Where to Buy Your Supplements

SPONSOR

Custom Nutrition Warehouse
This subforum's sponsor. They have a rep who posts in here as "CustomNW".

Sherdog
Sherwood slings some of Randy Couture's Light Force and the Body Quicken.


SEARCH
Froogle
If you're only buying a single supp, always check Froogle for the most comprehensive listing of prices.


EBAY
eBay > Healthy & Beauty > Nutritional Supplements
For some supplements (like protein bars), you can buy in mass at wholesale prices that aren't matched elsewhere. Always check expirations on these products.


GENERAL

DPS Nutrition
Without a doubt my #1 source. Service is fast, professional, and they give the usual bonuses at $100, $200, $300, etc. Nobody's cheaper on the whole (example: 2.48 lb. canisters of Muscle Milk are $20), especially when you factor in shipping. It used to be that it was automatically $5 for any order under 10 pounds, but I recently made a 14 pound order, and it was still $5 UPS Ground Shipping. You just can't beat DPS.

Bodybuilding.com Cyberstore
The biggest supplement store in the world. They have almost everything on the planet, and an incredible reputation with customers.
Bodybuilding.com does Price Matching. Here is the Bodybuilding.com Price Matching Restrictions
(1) Price match must be for the every item on the entire order. If third party's store does not offer additional items requested, they must be purchased separately.
(2) The item(s) must be the exact size and version of the one carried at Bodybuilding.com.
(3) The item(s) must be in stock with the discount price currently advertised.
(4) The item(s) can not be a closeout or clearance item at Bodybuilding.com or the third party's store.
(5) Price matching applies to items sold and fulfilled by Bodybuilding.com's warehouses and does not apply to drop shipped items.
(6) The price considered will be the total price including shipping charges, taxes, etc.
(7) Price matching does not apply to membership clubs or auction sites.
(8) Price match products are not eligible for special offers or discounts.
(9) Price match orders are not eligible for free gifts.
(10) Typographical errors will not be matched.
(11) Price matching will only be honored for stores in the United States.
(12) All price matching is at the discretion of Bodybuilding.com and is subject to change at any time.
(13) Special Note: Bodybuilding.com no longer price matches Massnutrition.com
Price Match is most easily implemented by calling the following number:
1-866-236-8969

Supplements Canada
This seems to be the DPS for our friends up north: with a greater emphasis on bulk retail (it appears at a glance).

Bulk Nutrition
Not quite as cheap as DPS for general fare, but with a better selection for the more hardcore user/customizer (they tend to sell a lot of isolated substances in bulk that you can only get overpriced in designer formulas elsewhere). If you want to buy these certain supplements, their own brand line (1fast400) simply cannot be beat. For example, check out their prices on CEE.
Also, their customer service is the best I have ever encountered. Once, I placed a $150 order. Well, one product was on backorder, so I waited 5 days for the entire order to ship. When it came, they had included two extra bottles of two supplements I ordered, a free gym bag (worth $20), and a bonus for the $100+ purchase I wasn't even aware I was getting: Neurostim by Sciavation, worth approximately $23. Also, when I placed a separate order including a canister of Blueberry Muscle Milk, then decided the next morning I wanted the Cookies n' Creme, I emailed their order department, and the order was changed before it shipped out. Stellar.

Supplement Direct
FCFighter added this one. I haven't bought from them before, but several members here have mentioned this store, so I checked it out. It appears to be a mix of custom and industrial packaged items with the normal brand-fare. I noticed the Accelerade was $4 cheaper than at DPS. That's pretty damn good. And they'll sell an 11 pound bag of dextrose for $10. That's the best I've ever seen.

Nutricraze
An interesting shop mentioned by RyanGracie7. If you post at their forum, you earn $0.10 credit from each post towards supplements. If only Shidokanartist knew...
(Note: avoid the creatine serum. That's bogus. The fact that they even carry creatine serums is a count against the store).


PROTEIN

All the Whey
Sir contributed this one. These are the best bulk prices I've ever seen and they include their scores on their site: "All the WheyTM Protein Powder has the highest digestibility (100), the highest bio-availability (104), the highest protein efficiency ratio (3.2) and the highest PDCAAS score (1.14)." The Sherdog Jedi Council recommends whey proteins for post-workout consumption and caseins and milk protein isolates for all other times. Get them here.

True Protein
If you like to play the mad scientist, customizing your own protein powder can be fun, although you will pay more for the same product. Still, this can be useful, especially if you take an MRP; you may blend carbohydrate, protein, and fat powders all into one brew. I've personally used True Protein and highly recommend that you pay the $1/lb premium for the gourmet flavors. Their wide selection of flavors bests pretty much every pre-packaged manufacturer's (including Cytosport).

