They have a lot of releases, and now that they’ve been around for a few years, some shades seem familiar or just marginally tweaked from a release before, which is inevitable with brands producing a lot of shades over time. I do love their overall business model and ability to respond quickly to trends and market demands with quality products (most of the time) at affordable prices.
— Christine
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Love the prices and shadow quality, hate that many shades irritate my eyes (similar to Anastasia’s mattes) and that shipping to Canada has cost me +$18 every time for “handling fees” that I wasn’t expecting
What I do like: From my experience with the brand (lip color and eyeshadow), it’s much better than drugstore-quality, but very affordable at the same time.
What I don’t like: They need more variety in their eyeshadow palettes. Not being able to swatch the foundation will keep me from ever buying it. Also, I can’t just buy one product here and there because it’s $5 for shipping if I’m ordering less than $30 worth. I totally understand why they do that, of course, but it’s still annoying to not be able to buy a $5 product on a whim without it doubling in price because of shipping. The only answer, I guess, is to sell in stores.
If you ever do want to try the foundation- I used the foundation matrix here and got a perfect match on the first try
I tried looking it up here, but I still got nervous about spending my money without seeing it in person. Also, feeling the texture of it, too. Foundation is the hardest part of buying makeup for me.
What she said!!!
LOVE:
-Their insanely AFFORDABLE prices
-Excellent quality of their products – few products seem to be misses
-Super shock formula is a game-changer (eyeshadows, highlighters, etc.)
-Their innovation – while some people get annoyed with them coming out with too much, I love their constant new releases and get excited about them
-Their inclusivity with shade ranges – blushes, bronzers, foundations, etc. to fit all skin tones!
-They aren’t afraid to fail – as I mentioned above, some of their products have been fails but it hasn’t ever stopped their momentum
Dislikes (I can’t say hate because I can easily forgive Colourpop!! 🙂 )
-Their tendency towards all eyeshadow palettes being WARM TONED. I know that the Fame palette is “cool toned”…but for true cool-tone lovers, this is not the palette we were hoping for. Give me some greens, blues, purples, silver/grays, and a cool toned brown – and a gorgeous matte or satin eyebrow highlight color. Even their latest “Mar” palette – sorry, but a few pops of blue does not make it a cool-toned palette (although I know it wasn’t marketed as such)
-Their shipping. I wish we had an option to pay for express shipping – I hate having to wait, and love their products so much that I would pay more to get it faster
-Repeats in some of the palettes – maybe not exact same shades, but same overall tones in many palettes. Sol palette is similar in tone to the Yes Please, for example
-Glosses – I LOVE gloss, and I really loved that they came out with a huge vault of new glosses, but they are not super pigmented or very glittery/shiny which is what I was hoping for. If they could have made their new glosses in the same formula as the MakeupxShayla “Neat Freak” gloss, I’d be a happy gal.
Raves: Amazingly good products at a very accessible price point, so much so it’s affected the industry I daresay. Consistently good quality, with very few misses (all the more remarkable in contrast to many or most of the high end/luxury brands). Doesn’t seem to abandon their core for going into new areas (still offering broad range of eyeshadow singles while going into palettes full force).
Rant: 50/50 that my order will come in properly — something missing, something delayed, etc. Honestly, this puts me off ordering, it’s just not worth the hassle, time and effort to get things fixed at that rate.
My rave is that they have some wonderful looking products – from what I’ve seen here – at reasonable prices (oh, and also that they use the “correct” spelling of “colour”); my rant is that they’re not available locally/don’t have an “in-store” presence because I’m one of those who likes to try things before I buy them (and I also don’t like paying shipping, duty, exchange on top of everything else).
Raves: I love the super shock shadow formula. I have had great success with their products overall. I love their price point. I have had very good luck with my orders arriving quickly, intact and without errors. I think the mission statement and branding is excellent. They personalized their purchases for the longest time with hand written notes. Very time consuming and yet very attractive to the on-line purchaser. They are innovative and seem to stay ahead of the trend curve.
Rants: There really aren’t very many. I would like to see their palettes have a little bit more diversity. They seem to release a lot of palettes with very similar color stories. I would like some cooler toned eye shadows in a variety of finishes and shades but that is my standard request from all brands. Because their products are so reasonably priced I feel comfortable buying things that I am not sure will work for me but that I am intrigued by and don’t have to worry that I am breaking the bank. For the same reason, I can usually find enough products to purchase that I can qualify for free shipping. I would like to see a brick and mortar store pick up more of the brand so that it could be swatched but I do fear that will raise prices which will ultimately hurt the brand. Once a brand comes out with products at a certain price point the public doesn’t want to see them raise prices even a little bit. Somehow the public thinks they are now trying to gouge them when their products were below the usual price median.
