Color analysis app complaints: what 1,012 App Store reviews say

What do people complain about most?

Money comes first. Of the 1,012 low-star reviews, 450 mention a price, a subscription, a trial, a renewal, cancelling or a refund. Another large group, 304 reviews, says the result itself was locked until they paid. Taken together, 595 of the 1,012 reviews (59%) are about one or both.

Share of 1,012 one- and two-star reviews that mention each complaint

Price, subscription or charges44%
Result locked until you pay30%
Result changed or seemed wrong19%
Crashes and error messages7%
Photo or lighting trouble6%
Ads2%
None of these25%

1,012 one- and two-star written reviews of 10 color analysis apps, US App Store, read 13 October 2026. A review can mention more than one complaint, so the shares add up to more than 100%.

Within the 450 billing complaints, 130 mention cancelling or trying to, 71 mention a refund or their money back, 60 mention a weekly plan and 44 a trial.

I cancelled this subscription months ago and continue to be charged

One-star review of Style DNA, December 2024

The locked-result complaints are about timing as much as price. The app was free to download, and 83 of these reviews mention the photo or the questions. Many of them say the price showed up only after the photo was taken or the questions were answered. One reviewer of Palette put it in a line: “I would rather you just tell me the app costs money upfront.”

A result that changes is the third theme. Several reviewers took more than one photo and got a different season each time. A Dressika reviewer wrote in September 2026: “It literally changes each time you upload a new photo.” Ads, crashes and trouble with the photo itself come up far less often.

How were the reviews counted?

How we counted

Which apps. On 13 October 2026 we searched the US App Store for “color analysis” and took the 10 color analysis apps with the most ratings. Two results that are not color analysis apps, a portrait editor and a color-naming tool, were left out.
Which reviews. For each app we collected Apple’s public review feed, newest first, as far as it goes (it stops at 500). That gave 1,400 written reviews. 1,012 of them have one or two stars. The 1,012 low-star reviews were written between June 2019 and October 2026, and 96% of them are from 2024 on.
How they were sorted. Each low-star review was sorted by the words in its title and text, with one fixed word list per complaint. For example, “charged”, “cancel”, “refund”, “trial”, “weekly” or a dollar amount count as price or charges, and “have to pay”, “not free” or “after I uploaded” count as a locked result. A review can count under more than one complaint.
How we checked. We read 30 of the sorted reviews, picked at random, by hand. 24 were sorted exactly right. Four missed a complaint they made and two had one complaint too many, so the shares above are close, and if anything a little low.
What it cannot show. Written reviews lean much lower than the stars. 72% of the 1,400 written reviews gave one or two stars, while every app’s overall rating is above 4. Read this as what goes wrong when something does, not as how often it does.

What do reviewers say about each app?

The eight apps with at least 20 low-star reviews are below. Two more, GlowStudio and Show My Colors, had 5 and 1, too few for a share, and are counted only in the totals. The stars are each app’s overall rating on the App Store on 13 October 2026.

App	Stars (ratings)	Low-star reviews	Most common complaints
Style DNA	4.3 (7,501)	364	Price or charges 59%, locked result 21%, result changed or wrong 18%
Dressika	4.3 (5,531)	163	Result changed or wrong 33%, price or charges 30%, locked result 28%
My Best Colors	4.7 (2,776)	45	Price or charges 33%, result changed or wrong 13%, crashes and errors 13%
Vivaldi	4.3 (2,009)	37	Locked result 59%, price or charges 32%, photo trouble 11%
Palette	4.3 (1,853)	103	Locked result 52%, price or charges 50%, result changed or wrong 18%
StyleLab	4.5 (1,649)	49	Price or charges 29%, locked result 16%, result changed or wrong 14%
WhatColors	4.1 (1,051)	225	Price or charges 40%, locked result 38%, result changed or wrong 16%
StyleIt AI	4.3 (351)	20	Photo trouble 25%, price or charges 20%, locked result 20%

The complaints are not all the same kind. Style DNA’s low-star reviews are mostly about subscriptions and cancelling, and it is also a stylist and closet app, so some complaints are about outfits rather than colors. At My Best Colors, several reviewers expected the app to tell them their season and found they had to pick it themselves.

