Cozi Family Organizer (for iPad)

How do you keep your household in order? Between managing finances, planning meals, remembering everyone's health status (allergies, doctor appointments), and keeping up with your to-do lists, running a family takes a lot of work and organization. An organizational Web app called Cozi aims to help you run your household more smoothly, and its iPad app, Cozi Family Organizer, seeks to help you out when you're on the go.

Unfortunately, both the Web app and iPad app are underwhelming.

Cozi Setup
Cozi's concept is to centralize important aspects of day-to-day family life. The Cozi iPad app works as a standalone service, though most people will likely prefer to set up their accounts via the Web app to explore the full range of features and tools. It is possible to set up entirely via the iPad app, though. The most crucial part of setting up is to create an entry for each member of the family, which can include pets, nannies, and extended family members. Everyone entered into the Cozi system is assigned a color (which you can change) so that any activity associated with that person becomes color-coded.

When you add an email address to any user's account, it gives the person a username with which to log in. So Uncle Artie gets a login because he has an email address, but the goldfish doesn't.

Cozi takes a few key aspects of personal organization, like keeping a calendar and to-do list, and simply makes them synced and shared across every family member's account. Everyone in your family who has a Cozi login will see the same calendar, shopping list, to-do list, and so forth, when they open Cozi.

Cozi iPad Features
The iPad app opens with a simple interface, with a rail of buttons on the left and a photo placeholder where you can upload a picture of your family to personalize the experience on the right. The main navigation comprises Calendar, To Do, Shopping, Journal, and Settings, which is a pared-down version of the Cozi Web app.

In fact, the iPad app omits more than I think it should. What's missing here that you get in the full Cozi online are messages, an email system, recipes, and recipe planning. From the iPad app, you can pull up and edit a little more information, like family members' email addresses and phone numbers, but those fields are confusingly tucked away under settings. I'd rather see a "People" or "Family Members" button included with the other main buttons.

Other family organizers simply give you more tools that are better designed for the complex needs of an entire household?although it's worth noting that none runs the full gamut. Even the ones we rate highly don't combine all the features available in competing products. For example, PCMag's Editors' Choice in this category, Famjama (beta), is the best I've seen and does at an excellent job of centralizing important family information, but even it doesn't have financial tools. Another Web app called Doxo, on the other hand, specifically handles finances and bill payment, but skips many other areas of family management.. Cozi's sweet spot is in lists and calendars, a lackluster niche to have?especially on an iPad?seeing as better digital calendars and list-making apps already exist.

Not So Cozy Security
Cozi comes in two versions: a free account that contains advertisements and some feature limitations and a paid Gold account ($4.99 per month or $49.99 per year), which removes both. One account works for the whole family, which sounds appealing except that all users login with the same password. Cozi recognizes different user names, in the form of each family member's email address, but one password is reused for everyone. A child could easily log in to the family account using his parent's email address. It's a security nightmare waiting to happen.

Shopping lists and to-do lists work as advertised, but lack solid management tools. I'd like to see Cozi add more control over which family members have read-only capabilities and who can actually edit and change a list. For example, if a mother created a shopping list and asked her spouse to buy all the items, she wouldn't want her bratty teenage son to quietly add the list things he wants? at least not without showing the items as "pending approval."

A bonus feature in the Cozi Web app that's absent from the mobile app (rather unfortunately?I think it's a missed opportunity) is recipe suggestions. If you find a recipe you like, you can automatically add all the ingredients to your grocery shopping list in the Web app. Wouldn't you want that same functionality on an iPad?

Family Organization on the Go
The Cozi Web app is a family management center with some decent shared calendar and list-making functions, but ultimately is not a website we recommend using, and thus, we cannot recommend the Cozi iPad app either. Our Editors' Choice for family organizers, Famjama (which is technically still in beta), is a much better option with tighter security features and overall better tools for keeping your family running smoothly. While Famjama does not have a dedicated iPad app, it does have a mobile-optimized site you can access from a Web browser.

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