At-home teeth straightening is changing the way people transform their smiles. Historically, the only way to adjust your teeth was to see a dentist or orthodontist for braces or Invisalign. Today, home clear aligner products like SnapCorrect make getting the smile you want affordable and convenient.
SnapCorrect was one of the first home aligner companies to come to market, and with some of the lowest prices in the industry, they’re certainly worth considering. Read on to find out if SnapCorrect is the right fit for your smile goals.
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What is SnapCorrect?
Based out of Vancouver, Washington, SnapCorrect is an online company that offers convenient and affordable teeth aligner products that empower you to transform your smile from home. SnapCorrect’s clear aligners look and feel similar to Invisalign — they’re designed to fit the contours of your teeth and enable dental shifts without a single metal bracket. However, unlike Invisalign, treatment doesn’t require any trips to the dentist. Instead, after you’re approved for treatment, one of Smilelove’s professionally-licensed dental providers will prepare and develop your plan. The company will then ship the clear aligners straight to your doorstep for home application.
If you’re saying “sign me up,” you should know that SnapCorrect is just one of several new, online companies to offer home-based clear aligner treatment. With the recent rise in home aligner popularity, there are now multiple competitors providing a very similar service, including byte, Candid, Smilelove and SmileDirectClub. Most of these companies are relatively young. In fact, SnapCorrect started up in 2017 and it’s one of the older companies in the home aligner industry.
SnapCorrect aims to stand out by offering free teeth whitening for life, and a lower price than most of the competition.
Like other home-based clear aligner products, SnapCorrect is primarily a cosmetic treatment and only designed to correct minor to moderate cases of spacing and crowding, along with mild bite issues. You aren’t automatically disqualified from treatment if you have a more severe case or a jaw misalignment like overbite or underbite, but you’ll likely see better results from a treatment plan that is managed in-person by a dental professional, such as braces or Invisalign.
How Does SnapCorrect Work?
To ensure that SnapCorrect can provide the results you’re after, their team will first need to take a look at your smile. Get started by ordering an impression kit from their website, which you’ll use to make molds of your top and bottom dental arches. After you submit these molds, SnapCorrect’s licensed dental professionals will use them to determine if you’re a good candidate for treatment. If so, they will begin work on your custom aligners and treatment plan. To make sure you’re satisfied with your proposed plan, SnapCorrect will send you a Consent to Treat form, on which you will agree to treatment.
Then it’s finally time to get started. The company produces your clear aligners and ships them to you by mail. Diligently wear your aligners for around 22 hours each day and your teeth will gradually shift over the next six months (on average).
Is SnapCorrect a Good Option? Our Perspective.
For patients with minor teeth misalignments, SnapCorrect offers fast results at a much lower price point than either braces or Invisalign. Not only that, but SnapCorrect’s initial cost is the lowest in the industry. Just because this treatment is less expensive, however, doesn’t mean the company cares any less about the customer experience. Based on our research, most SnapCorrect customers report positive results. Because SnapCorrect is a smaller company, we couldn’t find quite as many authentic reviews as we did for other home aligner providers.
Out of the top five home-based clear aligner companies we reviewed, we rate SnapCorrect #5. This doesn’t necessarily mean that SnapCorrect is a bad option. It just means that we think there are a couple of areas where they could grow and where other companies provide more attractive benefits. We based our rankings on a comparison of five elements: effectiveness, affordability, convenience, appearance, and customer support.
Further down, you’ll find a lot more detail on how SnapCorrect stacks up category by category, but here’s a quick summary of the biggest pros and cons as of 2019:
SnapCorrect Pros
- At $1749 SnapCorrect’s sicker price is the lowest on the market (although Smilelove’s frequent promotions make them more affordable overall).
- Your first set of retainers is included in your purchase. Other companies charge you $80-100 at the end of treatment for retainers.
- SnapCorrect offers free teeth whitening for life once you are a customer.
- Snapcorrect purchases its aligners from RaintreeEssix, one of the largest dental equipment and dental material suppliers in the US. This suggests these aligners are of reasonably high quality.
