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Dating portal development: driving inclusivity and revenue growth

Client

An online dating and matchmaking company

Industry

Digital media

Services

Staff augmentation, software development

Technology

Java 8-17, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Python, Spring Boot, Solr, Kubernetes, Android, Jetpack Compose, MongoDB, Redis cache

Challenge

The client is a prominent player in the online dating and matchmaking realms. The company has a dating web portal, native iOS and Android apps, and a number of back-office tools for customer engagement, marketing, and analytics. All these were built on the client’s in-house, custom-made framework, which is rather outdated, technologically demanding, and not cost- and resource-efficient. The company needed an established software vendor who could modernize its legacy platform—migrating the back end from on-premises infrastructure to a modern, cloud-native stack—while ensuring zero downtime for its large active user base. Beyond technology, the client aimed to make the platform more inclusive and competitive. They sought to introduce a third gender option to promote diversity and to revamp their subscription model into a flexible, multi-tier system that better matched user preferences and drove new revenue opportunities.

Solution

Our engagement with the client focused on three key objectives: improving user experience, expanding inclusivity, and diversifying revenue streams. To drive inclusivity, ITRex:

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Introduced a third gender option, labeled “diverse,” enabling individuals to specify their self-identified gender. Subsequently, our team undertook comprehensive platform revisions to accommodate this update. This included overhauling the registration form and refining platform settings, search criteria, and matching algorithms to integrate the new gender option.

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Enabled an Accessibility Service feature to accommodate individuals with specific accessibility needs. This feature gives an audial description of design elements and fields as users point at them. Furthermore, it intelligently groups related elements like profile information together, enabling users to receive comprehensive audial feedback without the need to point at each individual field.

Here is what we did to diversify revenue streams and ensure conversion:

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The client wanted to reimagine the subscription model to have more flexibility. The existing approach offered just a few subscription options, limiting monetization potential. The client designed a multi-tier subscription framework to create several products under one platform—each with its features, permissions, and pricing. This new system gave users more freedom to choose the plan that fits their needs while opening new revenue channels. The system determines the best-suited product for each user based on a fixed set of rules. Our team helped the client to experiment with different products and user segments. We implemented, trained, and deployed an advanced machine learning (ML) model that acts as a predictive intelligence layer: the ML algorithm analyzes user registration data and recommends user groups that can be eligible for discounts or alternative pricing.

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ITRex helped the client introduce a free trial mode—a feature previously missing from the product. Through iterative testing, we optimized both the trial duration and feature set to achieve the right balance between user satisfaction and paid conversion.

To improve user experience, our team:

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Ensured full compliance with DSA standards by implementing a comprehensive content moderation system and a structured reporting workflow. Users can now flag specific types of violations, submit detailed reports, and trigger automated PDF generation that is routed directly to customer support for review.

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Revamped the application using contemporary design approaches. These enhancements made the app more user-friendly and easier to maintain and update in the future.

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Added the ability to distinguish between real-time camera photos and images uploaded from the gallery. Users who submit live photos automatically receive a verification badge, increasing trust and authenticity across the platform.

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Implemented a brand new feature enabling users to “like” specific sections of people’s profiles, such as their interests

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Refined the mutual matching algorithm to account for the behavior and activity of other users, rather than relying solely on the searching user’s preferences and settings

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Integrated Spotify to enable users to attach different songs/music to their profiles without having to log in to Spotify, so that any profile visitor could preview these music segments without logging in as well

Tech

The project involved a complete re-architecture of the client’s dating platform to make it cloud-native, modular, and intelligent. Our engineers modernized the legacy framework to enhance scalability, maintainability, and user experience—all while keeping the platform fully operational for thousands of active users.

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Cloud migration and refactoring. ITRex initiated a gradual migration of the on-premises system to a modern cloud-native environment. The monolithic architecture was decomposed into microservices deployed on Kubernetes using Spring Boot 3.2. This approach allows teams to develop, deploy, and scale each component independently without disrupting the live platform.

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Application modernization. The app was completely redesigned using Jetpack Compose and the Clean Architecture pattern. These enhancements improved UI responsiveness, modularity, and maintainability—making future updates faster and more cost-effective.

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Machine learning development and deployment. Our AI developers deployed a CatBoost classifier that they trained on the client’s historical data. Our team designed and implemented the full ML pipeline—data extraction, preprocessing, model training, and API deployment. The pipeline connects directly to the dating platform’s database, processes incoming data, and delivers predictive recommendations via a secure API.

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Spotify integration. Even though Spotify offers a software development kit (SDK) to integrate with mobile apps, it was only accessible after authorization, which the client wanted to avoid. Our team discovered a workaround and investigated accessing Spotify's API using the back-end server as an intermediate layer to establish the connection.

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Automated testing and reliability. Comprehensive unit tests were implemented to automatically validate every new feature and ensure stable performance throughout the continuous deployment process.

Impact

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Improving conversion rates with the free trial mode, as users get the chance to experiment with the platform before committing

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Increasing revenue per customer with different subscription models

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Through our involvement, the client gained access to previously untapped market segments, including diverse gender identities and visually impaired users

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Cutting costs on data centers, CPU resources, and memory usage as a result of the migration

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The modern cloud-native technology renders the platform more appealing to engineers and developers, making the client a more attractive employer