14 Best Subscription Boxes For Giving The Gifts That Keep On Giving

Why give somebody one thing when you can give somebody lots of things, over and over and over again for an entire year? That’s a good question and the only answer I can parse out would be: “I HAVE NO IDEA.”


Holigays 20143

Mouth

Subscriptions:
$50/month box: Jerky
$55/month box: Vodka
$56/month boxes: Pickles, Gin
$60/month boxes: Snacks, New Indie Releases, Cookies, Chocolate, Cravings (for Pregnancy)
$70/month box: Indie-Gredients
$74/month box: Bourbon
$75/month boxes: Wine or Whiskey
$94/month box: Cocktail Hour

I’M OBSESSED WITH MOUTH. Mouth aims to get the best, most delicious and most interesting indie food products into your mouth while helping indie food makers stay in business. There are gift sets like “Vegan Holiday Treats,wp_posts“Grilled Cheese, Please,wp_posts“Hot Stuff Tasterwp_postsand “Bringing Home the Bacon.wp_postsThere are subscriptions like “Bourbon Every Monthwp_postsand “Chocolate Every Monthwp_posts— or “Cravings Every Monthwp_postsfor your pregnant girlfriend. They’ve got your birthday in a bag, your cocktail party in a bag and a hot toddy in a bag. You can also pick up individual food items, search by dietary restrictions or flavor profile or check out the plethora of spirits (also sold at their brick-and-mortar location in Brooklyn).


harry-and-david

Harry & David Fruit of the Month Club – starting at $89.95/year

This is the original subscription club. I asked for this every single year of my life but have never received it, perhaps because nobody related to me can afford 12 months of pears. Anyhow there’s a million options available for all tastes and price ranges and is an especially nice thing to do for a college student who could probbaly use some Cara Cara Oranges, Rainier Cherries, Hony Mangoes, Royal Riviera Pears, Strawberries, Apples and so forth on the reg. There’s also nuts, cheeses, sweets and other edible situations. When my Mom sent me Harry & David boxes at boarding school, we’d all skip dinner and have a feast and it was AMAZING.


holigay subscription

Graze – $6.99/box

I did the thing where I signed up for a free month of Graze and then intended to cancel it because I can’t afford it but I keep ‘forgetting’ to cancel it because IT’S SO GOOD. I work from home and snack a lot, but finding new, interesting and healthy (read: not just empty carbs) snacks is hard! Graze does that work for you, and works with small independent food-makers to bring you “exciting flavors and create delicious new combinations that will delight your taste buds.”


nerdblock

Nerd Block – $19.99/month

Nerd Block’s team of “uber-nerds” carefully selects and extensively tests a grab box of quality, fun, collectible licensed merchandise for you to have and hold every single month. Each block contains 4-6 epic items and a t-shirt. Boxed brands include Star Wars, Adventure Time, Doctor Who and Marvel, and you can pick from three different kinds of nerd blocks — Horror, Classic or Arcade.


barkbox

BarkBox – from $19 – $29 /month

If you know your gift recipient’s dog’s size, then you’ve got all the info you need to sign them up for BarkBox. Every month a box containing products and presents for the dog will arrive, containing “anything from toys, bone and all-natural treats to hygiene products and innovative new gadgets!wp_postsPlus 10% of BarkBox profits support animal rescue groups. Plus you can save 10% on any new subscription with code SANTA10.


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Boxerfy – $26.99 – $29/month

A “girl panel of style experts” pick the best boxers in the universe and mail you some every single month. This is obviously a service intended for women to gift heterosexual cisgender males but YOU CAN QUEER THAT SHIT. You give them your size and you choose your first pair of underpants, at which point “our female panel of underwear experts take control, and ensure their handpicked designer drawers are perfect for you!” You also get free socks your first month.


friday-tieday

Friday Tieday – $35-$45/month

From the same people who brought you Boxerfy, Friday Tieday delivers a brand-new designer tie, based on the giftee’s preferences. Isn’t that NIFTY.


craft-beer-3-twelve-pack

Craft Beer Club – $39/month

12 exceptional craft beers from small-production, independent brewers for your girlfriend / father / roommate to enjoy on the couch or on the porch or wherever the day takes them. Each pack of 12 features four beer styles.


