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“Real relationships, only online”, that’s the tagline. What I came into this Phrendly app review trying to answer is. . . what does that mean exactly? Are we talking long-distance relationships, casual texting, maybe even a cam site?
Since my first impressions from the site raised more questions than anything else, it was time to dive right in. What I found was refreshingly straightforward once I’d made an account. That said, to say you’re going to build a “relationship” here is a bit of a stretch.
These Are The Dating App Experts Think Regular Guys Get The Best Results With
Guys that struggle online are almost always using the wrong apps. There are a lot that are just a big waste of time. If you want real results start with these three that dating apps have found to work the best for regular guys:
Site | Our Experience | Our Rating | Free Trial Link |
---|---|---|---|
Best For Relationships | Experience Highlights
| 9 | Try eHarmony |
Best For Casual Fun | Experience Highlights
| 9 | Try AFF For Free |
Great If You're Handsome | Tinder Highlights
| 8 | Try Tinder |
Before we get into what my experience was like using Phrendly, let’s take a look at my review process for this one.
I created a free profile and left it for 24 hours. I was looking to catch any scammers that message every profile, even when they’re blank (there were none). After that, I filled out the remainder of my profile from top to bottom — photos and a bio, completed the quiz. . . everything.
From this point, I wanted to see what it was like to actually use the site as a real user. Starting out with a free account, I wanted to see how much you can do before handing over your credit card info.
Usually at this point, it’s time to upgrade to a paid subscription. Since there are no subscriptions on Phrendly, it was time to buy some in-app currency and see what I could get from there. Again, it was incredibly simple, so let’s get into the details of my review.
The only negative I came across while preparing for this Phrendly review is the underlying notion of finding a “relationship”. If dating is what you’re looking for, here’s a list of dating apps and websites you can check out — you’re never going to meet someone from Phrendly.
With that said, plenty of people are open to online-only, transactional interactions and I’m not here to shame. If you fall into this category, keep reading because you’re the target audience and you’ll probably enjoy Phrendly.
Now, time for a comparison against AFF as a known point of reference. This gives us a bit more context to the overall strengths of this site before we dive deeper.
Overall Our team rates each site objectively based on many hours of independent research, the features each site offers, and how it compares with other sites. The ratings are the opinion of our editors and their extensive experience. |
8 | 9.5 |
Quality of Women Our opinion of how attractive the typical woman is that uses this site and how easy they are to connect with compared to other sites. |
8 | 9 |
Popular How many people are using this site to actually meet people compared to other sites. |
7 | 9 |
Usability How easy is this site to use and how quickly can an average person begin meeting people compared to other sites. |
10 | 10 |
Privacy & Safety Does this site take proper precautions to safeguard its members, their identity, and their data. |
10 | 10 |
Effective Our opinion of how easily an average person will be able to achieve their dating goals with this site compared to other sites. |
10 | 9 |
Value Will the time and money spent using this site pay off for an average person based on the opinions and experience of our editors. |
8 | 10 |
As I mentioned, my experience with Phrendly was almost entirely a positive one. Sure, the aesthetics could do with some work but once you get beyond the lackluster layout, everything is great.
Far more important than that, I never felt as though my credit card was in jeopardy. It was also quick and easy to find literally everything I was looking for. I’ll always take a functional website over one that looks great but is unusable!
As a side note, Phrendly has an Android-only app as well as a browser version. Since I don’t have an Android phone, this entire review is based on the web version, though I expect the experience will be the same.
I’ve touched on this above but it’s important I highlight this for those who are just skimming the article headings. Despite what their tagline says, Phrendly is not about creating relationships. At least, not the type we think of when we talk about dating apps.
Instead, it’s about trading in-app currency for interaction with women. This comes in a wide range of formats, depending on your preferences and bank balance:
Strangely enough, women can send you photos but not videos. Only video chat.
It all starts with you finding someone you find attractive and messaging them. From there, you’re free to chat away and ask for whatever you’re into. Of course, the women are welcome to define their own boundaries of what they will and won’t do.
If you have a particular kink that you’re looking for, go for it, just don’t expect that every woman will be willing to cooperate.
This part is simple. You click the search button on the left of your screen and are presented with sets of 20 profile photos. If you like any of them, all you have to do is click on their photo and choose what you’d like to do.
At the top, you can choose to “star” her profile, type and send a message or initiate a phone or video call if her profile allows it.
You’ll also see other helpful information like her personality, local time, language(s), etc. If you’re interested, you can see the result of her personality test and how it compares to yours, though this is mostly a gimmick.
Before you go messaging anyone, it’s important to understand how it all works. Basically, the profiles you see aren’t just regular people like on a dating app, they’re models who do this for income.
You can send her a message but when she responds, 1 “sip” is deducted from in-app credit (see below). This is how she gets paid — she receives a portion of the money you spent buying that sip.
Don’t worry, only her first response to each of your messages will cost you money. If she replies three times to a single message, you’re still only charged once.
Some women are more lowkey and discreet than others so don’t just go assuming every person is the same. Some are there to promote their OnlyFans while others exclusively use Phrendly for some discreet income.
Since this is a form of income for the women you’re talking to, they’re going to stretch the conversation as much as possible.
Let’s be real, if we were in her shoes we’d do exactly the same. No shade, just a word of warning that since every reply costs you $1, you’re better off with a video call than a long sexting conversation.
