Grocery Gadget Reviews

What a pity. Best app I had found. Was prepared to write rave review. Was gonna buy the upgrade subscription. Used it for a month and Loved it! Loaded up numerous items in different stores. Used bar codes. Super easy use and warned you had lower prices entered at a different store. And then…… It suddenly wouldn’t let me change stores or switch between only 2 of them. It’s totally unuseable to me like this. No Response from tech support. Glad I didn’t spend the $. On to find a different list program.

Update: customer service has reached out.
App is working again.
Will give it another go ….. but will keep a backup app going and delay on upgrade decision til I am confident. Crossing my fingers because I really liked/like it.

EDIT: The developer did not read my complaint. I paid for lifetime ad-free access and then the developer switched to subscription model. They rewarded those of us who helped them get started by switching the deal later and giving us ads anyway.

Now they’re still giving ads to those naive enough to give them MORE money (I am not one of those people. I did not and will never subscribe after their unapologetic shenanigans).

Oh, and they raised the prices, too.
——-

For everyone complaining about paying a monthly fee for GroceryGadget and STILL getting ads, you should’ve taken a look at previous reviews and what these crooks did to their original paying customers who paid them money to get them going in the first place.

Longtime users such as myself paid for lifetime use, ad-free, and then later on, they put ads into GroceryGadget unless you subscribe to a monthly fee. Yes, it’s only $1/month, but that’s not the point.

The point is these jokers CANNOT be trusted. So if you neglected to pay attention to what these guys did to their original customers, it’s your own fault you’re getting ripped off now. If they did it before, they’ll do it again.

I can’t believe Apple puts up with this from a developer. It’s nuts. We pay for one thing and get something else. I don’t even use GroceryGadget anymore.

EDIT: I just subscribed for one month and I STILL have no way to log in to restore my lists.

EDIT 2: I finally figured out where to find the login (SO not intuitive) but guess what? Invalid group or password DESPITE being able to use those same credentials on the website just fine. I’m SO done. I’ve downloaded ANYLIST instead and it does EVERYTHING GroceryGadget used to do, for the same price, AND MORE, and the interface is customizable. I’m not usually this vindictive, but I’m SO angry. I’m just grateful I have a much better option.

Original review: I’ve had GroceryGadget for TEN YEARS and even paid for multiple people in my household to have the ad-free version before it went to subscription. I don’t want to pay for a subscription so I’m willing to put up with the ads. But it now quit working and kept crashing, as everyone else noted lately. So I uninstalled and reinstalled GroceryGadget . But without a subscription I can’t log in anymore and all my lists are lost.

Read the reviews, the developer keeps trying to spin the facts. In the beginning there was the “lite” version and the “pro” version. Lite was free but included adds, Pro was a one time payment to remove the adds. I purchased the pro version. Shortly after this they decided to put adds into the Pro version, and charge a periodic subscription.

Don’t trust this developer, they’ve proven over and over by their responses to customers that have paid them already, that they don’t care about you, only your future money.

What they could have done, is kept the lite and pro versions of Grocery Gadget, left the status quo. I’d they needed cash, they could have started a new business model with a new app and focus development under a subscription model. This would have given long-time loyal customer the CHOICE to upgrade if the features and service was attractive. Instead, they stole our trust and put adds into a program that was paid to be add free.

Apple, take note, you should not allow developers to behave this way. Or do you welcome this behavior because it lines your pockets with recurring revenue? Do the right thing, force this developer to remove the adds from the “Pro” version.

I’ve been using GroceryGadget for many years and it was one of my go to apps. It was just wonderful for shopping at the very stores and I regularly shop in. I have hundreds of items on my list. A couple of upgrades ago it decided to add almost every item in all my lists to the local hardware store I had recently added. And if you delete the store you delete everything in its lists, so I can’t delete it. Further I just found out I can’t add stores anymore at all. I can’t believe how far downhill GroceryGadget has gone in the last couple of years. One star is way too good for GroceryGadget. Edit: more than a year later, and nothings fixed. Obviously if they've stopped maintaining GroceryGadget.
Edit: i've replaced Grocery gadget with AnyList which has, near as I can tell all the features of Grocery gadget without any of the many glitches.

