Azarius review: The world’s first online smartshop

While most smartshops—also spelled “smart shops”—are located on the high street, Azarius was the world’s first smartshop to operate online, offering its vast selection of psychedelics and paraphernalia to customers across Europe. This unique accolade may have cemented its reputation for providing otherworldly substances, but in today’s fast-paced environment, has the brand adapted and modernised to meet an increasing demand for trustworthy products?

Who are Azarius?

The Azarius store opened in 1993 and became the world’s first online smart shop with its domain Azarius.net in 1999. The Dutch business specialises in fungi, herbs, psychedelics, smoking paraphernalia, and much more. While it opened a flagship high-street store in 2008, it’s since returned to its roots, focusing solely on its online domain.

With this renewed focus comes a wave of branded Azarius products, including a dedicated magic truffle farm and the development of exclusive cannabis strains in partnership with F1 SeedTech. However, before breaking down how these initiatives have impacted performance in today’s competitive market, it helps to understand the smartshop’s extensive history.

The history of Azarius

With well over two decades of experience, Azarius has been around long enough to see the psychedelic world change significantly. And with that change comes an increasing demand for reliable, high-quality products consumers can trust. It’s one thing to sell products online, but it’s another challenge entirely to develop a range that can navigate ever-changing regulations and scrutiny.

Opening a flagship store

In 1993, they opened their flagship store, giving locals and tourists alike a taste of otherworldly substances such as magic truffles, natural herbs, legal highs, smoking gear, and much more. Located in central Amsterdam, it was also a focal point for consumers seeking information on psychedelic substances, as Azarius was focused on building an extensive library of information detailing its quality standards, proposed effects, dosage guidelines, and more.

Becoming the world’s first online smartshop

Azarius.net went live over twenty-five years ago. While that may not seem like a big deal in today’s digital landscape, the decision to operate online was significant. So significant, in fact, that Azarius was actually the world’s first online smartshop, offering herbs, psychedelics, and smoking paraphernalia to customers across the Netherlands.

Since online shopping was still in its infancy, Azarius.net was a monumental change for psychonauts. Azarius offered unparalleled access to products many would have had to source on the black market without guaranteeing quality or safety. Their new online space also gave them a chance to focus on a product influences, and how different substances make you feel.

Cultivating its own brand of truffles and cannabis strains

In an ever-evolving legal landscape, it’s become increasingly difficult for smartshop brands to source trusted plants, herbs, and fungi. Azarius has maintained its focus on quality and leveraged its experience to launch a dedicated magic truffle farm in 2018. With magic truffles available in-house, the brand has complete control over the cultivation process, ensuring contaminant-free products.

A year later, it took this focus one step further by partnering with F1 SeedTech to develop its own cannabis cultivation farms in Spain and the USA, subsequently releasing a growing range of cannabis seeds.

The Azarius website: New and improved

Fast-forward to 2025, and while Azarius may have relinquished its high-street store, the website that kicked off its business has been given a much-needed overhaul. Not only is it more user-friendly and modern, but its range has also been expanded to focus on four key areas: Seedshop, Fungishop, Smartshop, and Herbshop.

Seedshop

The Azarius Seedshop focuses exclusively on cannabis seeds, from feminized and autoflowering to F1 hybrids and Cannabis Cup winners. What makes this range different from traditional smartshops is that each strain has been curated in-house, with help from cannabis breeder F1 SeedTech. Customers can even shop by strain type, which is a nice addition, especially for newcomers who want to stick to classics such as Amnesia, Gelato, or Kush.

Fungishop

The Fungishop helped establish Azarius in the late 90s and early 2000s, so it’s not surprising they’ve dedicated an entire subcategory to magic mushrooms, truffles, and functional mushrooms such as lion’s mane and cordyceps. The magic truffle selection comprises several staples, including Golden Teacher and Mexican, but Azarius has made a point of cultivating all its magic truffles in-house.

