Plan to Eat Reviews

by AndriaJones

I came back to PTE after trying it several years ago because I saw they finally had a mobile app! PlantoEat has made it so much more practical for me to use on a regular basis. The subscription is well worth the price when I consider how much money in saving at the grocery store by not buying things we don’t need.
I’ve given PlantoEat 4 stars for now because there are a few things I’d like to see added/fixed. One of my favorite features of the website is the freezer feature. I’ll often make double of something, and then freeze half for another week, and that feature makes it so easy to plan for that. I would love to have access to the freezer (and to freeze meals) from the mobile app, but for now I’m stuck doing it on my computer. My other issue is more minor, but I would also love to have access to the queue feature on the mobile app, so when I add a new recipe or think of something I want to make, I can add it to the queue and then remember to make it in the next week or two.

by Eve@CC

I have been a member 4 or 5 years. It is the only Black Friday sale I do, as the membership is 50% off then. Even when I don’t use it daily, I find it is still worth it. It’s like any other tool, I don’t use my wheelbarrow, or my snow boots daily, but I am sure glad I have them when I need them. I need this tool when my life gets overwhelming, I can anchor back in regular nutritious meals. I also use it to plan out things that are aging in my pantry. I use the meal planning as I don’t have a smart phone with data plan, so the feature of taking the shopping list with me to the store is not as useful, though I do print out the shopping list occasionally. In spite of using only a portion of the program, the program still has value. When I get tired off my own gluten free recipes, I can connect to others who have already tagged recipes as gluten free. This program really made my switch to gluten free so much easier. The other aspect of this program is it is stable, the people that created it continue to add features without losing the basic functioning of it like what happens to some programs. This program might be the one thing that convinces me to get a cell phone to fully use the shopping list feature.

by Grammica

I’m a grandmother who still has my old recipe card files and yet what do I now use? Plan to Eat! I’m very grateful for this efficient tool in my kitchen and when on the road!! It’s quick and easy to save and share recipes. And I now have my Plan to Eat recipe file tucked away in my phone! It goes where I go!

We all get stuck in a rut with meal planning it seems, but this plan is changing that for us! We are trying new recipes and loving the variety! (I used to tear recipes out of my magazines and stick them in a file, never to see them again.) I also appreciate that I no longer have to hand write recipes and am finding it exciting to search for new recipes online and in magazines now that I can simply copy and paste them into my Plan. Plan to Eat is the best gift I’ve received in a long time!

by Redqt2

I had been looking for a free meal planning/grocery list tool since the service I had been using shut down. So when I found Plan To Eat I signed up for the free trial. PTE has been a great investment in saving on groceries and lowering stress when I get home from work. Both of us can see what’s planned, add to and see the grocery list, and search for recipes.

It could take time to add all your recipes if you have them in paper cookbooks but I tend to find that if you search, most recipes are available on the internet somewhere. So all but 3-4 of my recipes, I used their receipt clipper to get them from a website. I love being able to click the link and go see the comments on how people had fiddled with the recipes, as well.

Every year I renew during the Black Friday sale, but I think it’s worth full price. And now with PlantoEat , it’s perfect.

by Finding A New Normal

Plan to eat has become a huge part of my life. I have a large family and work full time. I plan my weekday meals including sides on Saturday’s each week. Then get my shopping list from PlantoEat . Enter it in my grocery store app. Pick up my groceries on Sunday and am ready for the week. Those nights when I am stressed from the day and would usually end up spending too much on take out don’t happen often. It is comforting to know no matter what my day was like there is a plan for dinner and I know I have all the ingredients I need. We have a healthy dinner. No fast food take out to feel guilty about. Anytime I find a recipe I want to try I copy and paste it into PlantoEat . Sometime I even add it to next weeks menu so we we can try it. When we try new recipes I see how everyone likes it and rate it. I also enter any modifications I made. I love being able to access Plan to Eat from my phone, tablet, or computer. It is so convenient and has saved me so much money on groceries by having a planned menu. It keeps me from buying things that look good at the time but never get used.

