I did try Christian Mingle and a few others. Was generally unimpressed with all of them. My conclusion was that I would have better luck creating my own dating app from scratch.
Get this, most of these sites you are on there with the intention of meeting someone... but the site actually PREVENTS you from communicating with others unless you have a membership. HOW DOES THIS MAKE SENSE? The point of the internet in general is communication, FREE communication. So why would you go to a dating site to have your communication ability LIMITED?! Yeah, that makes sense! Not! :/ :/ :/
:[ :{
Oh yes, this subject pushes my buttons, lol
It's kind of one of those Catch 22 situations.
It was so long ago that I honestly can't remember how many dating services I tried -- something like 3 online with paid memberships, one real-life with a really expensive membership, and 2 free sites that allowed anyone to talk to anyone. And this wasn't all at once, lol, but I would say over the course of about 5-7 years.
I know paid memberships are aggravating and to some it will even seem un-Christian to charge money, but the one thing I can say I noticed was that the free sites seemed to have a lot more married people who were "curious to see what was out there" and "looking around."
I remember one guy in particular who talked to me for a while who had pictures of "himself" that in which he looked like a professional model (including a very buff, shirtless picture of "him" chopping wood. Ahem.)
I was very suspicious because I know the "type" I attract -- and it's not that type. I'm not saying that's an absolute way to be sure someone is a fraud, but guys who look like that DO NOT talk to me in real life (and I always have my real pictures up,) so I was pretty sure something was off. His personality didn't "match" his photos and I realize that sounds impossible to know (I'm certainly not saying it's foolproof,) but I guess it's just kind of a sixth sense you pick up from talking to people in writing for a long time before the internet ever came to be.
Long story short -- he told me he wrote to me because I just seemed "so real," and he kept in touch with me for (on dating sites at least,) quite some time. Eventually, he told me that he was not only married, but that he had married a girl he had met on that very same free site, and claimed that they were both still on there looking for just friends. I told him I appreciated his honesty but out of respect for his wife, was terminating our conversation.
I also knew married co-workers who would talk about being on the free dating sites because they wanted to know if they had "made the wrong choice" in whom they had married, and if the "real one for them" was "somewhere out there."
Others might have other experiences but I found the free sites to be a bit of a waste of time just because there were so many people there just wanting to play with nothing to lose.
A fee isn't an absolute prevention of course, but Mr. Married and Sister Mrs. might have a harder time joining a dating site that requires a check or credit card transaction that their spouse might see. People will also generally put more work and effort into something that was of personal cost to them.
(Occasionally we have threads here in Singles talking about various dating site scams and pitfalls to look out for -- perhaps we're overdue for one amongst the current crowd.)