The problem Match describes on its own site
Match tells its own members that a search can become "so precise there is nobody in the area who meets all your requirements", and advises widening the search criteria or the radius.
That is an accurate description of the rural problem, written by a mainstream site about its own product. When the pool is thin, every filter you add costs you more than it would in a city, so you end up loosening the things you actually cared about just to get results on the page.
Our answer to it
We start the filtering before you arrive. Every member is already someone whose life is shaped by the countryside, so the biggest filter you would otherwise have to apply is the site itself.
So the filters you do apply have less work to do. Age, distance, whether they have a dog, whether they ride. None of them is fighting against a national pool of people who would never consider living where you live.
Look before you pay, on both
Match lets free members create a profile and see a limited selection. We let free members set the distance and browse everyone in range.
Whichever you choose, do that first. The only number worth anything is how many people come back at 50 miles from your postcode, and you can get that for nothing on either site.
Where Match is the better choice
Match has been running since the nineties, it has a much larger UK membership than we do, and it covers every kind of person rather than one kind. In a city, or if the countryside is not part of what you are looking for, that breadth is worth more than our specialism.
We are the narrower option on purpose. That is an advantage in Cumbria and a disadvantage in Croydon.
