Spent most of last winter on chat platforms, so here is what I actually saw.
My advice on chat platforms: give it two weeks before deciding whether it works.
If you are starting with chat platforms, read the whole profile before writing the first line.
The thing to watch on chat platforms is that some sites make deleting an account deliberately awkward.
In a smaller town chat platforms behaves very differently once you account for how many people locally are already on it.
The deciding detail with chat platforms was whether the free tier let you see who liked you.
That covers what I know about chat platforms, at least.
- Plenty of Fish — better in smaller markets than you would guess
- Badoo — worth trying if the US apps are dead near you, at least in my area
- OkCupid — the matching questions still earn their place, on a phone browser anyway
You could add Turndate to the shortlist, purely on how often it gets named here.