- Aligners are marketed as clearer and less visible than those offered by competitors. However, in our opinion, the difference in visibility is not meaningful. Some customers may actually dislike the shinier plastic used in these aligners.
SnapCorrect Cons
- Unlike competitors, SnapCorrect does not guarantee that an orthodontist will oversee your case.
- SnapCorrect does not currently offer retail locations where you can get your teeth scanned instead of completing an impression kit. You’ll need to take dental impressions on your own.
- Unlike other at-home aligner products, you can’t start whitening until after you finish treatment.
- SnapCorrect aligners are scalloped to follow the gum line rather than cut to cover the gums. This means they can’t leverage the gums to exert more force.
Who is a good match for SnapCorrect?
If you like the price point and the free whitening for life, and you’re willing to try a newer, smaller company over a more established one, SnapCorrect may be worth considering.
Effectiveness
Orthodontic treatment is a big investment, so whichever path you choose, you’ll want to be absolutely sure that it can deliver the results you’re after. Numerous factors contribute to a clear aligner system’s effectiveness, including the dental professionals, manufacturers, and designs they use. Let’s take a look at the results you’ll likely see from SnapCorrect.
One of your first questions is probably if SnapCorrect would be effective in treating your specific condition. By design, home aligners are limited to addressing simple misalignments like mild crowding, spacing, and some bite issues. Because they don’t involve regular dentist office visits, home aligners aren’t as effective in correcting more advanced dental misalignments, such as bite disorders or severe cases of spacing or crowding. To ensure that SnapCorrect is a good treatment option for you, the company will send you a 3D preview of your post-treatment smile, a digital “after” shot. You can then determine whether you would like to continue with treatment.
For patients with mild teeth misalignment, SnapCorrect does appear to achieve satisfying smile transformations. Nevertheless, we’re unsure about other aspects of their overall effectiveness.
Your treatment plan will be developed by a licensed dental professional, but not necessarily an orthodontist.
When evaluating home aligner companies, it’s important to look behind the scenes to see who is actually crafting your treatment plan. Some companies, like byte, Candid, and Smilelove, work solely with specialized orthodontists. Others, like SnapCorrect, use general dental professionals. The distinction is important, as orthodontists receive 6 years of post-graduate training to master the art of adjusting teeth. General dental professionals are certainly knowledgeable and qualified, but orthodontists have much more extensive and applicable training.
The skill and experience of the person in charge of your care can have a significant impact on your treatment’s outcome. In a worst-case scenario, treatment at the hands of an inexperienced professional could even leave you with an annoying bite issue that needs to be fixed down the road.
In their FAQ section, SnapCorrect explains that dental technicians (individuals trained to use special software) are highly involved with analyzing your impression kit, approving you for treatment, and preparing your treatment plan. While the company is legally required to work with dentists at some level, it is unclear if the dentists they employ are working hands-on to develop treatment plans, or simply approve the plans developed by technicians. For us, this is a big question mark concerning your treatment quality, since there’s no guarantee that your plan is being designed by the most qualified professionals.
SnapCorrect purchases gets its clear aligners from Essix, a large and reputable company.
Effective treatment starts with well-made aligners. Most at-home aligner companies outsource their aligner production to large well-respected third-party manufacturers. For instance, SmileDirectClub used to work directly with Align Tech, the makers of Invisalign. Similarly, Candid purchases aligners from ClearCorrect, the second-largest clear aligner manufacturer in the U.S.
byte, for its part, works with a large U.S. dental supplier called Dentsply, from whom they purchase Essix brand aligners. Essix is a reputable brand that produces perfectly good products. However, in our opinion, they don’t have the same long-standing, well-tested quality as Align Technology or ClearCorrect.
Affordability
Let’s face it: teeth straightening treatment isn’t cheap. The high price tag for braces and Invisalign has historically made transforming your smile a substantial financial burden. Making matters worse, health insurers seldom cover this type of cosmetic treatment, and dental insurance will typically reimburse just a small fraction of the cost.
