Printful Review 2024 – Expert Insights on Quality, Pricing, and Services

In this Printful review, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about one of the most popular Print on Demand solutions in the ecommerce market.

If you've been in the printing business for more than, say, a month, you know how difficult it can be to find a printer that provides quality prints, delivers on time, and answers the questions to your customer support. There's a large collection of printing and fulfillment companies out there, and Printful is one of them.

In fact, Printful also falls into the category of dropshipper, or a supplier that stores the products for you, packages them, and ships them out to your customers after a purchase.

So, essentially, all you have to do is upload your designs and start posting them on your website to start selling.

When to Use Printful

We recommend using Printful for POD when you:

• Need access to a massive range of unique products
• Prioritize exceptional product quality
• Value intuitive design tools and AI features
• Want to scale your POD business
• Have an existing website or marketplace account
• Want global fulfillment support

When not to Use Printful 

We may advise against using Printful if you:

• Have a very low budget (and want cheaper POD items)
• Don’t want to build and manage your own ecommerce store
• Have limited design requirements

Why Should you Trust Us

At Ecommerce Platforms, we’re committed to providing the most comprehensive reviews possible for ecommerce platforms, tools, and resources.

We’ve experimented with Printful’s platform and integrations with tools like Shopify, for hands-on insights into what the solution can offer. 

We also have years of experience reviewing print on demand companies, so we can provide a behind-the-scenes look at how Printful compares with other reputable solutions.

To ensure this review remains relevant and up to date, we’ll update this article whenever significant changes to the platform or its features occur. 

Key Takeaways

• Printful requires users to have their own ecommerce store, or an account with a marketplace (or social media channel) to sell custom products.
• The platform has a huge range of products to choose from in various trending categories, and constantly updates its selection to match consumer needs.
• Printful has a free plan for beginners, which means you only need to pay for the cost of the base products, and the shipping.
• With Printful, companies can sell across a range of platforms, thanks to integrations with marketplaces, ecommerce tools and social media.
• There’s an API solution for Printful which allows companies to build custom automated workflows from scratch.
• Printful offers a huge range of value-added services for businesses who need extra help with things like photo shoots and design. 
• Compared to other platforms, Printful has some of the best design tools on the market, as well as unique AI features. 
• Printful’s products, while high in quality, can be a little more expensive than some of the alternative solutions from competing brands. 

What is Printful?

Printful is an on-demand service that allows you to access everything you need to start selling custom items and accessories online.

You can use the mockup generator to put your designs on everything from phone cases to hats and t-shirts.

What’s more, because Printful offers the opportunity to start using the engaging dropshipping method for selling, you don’t need to worry about holding any inventory.

Instead, you can simply work with manufacturers to send the items that you create straight to your buyers.

Printful offers a fantastic selection of tools for creative people who want to explore the benefits of the low-cost dropshipping route for their business.

If you’ve always wanted to sell your own unique products, from custom leggings to laptop covers, Printful can help you to do just that, without the headache of warehousing and stock management to think about.

Printful is even there to help you get started, with simple lessons that guide you through everything you might want to know.

That includes lessons about the dropshipping model, on demand services for printing, and building a digital empire.

The short story is that Printful doesn't have as large of selection of products compared to the competition.

If I wanted to print and dropship some designs on coasters, I'd have to look elsewhere. The same goes for more unique items like yoga mats. However, there's an onslaught of user reviews out there that state Printful is their go-to printing press because of the quality of products. And that's a big deal.

You may have to cut down on the range of items you sell on your site, but at least you know that the shirts are sturdy, the printing isn't going to wash off quickly, and customers aren't going to get ticked off because of a late delivery.

Of course, not all printing and dropshipping companies are perfect. I've seen users post terrible Printful reviews, talking about how the customer service is lacking or how the print didn't come out as bright as they thought. However, the majority of merchants seem to agree that Printful is the leader in this market.

One thing to keep in mind is that it often depends on the type of product you're printing on, the supplier you choose, and the quality of graphic you upload.

So, one type of shirt might look wonderful from Printful, but the tote bags might not look exactly right.

The primary way to figure out if Printful is for you is to upload some of your designs and order samples. This way, you can compare pricing, quality, and shipping speed to other printing companies and see which one is for you.

For this Printful review, we'll avoid the quality of its products, since that really requires you to order some samples.

However, we'll talk about pricing, ease-of-use, customer support, and the selection of products. That way, you'll have a better idea of how Printful can work for you and if the design and integration tools are enough for your business.

Printful Pros and Cons

The majority of Printful customers find the pros of the service far outweigh the cons. But it’s worth examining both the benefits and disadvantages of the platform before you dive in.

How Printful Works

Printful is a print on demand platform, which provides companies with a simple way to sell custom products online, using a methodology similar to the “dropshipping” model.

With Printful, you don’t actually have to interact with or hold the products you create in a warehouse.

Instead, you create an account with the platform, upload your designs to white-labelled products using the integrated design tools, and list them on your website or marketplace storefront with integrations.

When an order is placed, the details for the order are passed to Printful’s in-house team of over 1,000 experts, who produce your customer’s order. 

Here's an example from our store:

They then package and ship the product to customers on your behalf, charging you for the base cost of the items and the shipping.

You retain all of the profits beyond those costs. Printful can brand your packaging for you and add unique elements (like pack-ins and branded packing slips). However, you still need to deal with customer service, orders, and returns yourself.

