MLM Essential Oil Companies: Are They Worth It Or Not?
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Are MLM essential oils worth it? You can buy essential oils in stores, online, and also through direct sales/MLM (multi-level marketing) companies. Some say that the higher-priced oils from the direct sales companies are better quality, but are they?
I've worked with a number of essential oils MLMs over the years. Let's look at the essential oil direct sales companies up close to see the pros and cons of them.
MLM Essential Oils Companies
The 2 “Heavy Hitters” in the MLM essential oils business are Young Living and doTERRA. Be Young was another MLM oils company, but it's not around any longer.
There are a number of other MLM companies that offer essential oils, some of which have the oils as their main category and some that have them as a smaller offering. One example of this is Poofy Organics, but they only have a small number of blends for sale.
Of course, as companies start up or close down, or cease to be MLM, this list can change.
MLM Companies Selling Mainly Essential Oils
Here's a list of companies that sell essential oils. Only two of them are essential oil-based, which the others have essential oils as part of their offerings.
- Young Living
- doTERRA
MLM Companies Selling Other Products and Essential Oils
Most of these companies I do not recommend for various reasons; some worse than others.
- NYR Organics/Neal's Yard Remedies (NYR Organic had an MLM arm in the US, but they no longer do. They now only have this option in the UK.)
- Poofy Organics (solid company)
- Heart and Body Naturals
- Kannaway (a CBD company that sells only 3 blends of essential oils. I do not recommend this company.)
- Essante Organics (not recommended)
- Melaleuca (not recommended)
- LiveGood (not recommended)
- Swiss Just
- LeReve
- Jordan Essentials
- YOR Health
- Scentsy (they sell some synthetic and also some “pure” essential oils)
- HTE USA (they sell only 3 blends of essential oils)
From what little I know, LiveGood might be OK as far as quality is concerned, but I'm not completely sure about that. I don't recommend Melaleuca or Essante Organics. Melaleuca isn't transparent about ingredients and has unnecessary artificial colors in a lot of their products.
Essante has missing ingredients from their labels plus a lot of other issues going on that indicated a big problem regarding a lack of transparency.
My time with Young Living and doTERRA was kind of short, but I no longer recommend either of them.
Although I talk mostly about Young Living and doTERRA in this post, most of my concerns apply to all MLM companies that sell oils.
Benefits of Essential Oil MLMs
Education and Support
When you buy essential oils from a store, you typically can't get much support unless a salesperson in the store has a strong knowledge base about essential oils. And in today's work, that's typically not the case.
Shopping online provides more support, but it still might not be as much as the typical person needs. Any given website might have a bit of information about how to use any particular oil, and possibly some articles about oils usage.
If you work with one of the heavy hitters in the oil industry (Young Living or doTERRA), there is a lot more support via the community of sellers as well as training classes, and more.
That being said, there are some negatives even to these resources and their recommendations (see below for more information about this).
Money Saving/Making Opportunity
I'm all about saving money. So of course, when I can either buy something at retail or get the same things for 25-35% off (typical discount for an MLM representative), then you can bet I'm going to check into it.
Of course, you can save money by becoming a representative and getting a discount, but you can also make money when you share the products and selling opportunities with others.
When you buy something in a store or online, there's no such opportunity, unless there's a rewards or sharing program available.
So when done ethically, there is the option to perhaps at least get your oils paid for, and maybe make some additional income by buying from and working with one of these companies.
However, if you see the “Overpriced” section below, the savings might not really matter if you're already paying too much. In addition, there are hidden costs like annual fees, fees to access your loyalty rewards, and even to get your commissions. So the savings are not completely what they seem to be.
Negatives of Essential Oil Direct Sales Companies
Misleading and/or Unethical Marketing Practices
Much of doTERRA and Young Living representatives have been under the microscope for recommending their oils as being treatments for medical conditions. However, the concerns that I have about their marketing focus more on their purity claims.
Both companies claim that they have super high-quality oils that are “therapeutic grade,”
– Young Living calls their oils “Young Living Therapeutic Grade”
– doTERRA calls theirs “CPTG”
Each company has standards for what these things mean, but basically these “certifications” are made up by them.
