Factor vs Freshly: Which is Better?

Today there are loads of choices to get fresh, tasty, and cost-effective ready to eat meals delivered to your door. Whether you are a student, a parent, or simply a busy professional, these meal delivery services will help you save time in your day while keeping you eating healthy and tasty.

Two of the biggest names in the ready to eat meal delivery service game are Factor and Freshly. I looked into both services to try to find out which one is better, what strengths and weaknesses each service has, and I am back to provide you with my review on both services and which one I think fits better for your lifestyle.

In the following article, I will compare each service based on average price, menu, prep time, ease of customization, and customer service. Keep reading to see which one is better: Factor vs Freshly.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

Price	Freshly
Menu	Tie
Meal Prep	Freshly (by a hair)
Ease of Customization	Factor
Customer Service	Freshly
Bonus: Ordering & Delivery	Freshly

Ultimately, Freshly is really hard to beat. They offer low cost meal plans, their menu features both innovative and traditional menu choices, and their website and app makes it super easy to order and track your order as well as manage your account.

Pricing

Pricing may be one of the most important factors (no pun intended) when it comes to deciding which meal delivery service fits your needs. Below we compare several plans from Factor and Freshly.

Winner: Freshly is the clear winner when it comes to pricing per meal.

Both Freshly and Factor offer a variety of plans to fit your needs. If you just want some fresh lunches to take to work with you, 5 meals per week plan might be suitable for you. If you want dinner and lunches, you might want to consider some of the larger plans.

As far as variety, when I ordered my first box, I had a choice of 27 different menu options to choose from. While availability does change, it safe to say there is plenty of variety in what you can get. Each meal is tagged with a color coded category which I found healthy while browsing for Calorie Smart meals.

Factor plans start from 4 meals per week at $15.00 per meal. This comes out to $60 per week.

Freshly plans start from 4 meals per week as well but come for a lower price of $11.79 per meal, or roughly $47 per week. However, like most meal plans, the more you order the lower the cost per meal becomes.

If you are looking for the most savings, Freshly offers a 12 meal per week plan for a mere $8.99 per meal! That comes out to just $107 per week for 12 full meals. A comparable plan on Factor would come out to $11.50 per meal for 12 meals a week. This comes out to $138 per week.

Both websites give you estimated shipping costs based on which meal you select. This cost depends a lot on location and plan size so I won’t go into too much detail here. I will say that usually the shipping costs between the two are comparable. I live in Texas and shipping to my location for a 6 meal plan was $9.99 on both websites. To learn more visit Freshly and Factor to see which shipping costs are more favorable for you.

So to summarize:

Freshly is the clear winner when it comes to price. They have the lowest cost per meal for small and larger plans. They also offer more variety in the plan size i.e. how many meals per week.

Here is a breakdown of comparable plans between the two ready to eat meal delivery services:

	4 Meals	6 Meals	8 Meals	12 Meals
Factor	$15.00 /meal	$12.83 /meal	$12.38 /meal	$11.50 /meal
Freshly	$11.79 /meal	$9.99 /meal	$9.49 /meal	$8.99 /meal

Menu

Menu selection and choice is usually one of the top deciding factors. After all, what good is an affordable meal plan if it doesn’t fit your taste preferences? Below we compare the menus of Freshly and Factor.

Winner: It’s a tie…well mostly

There are a lot of different variables that go into deciding which menu options are right for you. So we will try to dig in a little deeper and look at the differences offered by the two services.

Amount of Meals to Choose

When looking at both available menus in 2022, I was able to find that Freshly offered a whopping 47 different meal options! They have everything from traditional meals like homestyle chicken, chipotle chicken bowls, chicken parm and creamy mushroom risotto to more unique options like Cuban Mojo Shrimp, Dijon Pork Chops, and Chicken Tikka Masala. It is clear that Freshly caters to a wide range of palates while offering mostly chicken, beef, and pork based meals.

Factor on the other hand offers 32 different meal options. While that may seems like a lot, it pales in comparison to Freshly’s 47 different choices.

Dietary Choices

Where Factor excels past Freshly is in the dietary choices category.

Factor offers 4 different preferences for you to choose from, including Chef’s Choice, Keto, Calorie Smart, and Vegan & Veggie. These meal preferences come with their own set of recipes for you to choose from making it super easy for you to stick to a Keto or Vegan diet!

