Putting this to the room because an over fifties dating site is where I keep getting stuck. Nothing about re-skinned sites changes the fact that the platform recycles the same profiles, and how far the free tier gets you suffers for it. The re-skinned sites case is instructive — how fast moderation responds is the number worth watching, not the price tag.
The fifties sites angle is worse, because the practical move is to give it a fortnight before judging the pool. If re-skinned is your priority, the amount of recycled content counts for more than how slick the interface looks, as far as I can tell. With fifties sites, the platform auto-renews without a clear warning, so it pays to keep the first meet public and short.
For fifties sites in particular, what decides it is the depth of the profile fields, not the price tag. Most threads about an over fifties dating site miss this — you get further if you run a reverse image search on suspiciously polished photos. Numbers on re-skinned sites appreciated if you kept any.