It's also common practice for representatives from both companies to make claims about the purity of their oils that are simply false. For example, claiming that if the label on a bottle says that it's safe for internal use, the oils are pure.
That doesn't make any sense since there are plenty of things that are meant to be used internally that many people would call “unsafe,” like certain prescription or over the counter drugs, artificial colors, pesticides, and more.
You can read about more of the myths spread around in the essential oils industry in this post about Essential Oil Myths.
Pressure to Buy More Than You Need
Both companies have requirements for purchasing oils in order to get the most savings. Saving money is great, but reps typically end up purchasing more and more oils, eventually ending up with more than they can use.
At that point, you're really not saving money any longer if you keep buying oils just to “stay active” to earn commissions or to get a loyalty discount.
Dangerous Recommendations
Both YL and doTERRA have a heavy emphasis on internal and neat (undiluted) use of essential oils. I wasn’t too concerned about these things when I first started using essential oils, but I’ve completely changed my mind.
DoTERRA even has a Slim and Sassy blend that they recommend taking internally numerous times per day for a long period of time, in order to assist with weight loss. And during my short stint with Young Living, I noticed reps recommending using grapefruit oil internally for the same reason
Essential oils are super potent. It takes about 16 pounds of peppermint leaves to make 1 ounce of peppermint oil. That’s a lot of plants. So that's about half a pound of peppermint in one drop of essential oil. That equates to half a pound of peppermint (about 5 cups of leaves) in one drop of essential oil!
That kind of concentrated amount of plants is incredibly strong.
So strong, in fact, that some oil experts say that if you do use essential oils internally, especially “hot oils” like oregano, cinnamon, clove, and citrus oils, you need to make sure to supplement with probiotics because the hot oils destroy not only bad bacteria but also the good. That may or may not be true, but better safe than sorry.
It's simply not safe to ingest essential oils on their own. The only way it is considered to be safe is if they are well-diluted with a carrier oil or emulsified as in this adrenal cocktail.
Similarly, using undiluted essential oils on your skin is considered to be unsafe by many experts. This can lead to sensitization, and believe me, you don't want that to happen to you
I've heard it said that the reason Young Living and doTERRA (and other companies as well) recommend so much internal and undiluted usage of oils is to increase their sales. I don’t know if that is their motivation, but it's a logical conclusion.
Overpriced
Let's face it, oils that you buy from a direct selling company are typically very expensive. Even if they are pure essential oils, they definitely aren't the only pure, quality oils on the market.
Everyone knows that a good bit of the pricing of MLM products goes toward rewarding representatives with cash, trips, and more. A manager at one retail company told me that his understanding was that in the Direct Sales industry, the percentage of pricing that goes toward commissions and rewards for representatives is 40%.
Yes, retail selling costs money too, but in general, direct sales companies are known to pay out too much to representatives, especially when their company starts out.
Here's an example of the high prices:
Young Living's peppermint costs retail $32.57 (not sure why they have such unusual pricing) and $24.75 for members. DoTERRA's peppermint oil costs $34.67 retail and $26.00 wholesale/for members.
Meanwhile, Rocky Mountain Oil's Peppermint costs $16.75, and Plant Therapy's would likely cost $12 for a 15-ml bottle since their 10-ml bottle costs $7.99 (it's a bit more on Amazon).
Blind Devotion
Having intense loyalty to the point that one ignores problems with the brand makes all direct sales companies look bad. This isn't a problem that is only in the direct sales industry, but it's a well-known problem in that arena.
Once MLM salespeople start making a decent paycheck, it becomes very difficult for them to admit that anything with their company or products could be wrong.
This is definitely the case with both Young Living and doTERRA as you can see in the comments on this post, the post comparing doTERRA and Young Living, on Facebook, and more.
I was accused of:
– seeking to tear down doTERRA
– profit-seeking (some said the motive behind this series will be clear when I share the “winner.”)
– having an analysis totally lacking in science, is based only on “smell tests”
I was even accused by a Young Living rep of being a fake persona who set out to game Google to make affiliate income.
I assure you, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) was pretty rotten for my posts in this series. No one would have written what I did in order to game the system.
