Solid Starts
Reviews and Complaints

While I love my pediatrician, he’s a bit, mmm, behind on the research into feeding babies. He wanted me to use rice cereal, avoid nuts until my son is 12 months old, and stick to just purées. This app (along with the bundle on the website) made me feel EMPOWERED to take control. EVERYTHING is evidence-based. The studies they reference are linked. Each food includes a recipe and even flavor pairing suggestions. My son is 9 months old and has already tried 79 foods, and it’s truly thanks to Solid Starts! I subscribed to track what my son eats in a day and I love seeing the number of foods tried increase! I recommend Solid Starts to everyone who has a baby, and I can’t wait for the Spanish version of the app to be released because I live in LatAm and just know so many of my friends here will benefit from the resource in Spanish!

This has been my absolute favorite app of all time. I’ve downloaded dozens and dozens of apps since getting pregnant with my first baby and this one is the absolute most helpful by far. I use it no less than 5x a day I’m sure. Also the website and courses/videos by solid starts are incredible. I did spoon feeding and purées with my first born and he became a terrible picky eater. The solid starts program has helped us so much in getting him back on track. When my second baby was born, I started using their resources right away and she has become the most wonderful eater. We enjoy meals as a family now and it has truly been life changing. I wish so much I’d had this when my first was born so we could have known all the things we could have been doing better from the start! This app is the best, truly couldn’t live without it now.

Solid Starts has been a game changer for our family. The pediatrician told us to start introducing solids around 5 months. No directions. No guidance. Lots of googling "can babies eat ..." and anxiety was skyrocketing. I was going down the path of purees and spoon feeding. Then soon after a friend told me about Solid Starts and I've watched every Instagram story ever since. Jenny and her team gave me a priceless gift-one thing to cross off the worry list in raising our daughter. I have a 16 month old little foodie all thanks to this app and this team. It's on my Home Screen. I use it all the time. Just so grateful for the Herculean effort it took to build this and have paid it forward telling any friend with a new baby to further this community and Jenny's most admirable mission to create a feeding revolution. It's unstoppable.

This app is worth very penny! I knew when my son had intolerances from breastfeeding that we would need to log his solid intake when we started baby led weaning at six months. I am so thankful we found Solid Starts to help us not only track which foods he has tried, but also reactions. This app is extremely helpful in giving the best research based information on allergens, choking hazards, how to serve foods, where foods come from, and even how the food can impact their diapers. I use Solids Starts every day and love being able to quickly search for a food that I'm unsure of how to cut or serve appropriately for my son. It is also helpful to see at a quick glance which fruits and veggies we have had that day/week so we can offer a nice variety. I 100% recommend this app to any parent who is starting solids with their little ones!

I’m a first time mom, and I started spoon feeding my son, but he always gazed longingly at our food when we would eat. I had heard of baby led weaning but wasn’t sure about it (choking, yikes). Solid starts Instagram page led me to their app. This team of professionals has put together an amazing app, including any food you can think of, recipes, how to cut the food safely for your child’s age, videos of other children eating, nutrition, allergy info, choking info and more. I’ve never felt more confident feeding my son than I do now after a few months of using the app. I use it practically every day for guidance on size guides for foods and recipes. Thank you solid starts!
(There are some app glitches, but overall I have to give it five stars. It’s a relatively new app, so I’m sure with time their amazing team will work out the kinks.)

If you haven’t already, follow Solid Starts on Instagram, subscribe to the newsletter, buy the All Access Pass and soak in all the amazing content provided in the FREE app and website database. This has been my go-to resource for all things baby-feeding (and still is, even though my Little has moved into toddlerhood).

The content Solid Starts provides is so well researched, completely vetted by so many professionals/experts, is wonderfully inclusive, and completely real (no paid promotion recommendations, no “this is all happy and easy”, and no shame if you fed your kid cereal for dinner today)...

It’s just about providing resources, encouragement, and support so families can avoid raising picky eaters and provide opportunities for their babes to (safely) get exposure to a ton of different flavors, textures, & colors. I’m a big fan and can’t recommend Solid Starts enough!