by Mom Of 5- Bethany

This is the best app out there for organizing your recipes and populating a grocery list. I’m a mom of 5 kids and so menu planning, grocery shopping and getting meals on the table is a big part of my life. And it’s where i can get easily overwhelmed. PlantoEat seriously gets it all organized for me. No more stress! One of my favorite features is uploading recipes into your PTE account. It’s does it automatically kind of like Pinterest but better! Another favorite, is it automatically populated a grocery list. You’re able to customize it if anything needs to be changed. It’s so easy to use PlantoEat while I’m shopping and mark things off. I also love the cooking view. This gives step by step instructions to make the recipe. It’s been easy to get the kids involved and for my husband to use PlantoEat too. He can view the grocery list and use it to know what items we need.

by O'Rhyan

I LOVE PlantoEat. It has completely changed my relationship with meal planning in a most beneficial way. Although you have to spend a little bit of time inputting your recipes, once that’s done I’ve found that I can meal plan for the week in under 10 minutes! It’s self-populating shopping list is easy to navigate. I love the fact that you can input recipes from blogs and, 9 times out of 10, it will cut out the dialogue and just capture the recipe. No more scrolling! You can also input recipes by hand, or make edits to the recipes as needed. I find PlantoEat extremely user-friendly, and was hooked on the free trial, but have been more than happy to pay for the yearly subscription as my time and sanity is worth way more than that. I am in my third year, and I still live and die by PlantoEat. Thank you Plan to Eat!

by ABABAA

I’ve been using this platform since 2016 and I always suggest it to friends. It is easy to use and makes a weekly meal plan actually happen. And I very much appreciate the Black Friday sale!

If I could suggest changes, one would be some way to know that Olive oil and olive oil, etc are the same thing for the grocery list. Also, if I add metric units to the ingredients anywhere except the measurement column they are not affected when I double or triple a recipe. (I realize I could just list metric units from the start, but most American recipes do not use them.) Lastly, I wish there was a way to set up sub categories for course. For example: main course, fall.

I really appreciate being able to send links to recipes and can easily revisit the original website if I need more information. I also really like being able to create my own tags.

by Blondiemom01

Everyone in the family has access to add to the grocery list when they run out of something. Anyone in the family can add a recipe to the queue, so we have ideas of what to plan for the next week. It’s easy to drag recipes from the queue to the weekly planner when using the website. I mostly use PlantoEat at the grocery store, to mark what I have picked up. I encourage friends and family to use Plan To Eat, so we could easily use each other’s recipes. I can access my recipes and grocery list from anywhere I have WiFi or data internet access. I have different lists for different stores, and I have my lists organized by category. There are features it has that I don’t use, but should be using, such as storing meals I have frozen, to add to the planner when needed. There is so much Plan to Eat can do for you! Plus, every year around Thanksgiving, they have a half off sale!

by MommaJ8

I’ve been a subscriber for 3 years. I was hesitant to join at first because of the annual fee. I bit the bullet and have found it extremely worthy. If you want to be organized, efficient, budget minded, and health conscious while meal planning and grocery shopping it’s extremely beneficial. We are a family of five. I’m a stay-at-home mom. It’s decreased how much we spend eating out. Simply because I know what I’m going to cook, have what I’m going to cook, and am prepared to make what I’m going to cook. With the recent addition of the iPhone app it’s so much more helpful. I use my phone in the store... sticking to the organized list. It’s easy to use. The customer service I’ve received is top notch. They’ve always replied quick and friendly. You really feel their concern for your question or problem. I don’t leave reviews very often but when a company exceeds my expectations, I feel compelled to spread the word. Thank you Plan To Eat!!

