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How To Build A Dating App Like Tinder

  • By Agira Technologies
  • March 9, 2020
  • 4579 Views

Tinder is one of the most popularly known dating apps in recent days. With over more than one billion matches were made over the past 8-9 years. This has opened out many opportunities in the dating applications market and its annual revenue was estimated at about $2 billion. There are many online dating platforms, and their advanced algorithms have made way for many users to use these applications without hesitation. Nearly 40 million people use dating applications and websites to search for a better partner. Tinder application clone has been popularly inquired about in many areas across the world. There are many varieties of dating applications available and here are some listed below for your reference. 

  1. Geolocation dating apps
  2. Matching based dating apps
  3. Traditional dating apps
  4. Niche dating apps

When you are developing a dating app, you can also add a twist to your innovation to attract more users. Strategize your dating app to success. Here are the steps that you should follow to build a dating application like Tinder. 

  1. Plan Your Target Audience: Even though Tinder did not target a specific audience, you can fix a specific target audience to get started with your dating application. If you are targeting a general audience, it is important to design the application to suit the requirements of a variety of people. When targeting your audience, keep their age, hobbies, preferences, and others. 
  2. Back-End Development: As the dating application involves very sensitive data like personal details and information, it is quite important to store them on a safe and secured database. Also, the database should be fast enough to cater to the requirements of the application, fast to use, and highly scalable. 
  3. Front-End Development: Front-end development involves the work of user interface and user experience.  The front-end developers create a user interface for each of the platforms including Android and Apple OS. You can also opt for hybrid mobile applications or cross-platform applications that work on both platforms.  
  4. Testing & Deploying: Test your application once the development is completed before deploying and launching it on Google or Apple store. 
  5. Monetize Your Application: Find ways to earn money from the application that is built. There are many ways to monetize a mobile application. You can find a few ways below in the article.

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Basic Business Model of Tinder

Tinder has taken its unique place with its iconic swipe in the industry. It has over 1 billion swipes a day from users across the world. The seamless user experience and interface have contributed to the success of the application and paved the way as an industry leader. Tinder originally marketed itself to sorority girls which in turn attracted many men and that led to the success of Tinder. Its marketing strategy was basically to succeed through word of mouth. 
Tinder’s business model largely involves gamification of the dating space and provides maximum value to its users. Its business idea revolves around connecting the potential users who are looking for the same thing. The swiping feature of this application plays a major role in making the user addictive to the user interface of Tinder. 
The best part about the Tinder application is that it is simple and doesn’t ask you more questions. It might believe in love at first sight.  
There are two add-on features in Tinder that are Boosts, Super Likes and subscription plans for more swipes and matches. Tinder’s target audiences were sorority students and everyone from 18 to 80. Without targeting on a specific age group, it is popular among the 20s.

Source: Dribble

Revenue Model of Tinder

Tinder follows a Freemium model in which you will get to use the application to swipe but the number of swipes is limited. So, you will need to upgrade to a premium version of tinder to use unlimited swipes which is also advertisement free. Because in the free application, you will see a clickable advertisement for every 4-5 swipes. 
You can find Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold Subscriptions that have upgraded features than the free one. It also lets you boost your profile, so that you will appear in many people’s recommendation lists. Also, they can give you super likes. You can rewind an accidental swipe and remove advertisements. In addition, you can also make in-app purchases like boosts and super likes for your profile. 
Boost: It is a mechanic in Tinder that empowers you to outdo its own algorithm to make your profile appear at the top of people’s recommendation lists.
Super Likes: It highlights a profile to display an enthusiastic engagement towards a person’s profile. You have one super like per day in the free version and 5 in the subscriptions. 
Some of the other ways to monetize your Tinder-like Dating apps are as follows.

  1. Advertisements
  2. Freemium
  3. Paid Subscriptions
  4. Third-party services

Tinder – Tech Stack

tinder tech stack

The tech stack of Tinder includes Javascript, jQuery, Python, React, Angular JS, Amazon S3, Moment JS, Kotlin and Gatsby.

Dating Application Main Features

The features are one of the most important parts of the application that enhances the user experience and contributes to the success of the business. Some of the top-notch features of Tinder application includes the following.

  1. Social sign-up – This feature lets the user sign up or sign in through social media networks like Facebook, Twitter or anything. 
  2. User Profile – It is the most essential feature that stores the details of each person who are using the dating app and their personal information like gender, name, age, image, bio and preference. In Tinder, bio and profile picture intrigues a person to make the move and decides to swipe right or left. 
  3. Discovery Settings – The settings let the users customize their discovery to other people and this is very important for a dating app like Tinder.
  4. Matching – it is also known as a matching mechanic that recommends people to one another. Using machine learning works, it matches people with its iconic swipe. 
  5. Private Chat – Once the user matches with the right person, then it should let both the users to chat personally. So, a private chat feature is inevitable in a dating application.
  6. Geolocation – A dating application should be location-based to let the local singles to meet one another. 

So, you will need all of these essential features to build a dating app like Tinder. 

ALSO READ: How to Build a Video Streaming Application like Netflix

Additional features

In case, if you want to add more interesting features to your dating application, you can consider the following. 

  • Advanced AI algorithms – The AI algorithms can be applied to make the application more advanced and fetch a matching profile more efficiently. With machine learning, it can analyze the preferences of the users and match automatically. 
  • Risk score – Especially in dating applications like Tinder, a risk score can make the profile more trustworthy and enhance the credibility of the application. One can involve artificial intelligence in generating a risk score for each profile by considering their personal ID information and others. This reduces catfishing and enhances a safe and secured environment for everyone who is finding a dating partner through the application.
  • Spam detector – This function is one of the essential features that need to be in-built to provide a spam-free environment to the users of the application. Reporting and removing spam messages is mandatory for a dating application. A spam detector can be blocked or notify the user that it is sent to multiple users.
  • Food and lifestyle preferences – This can be an interesting feature that can connect people with the same food preferences and lifestyle to meet one another.

How much does it cost to build a dating application like Tinder?

When building an online dating application like Tinder, it is important to consider the hours involved to develop the front end, back end, and additional features. Let’s consider approximately that it takes around 1000 hours to develop any application in a platform, 300+ hours for backend, 100+ hours for UI/UX and 20-30 hours for testing and deployment. 
Developing a dating app is a high investment and risk involving process. So, it is important to choose the right development company for your business. Create an exclusive online dating application by hiring the best React developers and Mobile developers from Agira technologies

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