Notably however, there are no set-up costs for using Printful, aside from the costs of launching your own website, and marketing your products. You don’t pay a monthly fee for the service, unless you need access to extra resources, such as product photography.

How many People Use Printful?

It’s difficult to know for certain exactly how many users are active on Printful. However, it is one of the most popular print on demand solutions available.

In 2019, Printful celebrated drawing more than 1 million registered users to their service for the first time. Since then, the popularity of Printful, and the print on demand market has only continued to grow.

In 2021, Printful achieved a record $1 billion in customer sales, and throughout its time in the market, the Printful team says its served more than 2 million customers. Printful has also delivered more than 62.3 million items to customers worldwide.

Around 189,000 Printful customers are using the integrations offered by the platform to sell products through Shopify, while another 79,000 use Printful with Wix. 

Printful Pricing

Printful has updated its pricing strategy a few times over the years. Fortunately, the good news for print on demand retailers, is you can still access many of the features of Printful for free, without paying any monthly costs.

You’ll still need to deal with the price of actually having your products created and shipped to customers, of course. 

Alternatively, if you want to tap into some unique benefits, you can choose to join one of Printful’s “membership” plans. There are two options to choose from: 

Printful Growth

Printful Growth is the membership plan designed for growing businesses in the POD world. If you earn $12k a month with your print-on-demand sales through Printful, you can upgrade to this membership automatically, without any extra fees. 

This gives you access to a range of benefits, including 20% off DTG products, 30% off other product categories, and a stable pricing structure. You also get product branding discounts of 7%, and unlimited stores and product designs for each Printful account.

If you want to access the “Growth” package, but you don’t have enough sales, a paid option will be arriving soon.

This will allow you to pay a monthly fee to access all of the benefits mentioned above. Once you reach your sales target, you can also switch to the free membership for a year.

Printful Business

Alongside Printful Growth, Printful also introduced its “Business” membership for higher-volume sellers. This comes with much of the same features offered by the Growth plan. However, you also get free digitization for all embroidered products. 

Plus, your product branding discounts increase to 9%, and your same order discounts will increase to 25%. You also get up to 22% off DTG products, and 33% off other product categories. Notably. There’s no paid option for this membership yet.

The only way to upgrade is to reach $60k+ in sales over a period of 12 months. All yearly sales are calculated by examining your total order sum for the year, after subtracting all shipping tax, VAT, and discounts.

However, digitization and Printful service fees are added back in.

Printful Pricing for Products

Printful makes money when you make a sale. The same goes for the supplier you're purchasing from. What happens is you choose a product to sell, and Printful lists a starting retail price for the product.

So, let's say I wanted to sell some t-shirts with my own custom design printed on them. Printful has a large collection of shirts from different brands and made with different materials.

Each product has the information listed for pricing, colors, shipping locations, and reviews.

For my t-shirt, I can see that a Gildan Unisex is only $8.95.

As you walk through the product creation process, you'll see an option to create your own pricing and view the potential profit. I figure most t-shirts go for around $10 to $15, so I list mine as $14.99.

When I make a sale, my profit is just over $6. This can be done for all of the products on Printful.

One of the main reasons I like Printful so much is because it focuses on certain products, but does them well.

For instance, t-shirts sound so simple, but some of the t-shirts are of incredible quality, so you can turn your store into somewhat of a high-end supplier.

I would argue that the Printful base prices are somewhere in the middle compared to the competition. I've seen some rather cheap prices from competitors like Printify and Gooten, but once again, those two options seem to have more trouble with shipping and overall quality.

I'm convinced that you can definitely turn a profit for most of your sales through Printful, as long as you're not pricing items above what people would usually pay. Folks know that custom printing is more expensive, so they're typically willing to pay a premium.

In addition, you get to see the potential profit before publishing it to your site, so if an item doesn't yield a good return, simply look for a cheaper version or hike up the price a bit.

The Sample Order

Another cost to consider is the sample order. As I mentioned before, the only way to really see if the quality of the products from Printful are right for you is to send a sample to yourself.

The sample orders from Printful are reasonable. You get a 20% discount on the list price, along with free shipping to select locations.

This is how the free shipping works for samples:

• Samples sent from the Printful facilities in California and North Carolina are shipped for free to Canada and all USA states and territories.
• If you order a product that comes from a European Printful facility, the shipping is free for all locations in Europe.

For each of these sample orders, you get two products. In addition to that, the sample orders are limited to one per month.

This might cause problems for those trying to test out new products on a regular basis. But the company does have some ways to gain additional sample orders–like by integrating with an ecommerce platform or generating more than $300 in the previous month.

Is Printful Easy to Use?

Specifically designed for fashionistas, artists, and creative minds, as well as entrepreneurs who want to make the most of quick and simple growth models, Printful offers a much easier experience for growing your online store than you would get from most eCommerce tools.

You can browse through a selection of Printful products, pick custom designs, and get everything your customers order sent straight to them, without the man-in-the-middle hassle.

Tools like Printful for dropshipping take the responsibility and cost out of things like fulfilling customer orders on your own.

This means that you’re left with more time to set up and manage your online store. While your manufacturing partners handle shipping your products, you can focus on things like writing your website FAQ, building a bigger Shopify store, or just optimizing your site.

You can even choose whether you want a dropshipping partner that offers sublimation, screen printing, embroidery, or various other forms of customization for your branding options.

The power is yours. That means that even though you’re experimenting with on-demand dropshipping, you can still make your business your own.

