eMeals - Healthy Meal Plans Reviews

by JosiDenise

Signed up for the trial. Really liked the service, but there were a few flaws for me - if two recipes called for eggs, instead of intuitively adding one carton of eggs, it asked me twice and made me choose eggs twice. Also, unable to see the recipes again once in shop mode which makes it hard to remember whether an ingredient is essential if the store is out of stock.

But my real issue.......there is NO customer service. There is NO option to cancel your trial, ANYWHERE. They give you a number to call for cancellation. I waited on hold for 45 min while all reps were “busy” and the impersonal robotic voice promised me a “chance for up to 25% off!” told me to “just stay on the line” while continuously offering me to schedule a callback. In two weeks, they haven’t responded to my two emails, FB message, tweet, or requests for callback. At this rate I guess I’ll have to contact my bank for a dispute because I am assuming they will charge me - though I have been trying to cancel my trial since the 2nd day.

This is how you lose customers. Doesn’t matter how novel your product is if you don’t value humans. Another company will do it better and actually care about people, and this app will go out of business. Give it a year.

by Graceland2015

I love eMeals and what it has to offer. Integrating the recipe lists into walmart pickup or delivery?!?! yeah that’s really rad, helpful, awesome. recipes are yum. menu selections are great. BUT this company will charge your bank account for subscriptions (i did yearly) without any account or email notice! you cannot unsubscribe from them via eMeals , you must email support. hate that bs. HATE. IT. SHADY BUSINESS TACTICS. YALL WHATS WRONG WITH THE WORLD GOT DANG SONNY. right now we are in a pandemic, my fam is down to 1 job, part time, and food and necessities are hard to come by but guess what, this app gettin paid. this app overdrew my bank account $100 without notice and now my fam is gonna sit in the negative for a week before payday can fix that. was hoping to find some toilet paper and a few things in town this week but now i can’t afford it. lol go freakin figure. i hate when apps do that. anything to get ur money, even take it without u knowing. it’s rude and downright shady. fix it or you will lose a lot of subs. GADNAHSUHAHAJAHSIABA IM SOOOO MAD!!!! this has caused so much stress for me. idk how i’m gonna explain this to my husband. icing on the freaking cake. thx this app. paying for a meal app when there’s no food in the stores and no money in my account to buy anything anyways. ffs. i’ve contacted them for a refund.

by VenableCL

I have been an this app subscriber for years. eMeals works very well and wouldn’t change much. The program was phenomenal back when it was simpler with a few meal programs. Now that it’s trying to meet the needs of everyone and every possible appetite, it misses the mark often. (1) Many of the recipes are designed with cross-over in mind. So - you’ll find the same recipe in 5 different plans. Problem is - it usually only hits one plan well and suffices for the others. (2) Kid friendly use to be exactly that. You knew it wouldn’t have mixed foods and complex seasonings. Yes, I have a kid that dines on anything, but my other one, I needed the boring kid-proof recipe. (3) Classic use to be true Classic (bring out the Campbell soup mix-ins). Now they try to make it healthy, too. And that doesn’t work for remembering the Classic tastes. (4) Slow cooker use to be all slow cooker recipes and included dinners, breakfast, and occasional other ideas. Now often the recipes are slow-cook once and 2nd recipe uses the first. Well, if you didn’t like the first, you’re out 2 recipes options. (5) They are trying to compete with meals in boxes, and are losing the core customers. What we used this for was to pick 2-3 recipes a week. Now - I’m hard pressed to find 2-3 recipes a week I want to cook, eat, or works for my family - and that’s using 2 plans and switching. I think I’ll give it another month. But then will probably quit.

by $&@-:

As a repeat customer (3 non-consecutive years - about every other year) this app serves its and my purpose of meal and grocery planning. In that time, I’ve had a good opportunity to try see and try a variety of meals and plans. I really enjoyed it the first year, less the second, and this will probably be my last. Why? Because the menus have become less and less tempting. I’m not a Foodie nor do I require something new EVERY DAY. I’d like to see recipes rated by this app (through customer input - maybe a click of a rating button on each recipe) so that recipes are more frequently reused. I’d also like to see more just plain, standard fare. And definitely less fish or a no fish option - 4 of 5 in my family doesn’t like it or is allergic to it - 2 meals a week on average cuts my use of the service down to 70%, not to mention the more and more frequent meals my family just won’t consider. I am now down to about two useable menus a week. And, of course, I was terribly disappointed when they removed holiday meals from the standard plan and offered them as an add-on. I applaud their attempt to be creative, but it’s backfired for me.

