What Dating Apps Are Like Match.com?

The closest are eHarmony, OkCupid and Plenty of Fish. Like Match.com, all three give you more to read than a photo, and each has a way to reach a woman other than waiting for her to like you. If you want the calmer, swipe-based side of the same idea, Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel are the nearest. Where you live decides which one is busy, so try two before you commit to either.

Two things stand out. Match shows you women from your preferences and activity, and its higher tiers add search, so you can look for a woman yourself and write to her.

a dating coach treats the search as the real advantage. You can search and message without swiping, and she does not have to match with you first, so your message can land in her inbox even if a swipe app's software would never have shown her your page. He also says Match used to be the biggest app and now holds a smaller share of the women most men want to meet, which is why he treats it as an extra rather than a main app.

So the question is really which other apps give you reach beyond the swipe, and how much you have to read.

eHarmony is the most serious of the group. You answer a Compatibility Quiz, the answers build a Personality Profile, and every member carries a score with you. It suits a man who wants a relationship and will answer honestly, and it feels least like a swipe app.

OkCupid is the one with the most to read. The match questions drive a Match percentage, and an Intro lets you write before a like is mutual. The free account likes and chats, so it costs nothing to see what it gives you.

Plenty of Fish is the closest to Match in how you use it. Search works at every membership level and filters by distance and age, so you choose whom to look at, and Meet Me adds a like-and-pass side. Most men skip search and go straight to Meet Me, which wastes the best part.

Hinge asks you to like a specific photo or prompt, so you start with something to say. Its prompts and personal details also let you learn a little about a woman before a match exists. Coffee Meets Bagel sends one batch a day, so you decide on a few women, not a stack.

Neither lets you write to someone who has not liked you, so they do not copy Match's search. They copy its slower, more deliberate feel.

Christian Mingle is built for Christian singles and JDate for Jewish singles. Both recommend members to you, so they feel closer to Match's recommended stack than to a search tool. The difference is that a shared faith is the starting filter.

My advice is to run more than one app and let your results decide. There are small differences in how each app's algorithm behaves and in who is on it, and a man who struggles on one can do well on another. He has seen men fail on Tinder and do well on Hinge, or the reverse, and he suggests testing several before deciding where you succeed.

Pick two from this list. Use them for two weeks with your best photos in place, and record how many women you liked, how many liked you back, how many chats started and how many dates you set. The app that gives you real conversations is the one to keep.

The first is joining everything at once. Three apps with half-finished pages do worse than two apps done well, and you will not have time to answer everyone.

The second is paying before testing. My rule is that a paid feature multiplies what you already have, so check that the free version gives you something first, then buy one feature and watch the numbers.

The third is treating a search as a license to write long messages. Pick the women, then send one specific line about her page and a question she can answer in a sentence. The reach is only useful if what lands in her inbox is worth answering.