Keep in mind that just because Printful stands out as one of the best providers of clothing and accessories, doesn’t mean that you can’t buy and sell other products through the platform too. You can add your own designs to a wide range of products, and the Printful marketplace is growing by the day.

Designing and Selling With Printful

At this point, you’re probably wondering about the designing and selling processes that you’ll get with Printful.

After all, Printful is the top dropshipping provider on the market for the sale of accessories, clothing, and household goods. They must have earned their reputation for a reason.

To start, we'll outline designing a product from Printful.

You can create a new order right from the Printful dashboard and upload your designs onto the products.

For this example, I'm going to design a canvas print, starting at $13.25 from Printful.

I would choose the size that I'd like to sell, then upload the print file that's going to go onto that canvas.

In general, the guide from Printful is quite clear as to what you might need to change with your upload. For instance, most random JPGs you upload from your computer are going to be too small for printing on a canvas. You're going to want a large JPG or PNG that you exported from a RAW file in something like Lightroom or Photoshop.

Once you find the right print quality, you can crop it to fit and move forward.

Mockups of the products are provided for showing to your customers in a more real-world setting.

After that, you either place your custom order or save it to your connected ecommerce platform. If you do have it connected to a platform the product automatically syncs to your store.

You’ll get the best deals buying and selling with Printful when you purchase the items that you want in bulk. Ordering Printful products in advance is easy, because you simply buy what you want, and store those items at the Printful warehouse.

You can also use the same-day fulfillment orders to get your products shipped to your customers the second they buy something.

Keep in mind that you can order samples of specific products if you want to test them out and see whether you’re going to expand your product portfolio at a later time. However, while there’s no minimum order, you will have a limit on how many sample orders you can make each month.

For instance, once you’ve registered with Printful, you’ll get one sample order per month with a maximum of two items per order.

When you’ve integrated an ecommerce platform with Printful, you’ll receive 2 sample orders each month, with a maximum of three items per order. By the time that you are generating a minimum revenue of $300 per month, you’ll have access to 3 sample orders per month with a maximum of 4 items per order.

Printful’s Product Range

One of the things that really impresses us about Printful as a POD platform, is its versatility. While some companies only offer a handful of basic products, like t-shirts and sweaters, Printful has a huge collection of items to choose from in different categories. 

Options include:

Men’s Clothing

If you want to sell custom men’s apparel, Printful offers a range of t-shirts, all-over print shirts, polo shirts, and tank tops. There are three-quarter sleeve shirts and long-sleeve shirts, as well as embroidered shirt options for a more luxurious look. 

Alongside a range of shirts, Printful also allows you to design and sell jackets and vests, hoodies and sweatshirts, and swimwear. Plus, there’s a huge range of “bottoms” to choose from, including underwear, leggings, shorts, pants, sweatpants, and joggers.

Women’s Clothing

Similar to the men’s clothing category, the women’s clothing category on Printful offers a huge variety of options.

You can create:

• all-over-print shirts
• t-shirts, polo shirts
• crop tops
• tank tops
• embroidered shirts

Plus, there are 3/4 sleeve and long-sleeve options too. 

For women, companies can create dresses, swimwear, and sports bras, as well as more common products like hoodies and sweatshirts.

Printful also offers white-labelled jackets, vests, sweatpants, joggers, leggings, shorts, skirts, and pants. Plus, you can create custom robes. 

Kids and Youth Clothing

In the trending landscape of kids clothing, Printful offers options for a range of t-shirts, including all-over print, three-quarter sleeve, and long-sleeve shirts. You can also design hats, leggings, baby bodysuits, swimwear, and hoodies or sweatshirts. 

There’s the option to create eco-friendly and premium versions of each product too, which feature more unique materials and components to make your brand stand out. 

Hats

Printful offers a fantastic variety of hats to choose from, designed to suit a range of different customer groups. Alongside common options such as beanies and dad hats or baseball caps, you can also create snapbacks, trucker hats, and 5-panel hats. 

Additionally, there are options for creating mesh hats, visors, and similar accessories, all enhanced with your personal branded elements.

Accessories

The accessories section on Printful is one of the biggest categories in its product collection. It breaks down into a range of different options, including:

• pins
• patches
• hair accessories
• sport accessories

Plus, you can create a variety of bags, from:

• tote bags
• duffle bags
• drawstring bags
• fanny packs
• backpacks
• handbags

If you’re investing in the footwear niche, Printful offers flip flops, standard shoes (Sneakers), and socks. For tech accessories, there are phone cases, earphone cases, laptop cases and mouse pads. Plus, you can create and sell facemasks with unique designs.

Home and Living

Similar to the accessories section on Printful, the home and living section is huge. You can create puzzles, aprons and towels. There are various wall art options, from posters (Framed or not), canvas prints, flags, and metal prints. 

Creators can design their own:

• holiday décor
• blankets
• candles
• pillows
• magnets

Plus, there are drinkware options like:

• water bottles
• mugs, tumblers
• coasters
• glassware

For stationary, you can choose from postcards, notebooks, stickers, and greeting cards. Printful even offers a selection of customizable pet products and beauty items. 

Other Options

Alongside all the options mentioned above, Printful also organizes its product categories into collections, such as “premium products”, or options made in the EU. You can also sort through products based on style trends, or options with large embroidery options. 

Alternatively, you can sort through products by brand, exploring popular options like Adidas, Champion, Bella + Canvas, and Port Authority.

Best Selling Printful Products

As one of the world’s top print providers for today’s dropshipping brands, Printful offers a huge range of products to choose from.