After so many years of using GroceryGadget, I had accumulated tons of products that I use on a daily basis, sorted by stores and also had over 15 different shopping list for all different occasions. This past week everything was erased! I’ve tried to reach the developer to ask if it’s really all gone or if there is a fix for it. I restarted my phone and no results. The developers have not responded to me. I used to recommend GroceryGadget, overall it’s a good one to use, but if I am going re-build my lists and product names, I want to ensure I won’t lose all the work I put into it. I’m looking at other apps and may end up switching to a different one.

I have been using GroceryGadget. for a number of years.
When hand held computers came out, you wanted to put your shopping lists on that device. Then you wanted organized per your routine. This program satisfies both of those ”desires“ very well.
Hopefully the day will come when the store will communicate with GroceryGadget. or have something, simply because the store keeps rearranging their stock. You no more than get GroceryGadget. set up with what is where. Bam! You start all over again learning the store and try to get GroceryGadget. rearranged.

I have loved GroceryGadget. for a very long time. This is the first time I have had to comment on it. Thanks for the opportunity. I have only one complaint, that is the commercial ads that have recently begun to invade my screen. I especially hate the ones that I am unable to clear off the screen. This is frustrating to deal with ads. I don’t have time to mess with them. If I was interested in those products I would ad them myself. I beg you, if you can’t get rid of them, I may have to look for another app. and quit bragging about you. Please address this.
Lynn Carmichael

Been loving GroceryGadget for many months now!! The organizing by aisles is so SOOO helpful, especially during covid-19 pandemic when I just want to get in and get out and not wonder around the stores looking for one thing (that took a while but places like target and Marianos have websites that tell me where things are!!). My one issue: There’s no way to see all the items that the stores sell. So I can scroll through and see what i might want to add to my list. Scrolling through the search is so tiresome, even after deleting many many things and renaming countless items. I want to see the products that I have definitely noted that a particular store carries. Otherwise a very handy app!

Adding items is easy, the interface is intuitive, and GroceryGadget is overall enjoyable. But I wasn’t able to designate a list as grocery store, I could only choose “everything”. That’s a lot of items to sift through and generally have to type a whole item name to get what I want on the list even though the list self filters as typing. That is a small inconvenience but manageable. Also, there’s no one click way to add another item. Like, I have one lemon on the list but want two, I have to open ‘lemon’ then add another. The thing that really bothers me is that the checked items don’t move to the bottom of the list.

Love that when I stop by a certain store, I can pull up GroceryGadget to remember what else I needed to pick up there and not leave frustrated that I forgot something again. Also love that GroceryGadget orders my items in the order I picked them up in the past so that I’m not all up and down the list or running back through the store because I missed something in produce, etc.

I use the recipes tab the most to create my shopping lists, but it would be great if the recipes were listed alphabetically instead of in the order I’ve added them.

Also, it would be nice if the web portal login would save my login info. I click the box to save it for next time, but it never has.

The new (well, years now) owners of this company, PingWell, bought the program from the original developer, and reneged on all contracts that had built the company in the first place. I am one of those who paid BIG bucks (I forget if it was $5 or $10) in the early days, when most apps were free or at most 99¢, because I wanted to support a good developer and have advertisement-free list-sharing for life. Pingwell is your typical Hong Kong/Chinese company that will take all it can steal, and deliver as little as it is forced to. Apparently Apple doesn’t enforce contracts between developers and customers. Pingwell will ignore you, tell you to just subscribe, shrug, and if you push hard enough, it will just tell you to ask Apple for a refund. Atrocious business practices!

So, apparently, all of my previous reviews have just been deleted. I guess when you rate something ONE STAR it just gets thrown in the trash by Apple. Great way to serve your customers. :-(

TL;DR: Just use Apple’s built-in Notes app, creating tick-box lists, and share that among your friends and family to create your own shopping list program. Do NOT to give criminals money. Stop putting up with advertising stealing your precious time and attention. We only have ~38m minutes in a lifetime! ;-)

I’ve been using grocery gadget for a long time and a couple of times development stopped and I was concerned it would stop being supported. I looked around and did not find another app that has the features that I need.

