These days, it’s both easy and common to buy an online subscription to get essential personal care items like tampons, razors, and clothing regularly delivered to your door. And now, a number of companies specializing in personalized vitamin packs and dietary supplements that cater to the subscriber’s specific dietary and health needs are competing to be your go-to supplier.
In order to get a personalized recommendation, you simply fill out a questionnaire or pick an area of your health you want to improve (e.g., cardiovascular disease, vitamin D deficiency or Crohn’s disease), and you’ll get the right vitamins delivered monthly. No matter what your health goals, there are plenty of custom vitamin packs out there to meet your needs. Here’s an outline of the best vitamin subscription services worth trying.
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Why get a personalized vitamin subscription service?
It’s become clear to wellness aficionados that mass-market vitamins and supplements don’t always cut it. By attempting to cater to everyone, most of the vitamins you find in supermarkets and grocery stores don’t cater to anyone — chances are, you don’t need half of what’s in your generic brand multivitamin.
Research shows that multivitamins don’t reduce the risk for disease, and some vitamins are harmful in high doses, such as vitamin E. Supplementing your fruits and veggies based on your individual needs is a smarter route that reduces your risk for vitamin toxicity (and saves you from spending money on a supplement you don’t need).
Plus, it’s possible that the brands you can buy over the counter contain unapproved and dangerous ingredients.
Millions of vitamin and supplement packages, especially ones marketed for weight loss, athletic improvement and sexual performance, can contain harmful additives and chemicals because they’re classified as food rather than drugs. This means the supplement didn’t undergo the strict regulation, clinical trials and vetting process that medications do.
Even if you weren’t looking for a personalized vitamin, supplement, or vitamin subscription services, you should always try to buy supplements that were developed with support from clinical studies, preferably long-term, double-blind trials.
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Six of the best vitamin subscriptions
The vitamin subscription you choose will come down to your goals and budget.
This is an overview of six subscription services that deliver custom vitamin packs and essential nutrients to address your individual needs.
Vitamin subscriptions at a glance
| Price range | Access to health care professionals | You take | Pill type | Shipping | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HUM Nutrition | $10-$60 per product | Yes, you are matched to a registered dietitian | Multiple pills or powders | Capsules, caplets, powders | Free on orders over $50 |
| Care/of | $5-$28 per product | No | Multiple pills or powders | Capsules, caplets, powders | Free on orders over $20 |
| Ritual | $30-$35 per month | No | One pill | Capsules | Free |
| Persona Nutrition | $10-$60 per product | Yes, staff nutritionists | Multiple pills | Capsules, caplets | Free |
| Vitafive | $8-$14 per product | No | One or more pills | Gummies | Free, Amazon Prime eligible |
| Rootine | $60 per month | No | One packet of microbeads | Slow-release microbeads | Free |
HUM Nutrition
Hum Nutrition started with one man’s personal struggles with skin breakouts and blemishes. Walter Faulstroh found that prescription medications only worked temporarily for him, and topical treatments left his skin — and his confidence — scarred.
Hum got its start creating vitamin supplements intended to contribute to healthy, clear skin, but the brand has since expanded to include a comprehensive offering of products for hair and nails, digestion, immunity, energy, bones and joints, sleep, stress and metabolism.
A 3-minute quiz unlocks your wellness profile and a free consultation with a registered dietitian. Your Hum profile reveals what the company says would be your most effective combo of nutrients, vitamins and minerals and your RD counsels you further. You’ll receive your Hum subscription box every 30 days, whether you sign up for a month-to-month subscription or buy a Commit and Save plan for three, six or 12 months.
The price of your subscription box will vary based on which vitamins and nutrients you choose. Hum’s products range from $10 to $60. Hum ships worldwide and shipping is free for all orders over $50.
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Care/of
Care/of takes vitamin personalization further than most with customized packaging and a handy app to use alongside your vitamin subscription.
And Care/of doesn’t just offer vitamins and minerals: This company also offers personalized recommendations for dietary supplements like protein powders, adaptogens, botanical supplements and on-the-go packets of powdered vitamins called Quick Sticks.