Love everything about the app! So easy to keep track of the foods I’ve been feeding baby. I love the videos, it helps so much. The nutritional facts, the way it categorizes the foods by baby’s month .. i love to follow them on Instagram. Love everything about the app! Love your stories and follow your journey with your twins and Charlie. You have helped me so much figuring out safe foods for my 6 month old. If I could just give one piece of advice to the makers of the app.. allow for some type of “family sharing” database .. my partner downloaded the app and I already paid for the yearly subscription and is making her also paid for the subscription when she downloaded the app even though she’s logging in with my information. How are we supposed to “share” our sons information if we each have our own app information in it, should be easier to share the info. Please and thank you .

I would be so lost as a parent if it wasn’t for Solid Starts. I WAS lost before I found solid starts. There is SO much conflicting information out there about starting solids. I remember when one of the first foods I gave my then 6 month old was mashed raw raspberry, and I FREAKED OUT for a week after my mom told me I couldn’t give him raw berries just yet. I googled it and sure enough, there were websites that supported that statement. But then other website said no big deal. Solid starts and this app completely take the guessing out of it, and I am so thankful for that. I really love the fact that I can trust them with all my heart and know that they are never sponsored. My science background mind NEEDS credibility, and the information provided in this app is credible and beyond. Every pediatrician needs to recommend this platform to parents. I ALL here for this baby food revolution ❤️

This app has been a Godsend for this FTM trying to navigate how to do baby-led weaning. So much thought, time, and research clearly went into this to make it as helpful and user-friendly as possible. I love how the format is consistent across foods so I always knew where to find nutrition info, whether a food is an allergen or choking hazard, how to prepare it based on age, and recipes. I honestly don’t know how I would be making it through this baby milestone without it!

One update after seeing some critical reviews - those people rating it a 1 or 2 are clearly not using this app correctly, don’t understand that there are still many features that are useable without a subscription, and/or just plain angry people who will obviously critique and complain about anything. Some of their complaints truly bother me because this app has clearly been a labor of love from Jenny and her team and has such tremendous value!

I started following Solid Starts on Instagram before I was even pregnant. I came across their page when they were first getting started and thought, “when I have kids, this is how I want to teach them to eat.” Fast forward a couple years, and I’m now pulling my 9-month old up to the table in her high chair and sharing meals with her. She eats what we eat, and she loves food and is a fantastic eater. If it weren’t for Solid Starts, I would certainly have puréed everything not knowing there was another option. Their app is one of the most used on my phone, as I’m constantly checking to make sure I’m preparing food for my daughter safely and to keep an eye out for what to watch for (possible reactions, choking hazards, etc.). And what’s more incredible is, it’s free! What Jenny and her team have provided to parents is an incredible resource. I highly recommend following them on Instagram, as well as purchasing their guides if you can.

Love this app and have paid for the tracking features as well because it allows me to log and see how many different foods my son has tried! We’re aiming for 100 different foods/ingredients by the time he is 1 year old! I love all the details and thought put into this app with how to feed by age, recipes, choking and hazard info, and allergen info. Takes the guesswork out of baby led weaning! And I’m able to look items up on the spot because we’re not big on cooking right now but can at least cut up or quickly cook an ingredient for my son. My husband and I feel so much confidence in being able to feed our son (and have him feed himself!). The gagging and coughing don’t scare us as we’ve now learned it’s natural and an important part of learning how to eat. We’re at one meal a day so far with doing dinners and it’s starting to feel like this fun routine! Adding another meal soon as well as lettting daycare feed our son. Using this app has made it all surprisingly easy!

I was introduced to Solid Starts when my son was a newborn and solids was the last thing on my mind at the time (I was dealing with postpartum anxiety and my son had terrible gas pains disrupting his sleep). When he turned 6 months and was ready to start solids, this app was the first thing I turned to after following Solid Starts on IG for a few weeks and understanding the benefits of finger foods and BLW. We introduced whole broccoli florets as his first food with nervous excitement and now that he’s about to turn 9 months, broccoli is still one of his favourite foods. We’ve introduced over 90 different foods to him in just 3 months all thanks to this app and all the resources on the Solid Starts website. It’s relieved much anxiety as a new mum and it’s helped me educate family
members and friends too who also now support how he eats (instead of saying babies can only eat purées). I cannot recommend Solid Starts enough to anyone wanting to help their baby/child become a happy (and safe) eater!