Much like its Seedshop, the focus is on producing truffle varieties consumers can trust, as Azarius handles the entire process, from fruiting to harvest, at its dedicated truffle farm.

Smartshop

The Smartshop is where Azarius has diversified its offerings, catering to a broader group of psychonauts with bespoke capsules and unique formulations. Many of the capsules on offer are non-psychoactive, too, instead relying on the natural influence of botanicals such as Rhodiola rosea, yerba mate, and theobromine. The category appears to be growing, with many capsules segregated via the desired outcome (Relax, Energy, Focus, Party, and Sex).

Herbshop

The Herbshop pays homage to staples of the psychedelic world, such as Herbs of the Gods and Seeds of the Gods. While both are no longer available, what replaces them is an equally diverse range of extracts, seeds, and leaves, all carefully derived from plants, herbs, and even cacti. Each Herbshop product includes a detailed description, key benefits, and consumption tips to ensure consumers get the most from their otherworldly plants.

The Azarius shopping experience

For any online business to succeed, user experience must be a primary focus. Transparent terms and conditions, accurate shipping information, simple navigation, and desktop and mobile optimisation are paramount for retaining customers. It's encouraging to see that all the essential features you’d expect are present on the newly revamped Azarius site. There’s a real focus on the experience a product gives you rather than simply stating the technical specifications, and this ethos is evident as soon as you land on their homepage.

User experience

Being around for as long as they have, you’d expect the Azarius site to offer a cohesive shopping experience. Indeed, the homepage is broken up into several attractive tile sets, each showcasing a different product range, teaser videos from their social media campaigns, and even customer reviews.

The art style is clear yet stylised, with attractive designs and infographics. This gives the site plenty of character while making it easy for shoppers to navigate the various product categories. Azarius has focused on what set it apart from the competition over twenty-five years ago—putting customer experience first.

100% Azarius-branded

In today’s market, significantly limiting your potential product range could be deemed a risky strategy. While this may be true in some sectors, implementing branded goods in the psychedelic world makes a lot of sense.

Psychedelic substances are often unregulated and untested, meaning products may feature unexpected potency or contain contaminants. With its truffle farm and cannabis cultivation projects, Azarius has overcome this hurdle by controlling the process from start to finish. Even the packaging for its magic truffles, seeds, and caps incorporates Azarius’ unique art style while retaining essential product information. Ingredients are clearly marked, and guidelines on quality control measures, consumption tips, and storage advice are available at every stage.

Customer service and shipping

A significant bonus for psychonauts, new and old, is the ability to get answers to related questions about products. Azarius tackles this need in two distinct ways. The first is a dedicated customer service team, which you can reach via WhatsApp and email, and the second is an extensive FAQ. The latter is broken down into several key areas, and covers topics such as making changes to an order, creating an Azarius account, and how to get the most from your magic mushroom grow kit.

This focus on meeting customer needs is matched by their shipping policy. Once dispatched, orders reach over fifteen European countries in as little as 1–3 working days. Moreover, Azarius promises discreet shipping on all orders, with plain packaging preventing nosy neighbours from knowing what you’ve ordered. You can also collect your parcel from a dedicated Click & Collect point in select countries.

Is Azarius legit?

After examining the product categories, user experience, and extensive history, it’s clear that the world’s first online smartshop has been carefully refining its strategy since Azarius.net launched in 1999. Today, the website has undergone some much-needed modernisation, and Azarius has doubled down on its commitment to consumer trust with a 100% focus on its own branded products. Even some twenty-five years later, that same focus on how products make you feel and how they influence daily lives remains.

New online smartshop companies appear often, but few can accurately claim to offer products made completely under their oversight. Whether it's the dedicated truffle farm or the exclusive partnership with F1 SeedTech, it’s clear to see that Azarius is still very much focused on homegrown, authentic, and reliable products, just like they were all those years ago.