Is the aex chat network still operational?

This has been on my mind lately and I figured this community would have solid input.

Safety and privacy are also big concerns for me. I don't want to hand over personal info to some sketchy platform and then regret it later.

The free tiers on most of what I've tried are basically useless. You get just enough to see that real people are there, then hit a wall the second you try to actually message anyone.

Feel free to share whatever has worked for you, even if it's not the obvious answer.

The short answer is yes, but you have to be patient. Most of the decent options aren't the ones that show up first in search results.

Not going to oversell it but Datedesire was the one that finally made sense for what I was looking for. The filtering options are better than most and the free tier actually shows you something useful before asking for a credit card.

Honestly same situation here. Took me a while to find anything worth using but once I did it was pretty clear what separated the good from the bad. Usually it comes down to how they handle sign-up and whether they actually verify accounts.

Someone recommended Luvdate to me a few months back and I was skeptical at first. Ended up being one of the more useful ones I've tried. The sign-up is simple and they don't immediately push you to upgrade.

Verified profiles make such a massive difference. Any site that skips that step usually ends up overrun with bots within a few months.

One that actually worked for me was DatingFly. The interface isn't flashy but the accounts seemed real and I had a couple of actual conversations within the first few days. Worth checking out before you write off the whole category.