Getting started with Care/of also includes a quiz that takes less than 5 minutes (try it out even if you’re not interested in the subscription — it’s fun and you’ll learn a lot about yourself). The quiz culminates in a personalized nutrients report based on your current activity level and diet, goals, lifestyle and values.
A Care/of subscription comes in daily custom vitamin packs with helpful nutrition tips, such as “Try swapping pretzels for an apple today. An excess of processed food can feed unhealthy bacteria in your gut.”
You can always adjust or cancel your subscription, and shipping is free on orders over $20.
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Ritual
Ritual is focused entirely on women’s health and women’s vitamins, and it’s great if you want a one-and-done deal when it comes to a multivitamin or supplement. Choose from three vitamins: Essential for Women, Essential Prenatal Vitamins and Essential for Women 50+. All of these vitamins are gluten-free and vegan.
Both of Ritual’s products cut out many of the vitamins, such as calcium for bone health — plus fillers, artificial colors and allergens — that most women don’t actually need in a multivitamin. Instead, Ritual created women’s multivitamins that include only the essential vitamins that women typically don’t get enough of, such as boron, folic acid, iron, magnesium and biotin.
The Essential Prenatal vitamin is formulated specifically to fill in the gap in nutrients for a mom and baby. All of Ritual’s multivitamins for women use a two-in-one design that separates dry ingredients from liquid ones, so you only have to remember to take a single type of pill (though the daily dose is two pills).
Essential for Women is $30 per month and Essential Prenatal and Essential for Women 50+ are $35. Subscriptions arrive every 30 days, and shipping is free.
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Persona Nutrition
Formerly Vitamin Packs, Persona Nutrition offers two ways to order your vitamins: the personalized way and the quick way.
The personalized way, like some of the other vitamin purveyors on the list, includes a quiz that ends with custom supplement recommendations. The quick way allows you to build your own pack of essential vitamins if you already know what you need, or you can pick from popular combinations.
Whichever route you go, Persona Nutrition delivers your vitamin packs once a month, and your packs are organized into time of day based on the way certain vitamins and nutrients are processed and absorbed by your body.
For example, it’s best to take water-soluble vitamins soon after waking up because an empty stomach can help you better absorb them. Fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins K and E, on the other hand, are best taken with a meal because your body won’t absorb the vitamins without the help of dietary fat.
Persona Nutrition ships orders every 28 days, and shipping is free. Your vitamins arrive in convenient daily packets labeled AM, PM or Night, depending on the contents of your subscription. Persona offers nearly 100 products, and the cost of your box will vary based on which products you add to your subscription. The predesigned essential packs range from about $10 to about $60.
Vitafive
If you absolutely can’t stomach the idea of taking pills, Vitafive could be the best vitamin subscription for you. This subscription service specializes in gummy vitamins, which, let’s be honest, are a little (a lot) more fun to consume.
Vitafive sends you a 30-day supply of your chosen essential vitamins (no quiz for this one, so you’ll need a good idea of which vitamins you want to take) in fun daily packs or monthly pouches. A monthly gummy vitamin pouch is the best way to go if you want a month’s supply of just one or two vitamins. If you need to take more, the daily packs are a more convenient and organized option for your dietary supplements.
As far as your account, Vitafive makes it easy to pause your subscription without canceling, manage the items in your subscription, add additional members to your account and change your shipping schedule.
You can also order Vitafive products on Amazon.
Rootine
Rootine goes even deeper than Care/of and Hum. It begins with a quiz about your lifestyle, and the company says it uses that information, plus your age and body size, to calculate your exact needs for micronutrients and minerals and a well-balanced diet. Additionally, you can order a DNA test with your first purchase or input data you already have from a service like Ancestry or 23andMe.
If you have data from a blood or urine test on hand, you can also upload that for a physician’s review. Rootine says it then takes your demographics (age, weight and so on), lifestyle, DNA information and blood or urine analysis into account to create your custom vitamin pack.
Rootine gives you a detailed profile of all your recommended vitamins, explaining what they do and why it believes you need them.
A Rootine subscription is $60 per month, regardless of what’s in your pack. You’re required to purchase a minimum of three months’ worth of vitamins, which will be shipped every 90 days but billed monthly. Shipping is free.
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Originally published last year.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.