Printful vs Bonfire 2024: The Complete Comparison Guide

Demand for print on demand (POD) services has skyrocketed in recent years. In fact, by 2032, analysts say the market for POD will be worth around $43.4 billion, and it’s easy to see why.

Print on demand solutions allow creators to add custom designs to a huge range of products and ship them to customers worldwide, without dealing with production or fulfillment themselves.

It’s one of the easiest ways to start selling unique items online. There’s only one major challenge: choosing the right print on demand company to work with.

I’ve worked with a huge number of POD vendors in the last few years, and today I’m going to be sharing my comparison insights into two unique options.

Printful: one of the most popular POD vendors around (and my top pick), and Bonfire: a brand focused on premium quality.

Printful vs Bonfire: How the Platforms Work

On the surface, Bonfire and Printful seem pretty similar. They’re both POD companies, which means they handle the production and fulfillment of your orders for you. They also both give companies a wide range of ways to customize different products.

However, the way these platforms work is very different.

How Printful Works?

Printful is one of my favorite print on demand platforms for a few reasons. It’s easy to use, flexible, and inherently scalable.

When you sign up for Printful, you’ll get your own dashboard, where you can design products, keep track of data, and monitor analytics.

Once you design a product, using Printful’s intuitive mockup generator, you’ll add it to your “product catalog”, which you can then import into your store through one of Printful’s many integrations.

You get to choose the price of your product, so you can cover shipping and production costs.

When a customer places an order on your store, the information is sent back to Printful. The company’s team then produces your product for you and ships it to your target customer.

Notably, the great thing about Printful is you can sell through a huge selection of platforms, from ecommerce stores built with tools like Shopify and Wix, to Marketplaces like Amazon and Esty, and even social media channels. You can also track everything within your Printful dashboard.

How Bonfire Works?

Bonfire, on the other hand, doesn’t give you the opportunity to sell your own custom products through a range of channels.

It doesn’t integrate with any other platforms. Instead, it gives users a free-to-use storefront environment where they can sell products to an existing audience.

This obviously limits your scalability, but it also means you don’t have to worry about creating and running your own store. When you sign up with Bonfire, you can choose to create a storefront on the platform, or start a “limited time” campaign.

Once you’re all set up with an account, you can design your custom storefront with Bonfire’s built-in tools.

The design process is pretty straightforward, giving you access to various themes, and customization options for your headers, and images.

After you have your store, you can head to the “My Orders” section of Bonfire to start creating custom products.

Notably, Bonfire only has a handful of products to choose from, but the design tools are relatively intuitive and straightforward for customization.

You can add text, upload images, and choose from various free “clipart” images too.

After you’ve created your custom products, you can list them on your storefront (with a description) and share a link to your store with your customers.

They can then purchase products directly through your “site,” and Bonfire will handle the rest (e.g., production and shipping).

The Pros and Cons of Printful and Bonfire

Every POD platform has its own pros and cons. While I think Printful is better than Bonfire for its advanced design tools, unique printing options, and range of products, it’s worth noting that Bonfire does produce very high-quality products.

Plus, it makes it very easy for beginners to get started.

Printful Pros and Cons

Bonfire Pros and Cons

Printful vs Bonfire: Core Features

Both Printful and Bonfire have a lot of overlapping features. They both offer handy design tools, with free clipart, fonts, and templates to help you start creating your products.

They also offer relatively fast shipping and turnaround times. However, Printful delivers products worldwide, whereas Bonfire’s suppliers are limited to the US at the moment.

There are some unique features on both Printful and Bonfire worth checking out, however.

Here are some of the main features that stood out to me during my review:

Printful Core Features:

• Advanced design tools with hundreds of free assets and realistic mockups
• Multiple customization options, including all-over-print
• Branding options such as custom labels and packaging options
• Comprehensive warehouse management solutions
• Access to statistics and analytics for sales
• Promo maker tools for advertising
• Integrations with a huge range of sales channels
• AI-driven tools for quality assurance

Bonfire Core Features:

• Intuitive design tool with free resources
• Extensive print quality control measures
• Simple store creator for online selling
• Limited edition campaign selling
• Merch shelf sales for top creators
• Design templates and pricing calculators
• Order tracking capabilities
• Affiliate marketing campaign

Printful vs Bonfire: Pricing

Pricing can be a little tricky to understand when you’re choosing a print on demand vendor. After all, it’s not just the core price of products and shipping you might have to think about, but subscription costs, and fees for any ecommerce stores you want to connect too.

Printful Pricing and Fees

Printful is relatively straightforward when it comes to pricing. As you create your product with the company’s mockup generator, you’ll be able to see how much each item, and customization costs. Plus, you’ll get an insight into shipping fees too.

Notably, the more customizations you add, the more expensive your item will be (a basic inside label costs around $2.49, for instance).

While some of Printful’s products can be quite expensive, compared to competitors like Printify, the shipping costs are on-par with most vendors.

