The Best Affordable Alternatives To The Ordinary's Top Sellers

Update: Yesterday, Deciem founder Brandon Truaxe, whose once-“quirky” behavior quickly turned to erratic and even volatile over the past year, announced that the company would be shutting down, effective immediately. In a minute-long video posted to Instagram, an emotional Truaxe rambled on about “financial crimes,” “major criminal activity,” and the 2012 Ben Affleck film Argo.

Though the Deciem website has since been reinstated after several hours of deletion, the brick-and-mortar stores appear to be closed, and stockists like Beautylish have reported that Truaxe has discontinued their supply partnership, which can only mean one thing: We may well be looking at a world without $9 retinoids in the very near future. If you haven't already, now would be a really good time to track down some alternatives to your The Ordinary must-haves...

There are a lot of reasons to love The Ordinary: the simplified formulas, the potent ingredients, the mix-and-match possibilities, the low, low prices. Unfortunately, there are also quite a few reasons to not want to support the brand, which have become more and more apparent over the past few months as Brandon Truaxe, the founder and CEO of The Ordinary and its parent company, Deciem, has very publicly made a bit of a mess of it.

While boycotting a company whose divisive views you disagree with is fairly easy when it’s something like, say, a chicken-sandwich chain that opposes same-sex marriage, cutting The Ordinary out of your routine might feel like waving goodbye to good skin, especially if you’re not looking to sell a kidney in exchange for a new seven-step skin-care routine. But there are still ways to stock up on the good stuff without spending an insane amount of money, while getting to keep all of your organs. (Though you do only need one kidney, after all.)

Ahead, the best — and most affordable — product alternatives to try if you love The Ordinary, but aren’t in love with what’s going on behind-the-scenes.