Choosing software for creating a dating platform requires careful analysis of various criteria. This guide will help you systematize the selection process based on similar criteria and characteristics. Over the years, we have compiled a list of criteria by which our clients evaluate us and we evaluate our esteemed market colleagues. This list is provided below and can assist you. The main criterion for clients is to stay with the chosen software for many years with good reviews so that the project grows, as moving to other software is akin to a fire with the potential loss of organic traffic if done unprofessionally.

This guide will help you systematize the selection process based on similar criteria and characteristics.

- Check reviews on platforms like Trustpilot, Capterra. Read about the reviews. Identify the strengths and weaknesses. Understand how the company is positioned in the eyes of the clients.

- Annual awards and recognitions in the industry speak to the quality and innovation of their solutions.

- Check the date of the last update on the company's blog.

- Find out how many years the company has been developing dating software. A long presence in the market usually indicates reliability.

- Ensure the new platform supports the required tools and integration for your traffic channels, such as CPA networks, SMM, and SEO-friendly practices.

- Check which traffic channel platforms are supported: Web, iOS, Android, Smart TV, VR, Messengers, etc.

- Apps publication guarantee: Find out if app publication in Google Play and App Store is included in the package. Look for guarantees and the presence of a team that handles this process.

- The ability to create a PWA (progressive web application) that does not require app store publication.

- Management of rates: feature composition, quantities. Free and freemium plans.

- Order management.

- Content moderation.

- Built-in CRM system for customer management.

- Number and price of additional modules for your niche.

- Availability and cost of suitable payment systems for clients from your target countries.

- Check if business status is required to work with the billing system.

- Availability of a chat operators panel and operators themselves to facilitate business growth at the start.

- Development cost per hour.

- Ease of money refunds.

- Availability of contracts or online agreements.

- Availability of project management tools: such as Kanban, Jira.

- Available themes and homepage presets, evaluated by your designer.

- Response time and quality of pre-sales and support. Ideally, within 1 day. If longer, will your future clients wait that long to resolve their issues?

- Level of technical support, cost, availability of support for international clients.

- Availability of a personal customer success manager who will handle your queries and save you time.

- Availability and clarity of training materials.

- Assistance in attracting traffic and filling profiles at the initial stage.

- Frequency and quality of software updates.

- Presence of an active user community.

- Study the range of plan prices, minimum and maximum rates. Compare what each plan includes.

- Check the terms for easy money refunds.

- Consider the installation cost.

- Check if providers offer flexible discounts.

By following this guide, you can thoroughly analyze all aspects and choose the most suitable solution for your needs. Knowing the importance of the components for the success of your project and comparing them with the availability of these components from the provider will increase your chances of reducing costs during migration and growing your metrics.

If you are switching to Dating Pro from another dating software, there are several recommendations you can use to make the migration of your service as smooth as possible. In some cases, migration is straightforward, but the migration process can be complex when your platform holds large volumes of data across multiple sets. The steps you need to take to transfer your service to Dating Pro depend on how your "dating platform" is currently set up.

Before you start adding products and setting up payments, you should perform a few administrative tasks:

When switching to Dating Pro, you need to transfer content such as your profiles, as well as your customers' transactions, from your old dating software. On this page, the term "data" refers to both content and data.

Transferring your data can take some time, so start working on the plan as soon as possible. Assess the existing data and decide what needs to be transferred.

List the types of data you track on your old dating software. Indicate in the list how much data you have for each amount.

Examples of types of data you may want to transfer include: services, customers, historical orders (which have been executed), discount codes, pages (privacy policy, contact, and other web pages).

After you have determined the data you want to transfer, you need to decide how you will be transferring this data and in what order.

Here are some options you can use to transfer your data:

The options you choose depend on the developer resources you have available and the volume of data you need to move. If you need to transfer a large volume of content, you will most likely need to use an application. But don't forget about copy and paste as an option, especially when you need to transfer small amounts of content.

The following table lists the different types of data and the available migration options:

The order in which you import data about your product, customer, and historical orders is important. If you need to import these types of data, you must import them in the following order:

The same email notifications that are triggered for new orders are triggered for the transfer of historical orders. Before you start importing, if you do not want to receive email notifications about your historical orders, disable the order notifications. This will prevent these notifications from being sent during the transfer of your historical orders.

When you disable email notifications for your orders, this will also disable email notifications for any new orders. You can still review any new orders in your Dating Pro admin.

After the migration is complete, re-enable notifications for your orders.

If you decide to manually import your products and customers into Dating Pro, you can use CSV files to import data into your Dating Pro.

It's important to ensure that all information has been imported correctly. Check for common mistakes in the transfer process.

To help you get started, a default theme is set up on the "Themes" page of your administrator account when you open an account with Dating Pro. How to add a theme for your online platform:

1 You can adjust the color scheme or add a free theme from the admin panel.

2 You can purchase a paid theme from the platform or through the "Done for you" service.

When configuring the Dating Pro service, you can transfer a domain associated with your existing service to your new Dating Pro account.

Note To prepare for the migration of your platform, you may need to disconnect any existing domains you wish to transfer from the settings of your previous dating software. Otherwise, you might encounter issues with SSL certificates.

In order for customers to make payments to you, you need to reconnect the Dating Pro platform to your payment system. A payment service provider allows you to securely accept credit card payments.

Now that you have set up the payment options, you should try a few transactions to ensure that everything is working.

Performing a test order will help you understand the process your customers go through when purchasing your services. You can access all the orders placed by customers from the "Orders" page. You can conduct test orders for several different types of transactions:

• completion of a successful and an unsuccessful transaction

• refund and cancellation of an order

• fulfillment of an order

As you create, refund, and fulfill orders, you will see the emails that your customers receive for each action. You can edit the templates for these emails on the Notifications page.

For your peace of mind, split the traffic between the new and the old platform, tracking your metrics on both. This will help significantly reduce potential losses from unforeseen issues. Start with a minimal amount of traffic on the new platform and gradually increase it to 100%.

After migrating to the new platform, closely monitor changes in organic traffic and search engine rankings.

After transferring customer data and launching, you can offer your customers to create service accounts on your new dating platform. If you have many customers, you can use third-party services from the Marketplace to send out invitations.

Redirect traffic from your old dating software to your new platform.

There are several considerations that you should be aware of when transferring your service to Dating Pro:

Note You can import and export URL redirects on the URL Redirects page, which is especially useful if you need to manage a large number of redirects. To learn more about redirects, see the URL Redirection section.

Steps:

a. Log in to the platform from which you are migrating.

b. Find the URL redirect section in the account settings. The location depends on the platform. If you cannot find where to add the URL redirects, contact the help center of the platform you are migrating from.

c. Enter your old URL in the from field and the new Dating Pro URL in the to field.

d. Repeat this process for all the URLs you want to redirect.