Is eMeals worth it in 2019? eMeals will save you time and money when planning out your meals. If you don’t want to waste time on choosing what to eat or on grocery shopping, this is for you.
Read my eMeals review to find out more and sign up for your free trial today to decide for yourself.
This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.
Marlena’s Overall Rating:
4.5/5
This is a super long, detailed post. If you want the gist, scroll down to the bottom for a pros and cons list.
What is eMeals?
In a nutshell, eMeals is a meal planning service that provides you with a weekly plan for easy recipes.
eMeals offers a huge variety of weekly meal plans for you to choose from. This is one of the best things about eMeals actually.
Let me explain why this is so important.
Remember the last time you tried to eat according to a certain plan? You pulled out all of your cookbooks and loaded up Pinterest to find good stuff to eat only to get overwhelmed with a giant disorganized ingredient list.
This takes forever and you still don’t have the food!
This is why you end up eating the same things every week. It is too much work to find a bunch of new recipes.
Not only that but if you didn’t write down what you got ingredients for, forget it. (Is that only me? haha)
With eMeals, you select a meal plan for the week and it selects the recipes for you. And they are good. And the ingredients are all there.
For real.
So let’s say you want to eat keto. You choose the Keto plan here and you’ll get a keto meal plan for the week with keto recipes.
No research involved.
If you don’t like something on the list, you can just remove it. Easy!
Should you try eMeals in 2019?
There are lots of other meal plans and meal delivery services out there.
So, is eMeals still worth it in 2019?
Hey, if you like saving time and money, it is 100% worth it. Who has time to plan a weekly dinner menu and eat a healthy variety of foods? (Does not raise hand).
There’s a ton of variety in the meal plans offered by eMeals. You get to pick and choose and you’re not at the mercy of one particular plan.
You can switch to a different meal plan every week (or multiple times a week) if you want.
So if you don’t like what is offered, just switch plans.
I’m not sure you can do that with some of those other services since many of them are packaging the foods for you.
With eMeals, you get a meal plan and an ingredient list. You but food as usual from the store. It won’t be pre-measured. So if you want to add more cheese, you can add more cheese! That’s important, right?
Don’t get me wrong, you don’t actually have to go in the store. The eMeals app also allows you to shop your ingredients from home right from the app (at certain stores anyway).
You heard that right! You don’t even have to go to the store.
No worries, if you really like going in the store, you can. 😉 Not it!
You don’t even have to leave your house if you live in the right area. You can have your groceries delivered.
I live in a small rural town. Guess what, I can have my groceries delivered!
You might as well skip reading and sign up now and just go sign up. Can you see how much time you could save?
Yes, I said you could get your food delivered. 🙂
Save time with eMeals
Dude! (haha) I already talked about this but I have to say it again.
eMeals saves so much time because the recipes are picked for you and are already a fit for your diet plan. (See more about the types of diet plans they offer below).
The recipes are SUPER easy too.
My husband does a lot of the cooking in my house so that I can work on my business.
When he first started cooking he wasn’t very skilled. He’s getting better 🙂 He started by cooking these recipes and they turned out good!
Shopping on the eMeals App: How does it work?
The eMeals app is attractive, user friendly, and has a ton of great features.
Here’s how eMeals works:
- Go into the app and select the type of meal plan you want.
- Choose either this week’s meal plan or last week’s meal plan.
- The ingredients are added to your shopping list.
- Go to your shopping list and remove anything you don’t want (or things you already have).
- Add more items if you have other things to purchase. (Like Combos – not keto friendly).
- If you have selected a store for pickup, hit “Shop Now” at the bottom of the app and it takes you to the store website where you go through and confirm each item for pickup.
- Once the cart is ready, check out and pay.
- When your groceries are ready, go pick them up!
- OR get your groceries delivered using instacart from within the app.
That’s it!
I made a little demo video for you:
A few quick things to add:
You can change meal plans whenever you want.
Isn’t it cool that the items are automatically added to your shopping list?
That means you can walk to your kitchen with just your phone if you want to go see if you have Coriander or potatoes.
Check them off of your list if you do!
Way easier than bringing your messy shopping list to your kitchen.
How much does eMeals cost?
First of all, you can start out with a 14 day free trial before even paying for anything so that will help you determine whether it is worth it to you.
The plan is inexpensive starting at $59.99 for 12 months ($4.99 a month) or $29.99 for 3 months ($9.99 a month).
The amount of recipes you get is totally worth it. It is essentially the price of a cookbook but much more convenient.
I started using eMeals many years ago after Dave Ramsey recommended it. Dave Ramsey quote on the eMeals site: “Bring your family back to the dinner table and save money at the same time.”
How to Cancel eMeals
I’ve read on other blogs that it is hard to cancel eMeals so I decided to try it out myself.
I was on a mission to figure out how to cancel eMeals. It was not hard at all. In fact, the eMeals cancellation process was pretty easy.
I went to their website and brought up the help page through the link at the bottom of the website.
In the search bar, I typed in cancellation and then picked “How do I cancel my account?”
It says “Please contact customer service at 205-377-7701 or 800-372-4811 and a team member will be happy to assist you in cancelling your account.” It then lists the hours of operation which are 8AM to 7PM CST.
As an introvert I was pretty annoyed that I had to call in. However, the cool thing was I didn’t actually have to talk to anyone. 😉 It was an automated system, one of those “press 2 if you want to cancel” (I don’t remember which number I actually had to press).
