Printify vs CafePress (2023): Which POD Solution is Best?

Printify vs CafePress: do you know which option is best for your POD store?

As POD (Print on Demand) business models continue to grow in popularity, countless platforms have emerged to assist creators in launching their own online companies.

CafePress and Printify are just two examples. Both are designed to help creators customize and sell a variety of products online, without having to deal with warehousing, logistics, production, or shipping.

With each of these tools, virtually any entrepreneur can launch a thriving online business, with minimal risk or initial investment. However, both platforms do take a very different approach to supporting POD sellers.

Here’s what you need to know if you’re struggling to choose the right platform for your growing business.

What is Printify?

Let’s start with an introduction to Printify. One of the most popular and well-known print on demand solutions worldwide, Printify, was first launched in 2015. It’s a comprehensive platform that connects creators with printing and manufacturing companies around the world, who can produce custom items on their behalf, and ship them directly to customers.

Printify offers more than 800 different POD items to choose from, ranging from accessories and apparel, to home décor. Plus, with over 110 highly rated printing professionals to choose from, it’s easy to find a partner to bring your business to life.

What is CafePress?

CafePress, like Printful, is a print-on-demand platform. However, while Printify simply connects vendors with the manufacturers they need to produce and ship their unique products, CafePress also gives vendors a central platform where they can sell their products.

Instead of selling items through marketplaces like Ebay, or ecommerce platforms, you’ll sell directly on the CafePress marketplace, and earn between 5-10% of the price of every sale. This means there’s no need to run your own ecommerce store, although the profit margins can be a little lower.

How Do Printify and CafePress Work?

On the surface, Printify and CafePress have a lot of similarities. They both offer companies access to a variety of customizable products they can sell online. Plus, they’ll both handle the process of producing your products, packaging them, and shipping them to customers for you.

However, there is quite a significant difference between the functionality of both Printify and CafePress. Printify’s main purpose is to connect merchants with manufacturers who can produce their products, and handle the shipping process.

How Does Printify Work?

When you sign up for an account with Printify, you can use the in-built mockup generator to add designs to hundreds of different items, uploading designs for tools like Dropbox and Google Drive. The mockup generator also features a range of features for customizing colors, text, and graphics. Once you’re done designing, you can select one of Printify’s partners to work with.

Printify allows users to browse through options based on things like ratings, shipping costs, and delivery times. Once you have your partner, you can either list your products for sale on your existing ecommerce website or a marketplace, using Printify integrations, or create a Printify pop up shop.

Every time a customer places an order with your business, their details will be sent to your printing partner, who handles production and fulfilment.

How Does CafePress Work?

With CafePress, you still get the option to upload your designs to various products, and customize your items using a mock-up generator. However, you don’t choose from a range of printing suppliers or sales channels. Instead, you’ll list your products directly on the CafePress marketplace.

Whenever a customer buys one of your products, either after browsing through the marketplace, or clicking on your store link, CafePress handles the order directly. You don’t pay for the base cost of the item, the customizations, or the shipping, like you do with Printify. However, you also don’t earn 100% of the profits. Instead, you get “royalty payments” for each sale.

Every artist or designer can earn between 5-10% on the sale price of the products. You can either choose to have that money transferred to your PayPal account or delivered in a check, or you can use it as “CafeCash” credit, to buy merch from the CafePress site.

Printify vs CafePress: Ease of Use and Features

Although Printify and CafePress take very different approaches to print on demand selling, they’re both designed to be extremely easy to use. You can sign up for an account on either platform in a couple of minutes, without having to pay any initial fees.

Both tools also come with various useful features. There are mock-up generators and design tools on CafePress and Printify to help you design your products. However, Printify’s design tools are a little more advanced. They also both offer step-by-step guidance and FAQs to help you.

However, Printify has a much wider feature set than CafePress overall. With Printify, you can choose whether you want to sell your products on your own ecommerce store or a marketplace with integrations, or use the Printify API to create custom connections. You can also create your own Printify store using the “pop-up” service if you don’t have a site already.

Printify also offers a range of services you can’t access on CafePress, such as the option to order items in bulk for a discount, transfer products to a Printify warehousing facility, and access assistance from design and selling experts.

Notably, both platforms require you to do the majority of the work involved with promoting your products yourself. However, CafePress does already have quite a significant audience for its marketplace, so you might find it easier to track down potential buyers.

Printify vs CafePress: Pricing

One of the main reasons merchants choose the Print on Demand business model over other ecommerce strategies today, is that it’s easy to get started with very little capital. There are no minimum order quantities to worry about with POD, and no costs for inventory management and warehousing, so you can dive in pretty quickly.

However, the fees you incur on Printify and CafePress can vary pretty drastically. Both tools allow you to start selling for free, but Printify does have some “subscription” packages available.