by Princessperla

I’m conflicted on this service because of the inability for eMeals and website to do the same things. For example I can limit my list to the recipes I like on eMeals and it will produce an edited shopping list. I can’t send that list to a printer though. I often go shopping with the kids and hate to have my face in the phone when I’m with them. It’s also easier to shop when I can see the whole list so I’m not scrolling up and down. On the website I can print, but I don’t have the option to edit my list and I also can see/add past favorites like I can in eMeals . I’m also not sure why Kroger is supported for adding the list to and online cart, but Fred Meyers, a subsidiary isn’t. Which is what is available on our market. Most of the actual recipes are decent, but often lack any depth or complexity. We often doctor it up with additional spices. If they ever tell you to throw meat into a crockpot ALWAYS brown it first. It makes the biggest difference. Anyways it’s nice to at least have a list of ingredients and then I can work with what I’ve got rather than sit down, plan specific meals and then shop. I’ll keep using but definitely some room for improvement.

by Returning To The Knot

There are a lot of good things about this service. All the meals have been good. It has streamlined meal planning and I love the Instacart and Walmart pickup options. I will continue using this app after my free trial ends and it’s one of the best subscriptions I’ve gotten since it saves me ~7 hours a week meal planning, searching out new recipes, shopping and cooking since all the meals I’ve done are 20-30 min. And they’re realistic times, not the people on chopped can do it that fast.

But this is not a review of the service, it’s a review of eMeals . Which is missing quite a few necessary features. I want to make notes on the recipes, like if I am making a substitution based on what I have on hand. Or being able to rearrange my weekly plan based on what day of the week I want to make it. Or mark when I’ve made it so it goes to the bottom of the weekly list grayed out. I still have to have a paper solution for my meal plan to keep track of things before handing it off to my husband. Which is the exact opposite of what eMeals promises.

The developers seem to be making updates regularly, so hopefully this will be addressed soon.

by KateD612

$60 up front not monthly, recipes are not sectioned correctly but more like sporadically... I won’t say that it’s not worth the money but it’s not exactly worth 60 per year but maybe 30 simply because it’s constantly just repeating the same recipes over and over again the recipes are not organized whatsoever to the category that you chose... For some people they may not seem like a huge deal if you’re just looking for recipes to cook up and not caring what is that you’re looking in for, but I was in a diabetic area it was constantly hurting and potatoes sugar honey things they can’t have is being put into their recipes over and over again... The kid section does seem to be mostly like kid stuff like mac & cheese and sliders little kids types of food that usually don’t go wrong but they also have other plans that have recipes I do not belong in that category in there... eMeals really needs to be gone through and checked and re-organized I also do not understand why it only works as an app I have never gotten to work on the computer using their website you have to download eMeals or it doesn’t run right which is very frustrating.

by Sgvaughan

I've been using this app for about a year now. Overall it had been really helpful, but there are a few minor tweaks that could make it really great.
First and foremost... Add nutritional info for every recipe!!!! I want to know what I'm eating and I hate that I have to use a separate app to calculate the nutritional info for the recipes. The nutritional info is included in some off the plans like the low calorie plan, but not most of the other plans. This should be standard!!
Also, there is no way to filter out recipes that don't fit into my diet. I do not eat any red meat or pork, but I do eat poultry and fish, so I end up having to search through several different meal plans to find a week's worth of recipes that work for me. (Which sort of defeats the purpose of paying for a service that is supposed to plan your meals for you)
Lastly, why do you need to subscribe to one meal plan instead of just being able to go to the library and see everything??? I know you can easily switch between plans, but why is this even a thing? Why can't you just see all the plans available on your dashboard and then pick and choose???

by Reading & Loving It!

I have been using e-meals for a little under a year now. It’s truly been a life saver for my meal planning. I like that I’m able to browse the other meal plans to search for different meals to add variety to my menu. While I like having the guesswork taken out of my meal planning there are some features that would really make this better. For starters, having the ability to add cooking notes to the meals that I store into my ‘Favorites.’ Often times, I have to tweak the recipe to make it fit the tasting needs of my family. It’d be nice to have a place where I could capture those notes so I can refer to them in the future instead of trying to remember. Dangerous!! In addition to a notes feature, it’d be nice to have full access via the computer. I like eMeals versions of e-meals but a computer version would be nice too. It gets hard meal planning on a phone, so a larger viewable screen would be nice. And finally, adding additional stores to link up my shopping list would be nice. I don’t use Instacart; instead, I use Clicklist and hanging my grocery list transfer to this system would save some time. These changes would be nice but they’re not enough to deter me from using this service. It has been a game changer for my family and helped reduce our grocery bill. Thanks!!