This is where SnapCorrect’s low upfront price shines. All home aligner treatments that generally cost around $2,000 are much more affordable than in-office options like Invisalign, which can cost $4,500 or more. And SnapCorrect is even less of a financial burden, making their treatment more accessible to a wide range of potential customers.
SnapCorrect’s initial cost of $1,749 is the lowest currently available and includes everything you need.
This sticker price covers the cost of your impression kit, treatment plan, clear aligners, and teeth whitening. SnapCorrect also includes your first set of retainers with the purchase price, which will save you some money at the end of your treatment. Other services like SmileDirectClub do not include retainers in the initial price, instead upselling your retainers at the end of treatment for around $100. It’s nice to know that, after your initial payment, SnapCorrect won’t spring any hidden costs.
SnapCorrect offers a payment plan option, but it requires a credit check and some may not qualify.
Even though SnapCorrect is much cheaper than braces or Invisalign, not everyone has $1749 stashed in their junk drawer or under their bed. To make treatment more accessible, they offer financing through a third-party called Affirm. This is a great option if you can’t (or don’t want to) pay for a large lump sum at once. The only drawback is that Affirm requires a credit check, so not everyone will qualify.
By comparison, some of SnapCorrect’s competitors offer more flexible financing options, including ones that don’t require credit checks. Byte, Smilelove, and SmileDirectClub each have in-house options that offer no-questions-asked financing to all customers, regardless of credit score.
Convenience
Aside from the cost, one of the biggest barriers to pursuing a more comfortable smile is the substantial time commitment of traditional orthodontics. Between work, family, social engagements, and personal time, your schedule is probably packed full, and scheduling dentist appointments every month would be more of a hassle than anything. After all, it’s not exactly a trip to the beach. Nevermind taking time off work every month to attend your appointments.
Or, maybe you have a big event like a wedding or graduation coming up this year (not two or three years down the road) and you want to finish treatment ASAP.
Home aligner companies like SnapCorrect make this kind of treatment much more convenient by shipping aligners to your home, no office visits necessary. Additionally, with most home aligners (SnapCorrect included) you can usually complete treatment in about half a year or less – much faster than the typical 18 months for braces and 12 months for Invisalign.
SnapCorrect is unquestionably more convenient than Invisalign or braces, but compared to its home aligner competitors, it’s about average. While all home aligner companies excel in convenience, there are specific aspects and perks that make certain ones stand out from the crowd.
When determining our convenience ranking for each company, we evaluated three things: overall treatment timeline, startup difficulty, and aligner shipping time.
SnapCorrect offers fewer startup options than other leading brands.
It might seem like the hardest part of home aligners is the treatment itself, but this isn’t the case. Many customers actually find that getting started is significantly more difficult.
Before developing your treatment plan and crafting your aligners, a home aligner company needs to get a look at your teeth. This is both to determine if you’re a good candidate and to create your treatment plan. All home aligner companies, including SnapCorrect, offer a kit that you can use to make a mold of your teeth called an impression. You’ll mix together two different types of putty and place the mixture in a teeth tray. When you bite down on the prepared tray, the putty surrounds your teeth, creating a mold. Then, you’ll mail this mold to your provider for review.
Most people don’t have any experience taking impressions of their teeth, so this process can be surprisingly difficult. But SnapCorrect thought ahead, so they’ll send you two sets of putty and teeth trays, two chances to make a good impression of both your top and bottom arches.
Some of SnapCorrect’s competitors, however, go a step further, offering free 3D teeth scans at retail locations as an alternative to snail mail impression kits. Both Candid and SmileDirectClub have physical locations where a dental professional will take teeth scans for you. SnapCorrect doesn’t currently offer this option, but their customer support is always available to walk you through the impression kit process or offer much-needed encouragement.
Expect to wait around 5-6 weeks total before you start treatment.
