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u/BennY_Flutter

Built a cooking app in a super crowded market, getting downloads but struggling to convert to paid users. Any advice?
▲ 1 r/iOSAppsMarketing

Built a cooking app in a super crowded market, getting downloads but struggling to convert to paid users. Any advice?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a cooking app called Cookly and would really appreciate some honest feedback/advice from people who’ve been through this before.

These are my current stats after launching on iOS:

  • 140 first-time downloads
  • 1.31k impressions
  • 309 product page views
  • 20.8% conversion rate

I know the recipe/cooking app space is insanely crowded, and honestly I questioned myself a lot before building another one. But I kept feeling like existing apps were missing some things I personally wanted:

  • An actual AI cooking assistant you can talk to while cooking
  • A solid household feature where families/couples can share meal plans, recipes, and shopping lists
  • More of a social aspect where you can follow friends, see what they cook, and get inspiration naturally instead of endlessly scrolling Pinterest/TikTok

So that’s why I built it.

The problem is: I’m not really sure how to grow from here.

I can get some downloads here and there, but getting people to:

  1. Keep using the app
  2. Feel enough value to pay for premium

…has been much harder than I expected.

Right now the premium is $4.99/month, but with ~100+ users and around 50 active users, nobody has converted yet.

For those of you who’ve marketed apps before:

  • What actually helped you get your first real traction?
  • What made people finally convert to paid?
  • Is this mostly a positioning problem, onboarding problem, or just too early/small sample size?
  • Should I lean harder into the AI assistant angle, the household/shared planning angle, or the social aspect?

Would genuinely appreciate any advice or hard truths

u/BennY_Flutter — 3 days ago
▲ 2 r/appdev+1 crossposts

I built a cooking app because meal planning apps stressed me out

I spent the last months building an iPhone app because I was tired of meal planning apps feeling like spreadsheets and just overloaded with ads..

My cooking app helps you:
• save recipes from anywhere
• generate shopping lists automatically
• plan meals for the week
• and now even share recipes + meal plans with your household

One thing I’m weirdly proud of:
If your meal plan falls apart mid-week (which always happens), the app helps you reshuffle meals instead of starting over.

It’s still early, but seeing strangers actually use something I built has been honestly surreal.

Would genuinely love feedback from people outside my own bubble.

Website: cooklyapp.com

u/BennY_Flutter — 3 days ago
▲ 16 r/dinnersuggestions

Full disclosure: I'm a developer and I built a little app to try to solve this for myself, so I have a bias here but I'm genuinely asking because I want to understand if I'm solving the right problem.

Not linking anything or asking you to download it. I just want to understand the real friction before I keep building in the wrong direction

The app asks you a few quick questions (time you have, dietary preferences, what you're in the mood for) and gives you a top 5 dinner picks for the night. No endless scrolling, no recipe blogs with 4 paragraphs before the ingredients.

It works okay for the "tonight" problem. But I'm not sure it actually helps people with the bigger meal planning picture.

So I'm curious for those of you who've tried to get more organized about dinners:

  • What actually breaks the habit for you? Is it the planning itself, the grocery side, or just not following through?
  • Have you tried apps for this? What made you stop using them?

Appreciate any honest takes.

reddit.com
u/BennY_Flutter — 18 days ago