Online pharmacies are pharmacies which operate over the net. Many such pharmacies are, in some ways, comparable to community pharmacies; the principal alteration is the method which the drugs are ordered and received. Some customers consider this to be more helpful than traveling to a community drugstore.

While lots internet pharmacies sell prescription meds only with a prescription, some do not require a pre-written prescription. In some countries, this is because prescriptions are not required. Some customers order drugs from such pharmacies to avoid the inconvenience of visiting a doctor or to acquire meds which their physicians were unwilling to prescribe. People living in the US may prefer online pharmacies because medical care and prescription drugs can be prohibitively expensive. Numereous of these websites employ their own in house doctors to review the medication order and write a prescription accordingly. Some websites provide medications without a prescription or a MD review.

In the United States, there has been a push to legalize importation of meds from Canada and a number of European countries, in order to decrease consumer costs. Frequently Americans purchase lower-cost foreign medications by driving to Canadian pharmacies, buying their medications when traveling overseas on vacation, or, buying from Canadian pharmacies that ship their orders via mail.