They will ask questions and suggest other text-based activities to keep the money coming in. If you know what you want, there’s nothing wrong with being direct about it. Just keep it respectful.
Much like text conversation, other services also run through this same in-app currency. At your request (and her discretion), you can request photos or initiate voice or video calls. These calls are done at a set rate while photos depend on the model and what you requested.
The default pricing looks like this, though the models can alter these rates:
At $25 per hour for voice calls and ~$31.60 per hour for video calls, the default charges are surprisingly great value. Especially considering the fact you could easily eat through $200 per hour in text messaging!
Just expect to pay more through “gifts” during the call for her to do or say certain things, though this is always optional.
Phrendly’s payment system is unnecessarily complicated but easy enough to navigate once you’ve used it a few times. Basically, you charge your credit card with a set amount of money and this is displayed in “drinks” within the app.
1 drink = $10 so if you put $100 onto your account, your in-app balance will say 10 drinks. Spend 4 “sips” and your balance will be reduced to 9.6 drinks. I assume they do this to remove that feeling of spending money with every transaction — “it costs one rose” sounds better than “it costs five dollars”, I suppose.
Here’s what it all looks like in real terms:
On apps like Tinder, it’s normal to message 10 women back to back. If you do that on Phrendly, you’ll end up burning through money like crazy.
If you message 10 women on Phrendly, all 10 of them are likely to reply and you’ve just spent $10 to get one response from each. You can see how quickly $100 would be gone just from 10 interactions with each of those chats.
These women are getting paid to talk to you so they’re almost definitely going to reply, no matter what you say. Often within a few seconds. Rather than messaging several people and seeing who responds, be selective about who you reach out to in the first place.
Phrendly is an overall decent site if you’re looking for a little online flirtation with no plans of meeting anyone in real life. But if you actually want to meet someone and have some real fun, this definitely isn’t the site for you.
Instead, you can use AFF–a site where people are actually willing to meet up for some casual relationships. AFF may have some features similar to Phrendly, but its main focus is helping singles meet and hook up. After all, AFF’s users are mostly regular people, not models making money off guys who are attracted to them.
With millions of people on AFF, all of whom are looking for the same thing, you’ll have much better chances of getting some action here than on Phrendly.
Phrendly isn’t a dating app, that much I’ve learned. So what are the things about the site that I liked and didn’t like?
These Are The Dating App Experts Think Regular Guys Get The Best Results With
Guys that struggle online are almost always using the wrong apps. There are a lot that are just a big waste of time. If you want real results start with these three that dating apps have found to work the best for regular guys:
Site | Our Experience | Our Rating | Free Trial Link |
---|---|---|---|
Best For Relationships | Experience Highlights
| 9 | Try eHarmony |
Best For Casual Fun | Experience Highlights
| 9 | Try AFF For Free |
Great If You're Handsome | Tinder Highlights
| 8 | Try Tinder |
Last but not least, let’s take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions we get around sites like this. Hopefully, you’ve got enough info from this review to form your own decision on whether it’s the app for you.
Choose your conversations carefully, be respectful and enjoy the experience!
Phrendly is a website that allows you to interact with women. This can be for anything from general conversation to exploring your kinks over video chat.
Based on a cost-per-minute or cost-per-message basis, it’s fairly similar to a cam site but entirely focussed on private interactions — there are no public lobbies.
Phrendly is owned by Platphorm, LLC, a company based in San Francisco, CA.
Creating a Phrendly account is very simple. You can sign up with Facebook, Google or your email address. Once you’ve got your account created, you use those same details to log in from any device.
There’s also an Android app but unfortunately, no iOS app right now.
I can’t say I’ve used an app that’s a direct competitor to Phrendly before. The closest I could suggest are SextPanther, if you’re into texting/sexting. If you’re more interested in live streaming, there are countless cam sites like Chaturbate and MyFreeCams that are typically regarded as some of the best.
That said, Phrendly does a pretty good job of pulling elements of those sites into one interface.
When you first create your account and verify it with your mobile number, you’re given 1 ‘drink’ ($10 value) to use for text conversations. While you can usually use drinks for other things, this gifted drink can only be used for initial conversations.
They also offer referral rewards for recruiting friends.
Like any legitimate site, Phrendly makes it very easy to delete your account:
Better yet, if you had any remaining balance on your account when you close it, these credits will be refunded to your credit card.
Note that this only applies to credit you purchased. Sign-up and referral credits will not be refunded.
There’s no monthly subscription for Phrendly. Instead, it works on a pay-as-you-go system. You add a credit card to your account, add in-app credits to that account and choose where and how you spend them.
Yes, Phrendly is a legitimate app. All of my interactions with people on the site, the payment system and even Reddit threads point to it being legitimate and trustworthy.
Phrendly does work, so long as you’re going into it with the right goals in mind.
If you’re looking for dating and relationships, Phrendly isn’t a solution at all. Take a look at these 9 dating apps if that’s what you want.
On the other hand, if you’re just looking for some flirtatious fun, knowing you’ll never meet up, Phrendly is excellent.
Sending messages on Phrendly is as easy as clicking on a user’s profile from the Search field and typing out a message.
Just be aware that if she replies to your message, it’ll cost you $1 worth of credit.
The Phrendly search function is very simple and straightforward. You just click the magnifying glass on the left sidebar and look through the available profiles.