Butterfly Express Essential Oils Review
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Butterfly Expressions, also known as Butterfly Express, is a family-run herbalism based health company that was founded over 20 years ago by LaRee Westover and her daughter, Valaree Sharp. Founded in Idaho, Butterfly Express offers a variety of products including essential oils, diffusers, carrier oils, hydrosols, and cases and bags.
Unlike many other large essential oil companies like DoTERRA, Butterfly Express is not a MLM company. They operate out of a small warehouse with around 30 employees, most of which are family members. Because of this, their products are more affordable than others. The goal of the company is bringing their customers quality essential oils at an affordable price.
Our Favourite Essential Oils from Butterfly Express
1. Lavender Essential Oil
Butterfly Express makes some remarkable blends of oils which are definitely worth checking out. But, the Lavender officinalis that they carry is arguably their highest quality oil they carry. It's used in over a dozen of their proprietary blends as a base note for that reason as well! Lavender is an amazing tool for aromatherapists (professionals and hobbyists alike) with its anti-microbial, anti-anxiety and relaxing and soothing properties.
2. Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is an amazing essential oil with a wide variety of benefits that it produces. Eucalyptus oil is known to be anti-microbial, relieve pain and is often used in relieving and soothing breathing issues like COPD, asthma and other breathing complications. Butterfly Express' Blue Mallee is a premium oil harvested from Australian trees.
3. Copaiba
Copaiba balsam, or copaiba, is an oil that has been making waves for itself lately, primarily due to its similarities to CBD. Copaiba is known to provide anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety and pain relieving benefits to the user and is an affordable solution to these common issues. Harvested from the Copaiba Balsam tree, this oil works magic for its users!
About the Company
The family-run business also offers classes on the basics of essential oils which you can find on YouTube. Now before we go any further into this review, we will disclaim one thing: Yes, LaRee Westover is the mother of the bestselling author Tara Westover. If the name Tara Westover doesn't ring a bell, in 2018 Tara Westover released Educated which is a memoir recounting her overcoming her survivalist Mormon family. The first half of the memoir is a shocking and eye-opening recount of a childhood that is far from the norm. The book spent 119 weeks on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list.
Throughout the memoir, Tara recounts how her mother turned to herbalism to cure many of their (quite serious) injuries. As survivalist Mormons, the Westovers didn't believe in modern day medicine. The memoir recounts the beginnings of her mother's journey into herbalism, forming Westover oils, and how she eventually became successful enough to hold classes for other women in the area who also wanted to learn about herbalism.
This all being said, we promise this review is our un-biased opinion on Butterfly Express Essential Oils as a company. Like our other reviews, we'll dive deep into the quality and sourcing, testing, affordability, and all other factors that separates the good from the bad in the world of essential oil companies.
Products & Offerings
Butterfly Express really checks all the boxes with their extensive amount of products and offerings. The company offers 100+ different essential oil singles and blends. On top of this, Butterfly Express also provides herbs, blessed waters, carrier oils, essential oil accessories, books, and vitamins and supplements.
Essential Oils
Butterfly Express offers 111 essential oil blends and 180 essential oil singles. For each essential oil, whether it's a blend or a single, the company clearly states what the aroma will be, the benefits of the oil, the ingredient list (for blends), the botanical name, etc. The variety of blends and singles is one of the things about Butterfly Express that definitely sets them above some of their competitors. You can find an essential oil blend of single for every need you have.
Our personal favourite from their blends is their Tranquility Essential Oil. This blend has 9 ingredients and is one of their best selling blends. This blend is great to use if you experience anxiety and panic attacks. You can also use this blend to relieve yourself of migraines and tension headaches. This popular blend is available to purchase in over 10+ kits (bonus!).
Butterfly Express also offers a Cross Reference page where they compare their essential oils with those of DoTERRA, Plant Therapy, and Young Living. On their Information page, you can find out a lot more about each essential oil along with which ones work for children, methods of use, safety guidelines, etc.
