Cozi Family Organizer reviews
What users love and hate · 500 reviews analyzed · ★ 4
A shared family calendar and shopping lists for everyone in the household across different phones — a tool people loved for years that recent updates turned into a buggy, paywalled headache.
What users love
One shared account keeps the whole family on the same page
What users love most: spouses and kids share one account and see the calendar, shopping and to-do lists update in real time. Someone adds milk from home and whoever's at the store sees it instantly. It kills the endless "grab this too" texting.
Everyone gets the updates in real time, the kids don't have to ask me to put something on the grocery list, they can do it themselves and I get the update immediately.
We love the ability for our family to add items to the grocery list. Makes it easy when any one of us is out shopping
keeps my wife and I on the same page even with our busy schedules
A bridge between Android and iPhone, where native calendars won't talk
For mixed-ecosystem couples, Cozi solves what the built-in calendars can't: a shared calendar and lists that work the same on the wife's iPhone and the husband's Samsung. That cross-platform bridge is exactly why many stay.
Also works seamlessly between my Android and her iPhone.
excellent unified way to share calendar with family who are in a different phone OS
especially as he has an apple phone and I have a samsung, so normal.calendar sharing doesn't work for us
The whole household in one place: calendar, lists, recipes, birthdays
Beyond calendar and groceries, people value recipes that turn into ingredient lists, meal planning, to-do lists and the perpetual birthday tracker with reminders. For families and people with ADHD this all-in-one is a lifeline against chaos.
I love this app! calendar plus shopping lists and to do lists and reminders. it's fantastic.
Our family has had Cozi for years. We love it - especially the Birthday reminders!
I recommend this to all my clients. it's amazing tool if you have ADHD
What users hate
Lists randomly delete and reshuffle items
After recent updates the shared lists have a mind of their own: items vanish mid-shop, things you add get wiped at random, and the row order rearranges itself. For the app's core feature — a shared grocery list — that's fatal.
I literally just filled in my grocery list and it erased it all when I was finished
The biggest problem has been items disappearing from shared lists, which has been awful for grocery shopping.
it moves all over lists around. our shopping list is always on top and it has been moving it down to the bottom. I make an entire shopping list and then it deletes everything
Loved it for years — recent updates broke it
The recurring refrain: families used Cozi for 10-15 years and adored it, but over the past year — or even the past month — it became unbearably buggy. People name the exact update that broke things and move to competitors.
Was an amazing app, but has been increasingly having problems.
This app WAS awesome until their recent update that causes SEVERE lag.
This used to be a great app. my family has had it for years and we loved it. Now its constantly logging us out
Basic calendar features locked behind a paywall
The app is marketed as free, but without a Gold subscription you can't view the calendar beyond 3-30 days — not even events you already entered. Month view, past appointments and planning ahead all cost money, and users call it a ransom.
labeled as a free calendar app, but the calendar is behind a paywall for anything beyond 3 days.
App won't allow setup of appointments out more than 30 days unless on the paid 'gold' plan.
Unannounced, they have changed where you can't see past 30 days without paying for gold. Now all my appointments are inaccessible without paying a ransom.
Endless spinner, random logouts, refused logins
The app spins the wheel of death for minutes or forever, logs people out at random, then refuses their correct password. Paying Gold users physically can't get into their own calendar and lists.
Now it kicks you off randomly and it won't recognize your password. I can't login now as I type this.
It takes FOREVER to open (pinwheels to the point where sometimes I give up or forget what I need to put on it)
now the app won't login - it sits there with the spinning circle trying to login. And when it does finally login it logs me out as soon as I minimize for another app
Lists and calendar don't sync between family members
Cozi's whole point — everyone sees the same thing — breaks down: what one person adds never shows up for the others, especially across Android↔iPhone. Sometimes only one family member can add items at all; everyone else's get wiped.
since the last update, the only one who can add groceries and stuff is my mom, because when me or my dad does it, they just get deleted.
The calendar and lists do not update. other family memebers will add things but no one else can see them.
schedule inputs are not syncing across devices
Intrusive, interactive ads and constant upsells
Ads pop up exactly as you're typing a list item, load on a delay so you tap them by accident and get thrown out of the app. Even paying Gold subscribers get a non-dismissible push to upgrade to the AI/Max tier.
Ads pop up while you are in the process of typing in or modifying an item in the list.
ads load in just as you tap the screen and take you out of the app
I'm already paying for gold. Remove the VERY intrusive ai upgrade ad or this will be the last year I pay for this.
The Android version is a crippled afterthought next to iOS
On Android the month calendar shows no colors, dates sit below the cell instead of above, and the interface looks alien. Wives on iPhone love it; husbands on Android call the same app nearly unusable.
Terrible Android interface. Looks fine on Apple, dont use this app if you and your family use different phone ecosystems.
the concept is great but the layout and display for android just isn't there. My wife is on IOS and loves it, but it's basically unusable for me. Color codes on the calendar is the biggest gap
The shared calendar doesn't show colors and the daily information is below the the number.
Swipe-to-delete with no confirmation wipes items by accident
List items delete at the slightest touch, with no "are you sure?" and no undo. On a long grocery list it's easy to wipe half of it and not even remember what was there.
Things get deleted from my list accidentally ALL THE TIME. Husband does it more
The only thing I would change is making the items not so easily able to delete because you can barely touch them and they will delete
they also got rid of swiping either left or right to delete items off the list. This nuisance is definitely a 1 star feature.
No offline access to lists — useless in a store with no signal
The app needs a connection just to open the lists, and signal often drops exactly inside supermarkets. A shopping list that won't open at the store defeats the whole purpose.
They have deliberately chosen to prevent offline use of lists.
I can't open the app when I don't have service. If I'm somewhere shopping and don't have service, I still need access to my list!
it won't even allow me to tick off items on a list whilst offline, also seems to take a lot longer when editting, several supermarkets have terrible or no signal whilst inside
The interface feels stuck in 2010 and is unfriendly to newcomers
The design looks untouched since 2010: confusing navigation, too many tabs, no dark mode, text cut off at large font sizes. It's especially hard on the elderly relatives families install it for in the first place.
it's so clunky. seriously, this feels like it hasn't been updated since 2010.
UI is not intuitive and difficult to navigate
Missing feature dark mode. Never see a calendar without it.
Support doesn't fix anything and blames the user
Support tickets get months of off-topic auto-replies or advice the person already tried. In one case an agent claimed the events never existed, called it user error and offered no solution at all.
Marian never offered any solutions and at the end of the convo just said "I hope that all will go smoothly for you going forward."
the response has been to ask me things I've specially stated i did and to suggest things I've stated I've done. for months!!!
My husband tried to reach out about it and got an automated response that didn't address the problem at all.