Printful vs Modalyst: The Complete Comparison Guide

Printful vs Modalyst, which should you pick for print on demand?

Personally, I think Printful is one of the best POD solutions out there. The company excels in terms of product variety and quality, plus the solution integrates with dozens of different sales channels. However, Modalyst has its benefits too, such as access to hundreds of pre-built products.

So, how do you pick? I took a closer look at the features of each platform to bring you this comprehensive comparison review.

Let’s jump in.

Printful vs Modalyst: Pros and Cons

Printful Pros and Cons

Modalyst Pros and Cons

Printful vs Modalyst: The Core Features

In the past, Printful and Modalyst had a lot more in common. Both platforms used to offer print on demand solutions, worldwide order fulfillment, and integrations with different sales channels.

Now, however, Modalyst is moving away from the POD landscape to focus exclusively on dropshipping.

That’s a shame in my opinion, as offering both dropshipping and POD made Modalyst a very useful tool for companies that want to extend their product portfolio with a range of options.

Still, both platforms do still have some great central features.

Product Options and Customization

Let’s start with looking at the product options offered by both companies. I love Printful’s broad collection of available customizable products. You can create everything from eco-friendly t-shirts to custom wall art, home décor, and accessories.

The great thing about Printful is that it allows you to customize every product in a range of ways. You can leverage different printing methods, from all-over-print to embroidery to add unique designs to apparel and other items.

Plus, you can even add branded elements, like outside and inside neck labels for clothing, customized packaging, and package inserts.

Technically, Modalyst does give you more products to choose from overall, however. There are more than 640,000 pre-made products listed on the platform, organized into categories like men and women’s fashions, jewelry, home products, and garden products.

Unfortunately, Modalyst announced it would be discontinuing its print-on-demand services from the 15^th of July 2024, which means you can no longer create unique, custom products. There aren’t a lot of branding options available for customizing packaging and unboxing experiences either.

Product Quality

As any print on demand or dropshipping vendor will know, there’s more to boosting sales than offering customers a wide range of products. You also need to ensure the items you sell meet customer expectations in terms of quality.

Printful has an excellent reputation on this front. In the past, the sample products I’ve ordered from the company have always featured high-quality materials and crisp, clear prints. In fact, you can even specifically order “luxury” products.

Printful’s commitment to quality shines through in its 99% satisfaction rate, and the hundreds of great reviews its earned from customers.

Modalyst’s product quality is a little more variable. A lot of the available products for dropshipping come from companies like AliExpress and Alibaba, so you might find they’re not always well-made.

Plus, since you’re ordering from a huge range of vendors with Modalyst, there’s always a risk some manufacturers will be more reliable than others.

Fulfillment and Delivery Options

While Modalyst and Printful now focus on two different areas (dropshipping and print on demand), they still both offer access to convenient global fulfillment. Printful has fulfillment centers located all over the globe, to ensure you can produce items and get them to customers quickly.

These centers leverage the latest technology to ensure you’re always delivering high-quality items to your customers. Some regions even offer access to express shipping options, although you may need to pay a little extra for the service.

Modalyst also offers global fulfillment, and even allows you to sort through manufacturers based on their location.

This can be ideal if you’re looking for rapid fulfillment from vendors in the US, UK, Europe, or other regions. Plus, certain companies will also offer express delivery services, although the price of delivery can vary drastically.

Most of the shipping fees I found ranged between $5 and $15 per item, which is pretty expensive. You might want to keep this in mind when setting prices for your products.

Read more:

• Printful review
• Printful Pricing guide
• Modalyst review

Sales Channels and Integrations

If you want to sell products through a variety of channels (potentially boosting your revenue in the process), Printful is definitely the better choice. Printful integrates with more platforms than just about any other POD vendor, from TikTok Shop, to Etsy, Shopify, Wix, and more. There’s even an open API so you can create unique automated workflows.

Plus, Printful also offers a “merch share” service, which allows companies and teams to create collections of customized items, they can use for specific campaigns, or in-store branding.

Modalyst integrates with a few dropshipping platforms, like Alibaba and AliExpress, as well as sales platforms like eBay, Shopify, and Wix. Since Modalyst is part of Wix, you’ll probably get the best experience from the app if you already have a Wix store.

Ease of Use and Customer Support

One great thing I discovered when experimenting with Printful and Modalyst, is that both of these platforms are extremely user-friendly. You can sign up for an account with either solution for free, and start browsing through products based on category, or search for specific keywords.

Printful offers amazing design tools, with included AI features for image upscaling, and realistic mockup generation. It also has a great backend interface where you can track orders, access analytical data, and even make promotional content for marketing campaigns.

While Modalyst won’t offer design tools anymore, as it moves away from POD, it still gives users a fantastic experience, with a streamlined backend where you can access one-click integrations, track orders, and even create custom pricing rules for your products. You can add products to your store in seconds, and even experiment with variant mapping.

From a customer service perspective, Modalyst has a great help center packed with guides and tutorials for beginners. Plus, there’s an AI chat solution that can answer common questions in a matter of seconds.

However, if you want to reach the customer support team directly, you’ll be limited to email. Like Modalyst, Printful has some great self-help resources, including FAQs, guides, videos, and blog posts designed to help you grow your business.

The company also offers direct 24/7 support, through live chat, and email. Plus, you can usually get a response from the team pretty quickly if you messaging them via social media.

MORE: Everything you need to know about contacting Printful customer support

Printful vs Modalyst: Plans and Pricing

If you’re looking for a cheap way to launch a new business, both Modalyst and Printful offer free plans. However, I think Printful’s free plan is a lot more generous. With Modalyst, you can only access and sell 25 products on the free subscription.

With Printful, you get access to unlimited products, endless customization options, and all the design tools and integrations you might need, no fees required. All you need to pay for is the price of producing and shipping your products.

Printful Paid Plans

If you do choose to upgrade to a paid plan with Printful, you’ll only have one option. The “Growth” membership, which is available for free if you earn over $12k in revenue a year, is also available for $24.99 per month.

This membership includes up to 20% off DTG products, 30% off other product categories, unlimited stores, 7% off branding options, and product transfer support.

The other membership option, “Printful Business” is only available to companies earning $60k or more in revenue per year.

This includes all the benefits of the Growth plan, as well as up to 22% off DTG products, 9% off branding, 33% off other product categories, larger prints for certain products, free digitization for embroidery, and priority support.

Modalyst Paid Plans

Modalyst’s paid plans are available on a monthly or annual basis (with 25% discounts if you choose the annual option. The “Startup” plan costs $35 per month, and includes all the features of the free plan, such as integrations, product editing and variant mapping. The only difference is you can sell up to 250 products, instead of just 25.

The Pro plan, for $90 per month, gives you access to unlimited products, including premium options from well-known brands. This is definitely the best value plan overall, but it’s quite expensive when you consider you’ll need to pay for the base costs of your products, and shipping too.

Printful vs Modalyst: The Verdict

In my opinion, choosing between Printful and Modalyst is easier than ever now that Modalyst no longer supports print on demand. If you just want a simple solution that gives you access to hundreds of thousands of pre-made products from worldwide vendors, Modalyst is the best choice.

However, if you want to create unique, customized products with advanced design tools, and sell them through a wide range of sales channels, Printful is the better choice, hands-down.

Of course, there’s nothing to stop you from using both tools, if you still want to combine print on demand with dropshipping.