Freshly, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily offer any specific plans for your dietary needs. However, their meal planner does offer handy filter options so you can narrow down your meal options to what best fits your needs. While they don’t offer anything Keto friendly, they do have Carb Conscious meals to choose from. Other diet options include Gluten-Free, Plant-Based and Dairy-Free.

They also have categories of recipes including Purely Plant, Signature Collection, FreshlyFit, and Proteins & Sides.

Menu Variety

When looking at both available menus in 2022, I was able to find that Freshly offered a whopping 47 different meal options! They have everything from traditional meals like homestyle chicken, chipotle chicken bowls, chicken parm and creamy mushroom risotto to more unique options like Cuban Mojo Shrimp, Dijon Pork Chops, and Chicken Tikka Masala. It is clear that Freshly caters to a wide range of palates while offering mostly chicken, beef, and pork based meals.

Factor on the other hand offers 32 different meal options. While that may seems like a lot, it pales in comparison to Freshly’s 47 different choices.

Meal Prep

Unlike many other meal delivery services like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron, both Factor and Freshly deliver ready to eat meals straight to your door. This means there is no cooking or kitchen required!

Winner: Freshly (by a hair)

Both services meal prep consists of simply warming up your pre-packaged meals for 2-3 minutes in a microwave. Freshly wins this category simply because they also put badges on the food you should eat first. This offers peace of mind from having to worry about your meals going bad.

Both Freshly and Factor come in microwave-safe plastic containers. All you have to do is stick a container in the microwave and follow the heating instructions.
If life gets in the way and you have to skip a meal, simply stick it in your freezer for another time.

Additionally, both Freshly and Factor use fresh, not frozen ingredients for their meals. I love the fact that when I get these meals, I can stick them in the fridge or warm one up right away. You don’t even have to wait for it thaw out. I also don’t have to spend an hour reading a recipe and then prepping and cooking a meal. I can eat these fresh meals whenever I’m hungry.

Ease of Customization

Winner: Factor

Being able to customize your meals based on taste and diet preferences is important for most people, including myself.

Like I mentioned before in the Menu section, Factor has 4 meal categories (Keto, Calorie Smart, Vegan & Veggie, or Chef’s Choice) which makes it super easy for you to narrow down to your preferred diet choices. When browsing the menu, each recipe has a badge for each category making it easy to browse and select based on your preferences.

Freshly does not offer any “set menu” options, instead you are free to select whichever meals you would like in any given week. It does have a few filter options to make it easier to find something that suits you. These filter options seem to be more loosely defined than the ones offered by Factor.

With Factor, you can either pick your own meals or have Factor choose a whole week’s of meals for you, saving you time and hassle of browsing over tens of different recipes.

Once you select a meal, Factor displays the Nutritional Information of the meal along all of the ingredients. I found this very helpful and easy to navigate. I am a picky eater so being able to quickly find out if a recipe uses Cilantro (which I don’t like) helped me pick Factor over Freshly in this category.

Here is what Factor’s nutritional information and ingredient list looks like on their website:

With Freshly, the Nutritional Info and Ingredients isn’t as easily available. When you add a meal to your basket, you can click on the meal and Freshly will show you a bird’s eye view of the meals, showing you the main ingredients and the Calories, Carbs, Fat, and Protein content of the meal. I found this high level view very interesting and the visual aspect is pleasing. It gives you a quick snapshot of the meal you are about to order.

The full list and nutritional information is available, however, it takes an extra click to get to which I found to be a mild inconvenience.

Customer Service

Winner: Freshly

It seems like both Factor and Freshly are very good when it comes to Customer Support. Both websites offer live chat and phone customer support.

However, Freshly wins out in this category because they offer 24/7 phone support, and chat support 7 days a week (8am-1am ET through Facebook Messenger).

Meanwhile, Factor’s support team is available 7 days a week but with limited hours of operation. Phone and chat is available Monday through Friday from 9am-9pm CT and on the weekends from 9am-6pm CT.

In either case, both of these companies are easy to reach out to whether you are thinking about starting a meal plan, are a first time customer with questions, or a regular customer encountering a problem.