It’s a shame because they have so much information but it’s all buried under a clunky experience and every step you need to take is made tedious.

First off, I’ve never been more confused by a landing screen. I was expecting things like “food to try at 6 month” or something to guide me. Instead were a few empty custom lists and “olive oil” as featured food. So it seems the user needs to have a plan already.

The tracker seemed useful so it tried to add yesterdays food. Looks like I can’t add it from the tracker. Off to the food search I go. I then have to answer 3 slides of questions to finally add it. Those three slides have to be answered every single time! If the product is in your favorites it will still ask you every time if you want to add it there. And at the end of the day there’s no great dashboard to see progress, variety of food tries or anything so it just feels like tedious data collection for them.

I really see the potential of their resource, but there needs to be some serious restructuring of the app to be made useful.

I am SO thankful for this app and the Solid Starts team. As a first time mom, I had zero idea of how to start solids. My only example of feeding a baby was puréed foods with a spoon held by a parent. The content provided by Solid Starts gave me the confidence to start solids when my baby was ready shortly after 6 months! We were extra nervous because baby girl had food allergies while breastfeeding, but the app gave me the tools I needed to track allergen exposure as well as help with spotting allergic reactions. I figured out how to serve the foods we were eating in a baby safe way (preparing only 1 meal was a game changer!) AND, when accompanied by their website, I Iearned how to coach my baby to spit, how to spot gagging, how to prepare for and also possibly prevent choking, and how to provide an array of foods without pressure so my girl would develop a healthy relationship with food. I’m now learning the difference between normal toddler eating behavior and picky eating - which I never would have known without this team. Thank you for this free resource! THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!

I’ve used Solidstarts Instagram to learn how to cut foods and recipe ideas. However, the FREE app is beyond convenient to search exactly what you’re trying to serve. I’ve used his app for my first child. He’s now 20 months and thriving with food. He eats what we eat and I owe it all to Solidstarts. My daughter is 7 months and we started solids about a month ago. I’ve since forgotten how to serve a lot of foods for her age range. But then I can easily search the app and see how to cut foods, how to prepare, nutrition facts, history of the food etc. and it’s all backed by specialists, doctors and research. There’s also a free recipe included with each food they have in their system. Which is a win-win. You can decide to purchase a subscription to track foods. Their website also provides even MORE searchable data. They have a very advanced search engine which allows you to look up things like “prevent picky eating”, “baby eating fast” etc. and all the articles will populate on that topic. It’s amazing what this company is doing. I recommend this to all of the parents I know. I can’t thank them enough for their hard work and dedication!

I love the info for each of the foods, and it’s been a great resource for introducing baby led weaning. However, that info is free on their app and on their website, with the paid subscription for the app including just the tracker. I paid the $10 for the year long subscription so that I could log what foods my baby eats. While this was helpful for the first couple weeks or so, the way that their app is designed makes it a very poor experience.
For example, if my baby ate banana French toast, I have to separately search “bread”, then log it, then search “egg” and log it, search “banana” and log it, etc. It’s extremely time consuming, especially if baby is starting to eat a variety of foods each day. There’s no multi select or group select for the Tracker, which makes it inefficient. Also, their tool is very interesting…if I’m searching “salmon”, for example, and type the first three letters, it comes up with “yam” instead as the top result. So if I’m trying to log quickly, I have to type out the entire word before it even comes up as an option.
All in all, great resources that are free, but would not recommend the paid subscription until their UX gets some major improvement.

As a first time mama, I had fed my son too many purees at first and when it was time to feed him solid foods, I wouldn’t feed him much of a variety because he would try something and act like he didn’t like it so I would just think to myself, “Okay. He doesn’t like that. I’m not going to serve it again.” This led to him being picky and not really willing to try new foods. I wouldn’t say that he’s extremely picky, but still.. I knew that I wanted to do something completely different the second time around. As a second time mama, I decided to go with baby led weaning. I knew that I was going to do it, even if I didn’t know how. Right as I was having my second child start solids, I found solid starts. And thank goodness because it helped me so much. I was able to serve him a variety of foods, have him eat what we ate by learning how to cut it and just make simple modifications like not adding salt or sugar. It was slow in the beginning, mostly because I was always afraid of him choking. But they teach you the difference between choking and gagging as well. And as he for better at eating I became more confident in what I was doing as well. I owe it all to solid starts. I would recommend this app to any of my mama friends or family. So great to see my son eat 3 meals a day at only 10 months old and my first son willing to try new things as well.

