Prose Review: Beauty Box Subscriptions

Prose is a beauty box subscription that stands out by replacing mass-produced items with made-to-order care to provide truly personalized products and customized care for your unique hair and skin. Utilizing ethically sourced and highly effective ingredients, the company's in-house R&D team creatively combines natural and synthetic actives to create innovative formulas that deliver proven results. As a certified B-corporation, Prose prioritizes transparency, incorporating carbon-neutral production and sustainable sourcing practices, striving to positively impact both people and the planet.

Face and hair care

Prose offers two main focuses in its boxes: hair care and skincare. You can incorporate both into your subscription, but to start, you need to fill out a quiz to determine your preferences and help Prose know which products will best suit you. First, you'll be asked about your lifestyle including where you work out (if at all), what kind of environment you spend time in, what your diet is like, and any medical conditions. Prose will also ask you for your location to calculate how much exposure you may have to UV rays and how hard your water is. Then Prose will ask you detailed questions about your skin type, your skin goals, and what you're already doing in your routine. At the end of the process, you'll be suggested the top products for your skin with a price on the side. If you want to get the hair option too, you'll need to go back and do that quiz separately.

Subscribe to hair and skin

There are two box types at Prose: haircare and skincare. You can choose to subscribe to just one or both. In the skincare box, our quiz suggested three full-size items: a serum, a cleanser, and a moisturizer. The value appeared to be around $145 full price. For the hair subscription, we were suggested 2 items: a shampoo and a conditioner for a value of $68 full price. The full price cost, however, isn't relevant unless you want to buy individual items from Prose. If you subscribe you get discounts on each item. You can choose shipment frequencies between 4, 8, and 12 weeks depending on how often you want your products. The price remains the same no matter how frequently you want the boxes shipped.

Prices from $34 to $72.50 per box

So, once you get into all the discounts, the total for the 3-item skincare box (shipped every 4 weeks) is $72.50, which is noticeably higher than many of the other beauty or skincare boxes in your review. For only 3 items and a value of $150 (lower than some of our top contenders), Prose definitely stands out as a more pricey option. The hair care box is a little better, with the total cost for a subscription at $34, which is about half the price of the items in the box. However, this is (again) a much higher-cost selection than at other companies. But, considering the benefits, it might be worth the price.

Products made for your body

The benefits of Prose include three key things: ingredient transparency (you know every single item that goes into your products), personalization (the products are designed for your skin and your hair), and the benefit of eco-friendly practices and vegan products for customers who want to put green practices at the forefront of their purchasing criteria. Plus, if you loved one of the products, you can buy it separately (though with monthly shipments, you'll be set on your favorites for a while), and you can change up your quiz results to try new products if your skin or hair needs change over time.

Praise for the hair care box

There aren't a ton of reviews out there for Prose yet, but the ones we found were pretty solid. On average customers rated Prose 4 stars out of 5. Customers loved how the products were personalized for their care, and how the products made noticeable changes in their hair. But, there were noticeably fewer reviews for the skincare. In addition to the positive reviews, Prose also holds an "A" rating from the Better Business Bureau, showing the company's reliability.

Unique and personalized beauty boxes

While the prices are higher at Prose, we're particularly impressed with the personalization and the detail that goes into designing the skin and hair care packages. Given the positive reviews and "A" rating from the BBB, Prose stands out as a newer but effective option for your beauty box subscription. If you're looking for a natural, eco-friendly solution to try a hair or skincare beauty box, this is a great spot to design a new routine that fits your body best. For this reason, it earns a solid 4.5-star rating in our review.

On the Prose website