by Kjust87

I love eMeals. The weekly meal plans are great, but I especially love that I can pick and swap out meals from different plans to suit what my family would like. The exporting of the shopping list to various stores (Kroger, for me) makes grocery shopping a breeze!
A few improvements that would be nice to see: 1. Ability to rate/review meals. It would be great to see what other people thought and/or what variations others came up with. Or a feedback option within the recipe (on the rare occasion that something in the recipe just doesn’t add up and needs to be addressed — has only happened once or twice in the several years I’ve used this app). 2. It would be nice to see meal plan online (I know I can access meal plan from email, but if i want to swap out meals, I have to do that from my phone — computer would be more convenient sometimes). 3. I don’t know if it is just me and my husband, but we have generally go way over on the projected time that preparing a meal should take. Maybe it’s professional chefs running the clock for prep/cook times and we just aren’t that good, idk
But overall, a great app that has made our lives much easier as far as dinner planning is concerned.

by Bodybuilding_behavioranalyst

I absolutely love eMeals, it is a no – nonsense guide to exactly what you need to buy each week, exactly how you need to cook it and it takes the stress and thought out of meal planning. Some of the recipes even include nutritional information (however, not all of the recipes do) which is a feature I would like to see for all of the recipes, but it does help you stay on track with health goals as well. My biggest complaints, which is an issue that has only recently begun happening, is that eMeals keeps crashing. When I go to start editing my shopping list to check off those ingredients I already have, there are two problems. Problem one: for some reason it is adding ingredients that are not included in my recipes for the week, but are for recipes that aren’t even on my favorites list or my selected meal plan. Problem to Colin when I go to check off or delete superfluous or unneeded items eMeals shuts down. There aren’t any updates, but I wish they would come out with one because I’m starting to regret paying for eMeals since I can’t use it.

by Redbelle123

I am not one who enjoys meal planning. I like looking at recipes, but finding them when it’s time to cook or letting someone in house know where the recipe is when it is time to cook, then writing all my ingredients down, checking to see which ingredients I have and which ones I need, shopping for ingredients, searching stores for ingredients, loading the car, unloading the car, putting away all the groceries. To do ALL this just to make a dinner 7 days a week week after week is exhausting. Using this app has been a blessing. eMeals is wonderful!!! I choose the meals I want (I use to only have one meal plan fo choose from...but now I choose from many plans.) I choose meals that fit my week’s schedule. Maybe we need a crockpot meal, kid friendly meal, a nice dinner for company, or some other type of meal...that’s okay. I look, choose the meal I want, click a button and it is added to my weekly menu. Then I go to the shopping list and get rid of the ingredients I already have, push the button at the bottom and it sends the list of ingredients I need to Walmart where i just click on which brands and size I want, push buy, choose the time I want to pick it up and go to store, pull up, they load the groceries drop me for free, and I drive home. Now eMeals doesn’t help me unload and put the groceries away...but hey...I have to do some things...right?

by Spnmomma

I love this app. I was a previous user before the apps were available and now a user again. I do have a couple suggestions that would help my family of very picky eaters... mostly my husband. I’d LOVE a way to favorite meals and keep them in a stored location so that when the meal plans come in for the week and we find only one or two that we will eat; we can go to our favorites and exchange them for what’s on the menu. It would be awesome if those integrated into the shopping list as well. Right now I write down all the recipes and rate them, then file them away somewhere to be used when I need more options. I have to manually enter everything into my shopping list.

I’d also encourage creating an easier way to switch through the menus without having to “subscribe”. As stated earlier, because my hubby is so picky, I visit all menus types to find meals we will eat. This would just make it easier to find meals in all categories.

Also- a Keto plan would be amazing! Thanks for listening!

by I Park It Player

I’ve been using this app for three years. Love the quick using it to get delicious meals to our table. I typically pick 3 to 4 recipes each week to make. Most recently I’ve been using the Walmart pick up. I am enjoying The easiness it is to get the recipes, the shopping list and food within less than 30 minutes of my time. I have used several different plans with this app. All of the plans have delicious recipes. I’ve only been disappointed maybe once or twice in the three years I’ve been using this app. I could’ve been disappointed by pulling a recipe out of the cookbook as well. I like the pictures the easy follow along recipes I could’ve been disappointed by pulling a recipe out of a cookbook as well. I like the pictures easy follow along recipes. I like that I can save recipes. I’d like that I use several different items in my week. For example I can buy 8 quart of cream for one recipe that only needs 2 tablespoons in the next recipe is going to need 2 cups. Instead of buying a pint of cream for 2 tablespoons. I have shared many recipes with friends and family.I have introduced this app to As many people as I can. I love this app!