by Jwombat17

I can’t say enough about how much I love PlantoEat! It combines everything you could possibly want in a meal-planning/recipe-saving/grocery-shopping app. It is so user-friendly and easy to navigate. I prefer to use the desktop version to plan my meals because you can just drag and drop the recipes onto the days you want and move things around as needed. I prefer PlantoEat version for when I’m cooking in the kitchen because I can quickly search for the recipe I want and pull up the step-by-step instructions and ingredients RIGHT IN PlantoEat . Plan to Eat has turned a multi-app, multi-step, time-consuming process into a seamless, intuitive, enjoyable experience. Thanks to Plan to Eat, I actually look forward to sitting down and planning out my meals and placing my grocery order. I never thought I would say something like that!

by Aleet29

I have used plan to eat for several years now. I load in a few new recipes each month using the website links, which is so quick and easy. It’s rare that it doesn’t come in correctly! Being able to just add meals to the calendar and then go to the shopping list and toggle between that and my Kroger app as I load my cart makes grocery shopping so much faster and easier. I never have to worry about not having an ingredient for a meal because it’s all put on the list for me. My over-stressed brain doesn’t have to think through each and every meal while I shop.
Then I just pull up PlantoEat each morning to see what’s for dinner and see if I need to thaw anything out or remember to start a crockpot.
I love that it saves all my meals. I can easily tweak recipes. I have made tags for when I want to follow a certain eating plan.
I just love PlantoEat and site!!

by MushyV

I love PlantoEat! I’m always telling people they should use it. It’s been a game changer in my house. It’s so easy to import recipes from the web, to save them, and to tag them if that’s important to you (we have lots of allergies, so every recipe gets tagged to help us keep track of what’s safe and for whom). We also enter family or cookbook recipes - at least the ingredients - and make a not of what page the directions can be found and in which cookbook. That way all the ingredients are included in the shopping list. LOVE the shopping list feature. It’s so easy to mark off what you already have, and it’s great to be able to create different lists for different stores (e.g., for what we buy at Costco vs the grocery store). We use PlantoEat weekly - we make a meal plan over the weekend, then there’s no more of the painful “what do you want for dinner” conversation. Truly simplifies meal planning and grocery shopping. Seriously, try PlantoEat. It’s amazing!

by Ch2174

PlantoEat has changed the way I meal plan AND grocery shop. As a working mom with a family to feed, I have all our frequent favorites imported. This means that when I’m in a pinch and I stop at the grocery store after work, I have my all go-to recipes at my finger tips. I reference it constantly! I love the shopping list feature, although it is slightly annoying that I’m inconsistent about certain ingredients (so, my shopping list might tell me I need to buy “EVOO,” “Olive Oil,” and “Oil.” -And the reality is that since it’s a pantry staple, I rarely need it at all - but it takes a few seconds to “tap” shopping items away that you know you don’t need). I love that I can add recipe photos, and I especially love how easy it is to import a recipe. If I see something online that I want to try, I’ll import it, plan it (so that it populates my shopping list), and we’ll try it. If it’s a keeper - great! If not, I just delete it and don’t think about it again.

by 19821982198219821982

I love Plan to Eat--I can't imagine going back to meal planning and grocery shopping for my family of six without it! I’ve been using it for over a year and in my opinion, it’s an incredible value for the convenience it lends to the necessary task of feeding my family. Another thing: the personalities of the real people behind the software really come through in their interactions with members (blog and email newsletters), which makes the user experience that much more enjoyable. They really put forth effort toward building community among members.

Until PlantoEat release this week, if a person wanted to use the software mobily, she had to access the website on the phone’s internet browser. It worked, but wasn’t ideal. The release of the brand-new app is really the icing on the cake and the cherry on top of the icing! It is so robust that a person can accomplish nearly everything on her phone that she can on her desktop, which reflects the world we live in. Thanks Plan To Eat!!!