Is Dressika worth it?

That depends on what you want from it, and the reviews cannot answer it for you. Here is what they do show. Dressika is rated 4.3 from 5,531 ratings. In its 163 low-star written reviews the most common complaint was a result that changed or seemed wrong (33%), ahead of price or charges (30%) and a result locked until you pay (28%). Its listing shows both Premium plans (1 week, 1 month, 12 months) and separate color analysis purchases.

Are color analysis apps a subscription?

Many are, and the price list is easy to miss. Every App Store listing has an “In-App Purchases” section near the bottom that shows each item’s name and price. On 13 October 2026 the listings showed:

Dressika: Premium for 1 week ($4.90), 1 month ($4.49) and 12 months ($12.49), and “Color Analysis - Premium” items from $6 to $40.
Style DNA: monthly, 3-month, 6-month and annual subscriptions, from $7.99 to $39.99, plus a $9.99 Advanced Color Palette.
WhatColors: Weekly Premium Access at $9.99, and other items from $5.99 to $29.99.
StyleLab: 1-week plans from $5.99 to $9.99 and 1-year plans from $34.99 to $49.99.
Vivaldi: Premium Monthly at $8, Premium Yearly at $18 or $36, and AI Analysis at $6.
My Best Colors: Lifetime Premium Access at $14.99.

The listing does not always say which items renew. A name with “week”, “month” or “year” in it usually means a plan that renews until you cancel it.

What should you check before you pay?

This data cannot name a best color analysis app. Every app here has an overall rating above 4 and a list of unhappy reviews. These checks answer the complaints people make most:

Is the result free, or only the download? Read the description and the In-App Purchases list before you take a photo.
Is it one payment or a plan? Look for “week”, “month” or “year” in the item names. If you start a trial, put the date it ends in your calendar.
Do you know where to cancel? On an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions. Several reviewers deleted the app and were still charged.
Do you know where to ask for a refund? Apple takes refund requests for App Store purchases at reportaproblem.apple.com.
What do the newest low-star reviews say? The star average hides them. Sort by most recent and read a page.
Will you take the photo the same way each time? Daylight from a window, no filter. Then a second photo is a fair check of the first.

Some women skip apps and see a stylist in person instead, which usually costs a few hundred dollars. What each kind of analysis costs is on our color analysis cost page.

How does Back in Color handle these complaints?

Back in Color is an online color analysis on the web, with no app to download. Here is what it does about each complaint, as it works today:

The complaint	What Back in Color does
Price or charges	One payment. No subscription, no renewal and no trial, so there is nothing to cancel.
Result locked until you pay	Before the photo, the app tells you the full result is paid and costs under $40. You see your undertone and three colors before you pay, and the exact price before you confirm.
Result changed or seemed wrong	It reads your answers to six questions as well as the photo. A different photo can still move the result a little; your answers keep it steady. If the photo is too dark, lit from one side or taken from too far away, it tells you before it goes on. After paying you can redo the analysis and move your purchase to the new result up to 3 times.
Error after paying	If your result did not open or the analysis failed, you get a full refund when you write within 14 days of paying.
Ads	No ads, no selling, no AI training.

It can still be wrong. It is software reading one photo and your answers, and lighting matters a great deal. Each step is on the how it works page, and who runs it, with the full refund terms, is on the about page.

Sources

Apple, App Store customer reviews feed (JSON), US store, newest first, 10 apps, 1,400 written reviews. Read 13 October 2026.
Apple, iTunes Search and Lookup, star ratings and rating counts for the same 10 apps. Read 13 October 2026.
App Store listings, In-App Purchases sections: Color Analysis - Dressika, Style DNA: AI Stylist & Closet, WhatColors: AI Face Try On, My Color Analysis AI StyleLab, Vivaldi Color Analysis, My Best Colors, Palette - Color Analysis, Color Analysis - StyleIt AI. Read 13 October 2026.
Apple Support, Cancel a subscription from Apple. Read 13 October 2026.
Apple Support, Request a refund for apps or content that you bought from Apple, published 17 September 2026. Read 13 October 2026.
Back in Color, Terms and Privacy, last updated 13 October 2026.