HowAboutWe have announced a national roll-out of their Couples service.
Their date-planning couples service launched in January 2013, and after growing it across five major cities, the New York-based company is releasing a free version for the entire US.
National users will get unlimited access to the existing Couples concierge feature, which helps couples to pick, plan, and book custom dates in their area.
They can also order a range of “unique, out-of-the box” dates delivered to their home, such as cheese or cocktail making kits, and “intimate painting” dates.
The free service also gives access to the top dates from the five existing Couples markets – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago.
This is so national users can plan fun and interesting dates when they travel to these cities, whether a Zombie survival class in Chicago or underground supper club in New York.
In January, HowAboutWe celebrated the one year anniversary of their Couples launch, expanding it to a fifth city – LA.
After a year of offering the $18/month service, they said over 500,000 couples had signed up, had spent 56,739 hours together and gone on over 1,100 dates.
Month by month retention was said to be 90%, and it had an average quarterly growth of 100%.
This January, Match Group and IAC launched their competition to Couples, called Delightful, in the San Francisco Bay area.
Delightful plans dates for couples, their concierge team helping to find interesting local dates, without the need to print out vouchers or special offers.
This may have spurred on HowAboutWe’s national roll-out, as both companies compete for marketshare in the couples space.
HowAboutWe founders Aaron Schildkrout and Brian Schechter, have said of their Couples service: “Online dating as a business has a terrible churn problem because these companies lose their most successful customers.
“We’ve become the first dating site to prove a meaningful, on-brand service for our happiest members.
“In doing so, we became the first dating site that doesn’t want our users to fail.”
The free, national version is only available to those outside the five cities, and there is currently no premium membership – the paid subscription features will only be made available when the full service launches in their city.