by SBR613

I know that seems overly-dramatic, but as a disorganized hoarder with fears of running out, I am LOVING how using PlantoEat calms my food-fear and reduces over-spending and waste.
I signed up for a trial months ago, but didn’t use it until I started a raw detox diet 3 weeks ago and realized it was time to enter the recipes into this app so I could more easily continue using them more easily after the program is over. (I was motivated by a 2 1/2 page grocery list that had apples listed in 3 locations, one amongst canned items, another with spices, a third with cuckes and zuchs! I strongly suspected this app would do a better job of grouping “likes” together, and it surely does! —tho I need to enter the category first, as in “apples, green” and “apples” instead of “green apples” for it to be most effective, as the produce is grouped alphabetically when the shopping list is generated.
After I signed up, I spent a few hours manually entering the first week’s recipes and menu, thus learning some of the software nuances at the same time.
I have more to learn about using this powerhouse, but I’m already thrilled!

by Atchx2

I love PlantoEat and have been using it for a number of years now. It keeps just getting better. On the weeks that I plan my menu, lunch and dinner time just run so much smoother! I have all the ingredients because it generated my shopping list, and I just look at my menu and know what I’m fixing (sometimes I do pick a different night’s menu, but I like being able to switch it around!). I can’t tell you how wonderful PlantoEat is.

I have bought memberships for my daughter and my BFF, and that is so awesome to be able to share recipes. I also love having a database of all those great recipes by bloggers and chefs that I see on the Internet. It’s so easy to add recipes and be able to search my own database and find it again! It is also convenient to always be able to access my recipes, even when I am out. If I decide I want to make something while I’m out, I can look up the recipe on my phone and stop by the store and get any ingredients I might need. Do yourself a favor and make your life easier! Get this!

by Momx4&more

Probably my favorite App and I have page after page of them! I love how PTE has thought of everything. I am obsessed with Pinterest as well as eating (healthy) and organizing! I find recipes on Pinterest add them to PTE which is incredibly easy. I use the tag button because we mostly follow a Keto lifestyle. From there I can then view all my choices. I look at my calendar for what my family has coming up for the week and add them accordingly to the PTE calendar. For example on busy week nights I add quick recipes or even add my own like salads. I can adjust the recipes amounts or delete or change ingredients like buns...I have a larger family so this also allows me to edit the serving size. I also love when I am looking at my shopping list that is on my phone and not on an old scrap of paper I left at home that each recipe has a letter and next to every ingredient is a small letter showing which recipe that ingredient is for. PlantoEat has helped me stay organized; we are eating healthy while I spend less money making extra trips to the store and I don’t feel that dread of “ what’s for dinner “

by ShineUpStNY

This is absolutely the most awesome software. I started doing meal plans for my family of 5 over 10 years ago. Back then, I did my menu by hand or in an excel spreadsheet. I tried subscribing to two different meal planning services that sent me menus each week to cook from. They were helpful, but as we were a vegetarian family I was frequently disappointed with the number of dairy and meat offerings. One service gave me a shopping list and I loved that feature. Plan to Eat has thought of everything! They make it easy to import recipes that I find online; I can add my favorites from cookbooks and or our tried-and-true family recipes. All of these can be easily scaled for the number of people I am cooking for. I just drop and drag the recipes into my meal planner. And it all translates into a digital shopping list I can check off as I go through the store. These people are brilliant! And their customer service is stellar. I have been thoroughly delighted with PlantoEat for over 5 years and it only keeps getting better. You will not be disappointed.

by Shaunsand

I signed up on Plan to Eat over a year ago, but I’ve been using it faithfully for about five months now. As a mom of four in her first year of law school, PlantoEat saves my hectic life from absolutely imploding. I downloaded the bookmark to my laptop, so now, when I’m on Pinterest looking for recipes, it’s one mouse click and everything I like is automatically in Plan to Eat for Me. But wait, there’s more.

The user interface is intuitive, and it’s easy to drag and drop to populate my meal planner for the week. This is also super helpful if I’m trying to eat Keto (for me) and plan regular meals for my kids at the same time. I can add notes to the planner if I plan on eating leftovers for a meal to remind myself what I’d planned without doubling the ingredients in the shopping list.

I bookmarked the website on all my children’s devices, so they can log in when they get home from school to see what is planned for dinner and get the meal started with the recipe right in front of them.

