I REALLY wanted to like this app. I listened to the episode of the Lila Rose Show where Emily and Daniel shared all about SacredSpark, and it sounded awesome. The reality is pretty underwhelming. A major part of the problem is that the app is quite new, so the available dating pool is not very big. I went into it with the understanding that since I live in a smallish Diocese, I wasn’t going to have many potential local matches. In reality, there aren’t many even when I loosened the filters and set my search nation-wide. Aside from being a new app, which I can forgive and have some patience for, the intentionality I know that Emily and Daniel tried to put into the app just does not come through. The maximum video & audio recording lengths and word counts for bios are not long enough, plus for the recordings there are no prompts given, so most people’s recordings are something along the lines of “this is awkward” and many are just recordings of dead air. The depth of the profiles is about on par with Bumble (well, really a little more superficial than Bumble), with the only advantage being that everyone here is Catholic. Another SUPER irritating thing is that you’re limited to 4 filters… EVEN WITH A PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION. The only reason I paid for a premium subscription was because I thought it would give me more filters, so that would have been nice to know before I spent that money. I seriously considered asking for a refund, but decided not to, because I do want to support this project. It’s not the fantastic online dating utopia I was hoping for, but they’re just getting started, and I hope over time the team will listen to feedback and it will change for the better.

SacredSpark was a pleasure to use. I especially appreciated the emphasis on video and voice prompts within user profiles. I am rating the app 4 out of 5 stars because, while I was able to meet a beautiful, chaste, Christ-loving Catholic woman through the app, this review focuses specifically on whether the app met its advertised expectations.The app promotes itself as moving away from the photo-driven model used by many secular and traditional dating apps, instead encouraging users to look “past the surface” through voice and video prompts. In practice, however, many profiles contained minimal or unengaging voice intros. As a result, photos still played a significant role in my initial interest. Obviously the voice and video prompts helped foster deeper connection after the initial match, but not significantly during the initial pursuit. From my perspective, visual attraction remains an important first filter, and I often felt the need to see who I was speaking with before liking a profile. While the app clearly has genuine intentions to foster deeper, faith-centered connections through Catholic/marriage/lifestyle profile stats, the experience still felt somewhat photo-centered in actual use. I’m not saying the app was 100% advertised as pictures-less dating, but it still felt very much photo driven in practice. Still the best dating app Ive ever used though! Thank you SacredSpark, Emily, and Daniël for starting something great, and I will continue to be a fighting advocate for the truest form of online dating in this broken world!

I was so excited to download as this was marketed as an app that would “change the face of Catholic dating”. When downloading, I was told about the blurred photos as aforementioned in other reviews. It bothered me so I went ahead and bought the membership. Then, they went and released an update in which some photos were unblurred and you could filter by location. What did my membership buy then? I feel like I just wasted my money. It was a pretty active app for the first couple of days but then I think ppl realized it is just a Catholic Hinge/Bumble and bowed out. While the video and audio features are unique, I don’t feel they are enough to justify this being an app that is the “solution to dating” as it was marketed. CM does a much better job with a temperament test and more specific prompts to answer, but it has a much wider audience, so some on there are not dating with intention. I almost wish SacredSpark, with its smaller, more intimate audience, would go by CMs approach but keep the video and voice memos. Also, now that it is updated, I would like some better perks for members as I paid for it. I can’t justify renewing my membership and honestly wish I could get my money back since this app has not been what it is marketed to be. The intention behind it was so beautiful, but the execution still leaves a lot to be desired. I’m hoping there are more perks when diocese unlock, but as of right now, I am discouraged from pursuing this or any other app due to the way it is set up.

I actually feel guilty leaving a bad review for a Christian app. But the developers are not doing what they claim to help us find marriage partners. I am on HOLY, Hinge, and Facebook dating and I get tons of matches every week. I’ve never gotten a single match on this app. It’s the most restrictive dating app I’ve ever used in my life. I don’t like the other apps I mentioned because they’re either secular or Protestant based. We really needed an option for Catholics, but this just wasn’t it. They need to lift the restrictions off of this app un blur the pictures and let us talk to one another. We should be promoting the matching of Catholic couples so we can get married and have children in this terrible time. We live in. I understand you need to make money, but there are other ways to do that such as advertising and less restrictive measures to promote people to pay for the app. Whoever is in charge of overseeing the way this app is programmed and works is making a lot of bad decisions unfortunately. I want to have grace with them and assume they just don’t know what they’re doing yet and will find their way soon but right now I can’t recommend this app to anybody who’s actually looking to meet a partner.