Ulta Beauty: Makeup & Skincare

Review by eFreeware

If you already shop at Ulta Beauty, or you're building a routine around the brands it carries, this app is the version of the store that travels with you. It keeps your Ulta Beauty Rewards points progress in view, lets you turn membership and app-exclusive offers on, and lets you redeem points whenever you like. That combination is the core of it: your account, your offers and your shopping in one place rather than spread across a store visit and a browser.

The other half is discovery. Virtual try-on sits in GLAMlab, alongside a shade matcher and skin care suggestions from Skin Analysis. Between browsing by category and checking shades before you commit, it's built for people who like to research a purchase before they make it.

It has been on Google Play since November 2012 and carries a 4.6 average from more than 220,000 ratings, with over 5 million installs. It's free, with no ads and no in-app purchases, so nothing here is gated behind a second payment on top of what you buy.

Rewards and offers in one place

The rewards side is the part I'd expect most people to open first. Points balance, membership and app-only offers, and redemption are all handled in the app. Because it all lives in the app, your points progress and offers are in one place.

Opting in to push notifications is what keeps the offers side moving. The developer positions these as a way to hear about app-exclusive offers and upcoming events at your local Ulta Beauty before they pass. If you'd rather not have a retailer messaging you, the opt-in is there to take or leave.

What appeals to me about this arrangement is how straightforward it is. The spending happens when you decide to buy something, which is a cleaner arrangement than a lot of retail apps manage.

Try-on tools before you buy

GLAMlab has been updated, and virtual try-on is the feature that makes most sense on a phone. Rather than guessing how a color reads on you, you can see it before adding it to a basket. The Foundation Shade Matcher does a narrower job: it's there to help you land on a shade rather than work through a wall of swatches.

Skin Analysis takes a different route, producing a skin care recommendation based on your own skin. That's the sort of thing that's easy to get wrong in a store aisle, and having a starting point before you browse is genuinely useful if you don't know the category well.

I'd treat all three as a starting point rather than a final answer. They narrow the field, which is the hard part when a store carries as many brands as this one does. How closely a recommendation matches what you'd have picked yourself is something you'll only judge once you're using it.

Shopping by category and by values

Browsing works the way you'd expect from a modern retail app: shop by category, then filter by brand, price, rating, bestsellers or new arrivals. Those filters matter more than they sound, because they let you cut a very large catalog down to something you can actually look through. You can also find brands that are sold exclusively through Ulta Beauty.

Conscious Beauty is the other way in. It groups products under five pillars: Clean Ingredients, Vegan, Cruelty Free, Sustainable Packaging and Give Back. If those criteria shape what you buy, having them as a filter rather than something you research brand by brand saves real effort. There is also a section for brands backing underrepresented voices in beauty, giving another way to browse.

Between the standard filters and the values-based ones, the app covers two different kinds of shopper: the one who knows what they want and wants to find it quickly, and the one who wants the catalog sorted by what a product stands for before they look at anything else.

Booking a salon appointment

The Salon at Ulta Beauty is bookable from inside the app. The services listed cover hair, waxing and brows, makeup and lashes, skin services and ear piercing, which is a broader menu than a hair-only booking tool would give you.

For anyone who already visits for color or a cut, having the booking in the same app as rewards and shopping means one place to check rather than two. It also makes it easier to line up an appointment with a restock, which is the sort of small convenience that decides whether an app stays installed.

I wouldn't expect the booking flow to replace a phone call for anything unusual, but for the services listed it's a sensible way to arrange a visit without waiting on hold.

What you need to get going

The app is a free download. The one thing it does spell out is the push notification opt-in, which is what puts app-exclusive offers and news of events at your local Ulta Beauty in front of you. That's a choice you make rather than a step you have to complete.

Points tracking and activating membership offers sit in the rewards section. If you shop there already, that's likely to be in place. The shopping, try-on and booking features are there too.

The most recent update is described as performance improvements and bug fixes, which is the maintenance you'd hope to see rather than a new feature drop.

A good fit for regular Ulta shoppers

This app makes most sense for someone who already has a rewards account and buys beauty products often enough that points add up. For that person, the combination of balance tracking, offer activation and redemption in one place is the reason to keep it on the home screen.

It also suits anyone who researches before buying. Virtual try-on, shade matching and skin care suggestions are aimed at people who want a second opinion before spending on a foundation or a new serum. And if you use the salon for hair, brows or skin services, the booking feature folds that into the same app.

If your beauty shopping is occasional and spread across several retailers, the rewards side won't have much to work with, and the app's value comes down to browsing and the try-on tools. That's a fair reason to install it before a specific purchase rather than keep it around.

The verdict on the Ulta Beauty app

I'd recommend this to regular Ulta Beauty shoppers without much hesitation. It's free, it doesn't interrupt you with ads, and it doesn't ask for purchases inside the app. The rewards tracking and redemption, the try-on and shade tools, the filtered catalog and the salon booking all serve the same person: someone who already spends money there and wants the account side of it on their phone.

The 4.6 average across more than 220,000 ratings suggests that's broadly how it lands. The limitations are the natural ones: the try-on tools are aids to a decision rather than the decision itself.

If you fit that profile, install it and opt in to notifications so the offers actually reach you. If you're an occasional shopper at several stores, it's still a useful catalog and try-on tool, just a less essential one.

What's new in version 10.17

Performance improvements and bug fixes: Enjoy a smoother, more reliable app experience.