For instance, shipping to US customers starts at round $3.99 depending on what you want to sell. There is the option to upgrade to express shipping (For a higher price) if your customers are looking for speed.

One thing that I think makes Printful particularly interesting is that although you can get started for free, you can also access more benefits from the vendor with a membership.

Both membership options are available for free to companies who earn a certain amount of revenue in a 12-month period. You need to earn $12k for Printful Growth, or $60k for Printful Business.

However, you can also buy a Growth membership for $24.99 per month. These memberships come with all the core features of Printful, plus:

• Printful Growth: 20% off DTG products, 30% off other products, branding discounts of 7% product transfer support, and unlimited stores per account.
• Printful Business: 22% off DTG products, 33% off other products, 9% branding discounts, free embroidered product digitization, larger front prints for select products, and priority support.

Companies can also pay for additional services from Printful, such as warehousing, assistance with product photography, and more. All of these services are delivered on a “per-quote” basis, so you’ll need to reach out to Printful for a price.

Bonfire’s Pricing and Fees

Bonfire isn’t quite as transparent with its fees as Printful. While there’s no cost for setting up an account, you do need to pay for the base cost of your products, and any shipping fees.

Oddly enough, you won’t see the “price” of your product with Bonfire until you actually add it to your store.

You’ll see the base cost, a suggested selling price, and your potential profit listed for you when you visit the “Profits” page of your dashboard.

Notably, Bonfire doesn’t seem to include any shipping fees here. However, the company’s help center suggests international shipping starts at around $11.99 for the first product, and increases by $4 for every additional product from your store.

On the plus side, with Bonfire, you won’t have to worry about the costs of setting up your own ecommerce site, as you can create your storefront for free.

Printful vs Bonfire: Integrations

As I mentioned above, one of the biggest differences between Printful and Bonfire is how you can actually sell your products through the two platforms.

Bonfire gives you an independent storefront you can use to sell your products via social media, messenger, and so on.

There is also an option to sell with “Merch Shelf” on YouTube, but that’s as far you can go with your “omnichannel” sales strategy. Printful, on the other hand, is a lot more flexible.

It has is own API, so you can create your own custom connectors and automated workflows.

Plus, there are simple integrations available for:

• Ecommerce platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Square Online, Squarespace, Webflow, BigCommerce, Ecwid, Weebly, Adobe Commerce, BigCartel, StoreEnvy, and Prestashop
• Marketplaces: Gumroad, Ebay, Etsy, Walmart, Amazon,
• Social media: TikTok Shop,
• Other tools: Shift4Shop, Launch Cart, Shipstation, etc

Basically, there’s no limit to how many sales channels you can access with Printful, which is why I recommend it as a more scalable and flexible solution for business owners.

Printful vs Bonfire: Product Designs and Quality

Few things matter more when choosing the right POD solution than product and print quality. Ultimately, whatever you choose to sell, the quality of your products will determine whether you make a consistent profit, and earn customer loyalty.

The good news is both Printful and Bonfire have an excellent reputation for quality. Printful boasts a 99% satisfaction rate for its products, thanks to its intuitive approach to quality assurance.

The company uses AI tools to ensure that prints look perfect on every product. Plus, their AI tools can even upscale the images you upload to the platform automatically.

What’s more, Printful offers a huge range of customization options to choose from, so you can give your products a more luxurious feel. For instance, there’s embroidery, DTG, all-over print and more.

While Bonfire doesn’t have as many printing options, it does take a strong approach to quality assurance. The company offers strong templates to help reduce the risk that your print won’t turn out as expected.

Plus, the team always double-checks the quality of prints before sending them to customers. Like Printful, Bonfire has earned a great reputation for not just its print quality, but its commitment to sourcing high-quality and sustainable materials.

Printful vs Bonfire: Customer Support

Finally, let’s take a look at customer support. First, I’m always impressed by Printful’s comprehensive self-help resources.

The company produces a huge number of blogs, guides, FAQs, videos, webinars, and other resources to help you answer any questions you might have about POD and growing your business.

If you need more direct help, you can reach out via a contact form or email.

Advanced, or “priority” support is reserved for people on the Printful Business membership plan, so you’ll need to be earning around $60,000 a year or more to get it.

Bonfire also has an excellent help center, though its guides, and content aren’t nearly as comprehensive as what you’ll get from Printful.

On the plus side, you can reach out to the team through chat, email, or phone. That means you have a lot more options here than you would on Printful.

Plus, Bonfire has a great reputation for responding rapidly to queries with personalized assistance for all of its users.

Printful vs Bonfire: The Verdict

Ultimately, Printful is my go-to choice in this comparison. It gives you a much wider range of products to choose from, more customization options, and a host of advanced features.

Plus, it ensures you can sell your goods across a wide range of platforms and channels.

In comparison, Bonfire is a lot more basic, with fewer product options, minimal customization, and a relatively simple storefront creator.

However, it does excel at creating high-quality products, and delivering excellent customer service.

This could make Bonfire a good choice for beginners who want to keep their costs (and store management issues) low, without compromising on quality.