Home DNA Review: DNA Testing Kits

Home DNA was one of the first companies to try and make at-home testing available to everyone - that's why you'll even see their test kits on the shelves of familiar drugstores and big-box retailers near you. When you use one of their DNA testing kits, you can rest assured that it'll be handled strictly in-house: all of their processing is done in Home DNA's own labs. That's a plus because it means they destroy your sample and never sell your DNA to third parties (and you won't always have that guarantee with rival providers, believe it or not).

Many types of DNA testing for ancestry and health

There are several testing kits to choose from at Home DNA. Many people use this company for their paternity testing, if customer feedback online is any indication. There are also options for food and pet sensitivity, weight management, and skin care, if you're interested. But, since the majority of people looking for DNA testing have ancestry in mind, let's focus on what this company has to offer in that regard. The three most basic are priced at $69 and give you a starting point for your autosomal, maternal, or paternal lineage. (Just make sure on that last one that, if you're a female, you submit your father's or brother's DNA. You'll find that clearly explained in the test description.)

Some kits only available through third-party retailers

There's also a mid-tier test at $124 that gives you a more comprehensive DNA analysis, comparing your results to over 1,000 reference populations and potentially taking you back a thousand years or more. Be aware, though, that this test isn't available through the Home DNA website; you'll have to look for it at a retail location (like a drugstore).

Origins tests can pinpoint specific towns of ancestors

Finally, Home DNA's top tiers of DNA testing are the GPS Origins kits: one with a broad focus, one with a focus on individuals of African descent, and a third for those of Asian descent. Home DNA says that these can go as far as to tell you the cities and towns your ancestors came from, many generations back. You'll want to read through the explanation of each of these kits and take a peek at the sample reports, so that you have a good understanding of what you will (and won't) learn, because these kits are priced at $199.

Some limitations to be aware of

Also, understand there's a lot you won't get with these DNA tests. Home DNA doesn't offer any kind of connection service with living relatives. You'd be using these kits to get information on your ancestry and maybe guide your research, but you'll be doing that research on a different platform. Also, while many competitors allow you to upload your results from other services, and Home DNA used to provide that as an option, we got a "product not found" error when we clicked on the link. Apparently, the company discontinued that feature several years ago.

Easier to find the needle in the haystack

Overall, Home DNA's services are really limited and not going to give you the type of results you're probably thinking of when you imagine DNA testing kits. However, there's one area that might be useful that we'd like to point out. We reached out to this company's toll-free number with a real-world situation: an adoptee who knows (from her testing with the #1 service on our list) that her birth mother was likely a recent immigrant from the former Yugoslavia when she gave birth to her. Could the GPS Origins test be used to make the haystack slightly smaller for finding the proverbial needle of where her birth mother's family came from? We spoke with several very personable reps at Home DNA, and ultimately landed on the answer that yes, the GPS Origins testing kit could indeed give us an idea of what part of that region her mother's family were from (northern Serbia).

Good reputation but not much feedback

Under both the name of Home DNA and its parent company (DNA Diagnostics Center), the Better Business Bureau offers an "A+" rating and accreditation. There were only a handful of complaints filed there over the last three years. There's not a ton of reviews for the company (and many of them are related to paternity testing, not the typical ancestry type we've evaluated here), and the ones for ancestry itself are lukewarm. The results just aren't remotely as robust as what comes with the better-known names in DNA testing.

Limited but could still be useful

Still, we've boosted Home DNA up in our ratings, largely because of how helpful their customer service team was when we reached out over the phone. Not only were they pleasant and knowledgeable, but they were also very quick to let us know that buying their tests directly from the website is not always going to be the least expensive route to go. But, whether you buy your test directly or you've received it through some other way (maybe as a gift?), just be sure to choose the advanced processing to get the most accurate, detailed DNA testing results.

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On the Home DNA website