Dermatica
On three of its four treatment pages it publishes prescription concentrations where you buy — the only brand here that does, and it cites the literature by name too. On the newest it names nothing at all. The pools are chosen with real clinical judgement and the headlines above them are the weakest copy on the site.
MODEL
Online consultation, provider-selected actives from a published palette, compounded formula shipped every 56 days.
The brand verdict
Five products assessed, and four of them tell the same story from opposite ends. The disclosure of composition on those four is the best we have recorded anywhere. Concentrations are printed on the treatment pages — including, on the melasma page, a corticosteroid's. A separate index publishes the entire prescription palette with strengths attached, which is the document three other brands told us could not exist because the formulas are personalised. The ingredient pages carry named academic citations with journal, authors, year and page numbers. Nothing else in this register cites its sources.
The pricing is equally legible: four plan lengths, each with a per-bottle figure, and the stated 15/20/25% savings are arithmetically correct against the monthly price. After eighteen reviews in which cost per application was almost never computable, this is a company that shows its working.
The gap is on the risk side, and it is structural rather than accidental. No treatment page states a duration limit. None carries a pregnancy warning. The anti-ageing and skin glow pages state no side effects at all; the melasma page manages side effects and a sunscreen clause, then omits the eight-week ceiling that governs the regimen it is selling and never once uses the word steroid. All of this copy exists, well written, on the ingredient pages and the blog — and the fullest pregnancy warning on the site sits on a $39.99 cosmetic, complete with named pregnancy-safe alternatives.
Then there is the outlier. Weight Loss Skin Support scored 43 where the others scored 69, 70, 71 and 71, because it abandons the one practice the rest are built on: it names no active, publishes no concentration and has no ingredients section at all. That is a twenty-eight point spread inside one catalogue, and it falls on the newest and most commercially fashionable indication.
The rosacea page splits the difference in a new way, and it is the one that finally names the problem. Its pool is the best on the site — ivermectin 1% and metronidazole 0.75% at approved strengths, azelaic acid to 20%, and no tretinoin, because retinoids aggravate rosacea. Its headline promises to 'clear rosacea for good', which is a cure for an incurable condition, contradicted two paragraphs later by the page's own word 'persistent'. The bottle is expert. The copy above it is not.
Read a Dermatica page the opposite way round from a Musely one. Here the specification is on the product page and the warnings are in the ingredient library. Both halves are good, where both halves exist. Only one of them is where the decision happens — and on one page in five, neither is.
- The only brand in this register to publish active concentrations on the page you buy from.
- Publishes the entire prescription palette with strengths — adapalene 0.1–0.3%, benzoyl peroxide 2.5%, clindamycin 1%, fluocinolone 0.01%, hydroquinone 4%, metronidazole 0.75%, niacinamide 4%, tranexamic acid 3–5%, tretinoin 0.025–0.1%.
- The only brand here that cites the literature: named journal references with authors, year, volume and pages on its ingredient pages.
- The melasma pool reproduces the Kligman triple combination at its licensed concentrations — the only regimen the FDA has approved for melasma — at $29.95 a month.
- The only brand here to publish a corticosteroid's concentration on the page that sells it. A competitor with a better cycling protocol kept its steroid in support material.
- Tretinoin's published range is exactly the therapeutic band, and hydroquinone is at the conventional 4% rather than the 12% found elsewhere in this register.
- Full INCI and fill size on every cosmetic in the range.
- Per-bottle pricing published across four plan lengths, with savings percentages that are arithmetically correct.
- The retinisation guidance — alternate nights, moisturiser-first, or wash off after 60 minutes and extend — is the best written in this register.
- Prescription gating is appropriate, and a pregnancy-safe personalised formula exists.
The range
- R-192026-07-27
Anti-Ageing Treatment
PERSONALISED FORMULAThe first personalised prescription formula in this register to print its concentrations on the page you buy from — tretinoin 0.025–0.1%, hydroquinone 4%, niacinamide 4%. The same page contains no side effects, no contra-indications and no pregnancy warning. The $39.99 cosmetic two clicks away has all three.
