Meal kit delivery services are undoubtedly good but also expensive. They are tasty, nutritious and offer you a variety of chef designed recipes and diet plans that are really enticing! But, despite of their goodness and classic recipes, they all come at a good price, except for Dinnerly.

One of the most in-expensive meal delivery services in the market, Dinnerly has earned itself a name in the meal kit delivery service market as one of the cheapest meal kits available. The recipes and dishes are healthy, full of nutrition, quick to make, easy to follow and delicious to eat. And this is one of the main reasons why a larger number of people choose Dinnerly as one of their first go-to meal kit delivery services. In this review, let’s take a deeper look into their meal plans, their services, their recipes, costs, and other features that make Dinnerly one of the top companies in the meal kit delivery market.

Dinnerly is one of those meal kit delivery services that offers you with all the basic recipes that you probably eat and enjoy at home. In simpler words, if you are looking for a low cost meal kit delivery service that offers you staple recipes that are stomach filling, Dinnerly is just what you need. The company offers you meal kits at just $4.99, the lowest market price. So, instead of gourmet chef designed classic recipes, you will receive a healthy, tasty and stomach filling recipe that will still help you enjoy a delicious meal.

It is a spin-off of Marley Spoon meal Kit service which is a more food and nutrition focused meal delivery service and offers you classic dishes that you can enjoy. Unlike, Marley Spoon, Dinnerly is a meal delivery service that offers you more time saving and reasonable meal options that you will definitely enjoy eating with your partner. And in-order to keep its costs low, Dinnerly uses limited ingredients, no recipe cards and no marketing campaigns that would otherwise increase its costs. In fact, Dinnerly is the most ideal meal service for people who do not have time to shop ingredients for their meals or cook the dishes for hours in the kitchen. However, following the recipes offered by Dinnerly is not quite easy. If you do not have basic cooking skills, following the instructions on the recipe card may be a little difficult for you, as they do not have pictures to help you see how your recipe must look mid-cooking procedure. Also, they do not offer you a variety of options such as Vegan, Paleo and Keto diet plans that are otherwise offered by almost all meal kit delivery services. Overall, Dinnerly is one of those meal kits that offers you regular meals with a regular taste.

What we didn’t like about Dinnerly is that the company lacks a good and efficient customer service and also has a very narrow delivery service window. Comparatively, companies like Blue Apron and Green Chef win more attention and appreciation for their recipes, freshness and procedures.

A popular meal delivery kit service, Dinnerly is your go-to meal option when you are looking for low budget meals that are delicious and quick to cook. Each serving at Dinnerly will cost you $5, an amount that is comparatively very low than all other meal delivery services. You can start ordering their meal plans within minutes after you sign-up with them. Let’s take a deeper look into their unique features that makes Dinnerly one of the most popular meal kit services in the country.

Signing-up with Dinnerly is just a 5 minute process. The company offers you two signing-up options, for 2-Person box or 4-person box, also called as the family box. When you open the company’s home page to sign-up with them, you will be asked which box you wish to choose. Once you are through with this, you will be asked the number of meals that you wish to order per week. Also, you do not have the option to order just 2 meals per week, unlike all other meal delivery services. Customers have to choose an option from 3 to 6 meals per week.

Once you are done with this procedure, all you need to do is select and move to the next stage of sharing your location with the company. Once you have provided your zip code and your email address, you will enter the 3^rd step of the sign-up process. Here, you have to choose your delivery days, the time and your address for the delivery, followed by the payment stage. The company offers you a restricted delivery day options such as Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, anytime between 8:00 am and 9:00 pm in the evening. Once you have reached here, the last step is to choose the meals that you wish to order with Dinnerly.

One thing we really appreciated about Dinnerly is its packaging. The meal kit service uses very minimalistic packaging to avoid a lot of unnecessary waste. Moreover, every packaging item used is recyclable, right from its cardboard box to the insulating paper liner.

We liked the fact that Dinnerly didn’t individually wrap tomatoes or garlic in plastic bags like most other companies. In fact, they individually wrapped only those items such as green beans, leafy greens and yogurt. The kit produced just the exact amount of recyclable plastic waste that we also get while purchasing items from a grocery store. This is particularly good for cities that have plastic recycling services.

Dinnerly recipes are not only low cost but also quick and easy to cook. The recipes are absolutely basic and do not require photo illustrations. Also, most of the recipes are no longer than 5 steps, which makes them easy to follow and quick to cook.

Out of the 3 kits we tried, most of them had only 6 or maximum 7 ingredients, and just a few items needed chopping. Hence, it took just 10 minutes to prepare for a recipe while the other 2 recipes just needed a skillet and a pot to cook the recipe. In fact, even beginners with some basic cooking skills can cook a proper dish with Dinnerly.