You’ll need to exercise some patience after submitting your impression kit. Assuming you complete and submit the kit ASAP, you can expect to receive your treatment plan within 2-3 weeks. Once you approve your plan and sign SnapCorrect’s Consent to Treat form, it takes 2-4 additional weeks to manufacture and ship your clear aligners. So, you’ll need to wait a total of 5-6 weeks before your aligners show up on your doorstep, which is slightly longer than most of SnapCorrect’s competitors.
Treatment takes around 6-9 months on average.
Maybe your wedding is in 5 months. Or maybe you simply can’t wait to see your transformed smile. Whatever your timeline, it’s important to consider each provider’s average treatment times. You don’t want to arrive at your special occasion disappointed with your progress, so it’s wise to choose a provider whose timeline matches yours. Go with SnapCorrect and you can expect an average timeframe of around 6-9 months. This is fairly standard among home aligner companies, although it’s not quite as fast as the industry leader, byte, who offers an average 3-month treatment time.
If you stumble upon SnapCorrect’s FAQ page, you’ll see that they claim some patients complete treatment in 3 months, but that some may continue to receive treatment for over a year. These cases are most often outliers, and a majority of SnapCorrect customers can reasonably expect to wrap up treatment in around six months.
SnapCorrect includes teeth whitening for life, but only after completing treatment.
Want to whiten your smile while you straighten your teeth? With most home aligners, you can. Every company we reviewed provides free whitening gel, and most allow you to use it at the same time as your aligners. You simply apply the gel or foam inside your aligners so that your teeth get visibly brighter while they are realigned — convenient!
SnapCorrect, however, does not. Their aligner material and whitening foam are incompatible, so you’ll need to wait until after your treatment is finished to use it. They will send you special whitening trays after you complete treatment, delaying the final step of your smile transformation.
On the bright side, SnapCorrect provides free whitening treatment for life, something no other company offers. So, even years after your teeth straightening treatment is complete, you can maintain your beautiful, dazzling-white smile.
Appearance
A large reason for clear aligners’ skyrocketing popularity among adults is their low profile compared to traditional braces. Many adults cringe at the thought of sporting metal brackets to a job interview or date, or even in everyday life. This is where clear aligners really shine. Because they’re much more discreet than traditional braces, all clear aligner products tend to score well in appearance, and SnapCorrect is no exception.
That said, not all clear aligners are created equal in terms of appearance. While they’re all made from transparent, BPA-free plastic, each brand looks a bit different due to variations in materials and manufacturing processes.
SnapCorrect aligners are made with a shiny plastic and trimmed to follow the gums.
SnapCorrect aligners are made of a shiny, BPA-free plastic, quite different than the frosted-appearing aligners from Candid, SmileDirectClub, or Invisalign. They call their aligners “Truly Invisible” because of the clear material they use. Initially, clear and shiny might seem better. But here’s the thing: your teeth are naturally porous (which is why they can absorb stains from coffee, red wine, etc.) and these pores give them a matte surface. This is why “frosted” aligners can actually look more natural than shiny ones, which might appear unnaturally reflective.
That said, some customers actually like the shininess – they feel like it makes their smiles gleam. The frosted vs. shiny debate is largely subjective and influenced by personal preference. So, the shinier plastic SnapCorrect uses shouldn’t necessarily deter you, but it’s something to consider while you make your decision.
SnapCorrect aligners are also trimmed to follow the gumline like Invisalign, which affects both their appearance and effectiveness. Scalloped aligners might be slightly less visible, but they also don’t exert as much force on your teeth. Invisalign’s in-office care allows your dentist to place special attachments on the teeth that anchor your aligners in place, allowing them to shift teeth more effectively. Since home aligners like SnapCorrect don’t involve in-person visits, this is not possible, so they might not be quite as effective.
At-home aligners that cover the gums are more effective at moving teeth, though arguably less ideal in terms of appearance and comfort. This overlap lets them leverage the gums to apply up to 4x more force on teeth than their scalloped counterparts. For this reason, we can’t recommend SnapCorrect’s scalloped aligners over competitors offering aligners that cover the gums, even if they are less noticeable.
