Why Glowelly exists

Walk into any beauty store and you're hit with thousands of products that all promise the same thing. Brand A says retinol changes everything; Brand B says retinol ruined their reviewer's skin; an influencer swears by a $4 cleanser; a magazine spotlights an $80 one. Nobody is telling you what works for YOUR skin — they're telling you what works for their margins.

Meanwhile, going to a dermatologist for a routine is either expensive, hard to book, or rushed. We wanted a middle path: dermatologist-grade thinking, applied to your face, for the price of a coffee a week. That's Glowelly.

We've tried to make this transparent. You won't find vague claims like 'AI magic' or 'patented technology' here. The pipeline is straightforward:

1. You upload three selfies (front, left, right). They go to Anthropic's Claude vision model. The model reads texture, tone, pigmentation, redness, and visible concerns — the same things a derm looks at in a clinical photo.
2. Your quiz answers (age range, Fitzpatrick scale, skin feel after washing, current products, allergies, medical context) get layered onto the visual analysis so we don't recommend, say, salicylic acid to someone who's pregnant.
3. A server-side filter walks our curated catalog of 150+ products — every one of them hand-vetted by our dermatologists — and ranks 2-3 candidates per slot (cleanser, serum, treatment, moisturizer, SPF, eye care) based on compatibility with what we read.
4. You get an AM + PM routine, an expected timeline (12 weeks is real — anyone promising results in a week is lying), and the option to ask follow-up questions about any product or ingredient.

We never let the AI invent products. Every recommendation comes from a curated list a real human approved. No hallucinations, no fake brands, no affiliate-of-the-month scams.

Your face is your face. We treat that as load-bearing — not a marketing line, an engineering principle:

• Your three selfies are processed in memory and discarded the moment the analysis returns. They are never written to disk, never stored in a database, never sent to a third party other than the AI provider that analyses them.
• Only the structured analysis result (skin type, concerns, routine, scores — all text + numbers, no images) is saved to your account, so you can re-open past analyses without re-uploading photos.
• You can export everything we have on you as JSON from your settings page, anytime. You can delete your account in one click — past payment receipts stay in Stripe per tax law, everything else is wiped immediately.
• We don't sell, share, or rent your data. Ever. The business model is the subscription — we make no money from anyone but our paying users.

We turned down a lot of obvious-looking features. Each of these is a deliberate non-choice:

• No body measurements, no calorie counting, no BMI. We are a skincare app, not a body-image app.
• No language about 'fixing' or 'flaws' or 'transforming' your skin. We use 'routine', 'care', 'glow', 'journey' — your skin is fine; we're helping you take care of it.
• No medical claims. We can't (and won't) say 'treats acne' or 'cures rosacea'. If your skin shows something we think a real dermatologist should look at, we flag it and point you at one.
• No before/after imagery that implies bodily transformation. Only routine consistency and visible skin clarity over time.

Glowelly is paid-only. There is no free tier. The intro month is $14.99 (50% off), every month after is $29.98. You can also pay yearly for $249 (30% off). Cancel anytime — once you cancel, you keep access until the end of the billing period you've already paid for, then it stops.

We don't run free trials because every dermatologist-grade analysis costs us real money to run. Charging up-front means we can keep the experience honest — no upsell pop-ups, no premium tier dangling features behind another paywall.

We are not a substitute for a dermatologist. If you have persistent acne, suspicious moles, severe rosacea, or anything else medical, please see one. We are a wellness tool that helps you take better care of your skin between dermatologist visits — not instead of them.