I spent six months as an EllieMD customer. The microdosing itself worked for me. The company was fine. And I still left.
If you're trying to decide between microdosing providers, or you're already on EllieMD and wondering if the price is normal, this one's for you.
Short version: I switched to Join Josie, I'm saving $50 a month for what is essentially the same prescription, and the customer service is honestly better. But let me back up, because the reason I microdose at all is the part most reviews skip.
Why I Microdosed a GLP-1 in the First Place
I lost my weight on a GLP-1. That part of the story went the way it goes for a lot of us. The part nobody prepared me for was what happened when I tried to get off of it.
My doctor and I agreed I'd hit my goal, so we tapered me off. And within a few weeks, the food noise came creeping back in. If you've never dealt with food noise, I'm a little jealous of you. It's not regular hunger. It's this constant low hum of thinking about food when there is no reason to be thinking about food.
For me it showed up worst right before bed. I'd be brushing my teeth, fully done with the day, and I'd find myself wandering to the pantry anyway. A handful of M&Ms. Sometimes popcorn. It didn't even matter what it was, honestly. Any snack that would quiet the craving so I could go to sleep. I wasn't bingeing. I was just... nibbling my way backward, a few hundred calories at a time, every single night.
I white-knuckled it for a while and it was genuinely one of the harder things I've done. That's when my doctor and I started talking about microdosing. The idea is simple: instead of a full therapeutic dose for weight loss, you take a small fraction of it for maintenance. Enough to keep the food noise turned down. Not enough to keep losing.
We decided together that this would be a long-term thing for me. I'm in the maintenance phase now. I'm not chasing a number anymore. I'm protecting the results I already worked for, and for my brain chemistry, a tiny dose is what makes that possible. That's it. That's the whole goal.
My Six Months With EllieMD
EllieMD was where I started, mostly because it was everywhere. Which, foreshadowing, becomes relevant later.
The honest review: the service was decent. Sign-up was easy, my prescription for compounded tirzepatide shipped reliably, and the microdose did exactly what I needed it to do. The pantry stopped calling my name at 10 pm. That alone made it worth the money to me.
But a few things wore on me over those six months.
The Ad That Changed My Mind
The irony is not lost on me that I left EllieMD partly because of ads, and found the replacement through an ad. But there it was one day: Join Josie, offering compounded tirzepatide microdosing for $189 a month.
Same category of prescription. Fifty dollars less. Every single month.
When you and your doctor have decided this is a long-term commitment, that math is not small. $50 a month is $600 a year. For a medication I plan to be on for the foreseeable future, staying with the more expensive option out of pure inertia didn't make sense anymore.
Canceling EllieMD (Brace Yourself a Little)
I'll be honest, canceling was the most annoying part of the whole experience. They really tried to keep me. Offers, questions, more offers. I understand it, every subscription company does some version of this, but it took more persistence than it should have.
My answer stayed the same the whole way through: the price was the price. I wasn't leaving because the product failed me. I was leaving because someone else offered the same thing for meaningfully less, and no retention script changes that.
Switching to Join Josie
As a women in menopause, I try to find companies that align with my stage of life - Join Josie fits that mold perfectly.
Here's the thing I was most nervous about, and it turned out to be a non-issue: the transition.
Because I'm microdosing, the dose itself is tiny, and matching my prescription strength at a new provider was straightforward. This is one quiet advantage of being in the maintenance phase. I wasn't mid-titration, I wasn't chasing a moving target. I just needed the same small dose I'd already been stable on. Join Josie's provider reviewed my history, we confirmed the plan, and my first shipment arrived without any gap in my routine.
A few months in, here's my honest comparison:
Compare | EllieMD | Join Josie |
|---|---|---|
Monthly price (tirzepatide microdosing) | $239 | $189 |
Response time on questions | 1 to 2 days | Within hours |
Cancellation | Pushy | Haven't needed to find out |
Cancellation | Yes | Yes |
Price paid over 6 months | $1,434 | $1,134 |
Price paid over 12 months | $2,868 | $2,268 |
The medication works the same, which is exactly what I expected. As far as the dose: it's doing the same quiet job and the pantry and I remain on polite, distant terms.
The service, though, is where Join Josie has genuinely surprised me. When I message with a question, I hear back within hours. Not days. Hours. For something as personal as a prescription, that responsiveness matters more to me than I realized when I was living without it.
So Was EllieMD Bad?
No, and I want to be fair here. EllieMD did what I paid it to do. If you're a happy EllieMD customer and the price doesn't bother you, I'm not telling you to jump ship.
But if you're paying $239 a month and assuming that's the going rate, it isn't. And if the constant influencer push rubs you the wrong way like it did me, know that the less-hyped options are not lesser options.
Microdosing Tirzepatide in Menopause Has Been A Game Changer For Me
Ever since my hormones changed, I started gaining weight. And after trying fad diet after fad diet + exercising more, still nothing was happening. That's when I finally realized it wasn't about the work I was putting in. Nope. In fact, at least for me, it was hormonal changes and my body was responding differently.
I reached my goal weight with a full-dose GLP-1, then stopped and gained some more back (nobody told me what would happen after you stop). When I started microdosing tirzepatide, I have now maintained the weight I'm happy with... for months!!! And it's because it turns the food noise down for me - Game Changer.
The Bottom Line
I microdose for one reason: to keep the food noise quiet so I can maintain the weight I already lost. My doctor is on board, the plan is long-term, and the goal is simple.
Join Josie gives me exactly that for $189 a month instead of $239, answers my questions in hours instead of days, and doesn't follow me around my social feeds. Fifty dollars a month back in my pocket for the same small dose and better service. That's not a hard decision. That's just the easiest $600 a year I've ever saved.
As always, this is my experience, not medical advice. Whether microdosing makes sense for you, and at what dose, is a conversation for you and your doctor. Mine happens to be a keeper.
