Teledermatology Platforms Compared: Who Actually Reviews Your Case

How this page works. Nothing here is tested. No service is ranked or recommended, and no link on this page earns anything, because this site has no commercial relationship with any of them. Every claim about a service is quoted from that service's own website, checked on 10 September 2026. Companies change their pages, so check the date before relying on any of it.

The comparison runs on one question, and it is the first question the American Academy of Dermatology tells you to ask, because with an online clinic you don't always know who you're seeing. Its recommendation is that you consult a board-certified dermatologist who is licensed in your state.

Seven services that all describe themselves as online dermatology answer that question differently, and each of them says so plainly on its own site.

Question one: who reviews your case

Service	What its own site says about the provider
DermatologistOnCall	Board-certified dermatologists, specifically American Board of Dermatology certified
First Derm	A board-certified dermatologist reviews the case, with a stated reply window
Honeydew	A board-certified dermatologist reviews the case; providers are dermatologists and licensed nurse practitioners
Curology	A dermatology provider licensed in your state, who may be a physician, a physician assistant, or a nurse practitioner
Nurx	A team including doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses and pharmacists
Dermatica	A dermatology team listed as including consultant dermatologists, pharmacists, primary care doctors and others
SkyMD	Doctors, with the site organized around insurance acceptance

The wording matters more than the summary, so here it is.

DermatologistOnCall describes Online visits with board-certified dermatologists for $95 and names the certifying board, listing among its reasons to choose it Care from American Board of Dermatology-certified dermatologists. It also states that its providers are credentialed in accordance with NCQA standards and have experience treating patients both in person and through teledermatology.

Curology is the one people ask about most, and its own answer is more precise than the question usually is. Is Curology a real dermatologist? Its site states that Every Curology patient is paired with a dermatology provider licensed in their state, and then defines that provider: patients are personally assessed by their licensed dermatology provider, who is either a board-certified physician, physician assistant, or nurse practitioner with dermatology training.

Read that phrase closely, because the important word is the one that is not there. A board-certified physician is not the same credential as a board-certified dermatologist, and the sentence also allows for a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner. So Curology vs dermatologist is not quite the right framing either: Curology is telling you, on its own page, that your provider has dermatology training and a state license, and that they may or may not be a dermatologist.

That is a disclosure rather than a catch. The company published it; I am only placing it next to the standard the AAD sets.

Nurx describes a broader clinical team than dermatology alone, saying that Our team of experienced doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and pharmacists provides its care. Its skin offering sits alongside several other categories of medicine.

SkyMD organizes its dermatology service around photographs and insurance, inviting you to Upload photos of your skin concern and chat with a doctor, with insurance acceptance given prominence on the page.

First Derm answers the question in the same sentence that describes its process: You upload photos and describe your concern, and a board-certified dermatologist reviews your case without you having to reveal your identity. It also states a reply window, which none of the others do: Within 48 hours a board-certified Dermatologist will reply with professional information about your condition.

Honeydew discloses both halves of its staffing on the same page. It states that You complete a short questionnaire, share photos of your skin, and a board-certified dermatologist reviews your case, and separately that Honeydew providers are board-certified dermatologists and licensed nurse practitioners who prescribe the same FDA-approved medications you'd receive in a traditional office. Read together, those two sentences describe a mixed clinical team in which a dermatologist is named as the reviewer.

Dermatica describes a team rather than a reviewer. Its site says Our dermatology team includes consultant dermatologists, pharmacists, GPs, clinical researchers and formulation scientists to help you reach your treatment goals. On the pages I could read, I did not find a sentence stating who reviews an individual case, which is a different situation from the services above rather than a criticism of the care.

So do online dermatology sites use real dermatologists? Three of these seven name a board-certified dermatologist as the person who reviews your case. The rest describe licensed clinical teams that may or may not put a dermatologist in that seat, and none of them hides it.

One word doing three different jobs

Across these pages the word "dermatologist" appears in at least three distinct roles, and the roles are not interchangeable even though the word is.

Who reads your case. First Derm, Honeydew and DermatologistOnCall each put a board-certified dermatologist in that role in a sentence about their own process.

Who is on the team, alongside other clinicians. Curology names a physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner. Honeydew names dermatologists and nurse practitioners together. Dermatica names consultant dermatologists alongside pharmacists, primary care doctors, clinical researchers and formulation scientists. Nurx names an even broader team. In this role the word tells you a dermatologist exists somewhere in the organization, which is a weaker statement than the first one and a perfectly ordinary way to staff a service.

Who helped make the product. MDacne's site describes a customized, dermatologist-formulated acne treatment kit and offers unlimited dermatologist chat support. Dermatica describes a serum designed with dermatologists to target and help prevent advanced signs of skin aging. Here the word is about formulation, and formulation says nothing at all about who will read your photographs.

Two things follow, and neither of them is a ranking.