The number of options available is constantly expanding, as the brand continues to branch out into new categories and industries.

Choosing which items to add your product design to can be one of the most challenging parts of running a print on demand company. While you might know what kind of niche you want to run your business in, it’s often tricky to figure out which items will generate the most revenue.

Fortunately, Printful has a solution to help you. The print-on-demand service allows users to filter through product options using the “Bestsellers” tab in the collections page.

This will show you all of the top-selling items on Printful at the time. You can also look for bestsellers in particular categories, based on your business model. Some of the top options from Printful overall include:

• Home and living products: In the home and living category, some of the most popular products fall under the categories of wall art, candles, blankets, and drinkware. Simple mugs, posters, canvas options, and home décor are often big hits.
• Apparel: From an apparel perspective, you’ve got a lot of options to choose from with Printful. You can sort through women’s, men’s, and kids clothing, and choose from embroidered apparel, premium t-shirts, and even eco-friendly products. Sportswear, sweatpants, and hoodies are a good choice for most POD companies.
• Accessories: If you want to build a print on demand company selling accessories, you can choose from a variety of footwear options, patches, hair accessories, and hats on Printful. The most popular options tend to include classic dad hats, beanies, and trucker hats.
• Tech accessories: Outside of basic everyday accessories, Printful also offers specialist tech accessories for laptops, and phones. Phone cases are often the most popular choice here, and can be designed in a range of shapes and sizes to suit different requirements. However, earphone cases for Apple products are common choices too.
• Other options: If you’re looking to expand your product portfolio a little further, you can branch out into coasters, water bottles, greeting cards, stickers, and notebooks. Printful also offers access to pet products you can customize, towels, fabrics, and aprons.

Printful's Print Quality: What to Expect

One of the most important factors you should always consider when choosing a print on demand vendor is print quality. Basically, this refers to the clarity of the printed images on your POD products.

The better the print quality for your items, the more likely you are to end up with happy, loyal customers, and repeat purchases. 

Unfortunately, print quality can vary depending on a range of factors, including the materials you’re printing on, the type of printing technologies used (such as DTG or all-over-print), and the image you upload to your POD design tools. 

Fortunately, Printful takes a number of precautions to ensure you always get great quality. Not only does the company use AI to enhance the quality of your images for you, improving clarity, but the brand has also invested more than $83 million on proprietary printing equipment.

That’s likely why, when we looked up customer reviews about Printful, we found hundreds of references to high-quality printing, like this one:

Printful’s Printing Options

One of the factors that influences the quality of Printful’s custom products, is the range of printing options it offers. Depending on the product you want to create, there are various options to choose from (more than most other printing providers). Options include:

• Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing: A method that sprays ink directly onto the product, for detailed multi-color designs and photographic elements. 
• Cut and sew: Often combined with different printing methods, this involves cutting and sewing pieces of a garment together after a print has been applied. 
• Sublimation: A process that involves embedding your design into a product’s material, rather than simply printing on top of it. This is a common choice for hard-surface items like water bottles, mugs, and home décor products. 
• Embroidery: Sewing designs into a product to create a unique finish. There are two options here, “flat embroidery” which gives you a more streamlined finish, and “3D puff embroidery”, which gives the design a raised look. 
• All-over printing: This relatively new printing method uses a heat press to transfer designs onto fabric (All-over) before the product is cut to size and pieces are sewn together.  
• UV Printing: Typically used for printing phone and headphone cases, UV printing uses a special light to cure ink graphics, for a hard and durable finish.

No matter which method you choose with Printful, you can expect to get a great result. The company’s AI design tools ensures you’re uploading the best possible files for your designs, minimizing the risk of pixelated images and faded colors. 

Plus, the company’s cutting edge printing technology ensures you get a professional finish. That’s why so many customers rave about Printful’s print quality. 

Printful’s Quality Assurance Process

Aside from excellent design tools and a range of printing options, Printful also boasts a fantastic quality assurance process. The strategy for ensuring the quality of each product involves three steps, and every product is assessed before its shipped to a customer.

First, Printful checks the quality of the graphics applied to your product, using AI-powered automated software. Next, the in-house team also checks the quality of the raw products, and monitors the print process as your designs are being applied. 

Finally, the team runs a quality check once your products are ready, to ensure they live up to your expectations. This process results in Printful having an incredibly low return rate of only 0.24%. In other words, there’s a good chance you won’t need to deal with a lot of returns.

Notably, if customers do choose to return the products you create with Printful, you’ll have to manage most of that journey yourself.

Like most POD companies, Printful will only replace ore refund products that are damaged or mislabelled. You can submit photos of a problematic product to the Printful support team if you discover an issue, to improve your chances of a refund.

However, refunds aren’t provided if your customer made a mistake, like providing the wrong delivery address, or simply changes their mind about the product. 

The Ongoing Commitment to Product Quality

One final point worth noting about Printful’s approach to print quality, is that they’re actually willing to remove products from sale if they don’t think they’re “good enough”. If you’re signed up for an account with Printful, they’ll send you an email whenever they decide to remove a product from their collection due to quality assurance issues. 

Some items are removed temporarily, until Printful finds another supplier or addresses the problem, while others might disappear forever. This could be a concern if you’re reliant on Printful to create a constant stream of specific products for your portfolio.

However, it also shows that Printful isn’t happy to simply continue selling products that don’t match its standards. Overall, Printful’s approach to quality is incredible.