This just shows how many reps from MLM companies are unable to accept criticism or concerns as being possibly true.
Most Companies Have the Same Sources for Oils
Many essential oils companies claim to have the best oils on the market, but that tends to be the case even more so for companies in the direct selling industry. However, for the most part, there are only a handful or so suppliers for most of the essential oil companies out there.
Granted, there are some smaller sources, but my understanding is that what typically happens is that almost all essential oils companies are buying from the same sources, and then some of the “bad actors” either sell lower quality oils while marketing them as more valuable varieties, or they add things to the oils or adulterate them in some other way to save money.
No Certified Organic Oils
This may or may not be a negative, depending on your perspective. If organic certification is something that's important to you, you'll have a hard time finding organically certified oils with most direct sales companies. They typically claim that their oils are of stellar quality, that's even better than organic. doTERRA , for example, claims that its CPTG “certification” is better than organic, and Young Living leans on its “Seed to Seal®” claim, which isn't completely true, as I explained in my post comparing Young Living and doTERRA.
While there are loopholes in the USDA organic certification process, some people do want that certification to lean on. For the prices that these companies charge, you can go to other companies and get certified organic oils for less.
To be fair, I think wild-crafted, indigenously grown oils can be higher quality than organic, but you would have to trust the company on the details about that sourcing without having the USDA's certification process to lean on.
More Posts On Essential Oils
– Which Essential Oils Company is Best?
– Qualities of a Good Oil Company Should Have
– How to Spot Fake Essential Oils
– Young Living vs. doTERRA
– Distillation, Bias, Vomit, and More
– Is It Safe to Use Expired Essential Oils?
– Why You Need to Emulsify Essential Oils
Final Thoughts
For me, I think the negative outweighs the positives. And if you read my post on Young Living vs. doTERRA, you can see even more reasons why I choose to avoid the direct sales arena for essential oils.
There are just too many other good options out there and a lot of other places to get an education. Hopefully you can find a lot of good information here, with more to come in the future.
So what do you think?
Are MLM Essential Oils Worth It Or Are They a Scam?
Hi, thank you so much for putting together the information about essential oils company. It helps me greatly to realize what I have been wondering about these company might be true. I started to question about my orders and how the business is run by YL. Also how they charge credit card before receiving items (especially at YL events) and not receiving items in 2 weeks while others already have received their event order items. I will probably end up with disputing credit card charges. The oils they sell seems to be good but I disagree with how the business is run, MLM with their commission especially thus closing my account soon.
Please keep your post coming because I don’t think you are attacking anybody. It is your opinion and people should respect your research and sharing the info!
Thank you so much. I have been swamped personally but hope to have a lot more to share soon. You might enjoy this in the meantime: https://wholenewmom.com/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-essential-oils-before-you-buy/ Hope to see you around again….
I have been a Young Living rep for a few months now and I have found your information very interesting. I think that for people who only want to buy a few essential oils a year a company such as NAM might be the best choice. For me, I feel that Young Living is a better choice but there is no need for me to go over all the reasons why here.
With Young Living how a person chooses to be involved and how the product is presented is their own choice. YL doesn’t force anyone to say anything about “therapeutic grade” so I just choose to say “high quality”. I wrote my own safety information to give to new members which I feel responsibly warns them of possible problems, including allergies. I don’t pressure people to buy things they don’t want to buy or to do business they don’t want to do. The people in my upline are not pushy either and the support in this group of people is wonderful. (My daughter has been a member for over a year so this isn’t based on just a few months experience..) I have never been interested in being involved in a MLM company before, but I feel comfortable with Young Living because I can run the business in the way I feel comfortable with and I like the products and I love the support.
As far as the higher pay for the higher level people in the company, this is the case for most, if not all, large companies and no one seems to think it is strange that a high level person in Microsoft gets high pay but for some reason in an EO company there seems to be an idea that a high level person should not get high pay. But one difference between Young Living and Microsoft is that they give every person an opportunity to benefit from the company sales and reach any level they wish depending on how much time and effort they are willing and able to work at it, which is not true of Microsoft. (Not that I would want to put the amount of time and effort it takes to reach the top levels – those people make great sacrifices of their time and effort to get to that level.)
