Pricing and Features

HomeDNA offers a single DNA testing kit for only $119, although it is currently on sale at $89, and focuses only on determining the paternity of individuals. It is not aimed towards customers who are looking to find out more about their ancestry and ethnicity, and will not have any information regarding this matter. It is an affordable and efficient take on DNA paternity testing which can be done at the comfort of your home.

Inside the HomeDNA package, you will find cheek swabs both for the child and the alleged father, a detailed instruction manual complete with illustrations, and a return envelope that has already been paid for by the company. As a standard, make sure not to eat, drink, or have any kind of oral intake 30 minutes before scraping the inner side of the cheek for more accurate results.

If you need to have more people in the family tested, you can order additional kits from their website, although these will come at an added cost.

Results

Once the specimen reached their facility, it will only take around 3 to 5 business days before they can release the results. If you need to have the results rushed, you can have it in just 1 working day, although this will entail additional costs. You can check the results online by using the email and password that you have entered at the checkout page when the order was placed. You can have the results downloaded for whatever purpose it may serve; however, do take note that it is not court-admissible since there are stricter guidelines for such. You can contact them to request for a test that can be used for court purposes, though.

You may become a bit confused with the result page at your first glance, as it only contains a table with multi-colored ranges and values. Although HomeDNA could have given a more user-friendly presentation of their results, you can see the probability of the relationship at the bottom of the page, as with the possible paternal relationship between the two tested individuals.

Accuracy

With a chromosomal approach in paternity testing, HomeDNA is able to provide up to 99.99% accuracy of results. This works by identifying specific sequences in the DNA for multiple loci both from the father and child, and if possible, from the mother as well. Two DNA sequences in the child’s DNA will match from his or her biological parents, confirming the relationship.

Full Accreditation. Full Confidence.

DNA testing laboratories located in the US are required to undergo accreditation under the AABB, or American Association of Blood Banks, to ensure that they are upholding the standards in terms of equipment and processing. You may be wondering why this specific organization handles the accreditation when there is no blood extracted for this kind of test. Well, DNA tests originally required a blood specimen, and it was only a few years back when saliva and other specimen became the norm.

HomeDNA’s laboratories are fully compliant with the AABB’s standards, so you can rest assured that the your specimen undergoes the standard process when it comes to DNA testing. You wouldn’t want just anyone to get your personal and biological information, much less spend money on some shady company with an unreliable facility. With HomeDNA, you can put your worries to rest.

Customer Service

While HomeDNA has a short FAQ section, it covers a good chunk of their process, so there won’t be anything unclear should you take the test. If you have more questions, you can contact their support team via their toll-free hotline, or by sending an email. They also have a blog section that contains articles on paternity testing and the like. They don’t seem to have social media accounts as of the moment, which is a shame since reaching out to them and checking for updates can go a lot quicker with these avenues.

What's the Verdict on HomeDNA?

Worth It, Some Issues

HomeDNA Review 2020 – Conclusion

HomeDNA focuses on providing home paternity DNA tests, nothing more, nothing less. They aren’t offering ancestry and ethnicity testing, which means they aren’t really for the general public to try. Instead, their services are only for those who need to confirm the relationship between a supposed father and their child. Even with a limited scope of service, they can reassure customers of 99.99% accuracy with their process: using chromosomes and identifying sequences from one or both parents to compare to the child’s patterns. Customers who have also taken the test are assured of the test’s competence, with their laboratory having accreditation from the AABB. The results can be overwhelming though, as it has a fully technical presentation without any charts or graphs for easier interpretation. Still, with a highly affordable testing kit that offer results in just a couple of days, HomeDNA is one of the best paternity tests you can avail to date.