by Jtedgar04

eMeals has revolutionized my cooking life. The ease of picking out meals and adding ingredients to Walmart grocery shopping (with home delivery!!!) takes the difficult decisions out of meal planning and frees my brain to tackle more important things. I used to enjoy cooking but found that the extra effort required to meal plan, work and run a household was causing us to eat more and more processed food. With this app, I find that choosing meals and assembling the ingredients is greatly simplified. We are eating healthier, more produce and more variety now.

I had a small learning curve with this app. I have found it critical which meal plan and size I choose. Quick and healthy for 2 has been a perfect fit for us. The kid friendly meal plan didn’t necessarily fit with my family’s tastes. And the family size made too much food and left too many leftovers.

I think this is the first review I have ever left for an app or product, but I am so thankful for this app that I wanted to share my experience.

by Tanya Mae Marie

I have done this app on and off for many years and never really stay into the this app recipes. This time I decided I’d like some new recipes so I decided to do the 2 week trial, then the 90 day plan just to see if I’d stick with it. I now am addicted and this is how I grocery shop. It’s so cool to be able to find recipes I want, have the shopping list made for me, then click the things I have already at home, then send the rest to the store and have it delivered! This is not only how I get amazing recipes with nutritional information but now how I do my grocery shopping! I got my daughter doing it too! We love it! The only thing that would maybe make it better is to be able to search recipes in your paid for meal plan. Like mine is keto and if I were to say want a recipe with ground beef, it would be awesome to search for some from the past.

I’m super grateful for what there is and the search is not a must I still love eMeals without a search option!

Love love love eMeals.

by Shades214

I felt like we were in a meal rut and dreaded making a menu each week so we tried Hello Fresh, but it was not a good fit for our family. We didn’t love the meat, I didn’t like the inability to substitute things (like chicken for beef or fish, etc) or really tweak the recipes much (I cook a lot and like to adapt recipes for my family’s taste). A friend used this app and recommended it. And I had tried her this app recipe for potato kale soup (a big favorite in my house). I wasn’t sure about paying a subscription for just recipes, but it really is worth it. I can sit down on the weekend and scroll through the recipes, pick a few and put them on my list. I can shop for my own ingredients, don’t get shipped condiments that I don’t need/already have, can adapt the recipe to my linking. If my family loves it, I can add it to my favorites so I can get that recipe anytime I need it. Most of the meals are pretty easy and quick and have good shortcuts. Love the recipes and the flexibility!

by Jlr07h

I’ve been using an this app dinner plan since August. It replaced an old New York Times Cooking subscription, and I find this app to be much more family and time friendly than those recipes. There is great variety each week within each category, but if you get tired of Mediterranean you can easily switch to Vegetarian or Paleo, or whatever fits your life. And, the meals are almost always delicious. Like, i ask myself if I’d be willing to pay for that food if I was out at a restaurant? The answer is almost always yes. There have only been 2 or 3 we wouldn’t make again. eMeals also makes building your grocery list and going grocery shopping super easy. Really, just a great app all around for meals and planning.

We like it so much that we recently upgraded to an All Day Plan that includes breakfasts and lunches. The upgrade didn’t sync properly with ITunes, but a quick call to Customer Service fixed it right away. Really, just excellent. Highly recommend.

by LikeALiger

I hate cooking and have had to adjust in this Covid world but also because my husband is in law school, we need to eat most of our meals at home. I can, for the first time ever, say I enjoy cooking now with these easy meals that are super tasty too! They are not gourmet by any means but it’s the type of food that transports you to your childhood when home cooked meals were common and one of the best parts of your day. I tend to get overwhelmed when meal planning and feeling like I have to go above and beyond to cook. But with eMeals, I feel like the pressure has been taken off to cook elaborate meals I find on the internet and instead me and my husband can just enjoy a tasty meal together, without the stress. It’s all very approachable and you know the ingredients will be available at your local grocery store.

I do have to say that I wish they partnered with Tom Thumb because it’s the store I prefer but, I use Kroger with eMeals and it’s not nearly as much of an inconvenience as meal planning was before.