The only real compliant we could find from consumers in this area was related to some of the color on certain products fading away after regular washing. However, this is a problem for a lot of clothing providers. 

Printful Integrations

On its own, Printful is a powerful tool for online selling. You can use it to easily customize products and send them straight to your customers for minimal monthly fees, in just a couple of business days.

Compared to other dropshipping platforms, this makes Printful one of the most efficient and affordable ways to sell personalized items online.

However, just because Printful has a lot of benefits to offer, doesn’t mean that you won’t want to expand its functionality. That’s why Printful offers a range of integrations with leading applications, eCommerce platforms, and marketplace tools.

You can integrate Printful with Amazon, eBay, and Etsy – giving you more options to sell online. You can also combine your Printful experience with Shopify, so you can track more of your customer journey, and build better connections with your clients. Other integration options include:

• Wish
• Magento
• Storenvy
• 3Dcart
• Weebly
• PrestaShop
• BigCommerce
• SquareSpace
• ECwid
• WooCommerce
• Wix

Printful User Reviews and Complaints

Printful has earned a high number of positive reviews during its time in the print on demand market. Most customers consider the company to be a reputable, and trustworthy POD vendor, with high-quality products and excellent customer service.

On TrustPilot, Printful has earned more than 2,517 reviews, and has an average score of 4.4 stars out of five. 69% of all Printful’s Trustpilot reviews are also five star testimonials.

On the customer review platform, G2, Printful doesn’t have quite as many reviews (around 57 at the time of writing), but it has still earned a rating of 4 out of 5 stars. Customers say the company delivers excellent customer service, print quality, and sample orders.

Elsewhere, on Capterra, around 55 customers have reviewed the Printful service, saying the software is easy to use, exceptional for customer service, and great value for money. The average customer score for Printful on Capterra is 8.1 out of 10.

Though negative reviews aren’t common among Printful customers, there have been a few complaints made by customers over the years.

Usually, the biggest issues customers have with Printful revolve around:

• Costs: Some products can be more expensive than others
• Integrations: Printful doesn’t integrate with every third-party app
• Stocking: Some products can go out of stock for a while
• Design: The design process can be a little clunky in some areas
• Shipping fees: Some Printful shipping fees can be quite high

The Printful Mobile App

One thing that helps to set Printful apart from other print on demand solutions, is that it gives vendors the opportunity to manage stores and sales anywhere. The Printful mobile app is available for both Android and iOS, and it’s completely free to use.

Within the app, users can create orders, confirm incoming orders, talk to the Printful support team, and even place and remove manual order holds.

The app also includes tools for tracking orders, and allows users to report problems to the customer service team.

It’s a simple and convenient app, ideal for companies who want to retain control over their print on demand company when they’re on the move.

Printful AI Features

One of the things that sets Printful apart from other print on demand vendors, is its commitment to providing designers with the latest in high-tech tools.

For instance, Printful has its own “smart image tool”, which uses artificial intelligence to assess the quality of your image for product designs.

The AI evaluates the information within a user’s image and sees whether it can be adjusted by adding extra information to suit Printful’s print requirements.

The tool can double the image DPI for images with a low range, to improve the overall quality and clarity of the image. It does this automatically, saving you time editing your designs.

Alongside the smart image tool, Printful also uses AI to help you select the right products for your catalog.

Once you sign up for an account, Printful will show you recommended products you might want to create, based on your potential to increase your profits.

The AI solution evaluates a huge amount of customer interaction data, to showcase the sales potential of each available product, according to your target audience. This gives you an excellent way to make more data-driven decisions when expanding your product catalog.

Connecting Printful to an Ecommerce Platform

That begs the question, how easy is it to sync with your current online store platform?

Well, I've yet to find a printer/dropshipper that works better with more ecommerce platforms.

I've personally run Printful on WooCommerce and it works quite well.

Printful also has a highly reviewed app on Shopify, along with apps and extensions for platforms like Big Cartel, Squarespace, BigCommerce, Shipstation, Ecwid, Weebly, Etsy, Tictail, Amazon, and more.

There's even a custom integration tool for linking the Printful service to any website or app.

How to Integrate Your Shopify Store with Printful

Probably the most common integration that you’ll choose for your Printful experience, will be one between your dropshipping tool, and your ecommerce platform.

Since Shopify is already well-known for its ability to offer a range of dropshipping opportunities with limited shipping time, it makes sense that you might be building your ecommerce business with this tool.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Shopify is one of the most popular tools for ecommerce business owners too, with a wider range of sales tools than most other platforms.

So, how do you integrate Printful and Shopify to start selling your custom products as quickly as possible?

It’s easier than you think to combine Printful with your Shopify store.

You can start by downloading the Printful app for free from the Shopify ecommerce store. Follow the instructions on how to install your new app and link into your store. After that:

• Use the free mockup generator to create your custom products, from custom hoodie and sticker products to sweatshirts and leggings. There are more than 200 products to choose from.
• Set up your shipping prices, fulfillment services, and other crucial requirements for your online store. Make sure that you fill in all the blanks so that you know your orders will go through smoothly.
• Set up notifications about incoming orders: You’ll automatically get alerts from Shopify when you receive an order. Those orders will then go through to Printful for fulfillment services.
• Work on building your brand: Printful will deliver your items to your customer in the shortest possible shipping time, while you concentrate on building your company through google optimization, marketing, and other strategies.

If you already have your own shopify store and you want to take it to the next level, then Printful is a great choice. We made an in-depth guide on how to use Printful with Shopify to build your own print-on-demand store, so make sure you check it out.

