Open Relationships compared with #Open

Two specialists, two approaches

#Open is built for the same people we are, which makes it a more serious comparison than a mainstream app. It supports couples and individuals, it takes non-monogamy as the starting assumption rather than an option, and it uses a structured preference system built around hashtags marked yes, no and maybe, which the app uses to work out compatibility.

That preference system is the real point of difference, and it is a legitimate design choice with clear advantages. It is fast, it produces unambiguous data, and it surfaces incompatibility before anyone has invested a conversation in it. For people who know precisely what they want, it removes a lot of friction.

Where we differ

The case for describing rather than tagging

Our argument, and it is an argument rather than a fact, is that the interesting information about a non-monogamous person rarely fits in a tag. Whether you have a nesting partner, whether that partner has any say in who you see, how much time you genuinely have, how a new relationship would fit alongside the ones you already have: these are the questions that determine compatibility, and they are answered in sentences.

A tag system captures preferences accurately and captures situations badly. Two people can share an identical set of tags and be entirely incompatible because one has three evenings a week available and the other has one a month. That is the failure mode structured matching tends to produce, and it is the one our approach is designed around.

The counter-argument is fair and worth stating: descriptive profiles require effort, they are harder to search across, and they let people be vague in ways a tag does not permit. A well-designed preference system forces a clarity that open-ended writing allows people to avoid.

Where we think we are better, and where we are not

We think we are better for people whose arrangement is complicated, for couples who need to be visible as a couple while remaining separate accounts, and for anyone who wants to understand a local scene rather than only search it. The country and city guides are a genuine difference and no competitor we know of does the equivalent.

We are not better for someone who finds writing about themselves difficult, who wants matching to happen quickly with minimal input, or who is looking primarily for specific activities rather than relationships. A structured preference system does that job better than paragraphs, and pretending otherwise would not help anyone.

The thing neither of us solves

Worth saying, since this is the comparison between two specialists rather than a pitch against a giant: the hardest problem in non-monogamous dating is not matching. It is time.

Almost every failure members describe comes down to capacity. Someone who genuinely wanted a relationship and had two evenings a month. A couple who opened up without working out whose calendar would absorb it. A connection that was perfectly compatible on every axis except how much of a life either person had spare. No preference system and no descriptive profile fixes that, because the constraint is real rather than informational.

What a product can do is make capacity visible early, which is why we ask about it directly and why we would encourage anyone using any platform to state it plainly. A person who says on their profile that they have one open evening a week and a fortnightly weekend is doing more for their own outcomes than any amount of careful preference tagging. The people for whom that does not work will filter themselves out, which is the entire objective.

Choosing between them

If you can write two clear paragraphs about your situation and would rather be found by people who read them, we are the better fit. If you would rather answer a structured set of questions and let a system do the sorting, a preference-driven app is the better fit. Both approaches work, and members who have used both usually have a firm preference within a week.

If you are still working out what you want to describe in the first place, relationship anarchy explained and what is an open relationship cover the vocabulary.