It’s a life saver in my eyes! I highly recommend it!

by Blazah

I’ve been an this app subscriber off and on for the last 10 years. I was on the fence about keeping my subscription until the last update. Now it allows you to pick and choose from all meal plans to seamlessly create your weekly shopping list. We eat very varied meals from one day to the next...Gluten-free, Paleo, Keto, Slow-cooker, Low-Carb. We are active and also do some carb-cycling (low carb for a few days then high carb.) I don’t want to be locked into one genre of meals and until now I’ve never found a meal plan that has been able to accommodate how we eat! eMeals now allows and makes it super easy to browse and add meals to your list from every different meal plan. I also love that you can add your own additional grocery items to the list as well. All of this combined makes eMeals a one-stop-shop for me! Something I’d like to see in a future update is the ability to add your own recipes and then be able to choose from them and have it added to the list as well. Thanks for listening to customer feedback all along the way and keep up the good work!

by Siberia2006

Don’t order this unless you want to go hunting through your grocery store looking for walnut oil, dry sherry, or Spanish smoked paprika. I have tried all of their meal plan types and none of them offer simple to make meals. Even the family and kid friendly plans have gourmet level recipes that most of us don’t want to go through the hassle to make. The point of this product is to make meal planning AND meal creation easy. It falls very short on the mark. Sure creating a grocery list is a snap and cooking the meals takes less than 40 minutes on average but finding the exotic items needed to make the meals is the real drawback of eMeals. I tried this product about 4 years ago when it was just a website so I really wanted to like it and see improvements. The offerings improved but they’re now gone too far to the gourmet for a family that really need to save time. I shop using Walmart’s pick up service so I was so happy to see it linked to this app. I’ll need to keep looking for another meal prep app that gives you normal easy recipes.

by Chacha316

I keep coming back to this app every couple years, and each time I just don’t stick with it. I’m lucky to have one meal a week I would consider making (picky kids), even on the family/kid friendly plans. It’s not easy to cancel and that’s what I’m working on now. I don’t remember it being so challenging in the past to cancel, but I had a harder time finding the area in my account where there was an option to cancel, and even then— I couldn’t cancel online, it makes you call customer support to cancel. Disappointed!
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Update: I called customer support begrudgingly to cancel, and I reached someone quickly, and it was easy to cancel. Also, since my quarterly renewal just paid two days ago, I asked if I could get a refund (didn’t have much hope they would, it was my fault I didn’t call sooner) but she was willing to refund the renewal I had just been billed. Fingers are crossed all is actually cancelled and I receive the refund in 1-2 business days.

by BrittBeckNM

My husband and I are both teachers who are both also in graduate school. Keeping up with our jobs, school and three children is time consuming to say the least. We struggled for the last two years to try to regularly cook at home and not eat out. Too often, groceries ended up going bad because trying to figure out what to make and coordinate everything we needed for it took a lot of time and energy. We’ve been using this app for two weeks and it has been life changing for us. We haven’t eaten out once and so far my whole family has liked the majority of the recipes. I love that you can save your favorites to use again and that you can browse other menus to make it fit your family. Everything you need is in one place and is easy to access (meal plans, grocery list, step by step recipes). We will definitely continue to use eMeals and are more than happy to pay $59 a year if it helps us to eat at home rather than eating out.

by Bogden

The worst part about preparing meals for my family? Thinking up and deciding WHAT to make. this app takes that time consuming task away by providing over 20 different meal plans to choose from that you switch in between as often as you like. There’s something for everyone to enjoy. You can save recipes that you really liked and incorporate them into future meal plans if you so desire. They also provide awesome features like generating your grocery list on your phone and you can even add things to it and it will remember them. Another wonderful feature that I love, love, love is the ability to transfer for grocery list into online grocery services through Walmart and Kroger and others depending on your area. You don’t even have to do the shopping in the store!! Simply select each item as it goes through your list, select a date and time you want to pick up your groceries. All this for $5 a month-worth every penny.

by Nothing-2-offer

Overall using the plans has been a great time and headspace saver. I love that I don’t have to stress the scramble of dinner night after night and the new app has made that even easier. If there was one feature request I’d make it would be that eMeals gave to option to omit the side dish. I’ve tried many of them and they are delightful, but my kids aren’t usually interested in the cool salady side and very often only my husband and I are having them. If you could omit them from the shopping list it would make tailoring the meals even that much easier, at least for me. I also LOVE that eMeals allowed me to access past meal plans! There were so many things we liked, and searching the only PDFs was difficult, having them at my fingertips is amazing. I hope that archive remains in place for the long term. Keep up the good work! I anticipate that we will be using this app for years to come.