CONDITIONAL$29.95 PER MONTH
- R-242026-07-27
Rosacea Treatment
PERSONALISED FORMULA · OPTIONAL ORAL DOXYCYCLINEIvermectin 1% and metronidazole 0.75% — the two best-evidenced topicals for rosacea, at their approved strengths, with the retinoid correctly left out. The best pool this company builds. The headline above it promises to clear rosacea for good, which is not a thing that can be done.
CONDITIONAL$29.95 PER MONTH
- R-222026-07-27
Skin Glow Treatment
PERSONALISED FORMULATwo candidate actives — tretinoin 0.025–0.1% and azelaic acid 4–20% — and they are the right two. No hydroquinone, no steroid, nothing with a clock on it. The restraint is real and deliberate. The question is why a prescription consultation is the route to a complaint the page attributes to stress and lack of sleep.
CONDITIONAL$29.95 PER MONTH
- R-202026-07-27
Melasma Treatment
PERSONALISED FORMULAThe candidate pool is hydroquinone 4%, tretinoin 0.025–0.1% and fluocinolone acetonide 0.01% — the exact composition of the only melasma product the FDA has ever approved, published in numbers, for $29.95 a month. That product is licensed for eight weeks. This one is sold with a twelve-month prepay and no end date on the page.
CONDITIONAL$29.95 PER MONTH
- R-232026-07-27
Weight Loss Skin Support
PERSONALISED FORMULAThe one thing this register has consistently credited Dermatica for — printing the concentrations on the page you buy from — is absent here. No active is named. No strength is given. There is no ingredients section at all. And the page's own description of the problem is one no topical can fix.
CAUTION$29.95 PER MONTH
What repeats across the range
These are the findings a single review cannot make. Each one appears in more than one product, and each is drawn from the reviews above rather than from an impression of the brand.
- 01
The composition is published and the risk is not
The anti-ageing treatment page publishes tretinoin 0.025–0.1%, hydroquinone 4%, niacinamide 4% and azelaic acid 4–20%. The same page source contains zero occurrences of 'side effect', zero of 'contraindication', zero of 'ochronosis', and one of 'pregnant' — which belongs to an advert for a different product. It is simultaneously the best composition disclosure and the worst risk disclosure we have recorded. Melasma names five actives and skin glow two, on the same pattern. The exception is the newest page, and see 05.
- 02
No treatment page states how long to take the drug for
Neither page assessed carries a duration limit. On the melasma page that omission has a number attached: the pool reproduces Tri-Luma, which is licensed for up to eight weeks because of its corticosteroid, and the page instead promises results 'within 12 weeks'. The company's two published hydroquinone figures — three to four months on its blog, six months in its support centre — are both about hydroquinone, and neither addresses the steroid, whose ceiling is shorter than either.
- 03
Pregnancy is a cause on these pages, never a contra-indication
Three treatment pages assessed, three without a pregnancy contra-indication, all of them offering tretinoin. The anti-ageing and skin glow pages do not mention pregnancy at all. The melasma page names it three times — in the definition, in an FAQ, in a blog link — always as a reason you have the condition. One page is an oversight; three is the template. The correctly worded warning exists on the tretinoin ingredient page, and a fuller one on a $39.99 cosmetic.
- 04
The risky drugs are placed where the medical need is, which is the right instinct
Two deliberate exclusions, both correct, both costing an easy upsell. Skin glow, the most elective indication, gets neither the hydroquinone nor the corticosteroid that sit in the melasma pool — just two actives with no duration ceiling. Rosacea gets no tretinoin at all, because retinoids aggravate it, from a company whose other four pools are built around tretinoin. Whatever is wrong with how these pages are written, the person choosing what goes in the bottle knows the field.
