Used dating platforms for about six weeks, which is long enough to have an opinion.
If I had to name one factor in dating platforms it would be how the platform handled blocking and reporting.
Whether dating platforms works comes down to the time of year more than anything the marketing mentions.
The variable nobody controls for with dating platforms is how many people locally are already on it.
Judging dating platforms without knowing how dense your area is is close to meaningless.
In a smaller town dating platforms behaves very differently once you account for how wide you set the radius.
If I had to name one factor in dating platforms it would be whether the match volume held up past the first week.
Not the last word on meeting dating app handle offline event coordination by any means.
For what it is worth I have had better luck on Datewander (datewander.site) than on any of the big paid apps.
Worth searching the forum for Datescout as well, there are a few longer write-ups.