How to Create a Dating App [ 2022 Updated Guide ]

Discovering love has always been an interminable mission for us, all human beings. Like the time the outlook of people towards love is ever-changing. With countless books, motion pictures, and saga doing rounds all around us all about finding Miss. Perfect or Mr. Perfect. We all are focused on tracking down our perfect match, no matter how goal-oriented we all are in this 21st century. And as we all know it’s not easy to go out and find love like people used to do a few decades ago, because of the current pandemic situation and also because of the daily hustle-bustle.

In this technology-driven world, there’s nothing a little code, lots of algorithms and a great idea can’t solve. Luckily, for all the single and lonely people looking for love, this technical world gives a number of options like websites, communication groups, online community groups, and the easiest and at your fingertips are dating apps. This article is to give you an easy guide about how to make a dating app.

Analysation of your Idea

Right now, there are more than a dozen dating applications in the market both national and international. So, the first and utmost important step before coming to question ‘how to build a dating app’ is – analysis of your idea. Few pointers to keep in mind before creating a dating app –

• Analyze your idea, what unique and different features your created dating application has to deliver that the other apps already in the market.
• Make sure your idea sits well with the target audience. Draw a plan and determine the kind of people you want to use your application.
• Deciding on an age limit for the users is always a good move.
• You can divide your application into two sub-parts depending upon the generation – youth or the older generation.
• Work upon the idea as per the geolocation.
• Analyze the risk of developing a dating app that can be similar to others that are already doing rounds in the market.

Make a structure your dating application

After analyzing the idea, the risk, and few other things. The next logical step is to make a structure for creating a dating app and when you’re at it probably want to work on the design as well. So, coming to the technical part of making a structure and design for an application let’s discuss a few pointers.

• The structure of your dating app will be a clear one, with minimal details of back-end development available to the front-end users.
• While making a structure make sure you keep in mind which activity will come first and what activity you want to follow the first.
• Compose a user-friendly structure with visuals and some animations so that your target audience will be hooked to it.

Coming to the design, UI, and UX of your dating app –

• As for the design, I would like to suggest you try something simpler and still a little intriguing. It shouldn’t be complicated and tough to browse through the application.
• The design should be slick, attractive, and well-organized. And for beginners, if you keep the minimal number of sub-tabs it’ll be much better. You can definitely add more once your created dating app booms in the market.
• For User Interface, it should be easy to navigate and enjoyable so that your user can better UX and won’t think about switching to other applications.
• There are a number of tools for Android and as well as for iOS platforms you use to build amazing UI and hence, provide a fascinating user experience.

Also Read:-Mobile App Development Trends in Post-COVID World

Algorithm to Follow – How to build a dating app

There are two kinds of algorithms the dating app developer should follow –

1. The technical one where you’ll consider the loops and functions

• The general algorithm approach sorts the users out into certain categories and matches them.

1. Technical – some of the important and basic ones to work on

• The kind of loops you gonna use for match-making
• Loops to eliminate the already matched people
• Algorithms for the functions you are going to use for the various buttons and snippets you will be using in your dating app.
• Algorithm about how to control the unwanted traffic on your application.

2. General algo – how to narrow down the search for your users and make it better for them while giving them something it does

• General questionnaire algo to create the match
• Personality tests to further narrow down the search for your users.
• Self-reported traits from your users.
• Last and not least preferences, what kind of match the user is looking for.

Important Features to consider while creating a dating app

There are already a number of dating apps out there promising love and partners to single ones. So the features you include in your dating apps should be different and even if they are similar, they should be much better.

• Safety and security measures for the users. They are fair chances, not all your users will be good ones. So there will be chances for privacy theft for your genuine users. So, as a developer, it’s up to you to develop an app that is secure and takes care of the users’ privacy.
• As we all know there are a number of people who like to go to fake profiles, false names, fake pictures. When you come to how to build a dating app, another important feature to keep in mind is that you make sure to develop a segment of code to check the authentication and validation of your users. It’ll save your users from the trouble of data bleaching and also make your dating app more popular.
• Easy to find matches. In this speed-driven world, no one really has time to sit and read long love letters to make sure that the other person is the right match. SO, develop your app on the easy-to-find principal with a quick and witty questionnaire which won’t be too much and still help your users to find the match.
• The other must feature for creating a dating application is to develop it as per the geolocation. You can either develop it on the basis of the LAN (Local area network) – within a few meters of area principle finding a match with nearby areas or either you can go for MAN (Metropolitan area network) that is within the city, coupling your customers across the city. And you can even try covering the wider area whatever you prefer and you think your matchmaking app can handle.
• The in-app messaging is something as common as the login page for a dating application but make sure you include it. The in-app messaging also should be encrypted end to end, something every dating app should make sure of.
• Voice notes are also a good feature to add to your dating app because sometimes people aren’t in the mood to type so they can use the feature.
• You can add a feature to upload profile videos to users, it’ll be cool and yet different from other dating apps.
• One of the ignored and still important features you should be considering adding to your dating app is locking the pictures, just like Facebook allows. So, not everyone can download your users’ pictures.
• Push notifications.
• Option to manage the dating profile.
• Privacy settings.
• Option to blacklist/block or report the offending users.
• You can also add ideas about the first meet-greet to suggest to your users based on their questionnaire.
• As because of the pandemic, the real date can’t be really possible but you as a developer can extend your app feature with virtual video call dates so that your customer can still have their romantic gateway even during the lockdown.

How to create a dating app?