I have a 7.5 month old and we’ve been using the starting solids guide for a bout a month now. We started out with lots of resistive foods (chicken drumsticks, mango pits, pineapple cores, etc.), some mashes, and some soft foods that my son could bite pieces off of to further practice chewing and spitting. Oh goodness the gagging was so nerve racking to watch, I hated feeling like my baby was struggling and potentially could choke, but watching stories on the Solid Starts Instagram page and knowing that I had prepared his food properly for his age using this app reassured me to keep pushing through with solids and not be afraid of him gagging - Solid Starts taught me that gagging is part of learning to eat solids and is a protective mechanism (the airway actually closes itself off when baby is gagging, for protection). I have been waiting for things to “click” for my little guy to really engage his chewing skills and not gag as much and last night I gave him a piece of chicken breast (that I was quite nervous about him ripping pieces off of) and he ate it like a champ showing off his freshly learned strong chewing skills and I was so so proud of him! It turned out to be the dinner that he has consumed the most so far and the least stressful for me to watch (bc there was significantly less gagging), it was amazing! The things I’ve learned from Solid Starts have been the reason I was able to teach my son these skills and to have the confidence as a nervous parent to move forward even when it felt scary! Solid Starts is so wonderful, and this app os extremely helpful, I check it every time before feeding him a new food to make sure I have prepped the size/shape appropriately for his age so that we are as safe as we can be and he can just focus on enjoying his food vs. getting frustrated! ♥️

I was using a free version and the educational part of the app is amazing. But I’d decided to support the owners of the app and also log my baby’s food, so I paid a yearly subscription. After a month of being unable to log in new food I’ve given up. Such a great free version of the app and broken paid version. Also, UX sometimes lags.

Like others, the app kept crashing for me but my main issue is that when I tried to reset my password I never received an email with the code to reset. I tried it on the app, on the desktop site, on different days - never received the reset email. I emailed the company for help and never got a response so I’ll be looking into a refund for my membership.

Pros:
- Gives serving suggestions and ages
- Has a lot of different foods in the database

Cons:
- App keeps logging me out
- Doesn’t let me scroll on certain screens (ex: forgot password screen, can’t hit submit button. Calendar screen, can’t see what food is logged .)

Wish I wouldn’t have paid for the subscription but since it wasn’t that much I’ll just let it go.

I was excited about this app since I am a FTM and wanted a little guidance but 99% of the time I go to use the app it’s glitching. It’ll just keep closing the app while I am using it. It won’t let me log food half the time. It’s just been way more of a nightmare then help.
Tech support does get back to you fast and it’ll start working again for a day or two and then right back to the same thing.

I can’t search specific foods because that portion of the app is down I guess and if I do click on a food I get “sorry we are having trouble retrieving this foods Information” This app did work for me for one solid day and what I saw was helpful... not sure what’s going on.

Thank you for your reply but still not working... can not search any foods. Can not get any information on how to prepare foods etc.

I loved this app until recently, when the newest update caused it to crash anytime I tried opening. The bug fix was released but now every single thing I entered over the past 7 months, including almost 100 foods AND every severe allergic reaction he’s had has been ERASED. This is heartbreaking, as I was planning on sharing this data with the allergist at his upcoming appointment this month. Very disappointed.

Don’t expect to be able to track things consistently with this app. Every time I open it, a different thing says it can’t be retrieved or saved. Today for instance I tried to log sesame in my child’s tracker and it won’t save. When I opened the app it said her Try Later foods couldn’t be retrieved. It’s always something. Save money subscribing and just use the amazing content on the site itself. The app is crap.

I wanted to purchase one of the full guides so that I could have recipes and daily meal plans. First off, it’s pricey for a PDF. $45. I never actually received the PDF. I reached out to support, they never helped resolve the issue and just sent me the automatic response eventually. There’s no phone number and no mailing address. Because the website is untrustworthy I am less inclined to trust the app, unfortunately.