The first is that several of these companies use the word in more than one role on the same page, which is not deceptive but does mean the reader has to notice which sentence is which. The second is that only the first role answers the AAD's opening question. A kit formulated with dermatologists and reviewed by nobody is a different product from a consultation read by a dermatologist, and both are legitimate things to sell as long as you know which one you are buying.

What an online dermatology visit includes, and what it does not

The clearest published example is worth reading in full, because the boundary is where the surprises are.

DermatologistOnCall states its price directly: The cost of conducting an online visit with DermatologistOnCall is $95, payable by card, HSA, HRA or FSA. Then it names the exclusions: The online visit fee does not cover prescriptions and follow-up appointments outside the 30-day communication period.

Consultation, not treatment. For an ongoing skin condition the medication is usually the repeating cost, and a visit price tells you nothing about it. What does an online dermatology visit include is therefore a question to ask before comparing any two numbers, and how much does a dermatologist cost covers why the figures circulating for the in-person alternative deserve the same scrutiny.

Curology runs on a different model entirely. It is a subscription that pairs a consultation with a custom prescription formula, so the relevant number is recurring rather than per-visit. Its home page currently leads with a trial offer rather than an ongoing price, which means the figure you see first is not the figure you will pay.

Photographs, records and insurance

All four accept photographs, which matters because the AAD treats the inability to send them as a reason to use a different service. Sending usable ones is a skill with a published procedure, set out in how to photograph skin for a dermatologist.

On records, DermatologistOnCall is the most explicit of the four: its portal lets you access your treatment plan and, in its description, print your records or fax them to your primary care physician. That maps directly onto the AAD's fifth question, which asks whether you can obtain a record of the consultation to share with another clinician.

Online dermatology that takes insurance is the axis SkyMD leads with, listing accepted insurers as a navigation item rather than a footnote. The others present as cash or subscription services on the pages I read. As always, your insurer rather than the platform is the authority on whether a given visit is covered.

What none of these pages answered

The AAD's third question is the one I could not settle from any of the four sites, and it is arguably the most consequential: whether the service can arrange an in-person visit with a dermatologist in your area when one is needed, and specifically in a doctor's office rather than an emergency room.

To be precise about the limits of that statement: on the pages I checked on 28 August 2026, being the four listed at the top of this article, I did not find a clear answer to that question. That is not the same as saying these services have no referral pathway. It may be documented in terms of service, answered by support, or handled case by case. It is a question to ask before you pay, and the AAD's advice if a service cannot arrange it is to use one that can.

Three services are absent from this comparison for a duller reason: their sites did not return readable pages to me. Apostrophe and Hers returned errors to every request, and Musely returned a page whose text is assembled in the browser, so there was nothing quotable to check. Nothing follows from any of that about the quality of those services. The inclusion rule here is only whether a company's claims about itself can be read and verified by anyone, which is the same standard applied to the seven that are listed.

On medication cost, Honeydew is the most explicit of the group, stating that If you don't have insurance, generic pricing is available starting as low as $30/box. That figure is theirs and dated to the check at the top of this page, and it illustrates the point above rather than settling it: the consultation price and the prescription price are two different numbers, and only one of them repeats.

FAQ

Is Curology a real dermatologist? Curology's site says every patient is paired with a dermatology provider licensed in their state, who is either a board-certified physician, a physician assistant, or a nurse practitioner with dermatology training. So the provider is a licensed clinician with dermatology training, and may or may not be a dermatologist.

Which of these uses board-certified dermatologists? Of the four checked, DermatologistOnCall states that visits are with board-certified dermatologists and names the American Board of Dermatology.

Do online dermatology sites use real dermatologists? Some do, some use other licensed clinicians, and the ones checked here disclose which on their own sites. The AAD's advice is to ask for credentials, and to use a different service if a clinic will not provide them.

What does an online dermatology visit include? Read the exclusions rather than the price. One service states plainly that its $95 fee does not cover prescriptions or follow-up beyond a 30-day window.

Which online dermatology takes insurance? SkyMD leads with insurance acceptance among these four. Confirm with your own insurer rather than with the platform, since coverage depends on your plan.

Is a cheaper platform worse? Price does not answer the credential question, the referral question, or the records question, which are the ones the AAD puts first. A cheaper consultation with a clinician who can escalate may serve you better than an expensive one that cannot.

How do I choose between them? Ask the five questions in online dermatology vs in person and use whichever service answers all five. This page only shows how four of them answer the first one.

The line this page will not cross

One category does not belong on any of these platforms, and it is worth stating separately from everything above because it is the one people most want to solve cheaply and quickly.

A mole that is changing, itching or bleeding is an in-person appointment. Assessment uses tools and lighting that a photograph does not reproduce, and DermNet notes plainly that Some melanomas are extremely difficult to recognise clinically even for clinicians with a dermatoscope in hand. No teledermatology platform, including the one here that uses board-certified dermatologists, changes that.

Mention those words when you book and you will usually be seen sooner than the routine wait suggests, which is covered in how to prepare for a dermatologist appointment. For where the threshold sits on everything else, when to see a dermatologist sets it out.