Despite the food quality and the simplicity of the recipes, the quantity offered by Dinnerly is good and enough for two people.

The meal kit service is ideal for people who live on a tight budget but wish to enjoy a simple non-takeout meal and don’t have the time to plan or make quick meals.

If you want to change the delivery address, or change a recipe or even change the delivery day, it will only take you a few clicks to make the needed changes. Also, you can cancel your order by clicking the corresponding link from the week’s menu from the website or the application.

In case you want to cancel their subscription, all you need to do is open the settings page and cancel it indefinitely or completely. This process must however be done 6 days prior.

When you compare the food plans and cost of Dinnerly with the other companies, you will notice a huge difference in their cost and their recipes. Dinnerly rightly justifies the statement, “You get exactly what you pay for.” The meal kit delivery service uses low-cost ingredients such as Roma tomatoes, pasta and simple non-organic meat in their recipes. They also do not offer recipe cards like all other meal kit delivery companies. Instead, if you want to cook a recipe by Dinnerly, you will have to open it on their website to follow the procedures. Moreover, they do not have pictures in the recipes to accompany the steps which further helps in keeping their overall budget low.

Another interesting fact that we noticed with Dinnerly was that the company doesn’t measure the ingredients in their kit. For instance, you may receive double the amount of garlic in your kit, while the recipe requires just 3 cloves of garlic in it. This may cause some confusion to all users who are not regular cooks.

Also, most meal kit delivery services usually ask you to keep basic ingredients such as olive oil, salt and pepper ready at home for some of their recipes. However, with Dinnerly, you may also be asked to keep eggs and other special ingredients ready at hand for certain recipes. This actually makes the cooking a little stressful, especially when you don’t have the ingredients at home.

Dinnerly offers you 14 different recipes each week, including 5 vegetarians and 1 fish recipe. Each of these recipes has a label on them, describing the food such as, “Low Calorie”, “Fast” or “Picky Eater proof”. Some of the recipes also mention if they are gluten or dairy product free.

Once click on the photo of the recipe and you will find every detail needed, right from its recipe, allergens and other details. The food options or recipes are simple and basic such as pasta, burgers, meat plate with a filling side dish, etc. Also, most of these dishes take only about 30 to 40 minutes preparation time.

Being one of the lowest meal kit services in the market, Dinnerly uses only ingredients that are good, not excellent. The scallions in our recipe were not absolutely fresh, but a somewhat wilted. That however, didn’t affect the flavor of the cooked dish.

The flavors were tasty but bland and honestly, we didn’t expect them to be absolutely mouth-watering or out of the world. The dishes were decent and stomach filling. We ordered their Greek Meatballs with Tomatoes and Orzo but were not quite satisfied with the outcome. It was just simple old meatballs with dried oregano tossed n sauce and pasta. Also, the meatballs didn’t have breadcrumbs in them to absorb the juiciness of the sauce which resulted them into a small mishap.

Out of our 3 dishes, the Thai Pork Salad with Crispy Shallots and Green Beans was the only dish that was good.

Dinnerly offers you meal kits that cost you $4.99 per serving (without including the shipping charges). In fact, the more number of meals you order, the price gets lower. So, you can order anything between 3 and 6 meals for each week, for either 2 people or for 4 people.

The smallest meal plan at Dinnerly is their 3 meals per week plan for 2people that costs $4.99 for each serving. Further add $8.99 shipping charges to this cost and your total comes to $38.93 weekly. The largest kit at Dinnerly contains 6 weekly meals for 4 people at the cost of $4.29 for each serving. With the shipping charges added to it, the total comes to $111.95 for a week.

Also, a point to remember – when you sign up with Dinnerly, you automatically give them the authorization to send you weekly meals. In return, they automatically cut the cost for the meals from your credit/ debit card. Hence, if you wish to change your meal plans, choose a recipe, skip a meal or even cancel their services, make sure you do them in time from their website or their mobile application. This is a standard practice followed by all meal kit delivery services in the industry.

Dinnerly is a meal kit service that is best known for its low budget meals. It is considered most ideal for people who are looking for low budget meals that are simple, tasty and yet stomach filling. In order to better understand Dinnerly, let’s do a market comparison with some of its competitors.

Like Dinnerly, Every Plate is also a budget friendly meal kit delivery service. Both companies offer you almost similar services and also charge you a similar shipping fee (almost $8.99). Their meals are simple, easy to cook and are tasty. However, as compared to Every Plate, Dinnerly gives you more recipe options (exactly 14 recipes per week) to choose from against Every Plate’s 8 weekly recipes. Also, Dinnerly offers you the chance to order up to 6 meals a week for a family of 4 people while Every Plate offers you only 2 plans, allowing you to choose 3 to 5 meals a week based on your subscription for 2 persons or 4 persons.