App Review: Glow and Eve

By Brianna

This post contains NO affiliate links.  If you choose to try these apps, we won't get anything for it, but we'll be really happy you took our advice.  We really believe in them, so give it a try and let us know what you think!

Glow and Eve

I could review every period tracking app I’ve ever tried, and maybe I will someday, but today is not that day.  Today, I’m going to review the only pair of cycle tracking apps that knocked my proverbial socks off.  I say pair, because it’s two sister apps, created by the same company.  Glow is the original, intended to help women become pregnant by tracking every fertility metric known to humanity.  Eve is Glow’s sassy little sister, meant to help all women track everything to do with their sex life, with very little focus on fertility and more on frequency, pleasure, and period prediction.

Glow has changed the fertility tracking game in so many ways, it’s getting tough to keep count.  First of all, Glow looks great.  The interface is simple, but there are plenty of options to track only the things you care about.  The background is white, with judicious pops of pink and purple in shades that look more cheerful than absurd.

So now that we’ve established that I can use it without gagging, how well does it work?  The answer to that is, pretty darn well.  Not only can you track your period, but when you have sex, when you take pregnancy and ovulation tests, when you exercise, and how you feel both emotionally and physically.  All of these metrics and more are able to be recorded in surprising specificity.  For instance, if you record that you took a pregnancy test, you can even select which brand was used.  If you have sex, it asks if you had an orgasm.  And you can record more than one romp in a day.  On top of that, it plays nicely with other health apps, such as MyFitnessPal.  Finally, Glow does something especially unique (at least, I haven’t encountered this feature in a similar free app), in that it takes male fertility into account, as well.  If there’s a man in your equation, you can have him get the app, register as his manly self, and the app will ask him questions about factors that could affect his fertility, too, such as drinking, smoking, exercise, and sauna use.  Also, the manly side of the app switches the color scheme from white with touches of pink and purple, to white with touches of green and red.​

What makes Glow a true fertility powerhouse, is that they know how to use all of this information.  They take this multitude of variables, and use them to predict when you’re ovulating, when you’ll get your period, and to publish papers.  The articles they release are based on anonymous metrics that demonstrate trends no one noticed before, because no one before had this much information in one place.

In Glow’s settings, you can select that you are trying to get pregnant (TTC, for you crazy acronym people), or are avoiding pregnancy.  If you’re avoiding pregnancy, they shift your predictions slightly, to help you be extra sure to use protection when you might be fertile.  If you’re trying to conceive, Glow asserts that you are 40% more likely to get pregnant if you’re using Glow as a fertility tracker.

If for some reason you want to track even more information, and get even more insight into your personal trends, you can pay for the pro version of Glow.  This is probably a good option for people trying to start a pregnancy, but who aren’t concerned with potential fertility struggles. ​

If all this info sounds really cool, but you’re not as concerned about fertility in general, Glow has an app for you, too.  It’s called Eve, and it’s all about tracking your cycle, your overall wellness, and how great your sex life is. Instead of taking your temperature every morning, you get to note if your most recent session was, among other options, “banana free” or “all me,”.  You can even rank how good your orgasm was with cute pictures of fireworks in various stages of detonation.  You’ll still get scary good period predictions, and you can still connect to MyFitnessPal to record your meals, but you’ll see little to no baby stuff.  And its color scheme is a super dark purple-gray, which I guess looks sexier and less sciencey than Glow.  But still, not wall-to-wall pink, because I know a lot of you hate that about period apps.

Finally, my favorite feature about both of these apps, is the one that has nothing to do with anything.  They push their community forum very hard (which I dislike), but you can filter it by age!  So if you’re using Eve, and you see a string of startling questions from 16 year olds with terrible friends, you can filter them out, and only see strings of strange questions from women in their 20s or 30s (or higher).  I’m against in-app forums generally (and Glow and Eve share their forums, for some reason), but other people love them, so if that’s you, get on Glow or Eve, and know that you can filter a little bit of the crazy.  Or, heck, you can offer advice to the confused teenagers, as that’s actually encouraged. 

Glow & Eve

I've tried and recommend both of these apps.  These aren't affiliate links, I just really like these apps, and hope you will, too.

Glow

Ovulation and period tracker

Android

iOS

Eve

Love, sex, & relationships app

Android

iOS

Other Apps by Glow

These apps weren't ready when I needed them, but they look very good.  I'll definitely try them the next time I have a baby.  If you have tried them, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Glow Pregnancy

Smart pregnancy tracker & baby app

Android

iOS

Glow Baby

Breastfeeding tracker & nursing timer app

Android

iOS

Do you love this family of apps, too?  Or do you have one you like even better that we should know about?  Comment below!  

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