But the best part is the latest update. Before this update, I could only access the meal planner through the website, which added an unnecessary step to mealtime since I could never remember what I’d planned for a meal from one minute to the next. Now PlantoEat has a section where I can view the planner, choose the meal I planned, and go straight to the recipe.

It’s everything I want in a meal planning app and worth every penny for the yearly subscription.

by Kate246890

I’ve been using PTE for about 3 weeks now and am loving many of its features. Planning meals for my family of 5 is becoming more of a pleasure! I LOVE that PTE puts my grocery list together based on the meals and utilizing the shopping list at the store is super easy. I ran into an issue early on and my email questions were answered quickly by Riley and a problem solved eventually after several emails. Lots of pleasant and helpful interaction with Riley and the quickness of the help was much appreciated. My only issue with PlantoEat (resulting in 4 stars instead of 5) is that when you’re cooking with PlantoEat open, it times out and closes so you have to regularly open your iPad, phone, laptop to continue reading and cooking from the recipe. Paprika manages to keep the recipe open while you’re cooking and PTE REALLY needs to look into this feature. That is really the only aspect of PTE which is lacking. Other than that, I’m loving it!

by RebeccaSigns

I’ve been using Plan To Eat for a few years, and I love it. It’s so easy to save, find, and access recipes, prepare a menu, and make a shopping list. I’ve kept a PTE Safari shortcut on my phone for quick referencing of a recipe if necessary, other than that, the website didn’t do much on a mobile device. That was fine, I love the service and use my laptop in the kitchen anyway (we call it “Mom’s Cookbook.”)

Enter the PTE app. Didn’t think this service could get any better. I was wrong. PlantoEat works just as well as the desktop version. I still prefer the desktop for the bulk of my recipe saving, meal planning, and shopping list-making, but having PlantoEat to quickly reference a recipe and even stick it wherever I want to into my menu plan has been so nice and helpful.

Thanks, Plan To Eat, for a great service!

by EbonySunshine

I have been playing with recipe apps on and off for several years but not one has become part of my daily activities. PTE helps me to “shop” the internet for recipes, plan when I’ll prepare them, and then hit the store (or fish in the cabinet) for PRECISELY the amount of ingredients to make each recipe. This is important to me since I’m cooking for one.

The grocery list continues to blow my mind, offering organization and customization that allow me to be efficient when I’m in the store. The emails that share features have been so helpful that I usually end up implementing the feature, right away. I really could go on, but I won’t. If you download and try this, you have nothing to lose except space on your device (and you can always get that back).

I don’t think it gets much better than Plan To Eat.

by El Rey 214

I have looked for a program like this for years. I can now do my meal plan and run out the door with a shopping list in 15 minutes if I can make quick decisions.
The interface via app and online is awesome. Just click and drag your recipe to the calendar and your shopping list is made.
You can also have a staples list for particular stores which is so handy (I just wish when you checked it off it didn’t delete it off the list- but I get around that by printing it).
Highly highly recommend- I don’t have problems of it crashing like other grocery apps have and I love that I can easily save my recipes. The features are too many to list in the review (custom tagging of recipes, saves list of what’s in freezer, edit your recipe ingredients from
A recipe you had imported)- check it out yourself, you’ll end up saving tons of $!

by Lynn In VA

Part of me wishes someone would tell me what to make for dinner every day and give me a shopping list... but the truth is I want to choose from recipes I know I like. Plan to Eat makes it super easy to collect recipes and plan meals and menus. It’s very easy to modify the food plans when life plans change. I love that it puts my shopping list on my phone and can even separate the list by store. I love that my kids can pull up recipes and get dinner started before I get home. You can scale recipes up or down to accommodate different numbers of people.

I’ve been using the website (before PlantoEat ) for years and it keeps getting better. Any time I had questions they were answered person to person very quickly.

The only thing that would make this better would be if they actually shopped and cooked and cleaned up for me.