So frustrating! I can’t even open the app to use it. I hardly even try anymore but sometimes I want a quick guide on how to serve something to my LO and I can’t even open the dang app to look. Super annoying to pay for a service and it just be an app that sits on my phone untouched. Unfortunately I made the mistake of paying yearly upfront. Don’t make the same mistake I did. I did like the app when I could actually use it.

I was so excited for this app and after using it for about two weeks I bought the paid version. Things were going great and we had a nice list of everything he had tried and then poof my account logged me out and all of our list disappeared. All the hard work of tracking what he ate was gone. There’s no support on the app to try and fix it and no way to refund my money. I do not recommend this app beyond the basic preparing food information.

Have experienced multiple nights where this crashes a bunch and I have to re-download and login to log anything. Tonight, even after trying multiple rounds of this any time I try to log a food it crashes again. This is super disappointing since the entire point of having this paid subscription is being able to log in real time - if I am going to have to retrospectively when the app happens to work I might as well just use a note in my phone..

Waste of $10. It was helpful as others stated to log for the first few weeks, but after that it’s a waste of time. Also, if you have to go back a few days, it doesn’t easily let you go back and log, and you have to scroll through to get to that date. You can’t simply click on that date to log if that makes sense. It doesn’t give recipes like the preview shows, just food ideas to try (aka strawberries, tomatoes, etc.) NO recipes. Save your $10 and look on Pinterest!

The information provided by solid starts is excellent, however the design of the app is dreadful. It’s clumsy, buggy, crashes without warning, fails to record entries and favorites, and there is no way to enter commonly eaten foods quickly - every time you want to record something you have to look it up, select it and then record it. I had hoped to use the app and tracker for my child’s first year but I can’t because it only works 30% of the time I open it and then the 30% of the time it does open it hangs and then crashes.

I’ve been paying for this app for a few months now, and it has tech issues that need to be fixed. The app will not open frequently- it will crash the second it starts to load. I have the latest update on the app so this is not the problem. The only way to fix it is by deleting the app and reinstalling it, but that is frustrating to do considering it’s happened probably 5 times now in 2 months. I cancelled my subscription for now and maybe will try again later. The info they have is great, so hopefully they’ll fix the bugs.

I used to reference this and log my baby’s food religiously. I would reference for reassurance and loved going back and seeing the progress through her solids journey. I still think they are a wonderful source for parents and caregivers, but the update has been so frustrating, I rarely open the app anymore (logs out, crashes, can’t log food, food descriptions and feeding suggestions aren’t properly loading) and will be canceling my annual subscription. It was really great while it lasted. I’ll be referencing their Instagram and google searches instead.

I pay for the full version of the app with ability to log foods etc, and no matter how up to date my app is, I frequently encounter bugs and crashes when trying to log foods. Especially difficult when logging several foods in a row. The information is great, but that’s all available on the web for free. I pay for the food log and that’s the clunkiest feature. I wish there were an easier way to log foods from past days, wish the search feature was better and less buggy, overall the functionality of the log is annoying given that’s why I paid for the app.

Solid Starts has great information and for that I’m thankful. I had high hopes for this app…but it just isn’t worth it. It’s nice to see pictures of serving size suggestions, but other than that, I’m better off just Googling foods and keeping my own notes. This app just doesn’t offer that much, imo.

More often than not, this app is crashing or signs me out - which means I’ve had to delete it and then redownload it. It never remembers login information.

Customer service was nice when I emailed for help, but I think I’m just going to stick with Googling what I need.

I have been emailing support since last month about not being able to log in. The app continues to be faulty and not work at all. The whole point of the app is to make tracking their food easily accessible and it just doesn’t work. Instead of passive aggressive comments, their customer service should offer a real solution - like refunding the subscription fee but allowing us to keep the subscription. Instead all I get are rude, passive aggressive comments and no solutions. Just kind of tired of the back and forth. It’s ridiculous that the app has failed after so many updates that seemingly make the app even worse. Don’t recommend at all. I actually feel terrible that I told my friends to get the app