Wing Review 2024
| Active Audience | 66% |
| Quality Matches | 89% |
| Popular Age | 20-25 |
| Profiles | 1 000 000 |
| Reply Rate | 87% |
| Ease of Use | 6.8 |
| Popularity | 9.0 |
| Fraud | Very Rarely |
| Rating | |
| Registration | Free |
Wing users sign up here as well:
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Euan Barker
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26 May 2020Updated:05 Dec 2024
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3327 Views
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9 min read
Pros and Cons
- Totally free to use
- Slick app design
- Intuitive navigation
- No Android version
- Looks forgotten by developers
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Wing is a dating and matchmaking app from the Netherlands, allowing users to play wingmen to their Facebook friends or find matches for themselves. Normally, most dating apps out there clearly categorize these intentions, offering separate products for each of these purposes. Wing, however, decided to mix them up and give both in one neat package. Did it work? Take a look at our review and see for yourself.
When was Wing Founded?
This app was released in 2017, and, over the first year, has seen its fair share of updates. However, not a single release was uploaded to the AppStore after 2017. So, for better or worse, this app remains more or less the same — without any improvements or bug fixes after 2017.
Who Owns Wing?
Wonderlus VOF is a software developing company from the Netherlands. VOF stands for general partnership in this country. The developers have a couple of other apps in their portfolio — literally, a couple. Both are casual games, one of which is a simple Solitaire. So, Wing is their debut in the dating niche.
Registration & Profile
Anyone who wants to give Wing a try will have to use their Facebook details to log in. There is absolutely no other way to create an account, which could be both a plus and a minus. On the one hand, faking a FB account is not that easy, which should eliminate scammers and frauds. On the other one, not everyone is so happy about sharing their dating agendas with Facebook — it has too much on all of us already. But, things are what they are. If you want to use Wing, you will have to get Facebook involved, and not just to register.
Once new users join, their basic data is automatically pulled from FB. It includes profile picture, age, location, sexual orientation, and marital status. Besides, Wing gets access to your friend list and some of their data. That is quite alarming when it comes to the ethical aspect of things, but hey — playing matchmaker for friends? Many would have a lot to say on that one, too.
As far as its profiles get, they are as good as one’s Facebook account. Sure, users get a chance to play along with Wing settings a bit and apply a different profile picture, but all accounts still remain Facebook-based.
Communication/Matches
Wing’s slogan is “Be nice, break the ice.” That’s what this app sets out to do — offer anyone a chance at playing a matchmaker and having their friends hooked up. Also, it takes a slightly different approach to matching and communication. With Wing, no one can do without a wingman. Even if you want to get matched yourself, you should pick a wingman first. The good news is that you do not have to place all of your eggs in one basket because any person hungry for love (or hookup) can choose up to three wingmen to represent them. Well, three wingmen are better than one. Supposedly.
So, once users have decided on their friends who need setting up and chosen wingmen for themselves, the app will start sending them suggestions. Once again, note that these suggestions are for your friends only. So, users should pick a good match for one of their lonely friends. Later, if this friend is in the app database (yes, you can’t just ambush your unsuspecting friends; they will have to install Wing as well), the suggestion is redirected to a person for whom the match is intended. They, in turn, can either like or ignore it — like on Tinder and practically all dating apps after Tinder. If both people like each other, they are notified, and the flirting can begin.
So, Wing does not offer any truly revolutionary functionality. It all goes down to getting a list of suggestions and mutual likes. The only difference is that your Wing friends go through those suggestions first. They filter out all automatic in-app suggestions and send you matches they think are good for you.
How to Search for People on Wing?
This app does not offer too many comprehensive search options. To find someone on Wing, users should first choose who they are going to set up. Then, the app will send them suggestions from its user database. The actual logic behind their automatic suggestions is unknown, but it looks like Wing considers one’s gender, sexual orientation, approximate age, and location. You cannot get any more specific than that or even indicate age and location range settings. All of those are set by default, and the anxious Cupid has to keep swiping to find decent matches for their lonely friends.
How to Delete Wing Account?
If you want to get on Wing, note that getting out could be a little tricky. Users do not get to delete their accounts or matching history. The only thing they can do is to delete the app entirely. However, app servers and the app will probably keep all this info in their database. We’re not even sure that completely deactivating your Facebook would do the trick. After all, Wing has already pulled your data and has all the intention of keeping it, along with AppStore. Besides, deleting your entire Facebook history seems a bit drastic.
Members Structure
Wing is mostly available in Europe. However, there is little official data on its users. For an app that treats user confidentiality so lightly, they do an excellent job of not disclosing any user stars from their database — not even the general info.
Sexual Preferences
It looks like Wing does accept different sexual orientations mostly because its profiling follows FB logic. We, however, still assume that most of its audience is straight — even though it is technically possible to search for same-sex partners.
Race and Ethnicity
From what we’ve seen, most Wing users are white. However, this site does not discriminate against any race or ethnicity — those are not factors they even consider. Still, this app mostly functions in the EU, so its user database is as diverse and Central and Western Europe.