Note: I called again in July 2020 and I did have to talk to a person. It was still relatively easy and only took a few minutes.
At that point I was offered a deal to stay on as a customer. I could choose whether to take the deal or whether to continue with the cancellation. Cancelled, done. Easy, peasy. So no worries there. You can feel safe subscribing.
In terms of cancelling a free trial…the website says you can cancel by calling customer service at the same numbers as above.
You have to call at least 2 business days before your renewal date to avoid being charged. You then get to use the service up until the end date of your trial. (So if you’re going to cancel, just call in as soon as possible to avoid charges).
I am not sure if cancelling a trial will result in you having to talk to someone.
The website says you cannot cancel by leaving a voicemail, email or through live chat. You have to actually call. But since it is the same number it is certainly possible you will get the same automated process.
Let me know if you end up cancelling a trial!
What weekly meal plans are available on eMeals?
I feel like I am saving the best for last. There are so many options! And remember, you can switch between them all.
That means you can look at all of these before you pick 🙂
Oh, they also have meal plans other than these weekly dinner plans (including breakfast, celebration, and lunch plans).
My recommendation is to start with the weekly dinner plan though. You will get so many recipes here. (Especially since you can switch between plans….you can print out the PDFs if you want!).
Here are the options you get to choose from (and can switch between all of them if you want). Each eMeals menu has a great variety:
- Budget Friendly
- Quick and Healthy
- Keto!
- Slow Cooker
- 30 minute meals
- Low Carb
- Low Calorie
- Kid Friendly
- Heart Healthy
- Diabetic
- Gluten Free
- Vegan
- Mediterranean
- Vegetarian
I know, I know…decision fatigue. You really can switch as many times as you want though so just pick one! I’ll list some of the foods in the different menus for you:
- Puttanesca Rigatoni (Vegetarian)
- Beer Braised Chicken Tacos (Better Homes and Gardens)
- Buffalo Chicken Salad (Eating Well)
- Skillet Orange Chicken (Classic Meals)
- Chili Lime Flank Steak (Paleo)
- Slow Cooker Smokey White Bean Stew (Vegan)
Does eMeals work on a desktop instead of on the app?
Yep.
The app and the website both have the same menu options and weekly dinner plans.
The desktop website gives you the option to print out your recipes on a PDF. The PDF includes the recipes and then a nice shopping list that is numbered by recipe.
Here is a picture of one of the recipes on the PDF version:
Fancy, hey? When you read the title it sounds like it will be complicated, but look, the recipe is just a paragraph!
You can also see the side dish is split off. I like that because sometimes I don’t feel like making a side dish so I can just skip that stuff.
Here is what the shopping list looks like:
As you can see, all of the items are numbered to show which meal they are a part of.
In this grocery list, the lemons and baby spinach are both used in three different meals.
On the right hand side you also see all of the “staples” you will need.
This is my only complaint actually.
I’ve missed this staple section in the past, which resulted in my not having something I needed when making a recipe.
Cooking from the eMeals phone app
You don’t have to use the PDF.
Instead, you can use the phone app to do your cooking.
The eMeals phone app is really nice! It sort of leads you through the cooking process.
Here are some screenshots of the same recipe so you can see how that works:
Here is how the shopping list on the app looks:
And a small example of how the app leads you through the cooking.
Talk about getting rid of distractions!
It goes through each step on a separate screen. I like that.
(Always remember to read your whole recipe first before starting though 🙂 )
Save your favorite eMeals menu items
I’m excited to see on the app that there is a favorites section as well. This allows you to favorite and save particular recipes. This is great.
When you use eMeals for awhile you will see that you end up trying a lot of different recipes and if you are organizationally challenged like I am, you might not remember all the good ones.
We ended up with a bunch of recipe printouts and tried to circle the ones we liked, but it was hard to keep track of all that. I love that the app does this for you!
Summary
That was super long!
I’m going to sum it up for you. Is eMeals worth it? YES! Saving time on finding a variety of recipes each week makes the cost worth it. Get your free trial here!
The recipes are easy to make. You end up saving time and money with this program.
I give eMeals a 4.5/5!
4.5/5
Pros:
- Free 14 Day Trial so you can try it yourself before committing
- Huge variety
- Weekly meal plans from multiple different diet plans
- Easy to cook
- The app is very well done and makes shopping easy
- Order your groceries to be shopped at the store for you right from the app
- Order your groceries for delivery right through the app with a subscription to instacart
- You can switch plans multiple times a day if you want, resulting in lots of recipes at your fingertips
- Saves a lot of time
- The app allows you to save favorite recipes
- The desktop version allows you to print out PDFs of the menus
- Affordable starting at $4.99
- Cancellation was generally easy
Cons:
- Too much variety could lead to decision fatigue
- The “staples” on the PDF are a bit hidden (though this has improved over the years)
- To get the best price you have to sign up for a year.
- You have to actually call in on the phone to cancel. Although it was easy and automated, it is 2019 and there should be a cancellation button on the website
Totally worth a free trial. Go sign up today and have a couple of weeks of yummy meal plans!
Organizing eMeals Recipes
Just a little quick add: I recently started organizing all of my PDFs from eMeals in Evernote.
I have an Evernote notebook for the different plans I use and then I save the recipe PDFs within the categories (keto, low carb, vegan, etc). This is much better than using something like a binder! I hope this helps!