Both Sips by and Tea Runners are tea subscription boxes that send you 4 teas to try each month. I enjoy drinking tea while I read, write, and edit, but I don’t want to browse stores in the middle of a pandemic, hence my latest subscription box addiction. Trying new teas has become a bit of a hobby for me and I’m trying to not let publishing creep back into eating up my non-publishing hobbies and social time. I tried both Sips by and Tea Runners in July to make it easier to directly compare since I was interested in both. Both boxes have pros and cons, but I greatly enjoyed both of them for different reasons. Let’s compare the big points you may want to take into account if you are searching for the right tea box.
My Sips by refer-a-friend referral code for $5 off is here.
Price: Sips by costs $15 a month while Tea Runners is $25. While Sips by is cheaper, you do get more tea with Tea Runners, making the higher price point worth the amount you get. With Sips by you get about 4 cups per sample, or 16 cups a box. With Tea Runners you get 30-50 cups a box. This makes Sips by great for sampling new brands, while Tea Runners stocks me up for the month with their tea.
Customization: With Sips by you take a personality quiz that helps them personalize your teas. If you hate a specific flavor or tea type or prefer loose tea over bags you can say so. You also get to list any allergies or other dietary restrictions. You also get to rate each tea to help with future personalizations. This is a great box to choose if you want to be surprised like me and try a variety of brands. Once your box ships, the teas you are getting can be seen in your account for those who can’t wait. Personally I never look because this box is all about the surprise for me. However, because you don’t know what you got until the box has been packed and shipped, unlike Tea Runners you can’t make substitutions.
With Tea Runners you can subscribe by box type. Their boxes are the original box (which includes a mix of all tea types), pure box (only pure tea), all black tea box, and the herbal box. This lets you pick your favorite type of tea to focus on, or go with original if you like to try a variety. Tea Runners sends an email listing the teas they will be sending ahead of time and you have until the 1st of the month to make any substitutions. If you don’t like a tea you will be getting, you can pick from any other tea being sent in any of the boxes that month and often extra teas are added to the selection. I switched out one black tea in my black tea box with a white tea and the process was easy. I suppose you could ignore the email to make the box a surprise, but if you have an allergy or certain types of teas you don’t like then you should check. The chance to make substitutions gives you more direct control over what to try each month and you can switch box types as well.
Quality: Sips by gives you different brands to try and I get a variety of bagged and loose leaf tea, so quality can be very brand dependent. Tea Runners tends to be more predictable since they focus on high quality teas from around the world including award winners like Golden Monkey. Once you’ve had some of their teas you know exactly what quality to expect each box. This is the box for those who put quality high on their lists of wants in a tea subscription and who love loose leaf. Tea Runners sends the kinds of teas I get at small tea stores and cafes, while Sips by sometimes has brands I recognize from grocery stores, like Stash and The Republic of Tea. Sips by has a lot of smaller tea companies included too that I wouldn’t have otherwise found.
Tea info: Both boxes share information on how to brew your tea right on the tea packaging itself (Tea Runners) or on the info slip in your box (Sips by), making it easy to check how to steep each tea. Sips by shares the social media tags for each brand too for you to tag them in photos for those who use social media.
Photos: This is probably only a concern for those who like to post on social media. Both boxes have fantastic designs that look great in photos. I like to post pictures on my instagram, and I think Sips by is more interesting to post monthly photos of for a few reasons. One, the boxes are personalized, so no one gets the same box unlike Tea Runners. All the bags for Tea Runners look the same, whereas for Sips by you get the original packaging from each brand, which gives each month a different look. If you look at my Sips by photos in past posts you’ll see I like to theme my photos around the tea name or packaging colors.
July Boxes: In my July Sips by box I got Fujian oolong by Bare Leaves, Tart-tea to the Par-tea by Tea Kitten, Breakfast in Paris by Stash Tea, and a Green Tea Lemon Ginger by Miracle Tree.
In Tea Runners I got Black Snow Leopard, Golden Monkey, Black Violet, and Butterfly Mango Dragon Fruit White (this last one I switched out with a smoky black tea I didn’t want). My SO fell in love with Tea Runners on this box and we both especially enjoyed Golden Monkey, which is considered one of the finest black teas in the world.
At the end of the day if I wanted a tea box to sample a variety of brands, I’d go with Sips by. If I wanted quality loose leaf that stocks me up for a month of tea, I’d go with Tea Runners.