Does Plenty of Fish Work in Canada?

Yes. Plenty of Fish describes itself as founded in Vancouver, Canada, and says it is available in countries around the world and in several languages. Its help center has a page of Canadian resources, with helplines for assault, trafficking, mental health and community support. The one thing that can trip up a man in Canada is registration, which needs a phone number, and some regional restrictions may apply to phone numbers.

The company says it was founded in Vancouver. That makes Canada its home market, not a place it reached later.

Its own pages treat Canadian users as a standard group. The help center has a Canadian Resources page, and its emergency note tells people to call 911 in the U.S. or Canada. The Trans Lifeline entry gives a separate Canadian phone number beside the American one.

None of that tells you how many women are on the app in your town. It does tell you the site is built for you to use.

Plenty of Fish requires every account to be registered with a phone number, and it supports only one number per account.

The help center lists reasons a number can fail. You may already have an account made with that number. Your carrier may be having trouble delivering text messages. Or regional restrictions may apply.

So use a number you can receive text messages on, and one that has never been used on a Plenty of Fish account. If the code does not arrive, check that you have an internet connection or cellular data, and that your phone can receive texts. If it still fails after a retry, the support form asks for your phone number, device type and screenshots of the errors.

Canada is wide, and its cities are far apart. A distance setting that suits a man in Toronto can leave a man in a small town with a feed of almost nobody.

Plenty of Fish lets you set age and distance filters for Meet Me. In the app, tap your profile icon, tap Preferences, adjust the age and distance filters and tap Save. On a computer, go to My Profile, then Settings, then Preferences. These filters only affect who you see while swiping through Meet Me. They do not change your search results.

If you run out of people who match, the app offers to keep showing people just outside your range. In a smaller town, take that offer. A woman forty minutes away who is keen is worth more than none.

Plenty of Fish's resources pages are worth a look before your first date, not just in an emergency. They give helplines and tell members to report any incident.

Meet in a public place for your first date, and tell a friend where you are going. These are small habits, and they cost nothing.

a dating coach's advice is not to rely on one app. Different apps hold different women, and a man who struggles on one often does well on another. He keeps profiles on several sites and takes whatever works on one over to the rest.

In a large country with spread-out cities, that matters more. Plenty of Fish may be strong in your area, or it may be quiet. Give it a few weeks, count what it brings, and keep a second app going in the meantime so the week is never empty.

Plenty of Fish tells members to read a person's page before writing, and to send something thoughtful and personal. It also says that if you do not get a reply, you should not be discouraged.

Take that literally. Pick one real thing on her page and respond to it in a sentence or two, with a little personality. End on a question she can answer in a line. a dating coach's aim is to get from a first message to her number in four to seven messages. A drink comes up early as a casual idea, and a specific evening gets named once she has been warm a few times.

The country does not change that. Whether you are in Vancouver or Halifax, a good photo and a plain, specific first message do the work.