Finding Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Right Now, has never been easier thanks to the advent of hookup apps. Grindr, Hornet, Jack’d, Scruff, Tinder, and the list goes on and on. These apps have revolutionized how gay men connect.
Related: Are Hookup Apps Good Or Bad For Dating?
Part of their appeal, aside from the obvious, is that they’ve always been free. Unlike dating sites like Match.com that charge steep monthly fees and offer no guarantees, getting laid using an app costs a person nothing more than the time it took to swipe right and typically yields better results.
But that may soon be changing.
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In a new report by Bloomberg, over the past five years, dating apps have slowly but surely begun introducing paid monthly subscriptions. And they don’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.
It all started back in 2011 when Scruff launched an upgraded subscription option ranging from $9.99 to $14.99 per month depending on the subscription level. Today, Bloomberg reports, nearly 20 percent of its more than 10 million users pay to use the app.
Related: Everything Wrong With Dating Apps In One Hilarious Infographic
But Scruff isn’t the only one doing this. Grindr soon followed suit by offering an upgraded Grindr XTRA membership for $11.99 per month, followed by Jack’d Pro for $4.99 a week. Today, countless other apps have jumped on the “pay-to-lay” bandwagon. As Bloomberg points out:
Tinder launched a paid monthly subscription—$4.58 to $9.99 a month, based on the length of subscription—and in-app purchases in spring 2015. Bumble was free until August, when it launched a monthly subscription service—$6 to $9.99 a month. The most recent convert is Hinge, which had been free since 2013 but this month began charging $7 a month for its paid service.
Tons of research has been done on exactly how much people are willing to pay to get laid. Most people, marketers found, will shovel out between $7 to $10 a month without batting an eye.
Related: Six Dating Apps That Deliver, Including The Sexy New Kid On The Block
“Our testing showed us that $7 is around the right range that both indicated ‘I’m serious, and I’m looking for something serious’ but not ‘I’m going to pay $50 on eHarmony,'” Karen Fein, vice president of marketed for the app Hinge, tells Bloomberg.
The key is to keep the monthly fee low enough that users more or less forget they’re even paying it. Tinder say it’s paid-member count expand by 30 percent in the second quarter of this year.
The question now is: With so many people demonstrating a willingness to pay for upgraded versions of their favorite dating apps, will the free versions eventually go away?
What are your thoughts on dating apps subscriptions? How much are you willing to pay? Share your thoughts in the comments section below…
Sukhrajah
How are the married men going to justify this, on their credit card statements?
ChrisK
@Sukhrajah: How are the trolls going to afford their fake accounts?
Eye of the Beholder
Dating apps? I thought the r*cists of our community had solidified that these were hook-up apps to justify shaming gay types who are “looking for too much”.
If you have to pay for the app are they going to start policing what you can state as your “preferences” to reduce the amount of abuse other users feel while reading it? Users are already feeling denigrated in mass quantities so how long before they factor-in that nobody’s going to pay to feel denigrated for very long…
Tobi
I imagine they’ll always be a free tier, simply because there so many parts of the world where low wages and a lack of payment methods mean it’d be almost impossible to charge.
grethomory
i can honestly say I don’t have any of those apps. They did the same thing online…they will be free for a few years and here we go “new and improved” for only $19.99 per month.
dwes09
As if maintaining servers, dealing with record keeping, keeping the code working, rooting out fake profiles and all that other stuff was free and required no employees! A very silly article. All the on-line sex sites (“dating” sites) and all the phone apps have always offered both free and premium accounts, and always will.
They have specific costs, and were created to make profits. End of story.
dwes09
@Eye of the Beholder: “If you have to pay for the app are they going to start policing what you can state as your “preferences” to reduce the amount of abuse other users feel while reading it?”
All the apps have always had specific terms of service, just as the dating sites do. Payment allows staff to deal with complaints. Try using your brain and making sense, logic and intellect can’t be that foreign to you (or are they?).
Pleakley
All apps count on a small percentage of their user base to generate 100% of their income.
This is no different, and the numbers in this article suggest the system is working just fine.
Eliminate free users would make dating apps virtually useless, and they’d end up losing all of their users.
I cannot fathom any app going to a subscription only model.
Lookyloo
@dwes09: @Pleakley:
All users generate income for these dating-app companies because the free versions have on-site ads.
Like free broadcast tv and most free websites – it may be free for the user but on-site ads generate revenue for the business.
The CEO of Grindr says they make 50% their money on the free setup (ads) and 50% from paid subscriptions.
(those stats may have changed as that info is from 5 years ago)