Pestle: Recipe Manager

What people write about

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1. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Doesn't always save. 1 out of 10 uploads not worth it

2. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Not user friendly. No easy way to cancel

3. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Lifetime purchase not applied. I purchased the lifetime subscription last year and I see now it’s about to review for a annual subscription. I reached out twice and no response.

4. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Terrible App. For the life of me - I can’t import a recipe from TikTok to this app. It will work if I open the app and drop the link to the video. But makes it inconvenient. Not worth $2.99 a month.

5. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   So Cool! … if it would stop crashing.. I actually really like the concept and the UI. But it’s unusable. I was playing with this app on one of those Apple store demo iPads, and the app kept crashing every 30 seconds. I figured maybe it was a problem with the iPad, but when I tried using the app on my phone, it still kept crashing every 30 seconds! What a shame.

6. ★★★★★account bans or deletion without explanation

   Used to be good. I have deleted my account and will never return. I joined on 3/2022 a lifetime account for $25. Clearly this was a lie. Now I’m supposed to buy in each year for the same service, no thanks.

7. ★★★★★trial charges and refunds

   Disappointed. This app is such a scam. They gave me a two week trial and charged me for the year even before my trail ended. They didn’t even warn me that my trial was ending. I’m so upset.

8. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Don’t waste your time. Does not auto-populate TikTok recipes as it claims to do. Every recipe I tried to imported stated “not in system, unable to load”

9. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   How to save recipes. How do I save recipes from Pinterest

10. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Bug limiting usage. Stopped using the app. No dev support after 1 year. I had high expectations of pestle and was very excited when I first learned about it. I ended up buying lifetime of pestle pro! After setting up family account immediately with my spouse, I started noticing an issue where my recipes got duplicated, and can’t be deleted. Also my recipes aren’t listed in all recipes! Even after reaching out to developer and getting an acknowledgment of the bug, I never heard back, and even with latest iOS pestle 1.9, the issue wasn’t resolved. At this point, me and my spouse have almost stopped using it. Might not have been the best AppStore purchase I guess! You live and you learn!

11. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    App developer strives to make this app work for you. Will Bishop this app developer reached out to me because of the poor rating I gave this app. He asked me for more details of what I was experiencing. I just received a reply that he is work on a fix at my suggestion. I’m looking into his other apps now and would buy from him again.

12. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    No support available for this expensive recipe app. Can’t log in on another device from the one I signed up with; contacted Pestle’s support weeks ago and no reply yet! No surprise here but still annoying considering the cost. Save your money and choose another app!

13. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Flat out doesn’t work as advertised. Tried importing about 10 recipes from a bunch of popular websites and was told the app couldn’t pull out the details on any of them. It’s really no better than a note with links to all your recipes.

14. ★★★★★privacy and excessive permissions

    Can’t test without creating an account. No desktop app.. From a long-time user of MasterCook and Paprika: Any developer that wants to compete in this space needs to create some level of feature parity with the leading apps. IOS has come a long way, but is insufficient for stand-alone use. You need a macOS desktop app. People are, rightly, more aware of privacy and personal data security than ever. I would like to test this app, but will not create a user account for the “privilege.” I would be happy to try a non-syncing evaluation version before surrendering personal data.

15. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Horrible App! Crashes constantly. Do NOT pay for this. It constantly crashes and never pulls in recipes. If I could get my money back I would. Tons of better apps out there.

16. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Disappointed. Features work well except most important feature to me, namely the ability to scan handwritten family recipes. Scanner function is practically useless as it tries to scan handwritten words and convert to text but conversion feature is inadequate rendering almost everything unintelligible (and this is the case with fairly clear printed, non cursive handwriting). At least some other apps will let you scan the recipe without trying to convert, which gets you the digitized recipe without needing to input manually ( like anyone has time for that). If they could fix the conversion feature or add a full scan feature, this would be a perfect app for the text. Hope the developer can address this!

17. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Total RIP OFF!!. I paid for the lifetime “pro” version, and have found the app to be a total rip off! 90%of the time when attempting to save a recipe, I get an error screen, saying the app cannot save the recipe, and promising to look in the URL. The only thing this app is good at…. Is taking your money! This is a scam app if there ever was one! I want a refund!!

18. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    App does not work. When training to import recipes I receive this message Sorry, we couldn't import this recipe We've taken a note of this URL, and we'll investigate it shortlv. Ok

19. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Cannot contact support or figure out how to add my own recipe. No instructions to add your own recipe and when you try to contact support it freezes. The only way to add your own recipe is to enter the details in the multiple fields or get a url from some website

20. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Needs Pestle Pro. I purchased a new IPad and transferred all my apps and data from the old IPad to the new one. Now when I access my recipes it tells me I need Pestle Pro because I saved the recipe on a different device. I’m not spending money simply because I transferred IPads. This is crazy!

21. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Pro?. I have a pro account. I loaded the app on my wife’s phone and logged in with my login and my recipes are not appearing on her phone. It’s asking me to pay again.

22. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Buggy and punishes you if you miss a paymeny. I've used this for years and the bugs have been more consistent then anything. Will misread recipies, forget what day it is, and on several occasions: forget I paid my subscription and downgrade my account. Finally got tired of it and moved on

23. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Conflicted. Relatively great app and easy to access the recipes for future reference. However I can’t use the recipes half the time because the app disconnects me from the household but when I try to “re join” it says you are already a part of this household. But none of the recipes show up when I open the app and neither does the household. So it becomes this cyclical maddening game

24. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Deleted all my Recipes. A year or two ago I decided to by the a lifetime license for pestle pro, I’ve not used it too much since then since I usually just throw some food together, but every once in a while its nice to do things by the book, especially for baking. It has some pretty neat scanning features for turning website recipes into a readable format and the app is fairly easy to use. That being said, today it randomly decided to delete all of my recipes. I don’t know if it logged me out, or something, but now I need to add all of them again. Very frustrating to have that happen in an otherwise great app.

25. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Improvements Needed. It’s alright. The importing tools are similar and better than others since you can import from social platforms. The phrasing and recipe/ingredient hierarchy need serious attention. Merging marinating, dry, and garnishing ingredients is not helpful. Other apps like ReciMe do this well. In addition: The grocery shopping list. When shopping for items, the measurements are important but not as important as the actual ingredient name. Pestle does 1/2 ounces turkey thighs, whereas ReciMe does turkey thighs (1/2 ounces). At a glance, I know I need turkey legs. It’s frustratingly ugly and friction-rich. The recipe lists garlic three times. Transferring it over to the grocery list results in three separate shopping items instead of compiling the total amount and listing it once.

26. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Unusable. The app is basically unusable without premium membership.

27. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Not compatible with youtube?. Is this app not compatible with Youtube recipes? Disappointing as I thought it was. The recipe was very clearly included and formatted in the video description but the recipe would not import.

28. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    No longer opens on MacOS. I know it's made for iPad, but something in the last update made it so that it doesn't even open on macbook anymore

29. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    So many bugs. Used to be obsessed with this app, but it doesn’t function like it used to.

30. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Not recommended for scanning physical recipes. Unforgiving scanner. Cycles screens incessantly and unresponsively if you try to scan ingredients again. Wanted to like this but won’t be renewing my subscription