Pepperplate Cooking Planner Reviews

I’ve used PepperplateCookingPlanner for YEARS. Years!! There has never been an update or enhancement. But it was free and worked ok, so whatever. Definitely could have used enhancements but again, free. Now all of a sudden it’s $2.99 a MONTH and not one single improvement or enhancement. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and have been paying, expecting surely an update would come, but no, I’m literally using the same app that used to be free but now it’s $36 a year.

To add insult to injury it has lately been glitching! The menu and “+” buttons on the main screen won’t work if I come back to that screen after being in the shopping list or planner. I have to hard stop PepperplateCookingPlanner and come back in to navigate.

What a piece of crap. I have YEARS of data in PepperplateCookingPlanner. I have used it quite literally every single day. I started paying when they switched to a paid version. I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt but PepperplateCookingPlanner has passed its prime and without support/enhancements I’ve got to abandon it.

There are a lot of recipe box apps. But not a lot of them have meal planners. This is inexpensive, and does it all. The import feature is amazing, and if you can’t import, you can copy and paste. I’ve been using it for a year and I really have no complaints. It syncs across all my devices, and I have put in 144 recipes. I do wish you could add nutritional info manually but if you can I haven’t figured out how. I guess you could add in notes, but would be nice to have a dedicated box. You can arrange the shopping list according to how you go through the aisles. I use the menu planner than save to shopping list, then add non grocery items. There’s very little you can’t do here.

I DO NOT LIKE COMPANIES THAT DO THIS!

Do I understand that they need to charge money to keep the business going? Yes.

Do I understand that they replace what was once a free application with a now you have to pay for it to even use get access to your documents? Absolutely not! (And yes, I have gone to the website and downloaded my saved recipes.)

There could have been several different ways that they could of handled this. Keep the free app available for a short time and offer the paid subscription as another separate application. After the short amount of time the free app would no longer get updates and it would of been put to end of life, removing PepperplateCookingPlanner from PepperplateCookingPlanner Store and leaving the paid application available. People that already downloaded the free app would continue to be able to use it but after a certain number of iOS updates it would stop working due to incompatibles. The recipes for the free app could also be saved locally on the device instead of having to go through a web service.

-or-

Keep the subscription service as an available purchase in PepperplateCookingPlanner but limit the number of recipes that someone can enter for free.

A great app that I used regularly, and I can even understand their need to have a fee to cover costs. But $36 is ridiculous when there are tons of free options out there. I have them the benefit of the doubt the first year and there wasn’t a SINGLE change to PepperplateCookingPlanner . Nothing. So instead I spent 10 hours manually transferring my recipes over to another server. Ridiculous that they took a great product and instead of being reasonable and charging for more recipe space or the planner function or even a reasonable yearly fee, they ruined it by being greedy

PepperplateCookingPlanner has minimized my daily dinner plans from chaotic late night meals to properly oriented, healthy dishes that my family and I love 7 days a week. Without PepperplateCookingPlanner, I had always felt insane amounts of pressure to feed my 4 kids and wife. Nowadays, I can worry about other, more vital things in my life such as getting enough sleep and trying new food!

Like everyone else, I am frustrated that they went from free to crazy expensive. I was willing to give them a chance, but the product doesn’t really work. And I have emailed the, repeatedly but they either can’t or won’t fix their bugs.

Examples:
1. their search feature doesn’t work. I can’t search for a word in a recipe title nor an ingredient nor a keyword and have it bring up a complete list of recipes (though it seems to bring up 2 or 3). That seems like a basic necessity, but it hasn’t been fixed.
2. Data doesn’t sync between devices. If I plan a weekly menu in PepperplateCookingPlanner , it won’t show up on the computer, which allows you to plan a different weekly app. Makes it increchallenging to share across platforms and family members.

For the price, it is definitely a no go.

I just love PepperplateCookingPlanner and use it every time I need to plan a meal and even when I don’t. The only wish I have for PepperplateCookingPlanner is to be able to import recipes directly into Pepperplate, instead of having to type the recipe manually. Otherwise, I have found no better app for cooking that I have found!

I had PepperplateCookingPlanner a long time for free and loaded many recipes. It was FREE…no trial! Then out of the blue, they sent me an email saying my trial period was up. I never was informed it was a trial period to begin with and I had it for years! They then held my recipes. I had to go in like I was subscribing and there was a link to export my recipes (not in the format I prefer, nor are there any pictures) It was totally shady and I do not deal with shady people or companies! I deleted PepperplateCookingPlanner and I wouldn’t suggest them to anyone! Beware!

. . . But now we’ve paid and it is still buggy. Synchronization from one device can overwrite lists on another rather than synthesizing them. The sites you can 1-click download from are very limited. Formatting recipes is tough. The planner is clunky. We’d already be on another app of it wasn’t a pain to transfer recipes over.