Herb Shop & Blessed Water
Butterfly Express offers a pretty extensive herb shop with over 545 options. The herb shop consists of dry mixtures and liquid mixtures. With the dry mixtures, you can make your own tinctures, teas, slaves, recipes, etc. We haven't tried anything from their herb shop yet, but it's clear that LaRee's background in herbalism is solid with the amount of products and guidance she provides when it comes down to her herb shop.
Butterfly Express also provides over 845 different types of blessed water. As we definitely aren't experts on blessed water, we'll let you guys do your own research on this offering here.
Carrier Oils
We love a company that offers carrier oils! Remember, not all essential oils are intended for direct topical use on the skin so it's always important to dilute your oils using a carrier oil. Butterfly Express offers more than 30 carriers and our personal favourites are their Grapeseed, Jojoba, and Almond oils.
Other Products
Butterfly Express also offers hydrosols, diffusers, and cases and bags, books, kits, and vitamins and supplements. Their wide array of products and offerings is telling of how experienced the Westover family is when it comes down to herbalism and essential oils.
For those who aren't familiar with hydrosols, hydrosols contain water-soluble parts of the plant whereas essential oils consist of the fat-soluble parts of the plant. Hydrosols are much less concentrated and can be great to use in your skincare routine or as perfumes, deodorants, air fresheners and aromatherapy sprays.
People love good essential oil kits! Butterfly Express has done an excellent job in this area by offering over 30 different types of kits.
Quality & Purity
Okay, this is where we got a bit stuck. As per their product information, Butterfly Express only produces and sells 100% pure oils. Unfortunately, they don't provide information on their sourcing, testing, and distillation process. They do provide an extensive ingredient list for each of their oils along with the extraction method. For example, for their single Lavender oil, you can see the entire ingredient list, general information, therapeutic properties, plant family, aromatic considerations, application, emotional aspects, and physical aspects.
They also provide a whole page on understanding tests and standards for essential oils, but they never once clearly state what their own standards and testing processes are. Butterfly Express Essential Oils claims they're 100% pure, but unless we have hardcore proof, it's hard to put our trust into the company entirely if they don't provide us with proof, or any reference towards testing.
Regular Pricing and Wholesale Pricing
Butterfly Express has lower price points in comparison to other essential oil companies. Now we don't exactly know how they do their testing and sourcing, but if their products are 100% pure as they claim then they're definitely one of the most affordable, high quality essential oil brands.
The most expensive essential oil they offer is Rose, which comes in at $158.73. Yes, you read that right. That being said, Rose is the most notorious essential oil for being expensive. On average, Butterfly Express essential oils come in between $9.00-$16.00.
Butterfly Expressions also offers wholesale for companies and customers who wish to buy in bulk. These are unique, specific prices just for wholesale members. In order to access the wholesale items you have to create a wholesale account.
Customer Service and Website
People love a user-friendly website, and in our opinion, Butterfly Expressions isn't one. The Butterfly Expressions website has a lot of information packed into the website and it can be a bit hard to navigate at points. .
Shipping costs aren't covered by the company, and if you're in Canada you're looking at around $20USD in shipping costs.
Frequently Asked Questions about Butterfly Express Essential Oils
Who owns Butterfly Express oils?
Butterfly Express oils is owned by LaRee Westover and her daughter, Valaree Sharp. They operate out of of Clifton, Idaho. Majority of their team is comprised of family members and friends!
Are Butterfly Express oils pure?
According to the company, yes, Butterfly Express oils are pure. That being said, since they don't provide the consumer with any testing and sourcing information, we really can never know for sure.
What essential oils attract butterflies?
Butterflies love essential oils! Using essential oils is a great way to attract butterflies to your garden and around your home. If you want to have more butterflies around you, try putting a few drops of lavender, fennel, helichrysum, sage, or orange into a cup of water in your garden.
Looking for more of the Best Essential Oil Brands?
Butterfly Express Oils are just one more essential oil brand of the dozens we've reviewed over the years. If you're interested in how they stack up against our other essential oil brand review, check out our full article here. We compare and contrast all the companies making the best essential oils, and also let you know which brands to stay away from!