Protein Factory
Protein Factory includes a wider selection of powders than True Protein but a smaller selection of flavors. Its baseline is more costly than TP's. You may have read many negative things about PF at the bodybuilding.com forums, and I won't validate or dispute the claims made there. What I will say is that the only concrete evidence I've ever seen regarding the quality of their actual product was the publication of the second lab trial by Bulk Nutrition of their protein. PF failed the first trial miserably, but filed a lawsuit in response; the second trial showed all of Pf's proteins testing to claim except the Egg White Protein (which contained only 89% of the claimed protein content). Nevertheless, I wouldn't blame anyone here for avoiding PF due to the controversy when I am aware of no such controversy surrounding TP, but then, I don't want to be an alarmist-bandwagoner who blackballs PF from my thread because of a rumor mill at another forum.

Fat Wilhelm's Protein Powder Price Comparison
Fat Wilhelm compiled a list comparing the prices per pound (the cheapest he could find for quantities of 5 pounds or less) of many of the more popular brands out there. He organized the list according to protein type.


ANABOLIC

Supplement Warehouse
Maybe I should put this in the General section, as supposedly they have a 5% Price Match guarantee (where they'll beat any competitor's price by 5%). I haven't tested this.
I put them in "Anabolics" because not only are they one of the only stores I know that sells discontinued prohormones and AAS's (like ALRI Ergomax LMG and Anabolic Xtreme Superdrol), but they do so at the only sane prices (e.g. Netnutri wants $140 per bottle of Superdrol...Supplement Warehouse asks only $60).

Custom Nutrition Warehouse
They still have one of the largest and most competitively priced inventories of anabolic and anti-estrogenic agents; they also stock many super-cheap brandless custom powders.

Discount Anabolics
I read this morning about how 5 current prohormones were tested more closely than they would be in athletic mass-detection tests, and all 5 were actually designed anabolic steroids- one of which was banned in athletic competition two years ago. Then I saw 4 of those 5 products being sold here. Found the last on Froogle. Gotta love America.


VITAMINS, MINERALS & HERBS

Puritan's Pride
Dragon's addition. The 3-for-1 sale has their prices blowing even Costco's out of the water (Dragon says the 3-for-1 recurs). The few results I was able to see from ConsumerLabs (since I'm not a subscriber) showed PP passing with flying colors. They also sell Fish Oil, Glucosamine/Chondroitin with MSM, and ZMA (buy the chelated Zinc lozenges and chelated Calcium/Mag): three popular supplements around here.

Vitacost
I've never used them, but many do. They specialize in vitamins, and offer a better selection (such as with liquid and time-release) at great prices. Also, as Supersudo pointed out in ZMA thread, some vitamins/minerals require special treatment like chelation to be absorbed by the body. Some of the general retailers' products proved sub-par in this regard.


Honorable Mentions:
Legal Gear's List of Available Distributors
A more comprehensive listing of distributors than I've compiled here. It's a who's who of supplement distributors. Browse for yourself.

 

I used to use Netrition, and they're included in the Legal Gear link page, but I don't really see the point now that I know about DPS Nutrition, except that Netrition has a better layout and more information on their site (but this isn't a reason to buy from them, just to browse...and much of the "information" provided is just manufacturer propaganda).

All the Whey is a cool site, and definitely the best I've seen for buying bulk WPC. Thanks for that link. This is why I started this thread. I'm adding it to the list.

 

That's up to Kabuki, but there may be some issues that prevent this from being stickied, so let's not preemptively put it on him.

I think it's a good idea to include Leverage, even though there's already a sticky for them; after all, if it weren't for sponsors like them, we wouldn't have a place at all to exchange information. So I'm adding them now.

Also, I give Leverage credit. They've taken some beatings in here and haven't pulled sponsorship, and that shows some character, IMO.

 

In the Sample section (since I'm too cheap to pay $24 to subscribe for a year), ConsumerLabs shows three Puritan's Pride products passing with flying colors.

I'll assume that's true of all of them, then.

Great addition, Dragon. These prices are insane.

 

Leverage has only sold one product that I have seen. They've supplied free samples to a number of guys in here, so you'll have to ask them how it worked. You might be able to get one yourself, I dunno, but I think that period has expired.

 

Added Nutricraze.

 

That's because it's pure WPC. All whey is produced at the same major dairy plants in this country. The supplement companies just repackage it, refine it, or add to it.

I got a 33 lb. sack once for $109 (after shipping). It was from the Land-O-Lakes plant. Unflavored. My friends and I divvied it up.