Like other clear aligners brands, you’ll want to take out your SnapCorrect aligners before eating & drinking to avoid stains.
All clear aligners are susceptible to stains from food and beverages — that’s why it’s important to remove them before eating or drinking anything other than plain, cool water. Our current understanding is that SnapCorrect aligners are reasonably resistant to staining, although we certainly wouldn’t recommend drinking coffee or red wine with your aligners in.
Like most clear aligners products, SnapCorrect’s aligners are generally quite inconspicuous, though possibly slightly more noticeable due to their shinier material.
Customer Friendliness
Considering the expense of orthodontic treatment and how valuable your smile is, you’ll definitely want a provider that cares about you and your progress. It’s important that you feel completely confident that the company you choose will treat you right and have your back in the unlikely event that something goes wrong.
SnapCorrect support is responsive and they offer a standard refund policy.
Have a question or concern? Need to get in touch? SnapCorrect is available by phone on weekdays from 8am-5pm Pacific time, or via email and web chat. They are quite responsive to based on our tests for all three options. When we used their website’s web chat, we received a response in less than five minutes.
SnapCorrect’s refund policy is standard compared to most other home aligner companies. If they determine that you are not a good candidate for treatment, they will refund the cost of your impression kit, so it’s totally risk-free to inquire. In the case that your treatment isn’t progressing as expected, SnapCorrect won’t provide a refund, but they can work with you to get you back on track.
What are SnapCorrect Customers Saying?
When we review a company like SnapCorrect, we start out by digging through reviews to understand common customer issues and concerns. Currently, SnapCorrect only has a handful of online reviews online, and many seem to be sponsored by the company.
Even so, the genuine online customer reviews we found generally reported satisfaction with the service and customer support. Some customers, however, have reportedly run into problems getting their impression kits approved. These customers sometimes had to redo their impressions up to three separate times — a bit of a hassle, and a problem that most other companies don’t have.
Alternatives to SnapCorrect
While SnapCorrect is a great clear aligner company, there are other options to consider, both in-office and at-home.
Invisalign is the primary in-office option, and while it is more expensive than home aligners, dentists have the option of placing special attachments on your teeth to achieve more advanced, intricate movements. And when it comes to home aligners, there are also several other brands that are worth checking out.
Candid vs SnapCorrect
Candid has been around longer than SnapCorrect, so they’re a bit more established and experienced. Plus, their retail locations offer free teeth scans as an alternative to impression kits, expediting the process. Candid also ensures your treatment will be developed and overseen by an orthodontist, while SnapCorrect does not. With their Remote Monitoring system, you’ll have digital check-ins with your orthodontist every step of the way, although this makes Candid’s treatment somewhat more expensive. Interested in Candid? See a full review here.
SmileDirectClub vs SnapCorrect
Established in 2014, SmileDirectClub stands out as the largest and most popular at-home clear aligner brand. Similar to SnapCorrect, they don’t work exclusively with orthodontists (unlike other options like Candid and byte). That said, SmileDirectClub has over 300 retail stores where you can get started with a teeth scan. They’ve also treated over 700,000 patients, making them the most experienced home aligner company.
byte vs SnapCorrect
byte is the newest home aligner company in the game, but also one of the most promising. They’re our top-ranked home aligner company, and for good reason. Like Candid (and unlike SnapCorrect), byte works only with orthodontists to make treatment plans. On top of that, they use a proprietary device called HyperByte to shorten average treatment times to just 3 months, the shortest in the industry. If you’re intrigued by this rapidly-rising company, take a look at our full review.
How Does SnapCorrect Stack Up to the Competition?
Summary
Out of the top five home-based clear aligner products we reviewed, we rank SnapCorrect #5 overall. They’re not a bad option, and they actually offer better affordability than most competitors, but they don’t do anything else to set them out from the crowd in terms of service quality. We recommend byte or Candid over SnapCorrect as they ensure an orthodontist oversees your care and they are typically much faster to ship out the aligners.
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