Now all said and done about the necessities about how to make a dating app, here comes the most important for all the developers – how to create a dating app and what kind of technology stacks to use.

The answer will depend on two questions –

• What is your target operating system?
• Are you thinking of developing the app only for Android or iOS or for both?
• If for both, do you want to go for Native mobile app development for both platforms easily? Or want to try something cross-platform like React Native mobile development? You can refer to two of my previous blogs to sort this out – 1)Beginners Guide for React Native and 2)All you need to know about Native Mobile App Development.

After getting answers to the above questions, comes the easier part.

• Languages –Java, Kotlin (for Android); Swift, Objective-C (for iOS); JavaScript (if you go with React Native)
• DataBase –MongoDB, SQL, Redis, PostgreSQL, Google Firebase real-time database (for Android)
• Frameworks –Express.Js, React, Node.Js, Next.js, React Router
• Cloud Storage –AWS
• Geolocation locator –Google Maps, iOS Maps
• General Purpose Tools –Optimizely, Google Analytics

Cost of making a dating app

The interest in Dating applications among today’s generation is bursting into flames. The income out of these sorts of applications is certainly extremely alluring. So for business reasons, it is a savvy choice to put into a Dating App. The question all of you developers want to know before starting with the development or investing a chunk is how much you have to spend on building a dating app.

To keep it short and simple, as a developer you all probably know the cost simple depends on numbers of factors like – which development technology you are considering, whether you want to target one kind of platform or both, what kind of tools you want to use, how much cloud storage you want, whether you going to opt for a free database with limited storage capacity, etc.

My suggestion to you, to start with a minimum and then extend the application as per the popularity. To give you an estimated expense it will be something between $4000 to $16,000 per stage if you go for a single platform with basic tools and attractive UI. The complete cost for the development of a basic dating app can be $50,000–$80,000.

This price includes building an MVP that is a minimum viable product, it is a variant of any software or application with quite ample features to be used by early users who can then provide feedback for the real future application that’ll be building for both Android and iOS. This cost also includes hiring one person for each technology. A multi-platform app with premium features can cost you $135,000 or more.

Monetization and marketing of Dating app

Your dating app will surely help the population to find their significant other, but you can too get something as well that is popular as a developer and finances to expand or whatever other idea you have in mind. But here arises the important question, how? There are numerous monetization and marketing techniques.

In-app purchase

As per the definition, in-application purchases are additional substance or memberships or any bonus in-app features or additional content services that you purchase inside an application. In-app purchases will help you as a developer to launch your application free of cost and still help you to make money. You can offer your users in-app purchases of coins, keys, or points gestures for updated app features or a better experience or for other third-party application-related application features like sharing a playlist from a particular music app to another user.

In-app advertisements

In-application advertisements are a viable adaptation technique for mobile phone developers, in which application developers get paid for allowing other applications promotions within their developed application. With modern data analysis tools following the users based on their search results, companies target the audience with pinpoint precision.

It allows the developers and companies to gain consumers and revenue. In-app advertisements have been confirmed to be one of the most productive monetizing techniques in the technological world. It is definitely one of the best and never out of fashion ways to make money. You can always have in-app ads, on the basis of user data and generate revenue.

Partnership

A different and yet beneficial way is to partner up with other local businesses like gift shops, sight-seeing spots, restaurants, coffee shops. You’ll promote them and send traffic their way in return you’ll get the commission. And you can always have tie-ups with other online businesses, e-commerce sites or online chocolate vendors whatever suits and boost up your business.

Premium membership

Premium membership means your users will pay a fixed amount monthly, quarterly, or annually to avail the additional features and other great user experiences that won’t be available for the users who are using the application for free.

These features will only be available for premium membership users. You can add additional advising features for your users about the gift ideas or date locations or suggestions about movie date nights in the premium membership. You can make the premium membership advertisements free as well because nothing is more irritating than being interrupted in between a conversation by ads.

As an addition, you can also make your premium membership a weekly based one as well. Like your user, per week pay $1-$2 for a week, and if he/she feels the need can extend it as per the need. This will give the user an upper hand and they obviously will use your application over the other dating applications because your other competitive apps in the market charge monthly or annually.

Freemium

In the freemium plan of action, users have to pay nothing to download the application and are offered voluntary in-application buys for premium highlights, extra substance, or computerized commodities. You can make your application free to download so that the number of users will increase and you can still make money by adding new features or upgrading the previous ones and apply a fixed amount of charges for those features and charges. While you work on this freemium monetization strategy keep in mind that you don’t make the basic things like in-app messaging, video calls, etc a premium feature because it’ll lose you, your users.

Wrapping Up

This whole article was about giving you a basic idea about the strategic steps you should take as a developer to create a dating app. Above we didn’t only discuss the technical aspect but also the marketing approach and the base steps to develop a dating app and how it’ll be beneficial to the developer as well.

Also Read:-Best Android Libraries To Use In 2022

FAQs

How to create a structure for Dating App?

To create a structure for a dating app, all you have to be is clear in your mind what basic features you want your application to have and how your application should function.

What are important features to consider while creating a dating app?

Some of the basic features a dating app should have are better usability, simplicity for navigation, ease to use, privacy policy.

How to build a dating app?

To build a dating application you have to work on a few factors, like which operating system, which development technique etc.

How much does it cost to develop a dating app?

The cost of making a dating application totally depends on the development environment, tools, techniques, databases and other technologies to be used.

How do dating apps make money?

Dating apps make money through various means like – in-app purchase, tie-up with other businesses, in-app ads, etc.