I started using Pepperplate because it was free and had all the things I cared about at the time, easy to add recipes, each could have a picture, and notes, and they even had a way to grab recipes of specific websites without having to type anything in. I moved all my paper recipes to Pepperplate and it served me well, however over the 10+ years I've been using it they have not improved it at all. The website grabber has not read a recipe I've found online in years but I paid nothing and it still functioned. Then a couple months ago all Pepperplate users got an email saying we had 2 weeks to subscribe to continue using it, to the tune of $36/yr. They claimed to need money to improve it but failed to list any planned improvements. That got me looking for it's replacement and I'm glad I did.
I searched, downloaded and tested Yummly, RecipeBox, Epicurious, Big Oven, OrganizEat, Recipe Keeper and probably others. Some were not really organizers and much as places to find recipes. Others were klunky or complicated, in the end it was between Big Oven and Recipe Keeper and I chose Recipe Keeper
It's easy to use, can grab recipes off the web from almost anywhere perfectly, imports from other products, syncs recipes between all your instances, allows for custom organization, even let's you take a picture of a recipe to add it and uses OCR so it's searchable. It runs circles around Pepperplate in every way. But it does cost a little bit to get all this quality, which I'm glad to pay for once I used it.
Beth and I had our own Pepperplate accounts and kept our recipes separate but we do have many in common too. Ideally we'd share one digital recipe box. Recipe Keeper has a two level organizational structure (taxonomy) - Course and Category. There can only be one course per recipe but each can be in unlimited categories and you can add your own and remove any default categories you don't need. I added a "Jim" and "Beth" category so we could see only our own recipes if needed. I also added "Low Carb", "Crockpot", "Pressure Cooker", and "Try" for recipes that we have not made but added because they looked good and we want to try them. If we are looking for something different we can check out what's in the try category. As you can see in the picture above we have 23 things to try.
It allows easy resizing of recipes by simply specifying how many people you want to feed and based off the "servings" listed for the recipe it does the math for you. It also stores nutrition information and will grab it from a website recipe if available. I use notes to tell me what worked and what did not and what to try next time. There is a 5 star rating you can give each recipe so you can quickly find your best ones. If you want step by step pictures you can upload those too. If someone asks you for a recipe you can quickly share it right from the app by entering their email address. This gives them a direct link right to that recipe. I've already shared recipes a couple times.
We never bothered using the shopping list or planner with Pepperplate because it was more hassle than it's worth but with Recipe Keeper we have tried it really kind of like it. Pick some things to make for the week using the menu planner, then go to the shopping list and all ingredient are there to make it all, simply click on all the things you already have, add things not part of the recipes like laundry detergent, and it creates a dynamic shopping list organized in grocery store categories automatically and you can reorder them once and it remembers, so ours are in Wegman's order.
We shop together and start at opposite ends of the store and as you pick something up, mark it off the list and it shows as picked up on the other persons phone immediately. High tech shopping at it's best.
Recipe Keeper is not a website but a collection of apps which sync together, so we bought iOS version for my iPhone and iPad and then Mac version for our Macs. Beth had to get her own on her iPhone since it's a different Apple ID. Each app is $5.99 per platform, so we ended up spending just under $18 for all our devices. Not bad for a top quality product. They also have apps for Android and Windows.
The only complaint would be cooking off your phone is tough because the ingredients are on one tab and the directions are on another, so flipping back and forth to get quantities is a pain. But on the iPad and laptop this is not an issue at all.
I highly recommend it.
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