Buying a bra that fits according to expert standards has, for years, entailed a visit to a department store or a lingerie shop, where employees double as “fit experts” who determine shoppers’ band and cup sizes in the confines of a dressing room. But that may be changing, as online retailers debut new methods for lingerie shopping that can be done easily–and, they hope, effectively–from a computer screen.

“People hate the fitting room experience,” says Aarthi Ramamurthy, who launched online bra retailer True&Co in May with cofounder Michelle Lam.

The San Francisco-based startup relies on a questionnaire and an algorithm designed to determine bra size as effectively as a human expert. Bras from brands such as Calvin Klein and Natori are $45 and sold using a model similar to that of game-changing eyewear retailer Warby Parker: customers receive a box of five bras and have a week to try them on, keep what they want and send back what they don’t. Shipping and returns are free. True&Co uses information about what you keep and what you send back to help customers make better decisions about their next purchases.

Also making a play for a piece of the $12 billion intimate apparel market are New York’s Adore Me and intiMint, the latest brand from Santa Monica’s BeachMint, whose other celebrity-endorsed subscription sites include JewelMint and StyleMint. Both AdoreMe, launched last November, and intiMint, which debuted in June with Brooke Burke-Charvet as its celebrity muse, offer monthly memberships and suggest products shoppers are likely to be interested in using online questionnaires. And online retailer HerRoom, around since 1998, padded its approach with the May debut of its online Universal Cup Sizing tool to help shoppers find bras that fit, despite inconsistent brand sizing standards that often lead to two bras of the same size failing to fit the same woman.

How to explain all the sudden exposure? For retailers and entrepreneurs, intimate apparel offers attractive elements that standard apparel does not. For one, lingerie can be lucrative. Profit margins for retail apparel stores average 3.4%, but lingerie stores routinely see double that, according to recent research from IBISWorld.