Ishq: South Asian Dating

You’re forced to pay $30 a month to even use the app and have less features than apps that require the same payment. You can’t set distance you’re stuck with what you get. Only thing you can select is age and religion. You’re still swiping to match with Indian girls who do not even message back. Their whole idea of just talking to one person would be great if you can get a match and that girl actually responds and doesn’t live hundreds of miles away from you. For all the vetting that goes into this app I’m really disappointed that I spent money on it without a free trail to know what I’m getting into.

I rarely leave reviews, but I felt genuinely disappointed after paying $30 for one month on this app. The onboarding process is unnecessarily long and frustrating. The questionnaire takes forever because the app slowly types out each question and doesn’t allow you to skip ahead, making setup feel tedious instead of engaging. What’s worse is that after spending all that time setting up your profile, the actual experience is extremely underwhelming. I’ve only had the app for a few days, and it keeps showing me the exact same small group of people over and over again- maybe 8 or 9 profiles total. There’s no real refresh system or ability to explore more matches. If you’re not interested in that initial group, you’re basically stuck. For a South Asian dating app that asks detailed personal questions during setup, it’s also surprising how limited the filtering options are. The app asks about religion, lifestyle habits, and preferences, but then doesn’t allow meaningful filtering based on those answers. As a Muslim, I would expect the ability to only see or match with other Muslims. I’d also expect filters for lifestyle compatibility, such as non-smokers, non-drinkers, and people with similar values - especially on a paid app. There’s also little ability to filter by location or other important compatibility factors, which makes the matches feel random and not personalized at all despite the lengthy questionnaire. Overall, the app feels slow, repetitive, and poorly designed for something that charges a premium monthly fee. Unfortunately, I haven’t found anything about the experience that justifies the cost. Huge waste of money.

I would say the app is okay. Def not a 5-star currently but room for improvement. Right off the bat, I was a little turned off that the subscription is quite high…I thought the point of being different from other apps was to have more accessible subscription rates. Also feels scammy that you have to subscribe before even having access to the app. Typically dating apps have a free version before asking users to purchase add-ons. During the interview process, the founder emphasized how different this app is but currently not seeing any significant differences in terms of cost… The other major issue I noticed is that though I’m getting likes my likes are from the other side of the country or quite a distance from me. I’m sure the people liking me are lovely and I’m not trying to limit myself but, it would be appreciated if we could find people a little closer to us. During the interview, I expressed how that was an issue on apps like Dil Mil. I like the concept and like that people have been interviewed before gaining access, however, the app needs a lot of work. I know a lot of work went into the launch of this app but there are some key missing features that need to added and some current one that need to be reconsidered.