Anyway, I would like to compliment you on the job you do here. I have not read one thing that I thought was unfair or unthoughtful.
Thanks much for commenting. I think much of what you said is accurate. I do wonder about some of the monies those “high ups” make – I just saw a blogger talking about a ranking she just made with doTERRA and on another site it said the average pay for that level is $490,000 or something like that. That is crazy!!!!
It’s so good to see this! I’m personally getting tired of seeing YL and doTerra all over the internet. I definitely agree with your concerns and am glad you have the courage to put them out there!
I am personally tired of it too. Yesterday my dental hygienist told me that one of her patients was pushing one of the big oil companies on her too. I do think oils are great but I think their enthusiasm is over the top.
Hi there, thank you so much for all your work! The only thing I’d like to question is the general idea that MLM prices are higher do they can pay their higher ups exorbitant sounds if money. Even if 40% goes to paying reps, think about all the things they don’t have to pay for… just by not having employees they don’t have ss taxes, health insurance, sick days, vacation days etc. They also avoid a huge advertising budget because that is being done by their reps. Then there’s maintenance of infrastructure, they don’t have that expense because reps use their homes or other local businesses. I suppose that’s the top of the ice berg, but I really think an argument could be made that the higher price goes into the crazy amount it must cost to work with farms around the world so they can provide a native product and the testing fees to hire companies to make sure their product meets their standard. I’m not trying to argue I just think maybe this thought needs to be stated too. Thank you, your information is valuable!
Hi there. It’s pretty complicated. I got a bunch of information from Native American on this so I hope this helps. I am putting it in my own words:
Even though many think that a company’s costs are higher than for an MLM, it’s not really the case. The costs are still much higher for an MLM because they still have just as many employees, and then the distributors are on top of the employees.
You are correct in that distributors do not have to pay “social security fees”, which is FICA and includes social security among many other things. Those are 7.5% of gross wages paid by employers. However, Doterra and YL have thousands of employees that they DO have to pay this for. Then they have thousands of distributors that they don’t have to, but they DO have to pay commissions for. In addition to one person’s commissions, there are other people in the up-line to pay commissions to. Because of these two factors, the cost per revenue dollar is extremely high, which is what causes a need to raise prices to compensate for high costs.
One of the most important business metrics that any company needs to look at is revenue per employee. Doterra’s Revenue per employee is much lower than NANs (as far as we can tell), meaning that they actually have a greater percentage of revenue spent towards employee costs than we have. This means that the FICA argument actually goes the other way, arguing that they have greater FICA fees than us by a significant margin. We are hiring more, so revenue per employee will change, but Doterra/ YL will never dwarf us in this regard, so keep in mind that these fees apply to them just as much as us, if not even a bit more.
Obviously with that employee rate, that linearly increases your cost with healthcare, vacation, etc. So the cost of downlines is in addition to those other costs on top of these fees.
Yeah this is technical business stuff, that I could go on about for hours,…Basically remember that Doterra has thousands of employees to support their distributors. In addition to that, they have to pay the commissions. All of those costs that you think that the MLMs can avoid, they really can’t. They still need employees to maintain their customers (which are their distributors). The difference between an MLM and a direct to consumer company (like us) is that our customers are the people using our oils. For an MLM, their customers are actually the distributors. Everything they do is to help their distributors and to get membership fees, etc. So the business model is very different.
Also, to say that Doterra doesn’t have advertising expenses is another major understatement. Their advertising expenditure per revenue dollar is much higher than ours. They have far more advertising expenditures. They put money into stadiums in Utah to sponsor those and pay big money to get their name mentioned. These are all advertising expenses which cost much more than the stuff we would do which is far more direct. So they have plenty of advertising expenses. They rent out huge conference centers and pay for massive parties to motivate their distributors to get out there and sell more. So remember that MLM’s customers are the distributors and so you might not see the advertising because its targeted at distributors and getting more of them, because thats where MLM’s make their money.
I hope that helps.
How can I contact you?
