Pelago Health 17+

Old review is below, but figured I’d update. I stuck with the app, and although I still find the Premium upsell touchpoints annoying, I’m raising my rating because I haven’t encountered any aggravating bugs in the more recent updates, and more importantly - I’ve found that even sticking with the free tier, the app works. It’s a good way to quit smoking.

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I really wanted to love this app. Even met one of the founders at a YC event. However, the app UX is just terrible. Almost every screen contains a surprise button that will bring up a full screen salepage for the subscription/premium service. Tapping “No, ask me later” in the “Log your cigarettes” section immediately triggers the app rating prompt, every single time. And twice, I’ve gotten into views somehow with no buttons, and no way out except killing the app (this is on an iPhone XS Max). Very disappointing!

This app actually helped me quit. Not only quit though, but change my mentality to become a non smoker. It was actually easy for me too, I went cold turkey. I’ll give you background, if smoked for ten years, two packs a day for most of it. I was kind of a chain smoker. I kind of got tired of isolating myself to places where I could smoke. It was hard to sit through a movie, go to friends houses, rent a car, go on a plane trip.. cigarettes were ten dollars a pack! Things weren’t looking good. So I started looking for ways to quit:
This app uses cognitive behavioral therapy, and is had good experiences with that while in high school, CBT helped me work through my anxiety. So to know you could quit with CBT was worth a try to me.
I was scared though, that I would be deathly uncomfortable after I stopped smoking, but I wasn’t: we make our own experiences. I really didn’t think it would be so simple. I didn’t use patches or any nicotine replacement therapy, I thought I’d just give it a go.
The first time I tried to just cut down to nothing, but someone told me if I have the self control to do that, then I can simply quit just as easily, if not easier. So that’s what I ultimately did.
I used the premium version, but I think one can also use the free version just fine.

To the developers of this app and this program, thank you! You might have saved my life, but for certain you’ve improved my life a great deal.

It’s been about a year and a half since I used this last. It helped me quit smoking but some rough stuff happened and I started again and abandoned this app. Now here I am looking to quit again so I start using this app again because it helped so much last time.

It’s changed completely and not really in a good way. There used to be a handful of mini sessions to listen to when craving which were a tremendous help that were free and other ones you had to have the subscription to use that were also helpful. The subscription price has also gone up quite a bit. I don’t really use the personal coach and really just want the little sessions. But they are all locked. So are the after quitting sessions. It’s very disappointing that something that was amazing before has just gone down.

The price isn’t the worst if you are a regular smoker but all I wanted was those craving sessions. They helped a lot and the only way to use them and really anything in the app is with the subscription. There used to be a variety of subscription types but now there’s just one. It’s just disheartening.