Rave: The super shock shadow formula is amazing.
Rant: Lately they’ve been favoring neutral colors and moving away from the vivid and even garish brights that drew me to them in the first place. I miss the neon greens, teals, and yellows.
I love colourpop products. All of them. Never tried anything bad.
BUT
Their international shipping is the worst I’ve ever experienced!
To get their products here (Italy) I wait 2 full months. I always receive the forms to fill from the customs!
And the customs rejected the documents twice, sending back the order I’ve waited for 2 months.
It’s frustrating and since their products are always sold out or limited edition once the order is gone I can’t buy certain products because they’re not available anymore.
Big fail. Never going to buy again from them until they won’t update they’re shipping options.
I’m an international customer as well and I have never had an issue with delayed packages – is it Colourpop that causes the delay by not packaging or identifying the contents properly or is it your customs or international mail centre that is holding things up? Do you have to fill out claim forms or pay import taxes or duty or anything like that?
I’m just curious – I’m in New Zealand and I’ve received shipments as quickly as 4 days, though more often it takes about a week – 2 months sounds like waaaaaay too long to wait!
Yes! I have to fill the claim forms AND pay import taxes. But it’s fine paying for taxes.. I mean that is not the problem!
No doubt that my national postal service SUCKS, but when I buy from Tarte it arrives in a week. Beautylish same (and I already pay taxes on the website). It means that Colourpop is either on a “black list” for my national postal service or that they don’t provide enough information over the documents.
Thanks for the response! Our postal service is slowly declining as well and next year our government will be levying service taxes on all online overseas purchases (currently there is an exemption for goods of value under a certain limit, depending on what the items are) so I’ve never been stung with extra charges.
While I don’t particularly mind paying an extra 15% in tax, I DO mind if it delays my purchases and no one has really been able to outline how they will force overseas companies to collect the taxes at the time of purchase and pass them back to my country or whether they will hold all purchases at customs until the tax is collected.
I am not looking forward to it!!! And I’m sorry you missed out on your LE Colourpop stuff, that sucks 🙁
Thank you CeeBee, I feel you very close! 😄
That’s why colourpop should get other shipping options, to avoid the national postal services and use a courier that just make you pay the taxes.
Good luck with your international orders then!
The SuperShock formula is amazing but I will never buy the gel pencils again. I had three and the color cylinder (that must have a real name, no?) constantly fell out even if I barely swiveled it. I guess that skimping on packaging is a way to keep costs down and I don’t mind cardboard or no mirrors, but it should keep the product together and functional.
They seem to have good products at affordable prices. They had a few products available online at Sephora CA around the holidays. However, those products didn’t do any justice to ColourPop (some boring colours and products that didn’t sell well). Weird choice from ColourPop or Sephora. And then they pulled out, all of a sudden. Although I would like to try their products, I’m not gonna order from their website or Ulta’s.
I think they mostly have wonderful quality, and their prices are super-affordable. I like that they try to have shade diversity for their concealers, foundations, etc.
I don’t like the Ultra Mattes. I think the formula is inconsistent between shades. I hate that they discontinued a lot of the super-bright and glittery shades in the SSS that originally made me love them, though I’m happy they’ve added some new brights again. Colour Pops lean really heavily on warm neutrals for their pressed eyeshadow palettes (like most companies, to be fair). Their shipping can be slow, although it seems to be improving.
Rave: The brand has a tremendous array of fantastic quality shades for such a reasonable price and their lipsticks are sensational too.
Rant: I wish they would come to Australia! International shipping rates are really prohibitive.
Perhaps some cool toned palettes would be great to see as well.
Not a fan of their matte liquid lips, and the fact that they take a while to ship sometimes… oh, and no return policy (to Colourpop themselves that is), but most of the Colourpop products I’ve tried I have had a great experience with, they’re very inexpensive but still put out mostly quality products for the price.
One of my pet peeves with Colourpop is they way described a shade description on there site is sometimes not accurate, for example I bought the No Filter concealer in Fair 8 because it stated it has warm undertones, but it actually has or pulls more pink on my skin tone. Most of the time the swatches on their don’t do the product any justice TBH. My last rant is that they have not discontinued their Ultra Matte Liquid Lipsticks as that formula is long lasting but extremely uncomfortable. Other than those complaints, I’ve been quite pleased with all their products.
Pros- The single pressed eye shadows are lovely, the prices are amazing.
Cons- I don’t know what it is about their eye shadows, but they make my eyes very itchy and watery. I don’t like the Super Shock eye shadows, They don’t last on me very well, even with primer. I wish I knew why they make me react so.