Thanks
You can use the contact me page – thanks! https://wholenewmom.com/contact-me/
THANK YOU FOR THIS. I have long wondered about these companies. Being an herbalist and blogger I have been pitched these products many times by real life friends and internet strangers. I stay away from network marketing in general but did always wonder if these companies were somehow different, just because they’re making products I’ve use in daily life for years. I just shared on Facebook- thanks again!
(Oh and here is my favorite thing to share with people who are considering joining an MLM- (video not on youtube any longer))
Oh my goodness, Amber. I don’t know what happened to your comment. I had a bunch of them that I needed to respond to but I don’t think I ever saw yours. So sorry about that! Anyhow, thanks for the kind words and hope you get this response :). I agree that most of these MLMs are a complete waste of money. A few are OK but mostly – not at all! I’ll have more coming out about other companies. I did write this fairly recently, but I do hope to address more of them. Take care!
Wow, way to promote your mlm. It’s amazing how something good comes along without all the side affects and people want to criticize. Btw, with Doterra you can get direct deposit and it’s 50 cents a check.
You didn’t mention that Doterra is tested by 3 different outside labs. (0: Just some info your readers might be interested in.
Hi there. I am not sure what you are talking about. I am not a part of any essential oils MLM – so could you please clarify? I don’t think you should have to pay to get a direct deposit. Can you explain why they are charging that?
I never said anything about doTERRA not having oils that didn’t meet testing requirements, but there are others who have said that. I merely took issue with their apparent distillation of one of their oils and sourcing questions about the same. I really really wanted things to work out w/ them but couldn’t get the answers that I needed and I can’t represent a company if I can’t get answers to important questions. What do you think about those issues that I brought up? Thanks in advance.
I’d say you didn’t try hard enough and ask the right questions. Maybe you’ve been too busy trying to get a 500 ft view of these companies and jumping to the next to keep readers interested. What do you make
from doing this? Who pays you?
Hi Cindi. I’m sorry you feel that way. I have loads of emails — some between myself and doTERRA but moreso between myself and another rep as we were trying to get to the bottom of things. And we couldn’t. It was very frustrating. She was my upline and told me that that I could make $8K per month with doTERRA b/c of my traffic. I walked away from that and it was hard but I had to. I went w/ a company that had no affiliate program at the time, but they do now. I am an affiliate for NAN / RMO and I have been very clear about that. I hope that clarifies things.
Rocky Mountain Oils/Native American Nutritionals are not an MLM company, so not quite sure how you came to the conclusion that she was just trying to make more money for her MLM lol.. You might want to read the whole article before getting your knickers in a twist. And that is the MAIN thing that bothers me about the MLM companies in the EO business.. The amount of blind faith, and kool-aid drinking that goes on, boggles the mind.
Hi there = sorry for taking so long to approve your comment. I have been swamped and am trying to play catch up. Thanks so much for sharing and hope to see you around again!
Really comprehensive review of the three MLMs companies. Personally I had some sleeping disorders and recently been using Living Young essential oils so was checking out if these are really effective .
Interesting. What was your disorder?
I would like you to clarify your comment that essential oils taken internally kill good and bad bacteria including, clove, oregano, cinnamon and citrus and you should be supplementing with a probiotic if using internally. I have not found ant credible information that this is true and would be interested to see where you obtained your information to make that claim.
I have read it in many places on the internet – well, I have read both sides. Folks saying that since it’s antibacterial is can kill good bacteria and others saying it’s “smart” and won’t do that. My current practitioner told me to be careful about taking too much oil of oregano b/c it could disturb the microbiome. hope that helps :).
These oils are known to help kill bad bacteria, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it killed bad bacteria too. It would be wise to supplement with probiotics. I too have read & heard for several years that they kill good/bad bacteria. These are potent plant oils. I was recommended to take Oregano oil regularly for chronic strep/pandas which settles in the brain/sinus and many with Lyme disease take it too. Just like Grapefruit seed oil is potent & can kill good bacteria with the bad. Clover oil is a strong anti-fungal too.
Hi, I appreciate the info you are providing! I am looking for oils that I can trust, and you have done a ton of the investigative work for me! And I can follow up myself with any further question I have, or just take your word for it. No one should be saying anything negative about what you are writing! I just want you to know I appreciat the work you have done. Thank you!
Thank you so much! Hope to see you around again!