Smilelove Review: Our #3 Choice for At-Home Teeth Straightening

Service Overview

What is Smilelove?

Smilelove is an online service that ships custom teeth aligners to your home, helping you get a straighter smile without a single trip to the dentist. Their aligners look and feel like Invisalign — they fit right over your teeth and are much less visible than traditional braces. They gradually straighten your teeth over the course of four to five months.

Founded in 2017, Smilelove is newer and less well established than some of its competitors in the home teeth straightening business. However, Smilelove stands out by offering lower prices and the strongest customer satisfaction guarantee in the business.

Smilelove vs Invisalign

On the surface, Smilelove appears to be very similar to Invisalign. Both companies create translucent clear aligners to straighten the teeth. However, there are a few key differences:

• Smilelove makes getting straighter teeth more convenient than Invisalign. With Invisalign, you need to go in-person to meet with a local orthodontist or dentist many times throughout your treatment. With Smilelove, all of your check-ins are conducted online and you receive your clear aligners in the mail.
• Smilelove is much cheaper! Invisalign typically costs between $4,000 and $8,000. It’s so expensive because you need to buy Invisalign from a dentist or orthodontist, who will typically markup the cost of treatment by several thousand dollars. By selling directly to the customer, Candid Co is able to offer straighter teeth for $1,699.
• Smilelove is only suitable for mild to moderate cases of misaligned teeth. When you go in-person to get Invisalign treatment, the dentist or orthodontist has the opportunity to place special attachments on your teeth, which can speed up or enhance the quality of your treatment. Because treatment with Smilelove is conducted remotely, attachments cannot be included in your treatment plan. This makes Smilelove less ideal for more severe cases of misaligned teeth.

Smilelove vs Other Home Aligner Services

Over the past few years, several new companies have launched home aligner services similar to Smilelove. Based on our research, the top four at-home invisible aligner services are: Candid Co, Smile Direct Club, Smilelove, and SnapCorrect.

Out of these four providers, we rank Smilelove #3. Here’s a summary of how Smilelove stacks up:

Smilelove Advantages

• Lowest prices in the industry. Plans start at $1699.
• The only at-home clear aligner company to offer your full money back if you aren’t satisfied with your results.
• Similar to SnapCorrect, Smilelove markets that their aligners as less visible than competitors, but this is hard to validate. While Snapcorrect’s aligner material is more translucent, it is also shinier, which some people may not like.

Smilelove Disadvantages

• With just 6 employees on LinkedIn, the company is still very small and doesn’t have a well established track record. At this stage, reviews of Smile Love are limited and it’s difficult to verify the authenticity of online reviews we did find.
• Other home aligner services, such as Candid Co and Smile Direct Club, work with large, well established dental technology providers to ensure they can deliver high quality aligners. We couldn’t figure out whether Smilelove partners with a reputable company to produce their aligners.

Detailed Review

Value –

The total cost to purchase an aligner kit from Smilelove is $1,699. This makes Smilelove the cheapest at-home aligner system. It is also significantly more affordable than Invisalign which usually costs more than $4,000.

Included in your purchase price are two impression kits. With all other at-home aligner systems, you only have one impression kit and you usually have to pay an additional fee for a replacement.

Like all other at-home teeth aligner services, Smilelove sends you a teeth whitening kit along with your order. Smilelove also includes your first set of retainers with the purchase price. Other services like Smile Direct Club do not include retainers in the price of treatment.

Smilelove is a good value for the cost and they earn 4 stars for Value.

Service Quality –

It is unclear who oversees your care when ordering aligners from Smilelove and what credentials they have. They do not disclose whether orthodontists, dentists, or someone else handles your treatment plan. Other companies like CandidCo work with orthodontists to create your treatment plan from start to finish.

In addition, there is not very much information available about the aligners offered by Smilelove compared to other at-home teeth straightening services. Other home aligner services are partnered with large, well respected aligner manufacturers. For instance, Smile Direct Club purchases their aligners as well as the technology used to customize your aligner treatment plan directly from Align Tech, the makers of Invisalign. Candid Co appears to purchase their aligners from ClearCorrect, the second largest manufacture of invisible aligners in the US.

These potential differences in professional experience and aligner build quality may affect the final result of your smile transformation.

Smilelove earns 3 stars for Service Quality. Their product appears to work, but lack of clarity about who makes the treatment plan negatively affects their score.

Convenience –

At-home teeth straightening is by definition more convenient than seeing a dentist month after month. That said, Smilelove tries to make getting started an easier process.

When getting started with Smilelove, you order a kit and they send you a set of two impression kits. Once you make impressions of your teeth and send them back to Smilelove, they will prepare a treatment plan. If you approve the treatment plan, they will create and send your aligners to you in the mail.

By sending you two impression kits instead of just one (like other at-home teeth straightening services), there is a higher chance that at least one set of your impressions will be done correctly. This means that, with Smilelove, there is a chance you may be able to start treatment sooner than you would if you had to order a replacement impression kit, as you would if you were using another service.

Other at-home teeth straightening services like Smile Direct Club and Candid Co are now offering physical store locations where you can get your teeth scanned. By scanning your teeth, you are able to skip the impression kit step. This is the fastest way to get started with treatment. Because Smilelove does not offer physical stores where you can scan your teeth, they do not provide the most efficient way to get started with at-home teeth straightening.

Overall, Smilelove earns 3 stars for Convenience.

Customer Support –

Something that sets Smilelove apart from other clear aligner services is their free consultation. Before you buy anything, you can send the Smilelove team photos of your teeth and talk to them about what you’d like to change about your smile. This may help you get a better idea if clear aligners are right for you and your smile goals.

Smilelove also has a satisfaction guarantee that is more generous than other at-home teeth straightening services. Other services only allow you to get a refund before you start treatment, and once you start treatment, they will only offer partial refunds or changes to your treatment plan. With Smilelove, you can get a full refund even after you complete your treatment plan.

Beyond their satisfaction guarantee and their free consultation, little is known about the quality of their customer support.
Smilelove earns 3.5 stars for Customer Support. We believe it’s nice that they are available to help you understand if Smilelove is a good option for you before you pay them for an aligner kit and are committed to customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Smilelove is a newer company offering at-home teeth straightening. Their services may be high quality, but it is hard to determine from the information they make available. The price difference between Smilelove and other more well-known competitors is only a few hundred dollars. We recommend considering all your options before making a decision on your teeth straightening care.