DoorDash works exactly as advertised, until you read the fee line.

The core app is a competent local-commerce front end. Restaurants, grocery stores, convenience, alcohol, retail, and the company's own DashMart dark stores all live inside the same search box, with delivery times that are usually within five minutes of the estimate. The map view shows the Dasher's pin moving in close-to-real-time once the order is picked up, and push notifications cover the four moments that matter: confirmed, picked up, nearby, delivered.

Group ordering lets multiple people add items from the same restaurant to a shared cart with split billing at checkout. Scheduled orders go out as far as four days. The reorder shelf on the home tab is the single most-used surface in the app, and it works — one tap rebuilds your last order, modifications and all.

DashPass is the subscription layer: $9.99 a month or $96 a year, with $0 delivery on eligible orders over $12 and reduced service fees. Eligible Chase Sapphire cardholders get a year free through 2027, and T-Mobile Tuesdays still hands out a free DashPass tier to qualifying lines. Pickup orders earn 5% back in DoorDash credit whether you subscribe or not.

Selection is the moat. After the 2022 Wolt acquisition closed, the combined network reached 27 countries, and the US catalogue keeps absorbing categories — the April 2026 Empire deal added more than 1,000 Sobeys, Safeway, and FreshCo locations across Canada in a single announcement. If a restaurant in your zip code delivers, it's almost certainly here.

The mechanics are also genuinely good. Real-time tracking is more accurate than Uber Eats most nights, the rating prompt waits until the order has actually landed, and the reorder flow saves enough taps that the muscle memory becomes the lock-in. Customer support is reachable inside the app — chat first, phone if you escalate — and refunds for missing items usually post the same evening.

The fee stack is the problem the app cannot design its way out of. A typical order layers a delivery fee, a service fee, a small-order fee under the threshold, a regulatory response fee in cities that capped commissions, and an optional "priority" fee that buys faster dispatch. A $16 entrée landing at $30 before tip is the rule, not the exception. In April 2026 two California residents filed a class action alleging that DashPass subscribers — promised "$0 delivery fees" — are still charged a mandatory service fee at checkout, and the FTC published a proposed rule on deceptive fees in food delivery the same week.

The driver-side controversy bleeds into the customer experience too. A January 2026 viral Reddit thread on how the "priority" and "driver benefit" fees actually flow turned into a boycott hashtag and 80,000 upvotes. None of that changes the food on your doorstep, but it changes how the checkout screen feels.

Install DoorDash if you live somewhere Uber Eats has thinner coverage, or if a Chase Sapphire or T-Mobile perk is paying for your DashPass. Skip it for any order you can pick up yourself — the 5% credit-back on Pickup is the company quietly admitting the delivery economics don't work at the price they're charging. Watch what the FTC rule does to the fee disclosure UI: that's the next real thing to change in this app.