Meal Planner Software/Website Evaluation Criterion

I've had a couple more meal planner programs added to my list and I will be working my way through their samples, but I wanted to take a moment and outline some of the criterion that I will be using to evaluate them and decide which one will work best for us.

First, issues that can be evaluated outside of their trial:

Access: can I get the information with just a browser or do I need installed software? Will the plans load on the iphone? If so, just the shopping lists and menus or can I do their customization?
Cost: fundamentally, what is the cost of the program? And, does it automatically renew? Give you an option to renew? Send a reminder email before it renews? And for what period of time do you have to make a commitment?
Usability: I know I'm a little fussy, but the ease of use of the site and its presentation really matters to me. Both in terms of being able to do the "meal planning" as quickly as possible and just not being annoyed by a messy site.
Flexibility: Can I customize our plan for the week? Is this done easily? Can I make alterations to the grocery list? Is the flexibility that they offer not offset by an unjustifiable accompanying increase in complexity and time demands?
Responsiveness: I am going to try to come up with a question for each company to see the rate and thoroughness of their response. Hopefully, it won't matter how quickly I can get in touch with them, but it's nice to know just in case.
Additional information: what articles, advice, etc. do they make available, if any? Do I value this or is it just clutter and more to weed through?
Record-keeping: does the site allow me to keep information about specific recipes? Can I rank them with stars? Keep recipes that I liked? Are the recipes only available during their week or do I have access to any recipe that I've received as long as I keep my subscription active?
Other meals: do they have any resources to help with potential needs for other meals? Breakfasts, sack lunches, weekend brunches, etc.?

Issues to be evaluted during their trial period:

Quantity: how does the quantity of food mesh with our lives? Does it seem to lend itself to easily being taken to work for lunches?
Cost: what is the actual cost of the food to prepare the meal?
Variety: good variety of food? This will be a little hard to evaluate with just one week, but it's definitely worth noting even if it's an incomplete reflection.
Composition: does the food style reflect what we like?
Taste: are the meals tasty? Do we like them? Will Trajan eat them?
Side-dishes: I pull this out because I've noticed a different degree of emphasis. Do they include side dishes with each meal that are good selections to be paired with the entree? Do the side dishes help to balance the nutrition out well?
Time: how long do the meals take to prepare? Are they feasible options for preparing after work and still having dinner early enough for Trajan?
Difficulty: how arduous are the recipes? Do they require extensive, specialized kitchen gadgets?

This is a very subjective kind of decision, so I'm not going to set a rubric or anything to use to make the final decision, but I think that identifying specific areas to think about will help to ease the difficulty of the final decision.

Meal Planner Update

Found another: www.mealmixer.com

This one is more personalized in terms of what goes on your meals. It also looks like it has more nutrition information if that's important to you. It also has other meals.
This actually looks like they may have gone too far. By making it completely customizable and having all the other meals in the week, I could see this taking a substantial amount of time. One of the benefits that I'm looking for in using a meal planner is having them decide what's to eat and not having to deal with the time and stress of making those decisions.

I think the scramble giving you the option of removing and adding meals as necessary is a plus over e-mealz which doesn't offer this, but I really think that having to completely set the meal plan from beginning to end is too much for me. If I wanted to do that, I'd just use cookbooks or a free online recipe site.

Presentation Matters - Web Products

I previously had written about the layout of a site really mattering particularly when you're in the productivity-esque field. I am finding this to be absolutely true and perhaps the first concept that those preparing productivity services/sites should consider even ahead of whatever their content is.

This was brought up again because I was wanting to find a meal planner that provided the whole week's meals along with a single shopping list.

The first one I found, e-Mealz , was pretty and looked like it could possibly work. However, it didn't seem very concerned about meal preparation time and the way they tell you to modify the plan if you don't like one of the meals is to just eliminate it from the shopping list. It doesn't provide any way to drop in one of your family's favorite meals from another week or any other way to customize the meals. They are one-size-fits-all. A potential plus is that they have plans based on the sales at various grocery stores each week. However, none of the store options exist near our house, so this wasn't a boost for me. If they added Randalls, HEB, Whole Foods or Sun Horizon, I might be more interested.

I went ahead and printed out a couple sample meals and will try them, but I was not at all convinced that this site was the right one for me. It packs the whole week's menus onto one page of paper which requires them sacrificing some of the detail and help that I think I'd appreciate having as a not particularly experienced chef.

So, the site was pretty and clean and made me want to love them, but the content just wasn't what I was looking for.

I then found thescramble.com. This looks like a better fit for us as it has explicit references to all meals taking short periods of time and it includes information that tells you what recipes can be cut in half (four of the five from this week) and ideas about how to use the leftovers. As these mealplans have 4-6 servings in mind and we only have 3 people, this is a definite plus. From an initial evaluation, this site looks like it really could be the system that I'm looking for. And, you're able to add in other meals, remove meals you don't like and even include more meals than then normal 5 if you need to for a week.

However, thescramble's site makes me unhappy. It feels cluttered and messy and even overwhelming. And since you have to interact with the site to customize your plans, I'd have to keep seeing it. A definite negative.

My decision?

I decided to print out sample menus for each program and will try them both. Then I'll evaluate the options available at each site, my feelings about the site itself with my reflections on the difficulty and time requirements of the sample menus as well as how the food tastes and if one seems to fit our tastes better than the other.

I'm sure there are other sites providing similar services, and I would love to look at them as well before I make a commitment and hand over money to one company or another, so if you know of a similar company, let me know.