Printify Pricing

The free plan on Printify provides access to all of the design tools, support for up to 5 stores, unlimited designs, and 24/7 customer service. The “Premium” plan, for $29 per month, includes access to all of the features of the free plan, with a 20% discount on your products, and Printify’s Order Management tool, Printify Connect.

There’s also an “Enterprise” plan available, designed for companies with more than 10,000 orders per day. With this plan, you can run unlimited stores with Printify, and access all the features of the Premium plan, with a custom subscription price.

On top of the subscription costs (if you choose a premium plan), you’ll need to consider other fees with Printify too. For instance, when you make a sale, you’ll need to pay for the base cost of the product, the price of customization, and the fee for running your ecommerce store.

CafePress Pricing

Signing up to CafePress on the other hand, is entirely free for merchants. However, you do have to pay for CafePress services, either by allowing CafePress to take 10% of your royalties (up to $10 per month), or paying monthly with prices starting at $6.95 per month.

However, you don’t earn 100% of the proceeds from your sale either. Merchants instead receive between 5-10% of the sale price for every product.

The money is processed within about 60 days, and may take longer to arrive depending on the payout strategy you choose. This does mean the profit margins for CafePress are a little lower, but you don’t have to worry as much about running your own ecommerce store.

Printify vs CafePress: Fulfilment and Shipping Costs

With most POD providers, there are a handful of operational costs to consider when running your business. CafePress is a bit of an exception to this rule, as you don’t have to pay anything at all upfront to sell customized goods. There are no shipping or fulfillment fees, as CafePress simply retains the majority of the profit when you sell something on the marketplace.

Printify is a little different. You earn the full amount of the sale cost of your item, but you also need to pay for the base product, the price of customization, and shipping and fulfillment. The good news is you can see what you can expect to pay for each product when you’re selecting a printing partner.

Printify also has strong relationships with some of the top carriers in the world, including DPD, DHL, and FedEx, and provides merchants with a handy shipping rate list.

Printify vs CafePress: Integrations

Integrations are usually an important consideration when choosing a print on demand vendor. With solutions like Printify, you need to be able to connect the platform to your existing store, marketplace, or website, so you can showcase and sell your products.

Fortunately, Printify offers a wide range of integration options. You can connect directly with Prestashop, Wix, Walmart, BigCommerce, Etsy, Ebay, Shopify, Squarespace, and WooCommerce. There’s also a custom API available.

Since CafePress provides merchants with a marketplace to sell through, there are no integrations with any online marketplaces or stores available. However, users do get their own CafePress URL and store ID, so they can link customers back to their products.

Printify vs CafePress: Customer Support

Even with a solution as simple as print on demand, you might find you need a little extra guidance or support from time to time. Fortunately, both CafePress and Printify are on-hand to help drive merchants towards success. They both have their own FAQs, resources, and articles to help users find quick solutions to common problems.

Printify also allows merchants to connect directly with the team through social media, chat, and email, although there’s no phone support available for the time being. CafePress takes a similar approach to customer service, offering either phone or email-based support, with no live chat. Both companies are relatively responsive, and aim to respond to customers as quickly as possible.

Printify vs CafePress: Products and Design Quality

Finally, before you make the decision to sell through either CafePress or Printify, it’s worth making sure you’re going to be delivering exceptional, high-quality products to your customers. While it’s difficult to know exactly what a product from a POD company will look like (without ordering samples), but CafePress and Printify have good reviews and quality assurance methods.

Printify commits to a “quality promise”, working with partners to consistently audit their processes and ensure every item lives up to brand and customer expectations. Printify’s in-house experts review each print provider regularly, and check products before they’re shipped for any errors. What’s more, there are tons of products to choose from, including eco-friendly and sustainable options.

CafePress doesn’t offer quite as many products as Printify, although there’s still plenty of variety. However, like Printify it does invest in a variety of quality assurance methods to ensure excellence. With both companies, you can order samples of your products to check the quality yourself.

Printify vs CafePress: Pros and Cons

Every Print on Demand solution has its own pros and cons to consider. If you’re still struggling to decide between the two platforms, here are the primary positives and negatives you’ll need to keep in mind when making your choice:

Printify

CafePress

Printify vs CafePress: The Verdict

Ultimately, if you’re looking for a simple and reliable way to get started in the world of Print on Demand selling, then both Printify and CafePress are excellent choices. However, both platforms do offer a very different experience to merchants.

If you’re looking for a powerful and scalable solution that you can use to build and enhance your online store, and sell through a range of channels, Printify is a great choice. It offers tons of products, and even discounts for high-volume sellers.

Alternatively, if you want to jump into selling without having to worry about marketplaces or creating your own online store, CafePress might be a better alternative. It’s a great option for beginners, although the profit margins may be a little lower.