Religious Orientation
Facebook does not collect any data on its users’ religious affiliations, and neither does Wing. It’s possible to assume that most users will be Christians, in all of this church’s denominations. However, this is just a theoretical assumption based on common beliefs in Europe. The actual stats may differ. Besides, Wing is not huge on religion, and even though it does not discriminate against any, it simply does not consider faith in its calculations.
Pricing Policies
Wing is one of those rare apps that do not offer any in-app purchases at all. Anyone can join and get their friends to join — all for free. All essential functionally and communication features are unlocked after the registration. Users will see an ad now and then, but they are not expected to pay for anything at all.
Is Wing Safe?
Wing is as safe as letting your friends play Cupid can get. If you speak about an online security aspect, everything is quite great because developers have a rough time publishing their products in the AppStore database. If Wing made it this far, everything about their privacy policy and encryption technology is solid. User data is protected from cyber attacks, is stored on secure servers, and never disclosed to any other parties. Besides, this app is totally free, so no one will need to worry about having their financial identity stolen.
Quality of Profiles
We do believe that most — if not all — accounts on Wing are real people. Since Facebook is the only registration option, scammers will have a hard time getting into this app. Technically, no one verifies how real one’s Facebook account is. Still, all matches go through double approval — first, by wingmen and then by people who need setting up. Having a blank or unrealistic profile would not do scammers any good. So, heads up on user authenticity.
Website Design and Usability
As of now, there is no desktop version for Wing. There is a site advertising this app, and you can even download an app from there. Or, technically, you could — because get-wing.eu is down most of the time.
How does Wing Work?
Wing works pretty much like Tinder or all Tinder-influenced apps, with heart and cross icons instead of Swipes. The only major difference is that all matches have to go through wingmen first, and only after wingman’s approval, the match is suggested to a person who’s being matched. So, it all goes down to letting your friends play Cupid for you. Wingmen get a whole bunch of automated, pretty random match suggestions for their friends, and pick the best of the best for their besties.
As a result, a person looking for a date gets fewer match suggestions than on most other sites. Besides, these suggestions have already been filtered by people who know what this lonely heart wants. Or so they think, at least.
Based on the suggestions from their wingmen, users can play the same heart (yes, I like that one) or cross (nope, definitely not) game. If both set up people like each other, they get a notification from the app. And now the courting begins! The rest, as they say, is in your hands — your Cupid friends have already played their part.
Wing App
Not only does Wing have a pretty unusual concept, but it also features an elegant design. This app looks both slick and modern with its neat, uncluttered interface and soothing light blue and grey shades. The desired heart icon is in red, of course, and it acts as the main contrasting element in this app. The background is mostly white, and all of those colors mix quite right together.
When signed in, Wing works without glitches or bugs (at least, we haven’t found any). However, the actual sign-in process might take a lot of time because the app does try logging in to Facebook (and FB lets it), but Wing often gives a connection error message.
Also, the developers only released an iOS version. We would say that Android users would have to wait, but it looks like the waiting will take quite a lot of time — Wonderlus VOF does not have a single Android app in its portfolio.
So, Wing remains iOS-exclusive, and looks like it’s going to stay that way. Besides, this app hasn’t been updated for almost three years, and we do have reason to believe the developers have forgotten about it.
Alternatives of Wing
If you are intrigued by this concept and are looking for something of the kind, another good example in the same matchmaking range is Wingman. This app was released the same year as Wing, is made for setting up friends only, and looks like it is still in business. It got way more publicity back at the time, and it should have more users than Wing. More apps of the same kind include Wing App (yes, exactly like this — not just Wing, but Wing App) and Wing Matchmaking.
Still, it looks like the whole ‘setting up friends” concept did not gain much popularity in the online dating world. Pretty much like it hardly gets any popularity (or gratitude, or effect) in the real-time dating world. So, you might take matters in your own hands and start searching for matches independently.
Obviously, anyone can start with Tinder — since so many dating providers are actively mimicking this tool. If you already tried it and found this app disappointing, Zoosk is another great option. It comes from one of the Tinder creators but tries to give more power to women. Speaking of giving more power to women, no app does it better than Bumble, where the ladies get all the initiative.
And, of course, there is a whole set of various dating apps for all types of relationships, sexual orientations, and even locations. You just have to define your goals and go for a platform that provides them. Today, there are plenty of products for everyone’s taste. And if you really wanted to set your friends up, sorry folks. It looks like this idea is as unpopular in the virtual dating world as in the real one.
Conclusion
All in all, Wing has an interesting concept and a neat design. We would recommend giving it a try if the developers actually maintained this app. But, it seems that either the company is out of business, or this particular product did not get the attention it deserves. The official website is down most of the time, and the app itself has not seen a single update in three years. So, it looks like the idea behind Wing did not work out. It could have been fun to give this matchmaking game a try — even just for fun — but it seems like new users won’t have anyone to play with. Which is sad because this app really could have become a nice tool for close single friends who take active participation in each other’s love life and maybe even want to go on dates together. But it just didn’t.
Contact Information
Company: Wonderlus VOF
Address: Zuidstationstraat 3/201. 9000 Gent, Netherlands
Phone: n/a
Email: n/a
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