The Alternative to Hinge, Bumble, Raya and The League for Successful Singles

They do.

The question is whether they still work for you.

That distinction matters.

Pew also found that 53% of people who had used online dating described their overall experience as positive, while 46% described it as negative. Among people who had recently used dating apps, 88% said they had felt disappointed at least sometimes by the people they encountered. (⁠Pew Research Center)

That sounds pretty familiar to us.

We talk to successful singles every week who are not necessarily having terrible experiences online. They are just tired of the process.

Hinge vs. Bumble vs. Raya vs. The League vs. a Matchmaker

These services are not really doing the same thing.

Hinge, Bumble, Raya and The League give you access to a platform or community where you can potentially meet someone.

A matchmaker gives you a person whose job is to help find that someone.

That is a major difference.

Even a more selective dating app still requires you to participate in the search.

You review profiles.

You decide who to like.

You message.

You figure out whether the person is actually single, serious, emotionally available and interested in the same kind of relationship.

You coordinate the date.

Then you start over if it does not work.

With matchmaking, much of that work moves off your plate.

What Is the Best Alternative to Hinge?

If you like Hinge but are tired of swiping and managing conversations yourself, a professional matchmaker is one of the clearest alternatives.

The biggest difference is not the size of the dating pool.

It is who is doing the searching.

At Cinqe, we are not handing a client thousands of profiles and telling him to start looking.

We learn who he is, what has and has not worked in previous relationships, who he is genuinely attracted to, what kind of life he wants to build and where we think there may be a disconnect between what he says he wants and who might actually make him happy.

Then we search.

Sometimes the right person is already in our network.

Sometimes we have to go find her.

That is the job.

What Is the Best Alternative to Bumble?

Bumble gives people the ability to meet a very large number of singles.

For some people, that is exactly what they want.

For others, more options eventually become more noise.

Research supports the fact that online dating can feel overwhelming. Pew found that 54% of women who had recently used online dating said they had felt overwhelmed by the number of messages they received. At the same time, 64% of male users said they had felt insecure because of the lack of messages they received. (⁠Pew Research Center)

Different problem. Same system.

You are still managing the process yourself.

Cinqe is for someone who would rather meet fewer people, with more thought going into why they are meeting them.

We do not believe you need 500 options.

You need the right option.

What Is a Raya Alternative?

Raya is probably the app we hear about most often from people in creative, entertainment, entrepreneurial and high profile circles.

But Raya and private matchmaking solve two different problems.

Being accepted onto an exclusive dating platform does not mean you no longer have to date online.

You are still on an app.

You are still browsing.

You are still making decisions based largely on a profile.

And for someone who highly values privacy, there is another consideration: sometimes you simply do not want to be publicly available in a dating marketplace at all.

That becomes increasingly important for executives, founders, professional athletes, public figures and people whose personal lives overlap with their professional reputations.

At Cinqe, privacy is not an upgrade.

It is part of the service.

We have been matchmaking since 2010, long before privacy became one of the biggest conversations in modern dating.

Today we believe something very simple:

Privacy is the new luxury.

What About The League?

The League positions itself specifically toward busy, motivated daters and says it provides members with a limited daily batch of potential matches. The company also says more than half of its members attended top 40 colleges, 30% have advanced degrees and about a quarter hold executive or director positions. (⁠The League)

That makes it an interesting option for accomplished singles who still want an app experience.

But again, it is an app experience.

Cinqe is different because a human being is involved in the search.

We can hear what you are saying and also notice what you are not saying.

We can look at your dating history.

We can tell you when your expectations may be limiting your results.

We can recruit beyond the people who happen to be sitting in a database.

And after a date, we can hear feedback from both sides.

An algorithm cannot have that conversation with you.

Successful Singles Often Have a Different Dating Problem

The problem for many of our clients is not that nobody wants to date them.

Quite the opposite.

They have options.

Their problem is finding the right person among those options.

A successful 45 year old founder who travels constantly may not need access to another 10,000 profiles.

He may need someone who understands that he wants children, spends part of the year in Miami, travels internationally twice a month, wants someone comfortable in a certain lifestyle and is genuinely ready to build a life with someone.

Those details matter.

And sometimes what a client thinks matters turns out not to matter nearly as much as he thought.

That is one of the reasons experience matters in matchmaking.

A good matchmaker should not simply take your checklist and start shopping.

We should be able to challenge it.

More Choice Does Not Always Make Dating Easier

This is one of the most interesting findings in the research.

Pew found that 37% of U.S. adults believed people have too many choices on dating platforms, compared with only 13% who thought there were not enough options. (⁠Pew Research Center)

That gets to the heart of what we see in matchmaking.

Access is not the same thing as connection.

You can have thousands of people available to you and still have difficulty finding one person you genuinely want to build a relationship with.

In fact, endless access can sometimes make people pickier about things that have very little to do with long term compatibility.

There is always another profile.

Another swipe.

Another possibility.

Matchmaking intentionally slows that down.

Matchmaking Is Not for Everyone

We will be the first people to tell you this.

If you enjoy dating apps, are meeting interesting people and do not mind managing the process yourself, keep using them.

There is no reason to hire a matchmaker simply because matchmaking sounds more exclusive.

It makes sense when there is an actual problem we can solve.

Maybe you do not have time.

Maybe privacy matters.

Maybe your dating pool is unusually specific.

Maybe you are divorced after a long marriage and have no interest in learning how to navigate dating apps.

Maybe you have built an incredible professional life but keep dating the same type of person and getting the same result.

Or maybe you are simply done swiping.

That is when the conversation changes.

Cinqe Is Not Another Dating App

Cinqe was founded in 2010.

We have spent more than 16 years building relationships, meeting singles, working on searches and learning something that technology has not changed:

People are complicated.

Attraction is complicated.

Timing is complicated.

And finding a great relationship is about much more than matching two sets of preferences.

Our approach is intentionally human.

There is no swiping.

There is no public dating profile for our clients to manage.

There is no algorithm deciding that someone is 94% compatible with you.

There are real matchmakers having real conversations with real people.

In a dating industry increasingly focused on technology and automation, we are comfortable being the opposite.

Access Beats Algorithms

Technology can give you more people.

That does not necessarily mean it can give you the right person.

Interestingly, Pew found that only 21% of U.S. adults believed computer programs used by dating sites could determine whether two people would eventually fall in love. Thirty five percent said they could not, while 43% were unsure. (⁠Pew Research Center)

We think people still matter.

A great introduction can come from a database. It can come from someone we met ten years ago. It can come through another matchmaker. It can come through a personal referral. Or it can come from our team actively recruiting someone specifically because we believe that person could be right for a client.

That is why we have always believed:

Access beats algorithms.

If Hinge, Bumble, Raya or The League are working for you, great.

If they are not, you do not necessarily need another dating app.

You may need a completely different way of dating.

And that is exactly what matchmaking is supposed to be.

About the Author

Erica Arrechea is the founder of Cinqe Matchmaking, a luxury matchmaking firm. Cinqe works with accomplished singles across the United States and internationally, offering discreet introductions and concierge level matchmaking for professionals seeking meaningful relationships.

Related Articles:

1. All the questions you’ve asked, along with our answers, can be found here
2. How Joining Our Complimentary Matchmaking Works at Cinqe Matchmaking
3. Why Cinqe Matchmaking Is Different (And Why Successful Professionals Notice)
4. Join our database today