The beauty world has been thriving in recent years. There's literally a product to achieve any look - want to show off your lashes? Highlight your bone structure? Even out your skin tone? No matter what, there's tons of amazing brands out there to help you look your best.
But with so many brands and products, how are you supposed to find what's right for you? Makeup is expensive; it's not like anyone has the budget to be trying every hair-lengthening product out there before finding the one that works for you.
Plus, sometimes we just want to figure out which shade of lipstick suits our skin tone best, or which eyeshadow formula is easiest to blend on our skin type.
This is why beauty subscription services, such as IPSY, Boxycharm, and Birchbox came about. These services send you out a bunch of branded makeup and beauty products every month.
We decided to try them all to discover which of these services is the best, so you know where to go to find the right beauty products for you.
Here's what we found:
IPSY
IPSY costs $12 a month, and with a year's subscription is only $11 a month. When signing up for IPSY, you take a quiz to establish your beauty needs and preferences.
You get sent 5 deluxe-sized beauty samples a month, which include some of the biggest names in beauty and skincare, such as bareMinerals, Benefit, Youth To The People, and more. You get to choose which brands you would like to try in the quiz! Plus, there's the IPSY shopper feature, where you can buy full-size products at a discount.
Boxycharm
With Boxycharm, you get 5 full-sized items every month. The monthly box is $25, and the cheapest option (for the yearly subscription) comes to $22.92. You don't do a quiz when signing up, but Boxycharm stocks some impressive brands, such as Benefit, TooFaced, MAC, and tarte.
Birchbox
Birchbox's monthly plans are slightly more expensive, the cheapest option being $13 with a 12 month commitment. The subscription also gets you 5 samples a month. Birchbox also has you fill out a "Profile" to discover your beauty preferences. Birchbox was the first beauty subscription service, so they have a wider range of brands on their roster, but fewer popular names. However, they do stock the likes of MAC, Benefit, and tarte.
⭐The Winner⭐
Both IPSY and Birchbox have a huge selection of brands, but the IPSY brands we received are more well-known and higher quality, which meant we were impressed with all the items from our IPSY Glam Bag. Plus, it's more affordable!!
Although the Birchbox products were nice, we didn't see the attraction to paying more for the lesser-known brands we got. Likewise, we liked some of the products from our Boxycharm box, but found it wasteful getting full-size products that we didn't want or end up using.
Overall, IPSY had the best products for the lowest price that were more personalized to our preferences because of their thorough quiz, so IPSY is our overall winner.
Plus their Glam Bag was by far the cutest! We'd recommend IPSY to anyone who wants to try new big brand makeup items for an affordable price.
