Clover Dating App Review

by dating-apps.com

Total Score

What you need to know

Are you on Tinder? Chances are, you’re also on OK Cupid. What about merging the two, into one convenient app? This is precisely what the Clover dating app does, providing its users with the unlimited chats and generous profile facilities of OK Cupid in conjunction with the immediacy of Tinder. Does it work? Clover is certainly an attractive app, but this Clover dating app review goes even deeper to examine which features of the site work well and which leave more to be desired.

The stats

Clover was established in 2014, and it was initially marketed as providing ‘on demand dating’. What this meant was dating that was as simple as ordering a pizza or booking a night at a hotel (which, coincidentally are also things that you might do if your date is going well). This may sound like a somewhat commercialised view of dating, but Clover has certainly enjoyed commercial success. In the first four months, Clover garnered 50, 000 users – most of them in the US where the app remains especially popular. It is also very popular in other Anglophone countries such as the UK, though it is available worldwide in numerous global languages, including French, Spanish and Simplified Chinese. As of early 2017, Clover appears to have around two million users, though it is unclear how many of these are active users.

Membership of the app is free, though it is important to note in this Clover dating app review that the app does try and encourage all users to upgrade to a paid for ‘Premium’ account (which costs $9.99 per month after a seven-day free trial). The app is available for both Android and iOS, and a 2016 survey of the app found that 91% of its users are between 18 and 34. Though the ‘dating on demand’ model may sound impersonal, the creators of the app insist that Clover can be used to find lasting love as well as short and long term dating, new friends and casual sex.

What it packs

I stated this Clover dating app review that Clover could be described as a mash-up of Tinder and OK Cupid and I stand by this definition as it adequately describes the range of features provided. As with OK Cupid, users fill out an optional questionnaire when creating a profile (this is shorter than OK Cupid’s seemingly interminable quiz, though, as it has just 20 questions) and then specify details such as their age, height, orientation and ethnicity.

Clover Dating App Review - dating-apps.com

Set your location

Hot tip: there is also the capacity to set your location so that you can see how far (in metres or kilometres) potential matches are from you, but Clover automatically has this feature turned off, so you will need to go into your settings and manually switch it on.

Perhaps I should have mentioned at the top of my Clover dating app review that Clover also borrows some features from apps like Grindr (i.e. the distance your potential dates are from you at any given time)! Matches are shown Tinder style with a prominent photo and a few snippets of information about each person, though you can quickly go deeper and enjoy the app’s unlimited chat function.

Gender split

There are not markedly different experiences for men and women on the app, though like all good dating apps Clover enables you to tailor your profile and match results to suit your sexual orientation. Interestingly, a 2014 study (conducted, like the 2016 study cited in the section, by the Clover team) found that the gender split with this app was relatively uneven: around 69% of its users were male. More recent data about the gender split is not readily available, but the app did feel like it had a very male dominated set of profiles when I used it.

Go premium?

Is it worth upgrading to Premium membership? Not really, but as I mentioned earlier in this Clover dating app review, the app does exert a certain amount of pressure on users to do so, attempting to hook them in with a seven-day free trial. Users who do upgrade their membership will be able to use the in-app credit (which is called ‘Boosts’ and which is bought for real money) to do things like featuring your profile more prominently than other users’ profiles in the top banner of the app’s home page.

More recently (i.e. 2016), Clover introduced a ‘Mixers’ function which enables several users to talk to each other in a group chat. This is useful for arranging double dates, or just for finding several people who are interested in the same things that you are.

The last word

I enjoyed using Clover. Yes, most of its users are still concentrated in specific countries (it remains the case that they are overwhelmingly in the US), but I’d be a liar if I didn’t end this Clover dating app review by confessing that I’ve had some significant dates on this app. It’s good for making friends in new cities when you’re there for the day and hookups – from those long term relationships can start.

As detailed above, there are far more male users of this app than female users, which can be annoying for those not exclusively seeking a male partner, however, overall this was a fun, free app to use. One thing I did not enjoy, though, was the constant pressure to upgrade my account – I wish those ‘encouraging’ messages could be turned off as Clover works perfectly well as a free app. You can chat, browse profiles, do quizzes and arrange dates without paying a penny.