One of the leading dating apps on the market, Bumble has been a contender alongside apps like Tinder as the face of the dating app industry. What makes Bumble different from other dating apps is that the app encourages women to make the first move by not allowing men to message first. It was the first of its kind that got real traction almost as soon as it was released.
Why the appeal?
Because on other traditional dating apps, where you have to wait for either person to message you first after matching, it's typically men that need to make the first move. The other brilliant part about Bumble is that if the woman does not message you within the allotted time, you unmatch, forcing the conversation to start if she doesn't want to lose it.
Men either love or hate Bumble for this reason, but it actually works at your advantage. If you're thinking about setting up a profile, here's what you need to know about Bumble before you sign up.
Recommended Before You Sign Up: How to Optimize Your Bumble Profile
Recommended Before You Sign Up: 7 Hacks to Hookup with Any Girl
Bumble has a cute design that's likely meant to resonate with females, as it's a female-oriented dating app created by a woman, Whitney Wolfe Heard, who was also co-founder of Tinder. Its yellow colors are welcoming, and it has a similar layout to almost any other dating app, making it easy to use.
Signing for Bumble is easy because you can either log in with your Facebook account or use your mobile phone number. As soon as you log in, there's essentially only three screens you need to navigate, which are the homepage, where you can see local profiles and swipe through them, your messages, where matches will pop up, and your settings.
When you sign up, you have the option of choosing what you want to use Bumble for, which is another thing about the app that makes it unique - it's multi-purpose. Bumble has three different modes to connect people - Bumble Date, Bumble BFF, and Bumble Bizz. The first option is self-explanatory, and likely the option you're most interested in. As for the other two, you can use Bumble to find new friends or make business connections and meet people in your field of work.
There's not much a difference in how the modes operate, and you can easily switch between them. The dating app portion, however, obviously serves a very different purpose.
Let's get into it.
First off, men will have to play somewhat of a waiting game thanks to Bumble's notorious features for matching. When you swipe right on a woman whose, let's be honest, looks interested you, you'll have to wait until she swipes right on you, too.
But that's not it.
You also have to wait until she messages you first, but thanks to the time limit feature on messages, you won't have to wait long - at most 24 hours. If she matched with you, she's obviously interested, and she won't want the match to expire so she'll message you soon enough, perhaps even faster than you'd get a response on other dating apps.
Bumble also has advanced filter settings that refine your results for potential matches, where you can select if you'd like them to smoke or not, drink or not, what their religion is, etc. It's a great feature that more dating apps should have since it allows you to find the perfect people to date.
Additionally, Bumble now has an excellent feature where women can choose what female advocate she'd like Bumble to support on her behalf with each first move she makes. Women can choose from causes of human rights, public policy, or economic development to support.
Bumble has all the necessary features in its free version that make it so that you don't really need to upgrade for a better experience or better results. You can make connections quickly as Bumble forces the conversation to move rather quickly or you risk losing the match.
But there are still a couple of reasons why you may want to upgrade.
You can either upgrade to Bumble Boost for added features or purchase Bumble Spotlight to make yourself stand out to women in your area as a top result. Bumble Boost is beneficial if you want to see who's already liked you so you can swipe right on them, making faster connections, rematch with any expired matches you might've not had time to respond to yet, add 24 hours if you don't respond the first time, and get unlimited filters.
These are the same features that you'd get with any other upgraded dating app membership, but Bumble's prices are pretty high in comparison. Membership for Bumble Boost starts at $9.99 per week, with discounted rates for monthly memberships. You could even get a lifetime membership for $140, which is something I haven't really seen in other dating apps.
Granted, this is a pretty steep price for a dating app, and the features aren't that unique to be worth that price. Plus, there are no guarantees you will get more dates with these features, which gives all the more reason not to purchase their pricey membership.
But if you wanted to check out what it's like to be a top result in your city, and see if it actually makes any difference in how many matches you get, you could purchase coins for Bumble Spotlight starting at $1.99 for 1 coin, but you need at least 2 coins for Spotlight to work.
Since only women are allowed to send the first message, it takes out the guessing game played on dating apps. You know for a fact she's interested in you; otherwise, she wouldn't have messaged you, let alone swipe right. Conversations also move much quicker and happen more often on Bumble than other dating apps like Tinder.
Plus, the girl will usually make it known if she's down to fuck or wants a serious relationship within the first few messages, and if you have it on your bio that you just want to hook up and she matches with you, you're pretty much in.
The 24-hour rule can get pretty annoying if you're not too wrapped up in the app and spend a lot of time checking your matches. It's easy to forget about them as you go through your day-to-day, and you can end up losing a match with someone even if she messaged you first, and you didn't respond in time.
If you wanted to upgrade your membership and get Bumble Boost, it's pretty stinkin' expensive at $9.99 per week for the features you get. I'd say it's not worth it unless they added some better features.
If you're a guy who feels intimidated by dating apps and isn't too sure of how it works out what the best angle is to get the most matches, and dates, then Bumble is a great place to start. You only talk to women who are genuinely interested, and it takes off the pressure of figuring out what to send in the first message by giving that role to women. It's a simple yet effective app for meeting women and going on dates, but you can still find the occasional girl looking for "something casual." Bumble gets a 4/5 stars.
