When it comes to dating apps, there are many options out there, all with different purposes, methods, and intentions.
Want to swipe forever? Go to Instagram. Want a hookup? Well… you know where to go… 😅 Want to find someone with similar values, have real connections, and potentially find someone to spend forever with? This is the place.
Mutual is not a swiping app. Mutual is a dating app. Our whole purpose is to create eternal marriages, which can only happen when healthy dating habits are put into practice by YOU.
We want to help cultivate genuine, quality connections and encourage intentional swiping to improve the overall dating experience of the members of our community. We don’t want to see your matches expire and go to waste! We want to protect you from dating habits that can hurt you mentally, emotionally, and in some cases even potentially in the algorithm.
On our end, we’ve incorporated things like a daily swipe limit, profile comments, boosts, and notes to help foster those genuine connections.
Why A Swipe Limit?
In a famous experiment known as the “jam experiment” scientists found that grocery shoppers were more likely to make a decision when they had 6 jam options to choose from rather than 24 or 30 options.
Similarly, if you have too many options to choose from in your matches, chances are that you’re not going to make a decision at all. This “analysis paralysis” is partially caused by the fear that there may be a better choice out there, even if the option you have is what you previously wanted. Your brain just goes into overload.
Simply put, unlimited swiping = too many choices and too many choices = no action or decision making.
We are hoping the swipe limit will help you to be more intentional in how you use Mutual. Take a minute to read the person’s bio. Look through their profile a bit and see if there are some common interests. By slowing down a bit, we hope you are able to find and foster genuine connection.
What Are The Current Swipe Limits?
For most people, we have limited swipes to 100 per day. This is basically the same as swiping through a whole singles ward every single day!
If your profile is not verified, you are limited to 50 swipes per day, so go get your profile verified! Every person’s swipe limit resets daily at 3AM Mountain Time.
MutualUp subscribers get unlimited swipes. Now you might be thinking, “Wait, I thought we just covered how unlimited swiping was bad. Why do MutualUp subscribers still get unlimited swipes?”
MutualUp subscribers have gone all in, and are investing in their dating lives. They are committed to finding success and are paying $11-$25 per month to have the best chance at getting where they want to be. If they spend all their efforts swiping and never interact with anybody, the membership alone won’t be enough to give them what they want. But they’ve made the commitment to use our full product, and so they’ve gained our trust to self-moderate.
We know some of our community isn’t happy with this change, but we truly believe it is best for our community as a whole. We chose 100 as the swipe limit because 85% of people on Mutual swipe less than 100 times in a day. If you are intentionally swiping, thoughtfully commenting, and responding to your matches, the swipe limit shouldn’t make too much of an impact on your day-to-day use of Mutual.
We are on your team! Everything we do is with the intent of enhancing your dating experiences.
For the critical anonymous reviewer, I promise it’s not for us to be greedy or get rich. Do we, as a small business, hope to make money? Absolutely. We have an amazing team of people who work hard every day to give you a best-in-class experience. We have a responsibility to be a profitable business that can staff great people and continue to invest in making our app better for years to come, but no one around here is pulling up to work in a Ferrari. We are just average people trying to do an honest job.
How Do I Have More Success With A Swipe Limit?
The same weekend that we released the swipe limit, Mutual made a few other significant changes. We decided to take one of the most valuable features of Mutual and create a free version of it. Enter: Comments, Boosts, and Notes.
Comments – Double your chances of a good conversation by sending a comment instead of just swiping. Comments allow you to like someone’s profile while also adding an initial message about their profile before matching, starting your conversation in a more organic way. These are 100% free and can be added to every like.
Boosts – Triple your chances of a good conversation by boosting your profile instead of just swiping. Boosts are an upgrade to a comment and anonymously prioritize your profile in someone’s swiping feed so that your profile is among the first that they see. You get 1 free boost per week. MutualUp subscribers get 1 free boost per day!
Notes – Triple your chances of a good conversation by sending a note instead of swiping. Notes allow you to send a message to someone pre-match. It’s a great way to let someone know that you are serious about exploring a connection with them. You get 1 free note per week. MutualUp subscribers get 1 free note per day!
(Learn more about comments, boost, and notes and how to use them here!)
The number one complaint we get from members of our community is that people aren’t messaging. To help combat this, we redesigned Mutual to be more geared towards conversation. We added comments, notes, boosts, and the swipe limit to increase the quality of conversations happening across the app and to encourage more genuine connection.
We’ve been anxiously monitoring the results, and it’s working! Our data shows that conversations are longer when members use these tools. Matches that include a comment are twice as likely to have good conversations (conversations that last 10 or more messages). Not only that, you triple your chances of a good conversation by sending a note or boost instead of just swiping!
