Cozi

Modern families need modern tools for keeping the household finances on budget, planning meals, remembering everyone's health status (allergies, immunization, blood type), and other points of organization. The Web app Cozi (free to $49.99 per year for Gold membership) aims to centralize some aspects of running a household. Each family member has access to a shared calendar, grocery shopping list, messaging board, and more.

While Cozi offers a few desirable features and services, it doesn't implement any of them well. Its worst offense is that every family member uses the same password to log into the system. Cozi recognizes all the email addresses of family members as user names, but one password is reused for all of them. From a security standpoint, that one reason is enough to not use Cozi.

The Web app also skips large swathes of family management entirely. For example, it doesn't contain much in terms of document management, nor any financial planning and monitoring tools. The amount of information you can add about each family member is extremely limited as well. The free version of Cozi has advertisements (a perpetual thorn in my side), as well as limits on the number of messages family members can exchange, and other restrictions.

However, of all the family organization sites I've seen, none run the full gamut, which is to say that Cozi's missed opportunities aren't much worse than those of ?Doxo (free, 3.5 stars) or AboutOne (beta) (free, 3 stars). Each one emphasizes something unique, while also missing entirely areas that the competition covers. For example, Doxo emphasizes bill payment by giving you one login to access all your e-statements from banks, credit card companies, and other service providers. But Doxo doesn't take on people management, so you can't create a profile of each member of your household. AboutOne, on the other hand, has great tools for uploading documents and cataloguing the family's possessions, but no bill pay features. Cozi's sweet spot is in lists and calendars, a lackluster niche to have seeing as better digital calendars and list-making apps already exist. It integrates only minimally with existing services (read-only integration with iCal, Outlook, and Google Calendar).

The only family management app that comes close to covering all the bases is Famjama (beta) (free), our Editors' Choice, but even it doesn't have anything near to the finance management features found in Doxo.

Cozi Features
As mentioned, 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.

The core features include the ability to create profiles for each member of the family, a shared calendar, shopping lists, to-do lists, a family journal, and a meal-planning area. Cozi has space for two "adults," which are essentially account administrators, and up to ten more family members, which can include pets. For each member, you can assign an email address and mobile phone number, but, regrettably, nothing else. Cozi does assign each member a color so that all the activity related to that person is easy to identify, and you can change the colors as you like, but these settings are tucked away in the calendar area rather than in the section where you enter people's names, email addresses, and phone numbers.

If you're so inclined, you can add each member's birthday to the calendar, tag it to the person so their color code shows up, and mark it as an annually recurring event. But wouldn't it be better to just assign birthdays to each person when you enter basic information about them? Wouldn't it save a lot of time if Cozi automatically set up birthdays as recurring events for you?

Cozi's calendar does include decent sharing features. You can send a link to anyone to have your Cozi appointments inputted in their third-party calendar (Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook for Windows).

Another nice feature is that Cozi lets you opt in each family member to receive a weekly email that lists the week's upcoming agenda.

The app has a messaging area where you can leave notes for all to see. This section of the website simply isn't well designed. When you write a message, you have to choose whom it's from, meaning anyone can write a message as "mom." You're not locked into writing a message from only your account. Also, you can't tailor who can see the message, so a note to the kids will also be visible to Grandpa and the nanny. In essence, the messaging center is really just a public graffiti wall where anyone can sign anyone else's name. A lot more work is needed in this area.

Other features, like shopping lists and to-do lists, work as advertised, but even lack solid management tools. It would make more sense to have 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."

You access Cozi primarily through a Web account, but there are apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and Android. The Cozi iPad app works well, but it's missing a few key features found in the website, namely messages, email, recipes, and recipe planning.

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.

Still Waiting for Something Great
Cozi's family calendar and shared shopping lists could be useful to some families looking for a quick and free way to add these digital assets to their household management program. But, overall, Cozi isn't designed appropriately for multi-person use and thus is not an app I would recommend for family organization.

If you're looking for a fantastic household management tool that lets you upload and back up important documents, maintain a group calendar, collaboratively write and share lists, and manage your family's budget, keep looking. I'm still dreaming of a family Web app that works like a pared-down version of project-management or content-management software. Wouldn't it make sense to have administrator accounts for parents who could turn on and off various features for other users? Imagine letting your teenage kids see the meal planning component of the app, but not be able to edit it. What if you could create a calendar entry that would remain hidden from everyone except your mate until he or she approved it? Until there is a family organizer that reaches those extremes, the next best option is Famjama, our Editors' Choice.

More Personal and Home Software Reviews:
??? Cozi
??? Famjama (beta)
??? Doxo
??? AboutOne (beta)
??? Digifit iCardio Multi-Sport Heart Rate Monitor Training (for iPhone)
?? more

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