- 05
The newest page dropped the disclosure entirely
Weight Loss Skin Support, flagged 'New' in Dermatica's own navigation, has no actives block at all — the heading present on the other three treatment pages is absent, no active is named and no concentration is given. It also has no FAQ, no side-effect line and no sunscreen instruction. The one practice this register has credited the company for is the one its newest and most market-driven page abandoned.
- 06
Where the copy fails, it now asserts rather than omits
Four pages fail by leaving things out — no pregnancy warning, no duration limit, no ingredients section. The rosacea page fails differently: its headline promises to 'clear rosacea for good', a cure for a chronic relapsing condition, contradicted by the same page calling rosacea 'persistent' and by its own FAQ explaining that triggers cause flares. It also states rosacea affects 'around 10% of us' against a pooled prevalence near 5%, and sells a 16-week oral doxycycline course without publishing the dose — on a drug where 40 mg modified-release and 100 mg differ entirely on tolerability and resistance.
- 07
The cosmetics are better documented than the drugs
Every routine essential publishes full INCI, a fill size and a pregnancy position; the $39.99 retinal serum adds a dedicated pregnancy FAQ and two named pregnancy-safe alternatives. The prescription formula publishes concentrations and nothing else — no INCI for the SmartBase, no fill size, no warnings. The least documented product on the site is the only one that requires a prescriber.
- 08
Hydroquinone is a course sold on a twelve-month plan
The company's own SkinLab article says hydroquinone should run 'in cycles of three to four months, followed by a break'; its support centre says six months. The pricing page's cheapest per-bottle tier is twelve months prepaid at $269. The plan is a prescribing relationship rather than a fixed formula, so the stop can happen at a check-in — but the discount structure rewards the longest commitment to a drug the company itself time-limits.
- 09
The ingredient needing a page is the one without one
Adapalene, benzoyl peroxide and tretinoin each get a full ingredient page with mechanism, FAQ and bibliography. Hydroquinone — ochronosis literature, mandatory break, rebound pigmentation, withdrawn from US over-the-counter sale — is a line under 'Other ingredients' with no page at all. /ingredients/hydroquinone returns a 404.
- 10
Round multipliers without denominators
'Up to 20x stronger than the high street' on the treatment page names no comparator; the anchor — generic retinol — appears only in the company's social advertising. The retinal serum runs '11x faster than retinol' on the same pattern. On a site this willing to publish real figures, the unanchored multiples are the weakest copy on it.
- 11
A regulatory status in a cosmetic badge strip
'FDA REGULATED' scrolls past on four pages we read, ninth in a list beginning with alcohol free, 100% vegan and cruelty free. Compounded 503A preparations are exempt from premarket review and are not FDA-approved. The words are defensible in isolation; their placement invites the reading 'approved'.
- 12
An interaction warning that contradicts the catalogue
The tretinoin FAQ tells patients that benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid, sulphur and resorcinol 'should not be used whilst you are using tretinoin' — legacy labelling language, largely settled by modern stabilised formulations and by FDA-approved fixed combinations. The same company lists benzoyl peroxide 2.5% in the prescription palette alongside tretinoin.
Disclosure scorecard
Not what is in the product — what the company publishes about it, and where. “Findable” means the concentration exists somewhere, such as a help-centre article, rather than on the page you buy from.
SCROLL THE TABLE SIDEWAYS
| PRODUCT | CONC. ON PAGE | CONC. FINDABLE | CONTRA-INDICATIONS | SIZE | SIDE EFFECTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rosacea Treatment | YES | YES | NO | NO | NO |
| Weight Loss Skin Support | NO | NO | NO | NO | NO |
| Skin Glow Treatment | YES | YES | NO | NO | NO |
| Melasma Treatment | YES | YES | NO | NO | PART |
| Anti-Ageing Treatment | YES | YES | NO | NO | NO |
If you buy one
Anti-Ageing Treatment
Worth buying for a specific person with a specific problem. Read who.
Weight Loss Skin Support
There is a real reason to hesitate. Read the finding before you buy.