The Business Model of Hinge

 

    Hinge has experienced significant growth and has gained more than 10 million users over the past few years. Hinge is a private company meaning that it does not make its revenue numbers public, but it is estimated that it generates about $16.1 million in revenue. Hinge makes money through its premium subscription called the ‘preferred membership’. They also make money through the purchase of roses and boosts. Hinge has a couple of businesses models. They use the freemium business model, the SaaS (Software as a service) business model and the transaction-based revenue model to make money. This means that they do not charge for a basic account, but they charge users more for enhanced version of the account. Hinge’s transaction-based business model is when they generate money by charging for its transactions completed through its platform. Other than the add on features available in the app like roses and boosts, Hinge makes its money through its SaaS software business model where it charges its users monthly. Hinge’s business aim was to be different than the other dating apps and cater more towards longer-term relationships and not be another hookup app. To become such a well-known app in a market full of online dating apps, Hinge had a complete relaunch when they hit a plateau in users. After relaunching the app as the relationship app, they have seen a 15% increase in users and doubled its user base in just six months. Their strategy was to ‘get past the games’ and that is exactly what they did, they leveraged themselves and became a very well-known dating app in North America.