How to Integrate your WooCommerce Store with Printful

WooCommerce is one of the most popular ecommerce tools for WordPress users on the market today. It’s great for companies looking to make the most out of their SEO strategy, and keep costs low. After all, you can create a storefront without spending much if you use the self-hosted WordPress option.

WooCommerce has a lot of great features for helping you make the most out of your business, and you can integrate additional tools into your website too, such as a shipping calculator, or a plugin for tracking your inventory. The good news is Printful is relatively easy to connect to WooCommerce.

To begin, you’ll need to create an account for Printful, and set up your WordPress store with WooCommerce. Next:

• Install the Printful plugin: Head into your WordPress dashboard, click on Plugins, then “Add New”. You’ll need to use the search bar to find Printful. Add the plugin by clicking Install, then click “Activate”.
• Set up the API: Once the plugin is activated, you’ll need to set up your WordPress permalinks to ensure the API can access Printful properly. Click on “Permalinks settings”, then “Common Settings”, and choose a structure other than “Plain”. Click “Save changes”.
• Go back to the Printful plugin: Click on the API integration settings within the Printful plugin in the “Plugins” section of your WordPress dashboard, or on the Settings page. Next, under the Advanced tab, click on “Legacy API”, and enable the legacy REST API option. Save your changes, and click “Connect”. You’ll need to “Approve” the connection.
• Sign into Printful: After you’re connected to Printful, you’ll be redirected to the site, where you’ll need to log in with your account details. You’ll be able to integrate products into your store by clicking on the “Add Product” item. Choose the product category you want, and click on the item you like. You can then upload your design and choose your fulfillment method.
• Submit to store: After customizing your product and choosing the right product quality with the Printful design tool, click “Proceed to details” to add your description, title, and other information. Then you can click “Proceed to pricing”. Remember to take your shipping costs into account here. Finally, click “Submit to store”.
• Set up shipping: Within your WordPress dashboard, click on the WooCommerce plugin, choose “Settings”, and then scroll down to “General Options” and “Shipping locations”. Click on the Shipping tab, and you’ll find “Printful Shipping”. You’ll need to enable this to allow for the integration to work.
• Set up taxes and billing: Depending on where your customers are, you may be charged tax on your orders, which can cut into your profit margins. Make sure you have the right tax settings in place to keep yourself compliant. It’s also worth selecting a primary billing method for Printful to use in future transactions.

If you want more advice on how to make the most of your Printful and WooCommerce integration, you can find some useful guidance here.

How to Integrate Your BigCommerce Store with Printful

If you’re running your online business through BigCommerce, you can also link your Printful account straight to your existing website. BigCommerce is a fantastic store builder, with great merchant support, and a range of built-in tools for marketing, reporting, and SEO. Depending on the premium plan you choose, you can access a range of great features.

If you want to set up a print on demand business with Printful on your BigCommerce store, the first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for an account with both BigCommerce, and Printful.

After you have your BigCommerce account, login, and go to the BigCommerce marketplace. Search for the Printful app, and click “Get this app”.

• Install the app: After you’ve accessed the app, you’ll be redirected to the BigCommerce control panel. Just click the “Install” button to start the Printful installation. You may need to click on “Confirm” to allow Printful access to your online store.
• Sign into Printful: After clicking on the Printful app within your BigCommerce dashboard, you’ll be redirected to the user-friendly Printful interface. You’ll need to log in so you can start the custom order import process.
• Select your products: Just like you would with WooCommerce or Shopify, select the best print on demand products for your needs through the Printful dashboard. You’ll be able to use the design tool to make your custom changes, and select order fulfillment options.
• Add the products to your store: Click the option to import the products to your BigCommeerce store when you’re ready, and return to your BigCommerce account. You’ll need to set up your pricing structure and fulfillment strategies within Printful. Remember to take production time and production costs into account when choosing pricing.
• Set up shipping and taxes: As mentioned above, make sure you set up your shipping and taxes and implement the right shipping rates. You may also need to set up notifications for incoming orders, and consider any tax requirements too.

BigCommerce makes it relatively straightforward to access all the features and functionality of Printful within your store, without having to hire in-house help.

Once you’ve connected your store, you’ll be able to bypass a number of manual order management processes.

How to Integrate Your Squarespace Store with Printful

Squarespace is another fantastic tool for building an online brand. Like many other store builders, it comes with a range of pricing options to choose from, including an enterprise plan, and a relatively affordable option for beginners.

For the most part, many people use Squarespace to promote their online portfolio or merchandise store, but the platform is extremely flexible.

To connect your print-on-demand platform to Squarespace, you’ll follow most of the same steps you would when integrating any other kind of store.

This means you’ll need to set up a Squarespace plan, and create a Printful account. Once you have these accounts:

• Log into Printful: Log into your Printful account and visit the admin section. Click on “Stores”, then “Choose platform”. Here, you should be able to select Squarespace from a list of options. Click on the “Connect” button.
• Log into Squarespace: Once you click “Connect, Printful will prompt you to sign into your Squarespace account. This may not work if you’re using a demo or free plan, so keep that in mind. After you’re logged in, click “Return to Printful”.
• Connect from Squarespace: From the Squarespace side, you can connect to Printful by logging into your Squarespace admin account, clicking on “Commerce” and then “Custom Merch”. You’ll need a Squarespace account that accommodates ecommerce for this. Click on “Allow” to enable the connection.
• Create your products: From within the Printful interface, you’ll be able to select your products just as you would with any other ecommerce store. Customize your items, choose your fulfillment options, and save your design. Click “Add Product”, and then click the “Squarespace” option on the drop-down menu. You may need to enter the URL of your Squarespace site.
• Update your settings: Like with other ecommerce platforms, you may need to make some changes to your settings on Squarespace after installing Printful. This could include changing your fulfillment options, setting prices, and making sure you have the right shipping options in place.