I paid for the pro version and now am paying for a subscription with no complaints. I would rather pay again than have GroceryGadget that I rely heavily on disappear.

I live in a rural area and make a large shopping trip monthly. When I shop, I am shopping for my household and 2-3 others. I shop at Costco and 2-3 other stores as needed. Grocery gadget has the features I need to do this type of shopping easily and with a minimum of effort. Thank you for continuing development.

I’ve been a Grocery Gadget Pro user since 2010; and let me tell you it has been the best grocery list managing app out there. Once before I had a problem and they addressed it quickly. That was years ago!
This time I had an issue after the cellphone and tablet received an IOS update and would not work. I contacted support for Grocery Gadget and they assigned a case number and responded one day later they contacted me back and addressed the issues.
You can’t get better response time which they provided in that amount of time!
THANK YOU GROCERY GADGET!

The most recent app update had been causing GroceryGadget to crash for me each time I attempted to checkout as others had reported. I was able to correct this issue by uninstalling and reinstalling Grocery Gadget. However, we now find that all the aisle information we had entered for our store lists is gone. The category data is there but the aisle listing is missing entirely from the new app version. We can edit the category to item to list the aisles but this means reentering all that information. As we shop by aisle and not category this is most inconvenient. Update - 12/10: Apparently when I uninstalled, reinstalled, and synced GroceryGadget with the cloud to correct the crash issue my configuration had changed. All the store aisle information we entered is now displayed correctly!

I've had GroceryGadget for a number of years and only lightly used it. I've now studied it’s features in detail and love it. The aisle feature is perfect for my shopping. It takes a bit of manual work initially by going to the stores app and searching the product and it’s aisle. The Prepare/Shop/Clear then reset to zero works perfectly plus ability to create a master list in a Not Selected Store then copy it to your favorite stores later. Everything customizable-rename product, create new, categorize or edit category.
All great.

I’m a long time user of GroceryGadget and absolutely love it!! I’ve tried many other grocery apps, but none hold a candle to the functionality and customization of this one. It helps me stay organized and on budget weekly. There is some initial setup involved, but well worth it. You can set up different stores/lists and when you add an item you can designate which stores carry it, as well as assign separate pricing per store. You can also create and assign aisles to each item so it saves time and eliminates ping pinging across the store when you’re shopping. You can also add tax per item. You can move and copy items to different stores and share a shopping list with someone else. If you ever have an issue, simply email support and they are very responsive. This is by far one of the most used apps on my phone. Thanks to the Grocery Gadget team for all you do and for making my Mom job of weekly grocery shopping a lot more enjoyable.

I use it every week. Would be better if there was a way to compare items at different stores by cost per weight as each store I shop at carries different sizes. Also it could be better if I could make my list with something generic like “Apples” and then depending on what they have I might fill it with Fuji or Pink Lady depending on what looks best. A third thing that would be nice is a price history that shows me what it cost over the last couple years. Overall a good app that I am happy with.

I have been using GroceryGadget for many years, possibly a decade. As I run out of items at home, I can grab my phone and add what I need to the Grocery Gadget app. My husband is always in and out of the grocery store, so I synchronize the list with his phone as well. If he’s at the store and I suddenly realize we need something, I can add it to the list while he’s at the store and it will populate on his phone. From home, I can see the items as he checks them off. I can set up a separate list for the grocery store, Costco, Home Depot, or any other store we shop at. I have even set up recipes by name and added ingredients for those specific recipes. I love that we can see items in a multiple line view in GroceryGadget in case it is a detailed description. After shopping is completed, I click on the “shopping done” button. All items that were purchased will be removed from that list, and items that could not be found will remain on the list for the next shopping trip. We personally don’t use the aisle feature, but I can imagine it would be a great time saver. Highly recommend GroceryGadget. It’s been a fantastic convenience for us.

I’ve tried pretty much every grocery app. Several things are missing from most of them, like multiple stores and being able to see items I normally get at each store to plan my shopping. GroceryGadget has it all. I love the checkout feature, which removes purchased items from the current list. The ads in the free version aren’t too obtrusive, but I purchased a subscription after a few days just to support such a great app.