Side note: for the person who is going to argue, “I never get any matches to have good conversations”… 97% of our community has at least one match currently. Chances are, there is someone you can start a conversation with right now! If you happen to be part of that 3% that doesn’t currently have any matches, try sending a note or boosting your profile. Or, you can try the good ol’ ‘Swipe Up’ approach. People like you! Give them a chance to surprise you.
Basically, what we’re trying to say is that if you feel like you never have good conversations on dating apps or don’t get enough/any matches, it’s not me, it’s you… 😬 But don’t worry! You just need to rethink your swiping strategy. Dr. Stephen Covey teaches that you should look in, not out. Focus your energy on what is within your sphere of control. What can you do to be more successful? Update your profile, swipe every day, send more comments/notes/boosts, don’t let your matches expire, message your matches. Give more people a chance and swipe up!
(That being said, if you truly believe the problem isn’t you, reach out to support@mutual.app and we can help figure out what’s going on.)
Make It Happen
Not every match that you make is going to become your happily ever after, and that’s okay! There are thousands of Mutual accounts created every week, so just because you’re not having luck this week doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone on Mutual for you.
Remember that there are GOOD people out there. We hear time and time again how dating is the worst and that dating apps don’t work, but that simply isn’t true! We have received thousands of success stories that prove otherwise (follow us on Instagram or on this blog to read their love stories.)
In fact, in 2019, The Knot concluded that “Dating Apps are the most popular way to meet a spouse” and that 1 in 4 couples meet in a dating app. In the last 3 years Mutual has averaged 15 million matches a year with an estimated 7-8 million conversations. Conversations are happening… are you part of them? Put in a little effort and you’ll be surprised what can happen.
Mutual is a tool in your dating toolbox. It is NOT a magic wand to “accio spouse.” You’re going to have to put yourself out there and become vulnerable. You’re going to have to go through a few frogs before finding your prince/princess. It’s going to be hard sometimes! Just remember, we are on your side, and doing this for you and our community.
Want to influence new features and help us continue to make Mutual even better? Provide feedback, upvote others’ suggestions and see what features are up and coming at Feedback.Mutual.App!
Kaleigh Adamson
Kaleigh is a Marketing Coordinator for Mutual, where she leads all copywriting, blog management, and brand ambassador programs. She has worked with couples, relationships, dating, and love in a creative role for over ten years. She's a hopeless romantic who loves that her career allows her to help people find their soulmates. She downloaded Mutual when it first launched in 2016, coincidentally the same year she met her husband! They now live happily ever after in South Carolina with their two kids and dog.
It’s neither a curse nor a blessing. It just doesn’t make sense restricting swipes when people are on a quest to find eternal companion.
Why are you making us pay to see more people.
Thank you for the thoughtful post
Such bs. I don’t think this is run by lds people
I can assure you it is 🙂
Pls stop the swipe control . It’s little contacts anyway
As a retired social scientist there is almost zero Research on dating app in regards to your above explanation. The limits you refer to as are far removed from applicable studies it made me laugh. This is just an attempt to find different avenues of revenue but you folks on the company and can choose to do whatever you want to do but don’t give us a bunch of bullsh*t data where you don’t even site your data sources. Just be honest people on this app can handle that rather than give us hidden agendas of guises to get us to join monetarily. The downfall of all of these single sites and I’ve seen many come and go is it some point that their dishonesty or their propensity to be honest finally gets them to the point where they become outdated and the next great thing everyone jumps to. You have a nice site… Just be honest that’s all or get a new data researcher and fire the one you have. Because here she is not doing you any favors and as a note the article was poorly poorly written which does say something about what you’re willing to pander to your subscribers sorry to be so tough on this but as I stated above honesty is always the best course action
Nice for probably most people, but I don’t even remember when I last had a match on Mutual, especially one that actually chatted with me at least in the messages. 😑 I think it might’ve been in the first couple of months of 2020?
I’ve 99% given up on dating in general now. Too many women just WANT to be alone, and allow businesses & other women to trash & degrade men. 🙁 Definitely doesn’t help my lifelong MDD.
I’m so sorry 🙁 I know some women are like that but I also know other women, like me, who cannot live without men 🙁 Keep looking, keep trusting, and keep believing someone is out there for you 🙂
Hmm. Then they not what’s in the profile!
I love this app one fine day heavenly father will give me his daughter from here
AMEN!
I God’s daughter
I don’t like having only number of people I can swipe on
The swipe limit is only good for people who get a lot of matches as it is. For EVERYBODY else the swipe limit only discourages people, it is seriously the worst possible thing you could have done.
Swipe limit is stupid there’s already enough things that make life hard and you want to make it harder for us make a connection. Your excuse of a experiment is that an excuse to limit the swipes.
Father gives choices . This control swipe is awful. We are in this website for a REASON!
I like the ideas which are explained here and how to go about it when I get a date here.