Adding Printful products to Shopify is relatively straightforward, and it should ensure you can track your orders and other details within the Squarespace platform. When you click on the “My Store” option, you’ll be able to see all of your items and pictures from Printful.

How's the Customer Support?

The Printful customer service has mixed reviews online, but the consensus seems to agree that it's better than most of the competition.

An FAQ page and blog are listed on the Printful website, and it has resources like printing tips, fabric facts, and embroidery files.

Shipping is quite fast, and the return policy is respectable, since it covers most situations where Printful is at fault.

The support team is available during the weekdays through a telephone number, and you can also access support through a live chat or email address.

How Ethical and Eco Friendly is Printful?

If, like many fashion and print on demand brands, you’re concerned about sustainability, Printful could be a good choice for you. Since 2020, Printful has been updating its product development policies and processes to become more environmentally friendly. 

It started eliminating plastic from its packaging in 2020, introduced recycled all-over print products in 2021, and partnered with Geocycle and Martex to minimize fabric waste. In 2022, it partnered with Sedex (an ethical trade service provider), and introduced natural certified skincare products in 2023.

Overall, Printful contributes to eco-friendly production by:

• Reducing plastic packaging: In 2022, Printful increased the recycled plastic content for its apparel mailers from 30-70% to 90-100% for North America. Around 70% of the plastic it uses is recycled on a global basis.
• Offering eco-friendly products: Printful offers a range of sustainable and eco-friendly products, including items made with recycled polyester fabric. It has actually introduced various eco-friendly SOL’s products in the US too.
• Enhanced its eco-friendly product collection: Printful has increased the minimum sustainable material content for its eco-friendly products from 30 to 70%. It also has certifications for GOTS and OCS, as well as GRS and RCS.
• CO2 offsetting: Printful partnered with Native to give customers the option to offset CO2 emissions associated with their orders. This means you can actively contribute to reducing your CO2 emissions whenever you ship an order to customers.
• Reducing fabric waste: Printful makes all of its products from scratch, reducing the number of fabric scraps it works with year after year. It also recycles and upcycles a range of different products when possible. 

As mentioned above, Printful also partners with a range of companies, including Sedex, to access practical tools that improve its eco-friendly performance. 

Order Fulfillment with Printful

As a print on demand company, Printful commits to delivering convenient and straightforward order fulfillment services. There are a few different ways to leverage Printful’s solutions for order fulfillment.

The first and most common option is to use an integration between Printful and your marketplace or ecommerce platform to automatically send orders to the Printful team. 

These orders are placed in a queue to be fulfilled by Printful’s team of experts, who assess the quality of the design carefully, and apply the unique customizations to white labelled products using the latest in printing and production technology. 

Once the items are produced, they’re packaged according to your specific instructions. You can add unique elements like branded packing slips, stickers, and other components to your orders to customize the packaging experience.

Then, Printful sends your orders to the shipping provider your customer chose for their order, to have them delivered straight to their door. 

Each order comes with a status you can check using your Printful dashboard, in the “Orders” tab, so you can monitor exactly which stage of fulfillment the product is in. 

Alternatively, companies can choose to leverage Printful’s warehousing and fulfilment services. These allow companies to store products from their store at Printful’s warehouse in bulk.

The process can accelerate the order fulfillment process by ensuring items are ready to be shipped as soon as orders arrive. With this method, you can even start shipping products in as little as one day. 

Printful’s team even offers same-day shipping for warehouse orders placed by 12pm. This makes it an excellent option or companies who want to delight their customers with instant shipping. 

Printful Shipping Services

To ensure products arrive at your customer’s location as quickly as possible, Printful partners with a range of worldwide carriers.

These include companies like USPS, FedEx, DHL, and DPD. There’s a white-label tracking page available for all account holders, so you and your customers can follow the progress of any packages being shipped. 

Notably, for every order you get, you’re charged for shipping. The amount you page will depend on the type of products in each order, the location of your customer, and the weight of the package.

You can find a complete guide to shipping rates for each product and location here.

You get the opportunity to set your own shipping rates for your customers through your ecommerce or marketplace storefront.

Although lower costs (or even free shipping) can help increase conversions and reduce cart abandonment, it’s up to you to determine what kind of fees you want to charge. 

To help you make the right decisions, Printful will show you live shipping rates on your dashboard, calculated by the carriers in your region in real-time.

These rates are determined by shipping destination, shipping method, carrier pricing, and order fulfillment location. 

If you’ve integrated Printful with tools like Shopify or WooCommerce, you can access the live shipping rates on your website, and activate them for your storefront.

Notably, you may also need to consider customs fees, depending on your order’s fulfillment location. These fees vary depending on order value, country limits, and other factors. 

The good news is that Printful ships products worldwide, but there are some countries the company can’t ship on due to carrier or legal restrictions, so it’s worth double-checking before you start building your store.

Additionally, as mentioned above, you can access different speeds for shipping (standard or Express). However, same-day fulfillment is only available if you’re also using Printful’s inventory and warehousing services.

