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?
That you so much for your research! I am a Young Living rep and massage therapist and it dose help to know what others think or a product and their competitor. You stated that you can be wrong and it’s only your own assessment many times. You’ve also put out your own money for this which didn’t need to be done. I appreciate you doing this and it’s sad that people are attacking you. It gives MLM’s a bad name. Hope all is well!
Thanks so much for your encouragement. Hope to see you around again!
Thank you for all of your attention to detail! I recently jumped the gun and bought a HUGE bundle of doTERRA products without researching them first. I will continue to use the remainder of those, and later switch to a brand more aligned with my ethics.
You are so welcome. Glad to hear that this helped! Hope to hear from you again.
Adrienne, I am so glad I found this site. Thank you for the research. I fall into MLM all the time and don’t make money at all. I do have questions in my heart as to why YL test their own oils? Who is accountable then?
Hi there, Kelly. Their literature says that they use 3rd party testing as well. I can’t verify that, of course.
I’m contacting them directly and seeing if I can get my hands on the 3rd party testing reports. I’d be happy to share if I can get them 🙂
Thanks!
Can you please clarify the difference in why you explain not choosing YL, DT, and other EO companies but in the comments only say you “can not comment” why not going with other EO companies that your readers have asked you about. I am really just curious as it confused me a bit. Also, Do you find NAN oils safe to ingest? I have read where you said you used to ingest but now are re-thinking it.
Hi there. It all comes down to the risks I feel I can take and the reasons for doing so. In the case of these other companies, I would have to write only things that I could prove and that is very hard. I would have to, for instance, take screenshots of their sites showing that they don’t have disclosure of source countries, and their pricing, to prove what I was saying. Otherwise, you can get in legal trouble. I am not willing to do that. I did have emails to prove what doTERRA said and the Young Living issues that I wrote about were mainly opinion so that is a different issues. NAN says you can take them internally with caution. This post should help – thanks! https://wholenewmom.com/health-concerns/how-to-use-essential-oils/
You can buy oils direct from Mountain Rose Herbs and save a lot of $$ as compared to MLM companies.
I am a DoTerra rep, and I think you did a fine job. It’s up to people to do their own research, but I appreciate the work you’ve done and your opinion. If you really believe in your product, it’s the “why” that drives you to share.
Thanks so much. Hope to see you around again!
I really enjoyed reading this blog/article about the essential oils and the companies. I commend you on all your research and studies. You were very informative and honest. I have a friend that joined with DoTerra and she introduced the oils to me. I decided before I join I wanted to do some research and comparison on my own and in doing so I came across this blog that has ruffled a few feathers (hahaha) The truth and opinions are never welcome in the world we live in.
Thanks again for a very interesting and informative article continue to educate your readers.
Thanks so much and welcome! Hope to see you around here again! I really appreciate your kind words.
Hi Adrienne! I just read through this whole series. Thanks so much for doing this! I read to your final recommendation and am excited to potentially try it myself. I was wondering, though: do you have any other thoughts on Be Young in regard to quality or the company specifically, aside from potential MCM concerns? I ask because it sounds like it’s a good option from this post, and I’ve never tried any essential oils company personally. Thanks! I look forward to reading more of your blog.
Hi there. Thanks for your kind words! I did look at Be Young and had several concerns. I can’t really share them here due to a number of factors – the whole industry is really dicey about things. I got a cryptic threatening email regarding negative comments about a company that were posted in the comment section. I personally wouldn’t go in that direction, but of course you are free to do so. Hope to see you around again :).
Update about doTERRA. As of May 1, 2015, doTERRA will no longer be requiring SS# of new distributers.
Thanks!
In the above commentary, you state:
” Possible Dangerous Recommendations”
I am not up on the practices of Be Young, but I know YL and doTERRA both have a heavy emphasis on internal use of essential oils. I wasn’t too concerned about this at first, but as I’ve learned more I have gotten more worried about this.
Both recommend internal use of oils liberally, with doTERRA even having a Slim and Sassy blend that they recommend taking internally numerous time per day, for a long period of time, in order to aid weight loss. There are protocols on the internet recommending internal use of grapefruit oils by YL reps in order to lose weight.”
Perhaps it’s only to protect themselves from liability, but on the doTerra website it states:
“Do NOT consume an essential oil internally unless labeled with a Supplement Facts box with specific dietary supplement use instructions and warnings.”
I’m not that familiar with either company in any detail. I’ve only researched them in order to publicly refute their claims of having (as you also clearly state above) their non-existent and self-proclaimed labeling of: “Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils” and “Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade” Essential Oils.
As well as posting that the “The Essential Oils Desk Reference” isn’t a reliable reference as it’s actually published by Young Living.
I look for balanced information – such as your blog, as well as also referring to Cropwatch.org, whose initial purpose was that of acting as a watchdog group in order to report on:
” … the use of threatened aromatic species used in the cosmetics (fragrance), aromatherapy &
medicinal industries. The ecological position has worsened, thanks to a rise in
“green consumerism” leading to further increases in plant exploitation, and to the
collective failure of the fragmented business sectors” (from Cropwatch.org) Their original foray has since expanded considerably in order to keep up with this ever expanding market.
It always surprises me that people don’t do their own research, especially when it comes to their own health, and that of their loved ones. Ingesting anything, especially when so many essential oils have warnings regarding irritation, or worse. So, thanks for the detailed information.
Thanks for commenting. The supplement facts box does not change the concerns about internal use of oils.
They are still very very strong and can alter gut bacteria and more. I hope this helps. This is the official statement of the company that I went with.
You mentioned that Young Living tests their own oils. They do, but they ALSO send them elsewhere to be tested on a regular basis. According to Dr. Herve Casabianca (Ph.D.), Chairman of the International Standards Organization (ISO) Committee on Essential Oil Standards (a European agency whose acronym is AFNOR), Young Living is the only North American company that sends samples on a steady basis to the AFNOR laboratory in France for testing against the international standards for therapeutic quality. In Dr. Casabianca’s own words, “Young Living oils are the only therapeutic grade oils, of which I am aware, produced and/or marketed by an American company.”
Hi Rebecca. I think it is possible that you are mistaken. This is from the Young Living blog at this URL: https://www.dgaryyoung.com/blog/2010/part-9-finding-pure-essential-oils/
This is the information on AFNOR- that Young Living does not send their oils out to be tested, but they apparently calibrated their instruments to match the AFNOR testing.
I hope that helps!
According to their site and the source I stated above they do. Here is what they say on their site: “To guarantee consistent quality, our oils are tested in Young Living’s own internal labs, as well as in third-party facilities, to ensure that they meet stringent specifications, exceed international standards, and contain the optimal levels of natural bioactive compounds.”
https://www.youngliving.com/en_US/discover/seed-to-seal?hc_location=ufi
Hi Rebecca. I don’t see anything in the source that I linked to stating that they use a 3rd party for testing, but I do see it in the link you sent now. So perhaps they do. As a side note, all of the GC/MS tests that NAN/RMO does are 3rd party tested by certified labs. If you have any other questions or concerns I will do my best to address them. Thanks!
I don’t have any more for this post, thank you! I was hoping to get a response for the long comment I left in Young Living vs. DoTERRA, but I see you have not had the opportunity to moderate it yet. 😀
I responded – sorry I am just so swamped :).
Hi again. I just found out (might have known it before) that NAN and RMO use AFNOR as one of the standards for their oil testing so I hope that helps :).