Farm Fresh To You box

Farm Fresh To You – $35 – $110/month

If your special someone lives in the Bay Area as so many of you do and doesn’t already get a CSA Box or order from Good Eggs (which is basically an online farmer’s market, my girlfriend works there, it’s awesome), perhaps they’d enjoy a box of certified organic fruits and vegetables on their doorstep on the regular! Choose from Mixed Fruit & Veggie, Fruit or Veggie only, an Office Snack Pack or a Traditional CSA Box and support smiling families and their independent farms.


hello-fresh

HelloFresh (groceries) – from $9.08/week

HelloFresh does the work for you, delivering fresh food and healthy, 30-minutes-or-less recipes to your doorstep every week. The chefs create the recipes, you pick what you like, they go shopping for you, sourcing only the very best fresh food from local suppliers.


a_plus_640px

A+ Gift Membership: Bronze, Silver & Gold – $60 – $240 / year

Obviously everybody needs an A+ Membership and YOU KNOW IT. This is the absolute best way to show a person that you love them. Nothing else comes close except maybe those pears I talked about earlier.


nextissue

NextIssue – $9.99/month

NextIssue gives you digital access to pretty much every mainstream magazine in the universe for one low monthly price. If your giftee subscribes to the digital editions of any of the magazines included in this app, they might as well have this app! Plus it’s got magazines like The New Yorker that I’d never be able to afford regularly, and you can basically pick and choose the best recipes from the best food magazines every month. There are just a lot of advantages to this situation, is what I’m telling you.


We don’t have an affiliate account with these guys but you should check them out anyhow because they sound SUPER COOL:

SprezzaBox – $28/month

You get several high quality Dapper accessories and grooming items every month. The boxes are worn and curated by stylists and although the products are ostensibly aimed at men, a dapper lady undoubtedly would enjoy 3-4 lifestyle products and one grooming product a month, amirite?

Birchbox – $10/month

Birchbox is the mother of subscription programs. Their women’s boxes contain five beauty samples from high-end brands and the men’s boxes include 3-4 grooming samples, plus a stylish accessory or gadget. Neat-o!


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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in California. Her work has appeared in nine books including "The Bigger the Better The Tighter The Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards Of Being Female," magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3074 articles for us.

31 Comments

  1. Even though the wording of this is not meant for people like me (I’m a bisexual Autostraddle reader and my life partner happens to be male and I don’t have a lady friend at the moment) I really appreciate the gift ideas I can get for my dude. Thanks as always for a great gift idea list.

  2. I love my Graze box! I’ve got one on my desk right now, with a new cocoa and vanilla flapjack to try for breakfast tomorrow. I also love the fact that if you’re a regular customer you get occasional discounts and special offers, but also they give you offers if you leave for a while, AND you can spread your deliveries out so you can afford them (it’s great for students!).

  3. I too signed up for graze just for the free box and I cannot cancel my subscription because I want to try everything! I love snacking and can actually feel good about eating their snacks, and love that you can skip weeks when you need to without having to cancel.

  4. I get the mens Birchbox and it is my favorite mail to get (besides Autostraddle merch). The trial sizes of high end grooming products are great for travel and throwing in my gym bag. I’ve gotten a tie, solo cup shot glasses, whiskey stones, grilling apron; all kinds of cool stuff. Plus, it makes me feel like a damn fancy genderqueer.

    With any luck, I’ll be coming back to this post to use the affiliate link for a Bark Box. I’m glad pup adoption agencies do their due diligence, but it’s a long process. Will this affiliate link still work after the Holigays?

  5. I kind of want to try that boxer subscription for like a month or three. It sounds like a solid idea, but sadly they aren’t neutral enough for my taste. It be nice if they had a queer option or something.

  6. I’m awaiting my third installment of Birchbox (lady edition), & I am definitely a fan. I’ve been bringing out more of the femme side of the tomboy femme this year, & it’s been a non-intimidating way to try that business out.

    I think I’m going to have to try Graze next. If I’m not at work I’m at the movies, and some snacking variety would definitely come in handy in both of those places.

  7. I have asked every single human that I know to donate toward an A+ membership for me. It’s how I inadvertently came out to my grandfather. I almost sent him a link to the scissoring sweatshirt but then decided that would be too much to throw at him in one day. Maybe next year!

  8. I’d never heard of NextIssue, but now I’m super excited about it! Going through the affiliate link seems to lead me to a page that wants to install programs on my computer, though… Does that link look correct, is there an alternate AS affiliate link?

  9. I feel like Friday Tieday should be the name of a column on here. Sort of like Sunday Funday, only instead of news-related stuff, it’s all about different kinds of ties.

    The fruit of the month club sounds brilliant. My first thought was “but I’m too poor for that!” but it comes out to approx $1.70/lb of fruit, which isn’t really more than what you’d pay at the grocery store for most of the fruits on there.

  10. Just a head’s up — Next Issue seems to have some offers that may be sketchy. Unsure how to interpret them, but they ask for a lot of personal info (and not for the subscription, for the “special offers” that takes you to a different site).

  11. Another subscription box (or bag, rather) that I really liked was Ipsy! It’s kind of like Birchbox’s women’s boxes and is also $10/month, but Birchbox gives more skincare products and Ipsy gives more makeup products. I ended up canceling my Ipsy subscription after a few months since the price was adding up, but I got quite a few products that I really like/use and will probably keep buying after they run out.

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