Best Monthly Subscription Gifts
If you’re looking for something more unique to give as a gift (or to suggest for grandparents or relatives to give to your kids/you for birthdays and Christmas!), I highly recommend monthly subscription boxes! They are such a fun gift, many of them are so practical, and they are a gift that keeps on giving!
Here are six of my favorites, along with my honest reviews of the services:
1. Fun Monthly Subscription Gifts: KiwiCo
KiwiCo is a monthly subscription service that offers kid’s educational projects, crafts, and activities on different themes. You can get a subscription for as low as $16.95 per month for the box — including shipping. This box will include 2-3 projects, all the materials to complete those projects, plus hands-on learning activities and more.
They offer monthly crate subscriptions for various ages: Panda Crate is for ages 0-36 months, Koala Crate is for ages 3-4, Kiwi Crate is for ages 4-8, Tinker Crate is for ages 8-14+, and Doodle Crate is for ages 9-16+.
You can go here to check out my full review of KiwiCo.
2. Monthly Subscription Boxes Gifts: Surprise Ride
Surprise Ride is a monthly subscription box that offers pre-planned educational activities for kids ages 6-11. They work with experts to curate a monthly adventure in a box. Each month, the box theme is a surprise and centers around something fun and educational like art, geography, outer space, food, and more!
I was hesitant to believe that the box would really be good for ages 6-11, but I’m here to tell you that all three of my kids think these boxes are super cool (they are 7, 9, and 11). I’m pretty impressed by that fact alone as it’s rare that all three kids will really, really love the same thing.
You can go here to check out my full review of Surprise Ride.
3. Monthly Subscription Gifts: Stitch Fix
Stitch Fix is an online clothing shop designed to provide personal styling services for women at an affordable cost. It was specifically created for women who need to wear nicer clothes for events/work but who don’t want to spend hours and hours combing through clothing stores to put together outfits.
You can go here to check out my full review of Stitch Fix.
4. Best Monthly Subscriptions: Gwynnie Bee
Gwynnie Bee is a clothing rental subscription service for women sizes 10-32. They are similar to Stitch Fix in many ways, but different than Stitch Fix because instead of having items sent to you to try on and possibly consider buying, they are a “lending service” where they lend you clothes to wear for as long as you’d like and then you ship them back and they’ll send you more. It’s almost like what Netflix used to be, only for clothes!
You can go here to check out my full review of Gwynnie Bee.
5. Best Monthly Subscription Gifts: Rocksbox
Rocksbox is a jewelry membership service dedicated to making your life easier and more stylish. Their goal is to make accessorizing with jewelry fun again.
As someone who likes to look nice and presentable, but who is by no means a fashionista, I wasn’t sure what I’d think of this service.
I’ve really ended up enjoying it — mostly because I hate shopping, so this made it incredibly convenient and easy to accessorize my outfits! I also loved that the stylist helped me know which pieces could be worn together, because truthfully I’m often wondering if I’m breaking “the jewelry rules” when I wear a bracelet, earring, and necklace combination that didn’t come packaged together.
You can go here to check out my full review of Rocksbox.
6. Monthly Gift Subscriptions: Blue Apron
Blue Apron is a a subscription service that ships farm-fresh ingredients right to your doorstep, in exactly the right proportions so you can make home-cooked dinners for your family. Blue Apron’s goal is to make it easy for you to create delicious, nutritional recipes at home.
They offer a large selection of different recipes — all that are between 500 and 800 calories each. They are always adding new recipes to their line-up and do not repeat any of the same recipes for at least a year.
You can go here to check out my full review of Blue Apron.
Do you have any favorite subscription boxes you’d recommend as a gift giving idea?
I’ve heard so much about Blue Apron through my husband’s Dallas Cowboys podcasts, kind of wish we lived in the states just so we could try it out.
I got my first Stitch Fix box last week. I absolutely love it! I purchased every item. I really like that you can exchange items that don’t fit. One of the pieces was a bit too snug. I sent it back and received a new one in 3 days.
I see somebody already mentioned it but I second the Fair Trade Friday subscription box. SO good! They source companies that empowering people across the globe to overcome poverty and many other hardships. Definitely worth checking out!
Getdatebox.com is super fun – bought it for my husband last year- they send you everything you need for a date- different each month– one time it was a camping theme– directions and Ingred for soup, 2 mugs, candles and s’more fixings, and discussion starters…. one night was painting– came with canvases and paints, and ingredients to make cake pops…. really creative
I LOVE Cat Lady Box! It’s the purrfect gift for a cat lover (oh goodness, my phone auto corrected “perfect”!). It usually includes a shirt and/or jewelry plus one or two other cat – related things. I’ve loved every single thing I’ve received. It’s like they know me! For a few more dollars you can get the Crazy Cat Lady Box which also includes 2 cat toys.
Thanks for sharing! -Meg, MSM Team
My kids love Kiwi Crate. My 8 year old gets Kiwi crate and can’t wait for the next one when she’s finished with the present one. My 11 year old tried Doodle Crate and loved the crafts, but when she saw Tinker Crate she wanted to go more towards the science based crate.
For my dogs I was getting Bark Box for a year, https://www.barkbox.com. They enjoyed the new treats and toys every month. I’m from Canada and found Bower Box, https://bowzerbox.ca, to be the same, but more local for me
Thanks for sharing these! -Meg, MSM Team
I have really enjoyed Green Kids Craft. The age range is perfect for my two kids – 4 and 6. They even offer a $10 sibling add-on, and which supplies an extra set of supplies for every craft. Each month is a different science theme. The crafts are very simple, which means kids can actually do them independently! The end result were some fun discussions about weather, ecology, animal science. I’ve been very impressed.
I also tried Surprise Ride, when they had a sale deal for their Brazil box for the Olympics. I was really unimpressed. My kids could not share the activities, which were pretty lame (glueing painted bottlecaps to a fake soccer ball), and not really educational.
I loved Gwynnie Bee! After I had a baby, I gave myself a lot of time to get my body back. I had to go back to work, but there weren’t a lot of maternity clothes that could make the transition and I didn’t want to have to buy anything new since I didn’t plan on staying that size. So I used Gwynnie Bee and slowly worked myself down to my “usual” size and then discontinued my membership! It was terrific.
I love this! Thanks so much for sharing!
I love kidbox
That’s so great to hear! Thanks so much for sharing!
I am absolutely loving Le Tote. It is a monthly clothes rental service. You pay a monthly fee for unlimited boxes of clothes. You wear and return. No laundry, nothing! Love it!
Thanks so much for the recommendation!
There’s also http://fairtradefriday.club – which is part of Mercy House Global. Fair Trade Friday has different Subscription options: Box of the month, earring of the month, necklace of the month, bracelet of the month, so good for different budgets.
All the products are gorgeous and made by different artisan groups from over 20 countries around the world, providing jobs to women in poverty to help them provide for their families. Kristen and her crew are amazing.
Thanks SO much for mentioning that!! What a GREAT idea!
Very excited for Grandparents to gift
3 yr old a Kiwi Crate!
Woohoo!
I’ve really loved the Dia & Co. subscription box.
It’s like Stitch Fix, only for plus sizes. It’s also a $20 styling fee that applies to whatever you keep, with free shipping both ways. Unlike the Gwinnie Bee option, you get to keep your clothes forever!
I’ve done reviews of several boxes. Here’s the first: http://www.sweepingupjoy.com/dia-co-review/
As someone who hates clothes shopping, I would love to have been given a gift certificate to a service like this a long time ago!!!
I second that!!! I love my Dia boxes!