Alternatives to Printful

While Printful does stand out as one of the best tools for creative dropshipping and on-demand services, it’s not the only software on the market that offers these services.

You can also get mockups, warehousing and order fulfillment support from companies like Printify, TeeLaunch, and Print Aura too.

Printful vs Printify

Both Printful and Printify are a great way for business owners to deliver a range of new products to customers.

Printify has over 250 product options to choose from. However, unlike Printful, Printify outsources your order fulfillment and printing, so you’re working with partners, rather than directly with the brand.

So, does Printify offer any benefits over Printful?

If you’re looking for a range of printing options, from DTG to sublimation, then you may prefer Printful. Printify doesn’t provide screen printing as an option, while Printful does, and international delivery from Printify can take up to 30 days.

Additionally, Printify can’t warehouse your products for you. On the plus side, Printful does offer a range of integrations with Etsy, WooCommerce, and Shopify.

Additionally, both products can give you access to a simple and free back-end, with a mockup generator and no minimum order requirement.

What’s more, there are tons of Printify products to choose from if you’re looking to sell a wide range of items.

Printify works with a range of tools, similar to Printful. However, it’s worth taking Printify pricing and fulfillment options into account when making your choice.

Printful and Printify also both offer worldwide shipping, and 24/7 customer support, along with a range of branding options upfront.

Check out our full Printful vs Printify review here.

Printful vs Teelaunch

Compared to Printify and other tools designed to deliver on demand drop shipping, Teelaunch is a relatively new player in the market.

Like the Printful.com team, Teelaunch offers the option to print a product for you and send it straight to your customer. This means that you get more time to work on building your brand.

Compared to other providers, Teelaunch also has a wide range of unique products that you can choose from to add your own designs too. For instance, you can print Bluetooth speakers, headphones, dog bowls, and so much more.

Unlike Printify, which integrates with a number of ecommerce tools and providers, Teelaunch is designed exclusively for Shopify, which means that you can’t use it if you don’t have a Shopify store.

Additionally, shipping time can take up to 6 days. Another downside of Teelaunch is its relatively small product catalog of only around 65 items.

On the plus side, there is an option for shipping from Australia, which you can’t get from most companies.

Just like Printful, there’s no subscription fee to use Teelaunch. Printful is still the better option when it comes to building your store with features like reshipment and unique products, but Teelaunch is an exciting contender.

Printful vs Sellfy

Sellfy boasts a unique pricing structure that's great for new dropshippers. Unlike Printful, you won't have to pay a commission on your items sold.

Of course, you'll still have all the benefits of remote production, warehousing, and shipping. Instead, with Sellfy, this is all covered in a monthly subscription plan.

However, the downside of using Sellfy compared to Printful is their product options are somewhat limited.

You can still access a range of apparel, such as sweatshirts and hoodies. However, in comparison, Printful provides lots more product options to choose from.

Sellfy also mainly uses DTG (direct to garment), which isn't advised if you want to print semi-transparent graphics. However, embroidery options are available for t-shirts, sweatshirts, and bags.

But, it's worth noting you'll need to pay an additional $6.50 per embroidered item. That said, with Printful, you'll pay upwards of $6.50 depending on the item. However, with Printful, you can opt for screen printing which is an added bonus.

Integration-wise, Printful, again, has far more options than Sellfy. Sellfy integrates with Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, and Zapier.

However, one of Sellfy's main benefits is that you get a free online store, which is undoubtedly beneficial for newbie dropshippers.

The last point worth mentioning is where Printful is set up to facilitate efficient worldwide shipping; Sellfy also has fulfillment sites outside Europe (4 in US and 1 in Canada) and shipping can take between three to five days.

Printful vs Print Aura

Finally, Print Aura is a white-label solution for companies that want to create their own unique clothing under their own brand.

You can choose from over 100 different t-shirts alone if you’re looking to create the perfect low-effort fashion brand. There’s also the option to create other kinds of merchandise for your company too, such as hats and bags.

Like Printful, Print Aura offers excellent print quality and a fantastic service. However, you might come across the odd poor-quality garment from time to time from Print Aura. .

With Print Aura, you can’t choose who’s going to be fulfilling your order for you. Additionally, if you have any problems serving your customers, there’s no 24/7 support service to keep you in the loop.

Some of the items available from Print Aura are also a lot more expensive than what you would pay for the same products from Printful. If you’re on a budget, you might be better off sticking to the Printful instead.

Who Should Consider Printful?

There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to building the perfect print on demand strategy for online sales. However, if you’re looking for a quick and simple way to start selling customized hoodies, sweatshirts, and leggings online, then Printful could be just the tool for you.

With Printful, you can design the products that appeal most to your customers, and sell them across the world, in Europe, Aisa, and the UK, without having to worry about slow shipping times or high shipping prices. You can create amazing mockups to share on social media, and your own websites.

The POD solution will give you the opportunity to sell your products however you choose, and it even integrates with marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.

With the state-of-the-art mockup generator, you can create quality products like phone cases and laptop hoodies, without having to purchase your own DTG printers and other advanced tools. What’s more, you can expect excellent print quality every time.

Printful Review: Conculsion

Printful stands out compared to other alternatives that are lacking in fast shipping and quality products. Therefore, I recommend Printful to anyone interested in trying out dropshipping and custom printing. It links to your site quickly, you're able to get affordable samples, and the quality of products leads the industry.

If you have any questions about this Printful review, let us know in the comments below.

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