At the beginning of 2017 I started a series on my blog called Birchbox Vs Glossybox. Every month I showed you what came in both of the boxes, what my initial thoughts were and how much the product is worth. At the end I would summarise the box up by telling you the value of the contents, how many full size products there was and how many products I was excited to try out of the box. Then at the end, I would pick which box was the winner in my eyes for that month.

The reason I started doing this series was to help anyone that was thinking about starting up a beauty subscription box. I wanted to show you what kind of contents you can expect to receive from these two boxes, so that you could decide which would be the better box for you, if any. I also wanted to do this for myself. I've been subscribed to both of these boxes for quite a while now and I wanted to make sure that I was still enjoying the products I was receiving. I didn't want to be paying out for the subscription if the enjoyment was gone for me. I could easily be putting that money aside for beauty products I want to buy.

Let me give you a quick summary of what you can expect from being subscribed to the beauty boxes, here's what I found while I was subscribed to them anyway....

Birchbox

You can expect higher end products from Birchbox. The products are very rarely full size, but the value of the products in the box is usually way more that what you paid for the box due to them being higher end products. What's great about Birchbox is you can always easily buy the products if you like them. Birchbox have there own shop and everything they put into the boxes you can purchase on there website. There's nothing more annoying than finding a product you love, but then cant get hold of it easily in the UK. One of the main things I loved about Birchbox, was you used to earn points for filling in the monthly surveys on the products. These points could then be used in the Birchbox shop as money to go towards buying products. This all changed in 2017, they took the points system away and gave subscribers a % off their shop instead. If your a new subscriber, for the first 5months you get 10% off any product in the Birchbox shop, you also get to choose a products or box design every month, a free gift and free Birchbox shop delivery when you complete the months surveys, free gift +£5 when you refer a friend, early access to limited edition boxes and a special birthday offer. If your subscribed for over 6months you get exactly the same expect you get an extra 5% off the Birchbox shop and you get first chance to choose the product or box design every month.

Glossybox

In Glossybox your more likely to receive full size products, but the products you receive are usually more drugstore level. So even though you still get a great amount of product value in the box, it didn't necessarily mean the value of what was in the box was better than Birchbox. Full size doesn't always mean better value, is what I'm saying. But I do prefer to receive full size products, as it allows me to truly test the product out and see the results over time than having a small sample that lasts a week. Especially with skincare as you don't see the results unless you use it for 2-3 weeks. You do get a wide variety of products in Glossybox, but I do find that they are not all easy to find/buy in the UK. I've had a few products that can only be purchased from America and France. This can be annoying if you really like that product, as trying to get hold of it again can be difficult. Being subscribed to Glossybox used to have a great benefit. For every survey you filled out you got 50 GlossyDots, every 1000 GlossyDots got you a free box. I used to go on religiously and fill out the surveys, as you could get a free box very quickly. Then they reduced this to 20 GlossyDots for every survey, which meant it took far longer to get a free box and I stopped filling them out as regularly and only went on every now and then to bulk answer a few months surveys to eventually get a free box. But sometime in 2017, I've no idea when, I must have missed the notification. They changed this up again. They no longer give GlossyDots, you now get GlossyCredits. They've teamed up with Look fantastic (which is one of my fave online beauty stores) and for every survey you fill out, you now earn 25pence to spend on their website. It will take a while to earn a decent amount to spend on look fantastic, but its a great idea as there are so many brands on that website and its an incentive to spend 5 minutes a month filling out your surveys.

I'm now going to recap through the year, month by month so you can see what came in each box from the pictures and which box won each month. Then at the end you'll be able to see which box won overall.

January

Birchbox

Glossybox

 

 January Winner : Glossybox

February Winner : Birchbox

March Winner : Birchbox



April Winner :Birchbox



May Winner : Birchbox

June Winner : Glossybox


July Winner : Glossybox



August Winner : Glossybox



September Winner : Glossybox



October Winner : Glossybox


November Winner : Glossybox



December Winner : Glossybox


 2017

Birchbox

 Box Price : £155.40

Box Value : £393.35

Full size products : 19/61

Products excited to try : 32/61

Products used + Enjoyed : 24/61

Monthly Winner : 4/12 

2017 Winner : Glossybox

I was quite shocked to see how much I'm spending on beauty boxes yearly, they really add up over the year. I guess when its coming out your bank account monthly you don't really notice it. I'm also very shocked at the amount of product value you get in both boxes over the year. Considering Birchbox very rarely give you full sized products, the products over the year still added up to nearly £400. That's just crazy! But obviously Glossybox wins for the best box value. The total product value over the year for Glossybox was just over £600. It's crazy to think that all those boxes I've received over the year have had that amount of value to them. 

As you can see the 2017 beauty box winner out of Birchbox and Glossybox, ended up being Glossybox. I picked Glossybox, not because the box value was better than Birchbox. It was the fact that 8 out of 12 of the months, I preferred Glossybox over Birchbox. That easily shows from the fact that I enjoyed 35 of the 61 products I received over the year from Glossybox, whereas with Birchbox I only enjoyed 24 out of 61. I enjoyed more than half of Glossybox's products over the year and only just over a third of Birchbox products. 

That is why I chose Glossybox as this years winner and its also the reason that I've now unsubscribed from Birchbox. I did enjoy my Birchbox a lot at one point. I've been subscribed to Birchbox since September 2013 and I subscribed to Glossybox the very next month. So I've had these boxes for quite a while. At the beginning I loved them both, but overtime I felt that Birchbox wasn't putting in as much effort any more. There have been a lot of repeat products in their boxes and at first I thought that was because I'd been subscribed for so long, but I've not had many repeats in Glossybox and I've been subscribed for about the same time to both. Every month there is plenty of new beauty releases, so I don't see why there's any need to repeat products in boxes. I was just finding that month after month, I was getting disappointed by my Birchbox and I don't want to spend my hard earned money on something I'm no longer enjoying! 

Do you have any subscriptions that your thinking of cancelling?  
Or are you thinking of starting a subscription up? 
I'd love to know. 

If you managed to get to the end of this lengthy post, then thanks for sticking around and reading it all. If you've been following the series all year and have enjoyed it, then let me know below.

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