After using PepperplateCookingPlanner for years (for free!) the developer decides that they want to charge a subscription fee of $2.99 PER MONTH! It is not as if PepperplateCookingPlanner is finding the best recipes for you or making suggestions of meals, it is simply a storage of the recipes you enter into it. This is outrageous! I would have been happy to pay an annual fee of $2.99 but certainly not monthly. Luckily, my iPad was not on WiFi and I am able to access all my recipes and transfer them onto another app. Argh!

Used PepperplateCookingPlanner all the time and have all my recipes on it. It was a free app for a long time and then they decided to start charging a monthly subscription fee so will move to another app. Would have considered paying a one time fee to use but a monthly subscription for a lifetime seems extremely excessive and greedy. Functionality of PepperplateCookingPlanner was great, but cost to keep and use is too much. Will look for something more cost effective.

I have been using and loved for 8 years. With NO warning I now have to pay to even access my recipes on PepperplateCookingPlanner . So Christmas Day I signed up because all my holiday recipes are needed. Just now exporting my recipes and trying to cancel. THEY MAKE it close to IMPOSSIBLE to unsubscribe. I’m waiting to hear back because nowhere, website or app can I cancel my subscription that I never wanted in the first place!! Ugh

I have to admit that I have use(d) PepperplateCookingPlanner a lot. It is so nice to have all of your recipes in one place and have them synced between computer, phone, tablet. It's also visually appealing as opposed to a lot of the other hokie-looking apps. It is easy to add new recipes from the website, not so much from PepperplateCookingPlanner . I used the shopping list feature all of the time, but the meal planning feature has a lot of bugs, and there are a few other random bugs as well.

I gave pepper plate 2 stars on my revised rating because the website and my phone/tablet will no longer sync. This is after trying to solve the problem on my own with app and hardware updates, rebooting, etc. I can't use PepperplateCookingPlanner if it doesn't sync, plus PepperplateCookingPlanner is quite user unfriendly as opposed to the website. I am also tired of all of the bugs that have yet to be fixed. I would gladly pay up to $10 for PepperplateCookingPlanner if it would actually do what it is supposed to do. It is an amazing idea and has the potential to be just that. Please fix the bugs!!!!

This was my go to app for all my recipes, which are now hostage due to your charging either a monthly or yearly fee. NOPE!! Luckily I still keep all my paper copies. Will look at Paprika which seem to be a favorite from the people leaving you. I would guess if you want back a a free version and offer special features on a paid version you would jump up to a 5 star rating.

I’ve been a Pepperplate user for about 10 years. It was good at the time but I don’t think they’ve added any new features in the meantime, except a $2 per month subscription, which they said would help them develop new features. Boy did they have me going there for a while. There are so many better options, which ironically have lower price tags. Don’t bother with PepperplateCookingPlanner!

I’ve been using PepperplateCookingPlanner for years. It’s design is easy and simple. I don’t mind the subscription fee, I appreciate the ad-free space.

I used to love PepperplateCookingPlanner. It worked perfectly. Now when I open my recipe, the picture disappears and I gave to reload it if I want to see it. This happens even though I have gone to the online site and synchronized. Probably going to cancel my subscription. I don’t mind paying for it IF IT WORKS!!!!

This was my favorite recipe app. I was fine paying for the subscription at first due to convenience and in hopes they would further improve their app, but after months of waiting, nothing. All I really wanted was a search function to search for recipes. Goodbye, switching to Paprika.

It used to be free, then they started charging $3/mo. I couldn’t get access to any of my recipes until paying the ransom. If you’re going to start charging, at least let me get all my recipes and make a decision whether or not to continue to use PepperplateCookingPlanner and pay!

It used to be good until they decided to charge for it. It combines items on the shopping list but won’t let me un-combine them if I choose to. An example…I added pear and pear nectar to the shopping list. It combined them as pears.

Avoid at all costs! This was my favorite recipe app. That was until they emailed to inform they would be holding my recipes hostage after 14 days if I didn't start paying them $36 per year. That's $360 every ten years. Sorry. Nope. I've done a bunch of research and found a TON of better options out there. Many are free, or have free and paid options. AnyList is a great one, but I think the best out there is Paprika. $5 ONCE (for iOS, and $30 once for Mac app. No web app). Syncing is free. AND they have a method (listed on their support pages of their site) of importing all of your Pepperplate recipes from the database file you can get on the Windows version of Pepperplate (ask a friend if you don't have Windows. It's flawless and imported hundreds of my recipes in less than 2 minutes.) I don't pay for subscription-ware and neither should you, especially when it literally has less features then the much cheaper competition.