Shopify vs Printify (2024): Building your Business

Shopify vs Printify: Which option is really right for you?

It’s a difficult decision to make. After all, Shopify and Printify might both serve business owners, but their features and capabilities are very different. 

After helping countless companies build their own print on demand stores and brands with both Printify and Shopify, we decided it was time for a comprehensive comparison. 

Here, we’ll cover everything you need to know about Shopify and Printify, exploring sales features, pricing, ease of use, and more. 

Quick Verdict:

Our ultimate verdict is: why choose? You can use both Shopify and Printify together to build a comprehensive print on demand brand.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one ecommerce platform that supports more than just POD sales platforms, Shopify is the clear choice. 

Alternatively, if you already have an online store with a platform like WooCommerce, or you want to sell through marketplaces like Amazon, consider working with Printify.

What is Shopify? Pros and Cons

Of all the countless ecommerce platforms we’ve used and reviewed, Shopify is our favorite. It’s a comprehensive SaaS solution, designed for the commerce market.

Shopify, as mentioned above, is a comprehensive SaaS solution, designed for the commerce market. The hosted platform provides companies with everything they need to build, grow, and manage their business.

There are SEO and blogging tools for content marketing, social media, and email marketing integrations, and even solutions for inventory and order management.

Though Shopify primarily markets itself as one of the top ecommerce platforms, users can utilize the ecosystem to build just about any kind of website or store. You can even leverage Shopify POS tools to create an omnichannel sales strategy, with both online and offline selling.

Shopify comes with its own payment processing service, access to fulfillment and delivery support, and countless resources ideal for growing brands.

You can even use reporting and analytical tools to make data-driven decisions about profit margins. Plus, with a comprehensive app store to access, users can connect their Shopify site with virtually any other tool – including Printify.

What is Printify? Pros and Cons

Alongside Printful, Printify is one of our favorite print-on-demand platforms. Printify is a dropshipping and print-on-demand service provider. The all-in-one platform gives companies access to over 850 high-quality products they can customize with their own unique designs and branding.

You pick the product you want to sell, add your elements in the Printify mockup generator, and then use Printify’s integrations to upload the item to your store.

Every time a customer places an order on your website, their information will be sent directly to Printify’s team of “print providers” who produce your order, package it, and ship it to its destination.

Rather than printing products in-house. Printify works with a global network of distribution partners, most of which will allow you to order samples of your products from them before you commit to a long-term partnership.

Once you’ve selected your partners, they handle all of the hard work for you, making sure your items reach customers as quickly as possible.

While Printify doesn’t allow users to create their own online store within the platform, it does allow you to connect your print-on-demand services to a range of existing ecommerce platforms.

There are integrations available for Shopify, Etsy, Wix, and many other market-leading solutions. Plus, some Printify packages come with access to a custom API integration option.

What Can You Do with Shopify?

The biggest difference between Shopify and Printify is what you can do with the two services.

Printify focuses exclusively on print-on-demand, helping to connect companies with the manufacturers and fulfillment providers who can produce and ship their products. Shopify is a lot more versatile.

With Shopify, you can build virtually any kind of website or store you like. You can design a website where you can manage bookings and appointments for your service-based business, host your own online blog, or create a store selling physical or digital products.

You can even integrate Shopify with dropshipping and print on demand apps for quick and easy order fulfilment.

Plus, Shopify integrates with a range of platforms for omnichannel selling. You can use the tool to sell on social media, or access POS tools to synchronize online and offline retail locations. Shopify also features comprehensive tools for:

• Brand development: Shopify makes it easy to develop a powerful brand online. You can purchase a custom domain name straight from the hosting provider, use templates and themes to customize your site however you choose, and even access tools for creating branded images and logos. You can even create custom, polished invoices.
• Payment processing: Managing transactions and processing payments is easy with a Shopify store. The solution comes with it’s own dedicated payment solution, “Shopify Payments”, for secure credit card and debit card transactions. You can sell internationally in different currencies using Shopify Markets, integrate your own payment processing tools, and even use buy-now-pay-later options within the Shopify platform. Plus, there are tools for tracking all of your transactions, tax reports, and other essential data too.
• Marketing: Shopify gives business owners numerous ways to engage their audience. The platform is search engine optimized as standard, and comes with blogging features for content marketing. There are in-built email marketing tools, as well as the option to integrate your store with external apps. Plus, you can leverage social media connections directly within Shopify. Apps are also available for creating sales, landing pages, pop-ups, and more.
• Fulfillment: Shopify’s fulfillment network makes it easy to get products to your customers wherever they are. There’s also a comprehensive partner platform, where you can find discounted shipping rates, and connect with suppliers to offer faster shipping times to customers. You can manage everything from label printing to order tracking within your Shopify dashboard, and also integrate dropshipping or POD apps.
• Automation: There are tons of automation tools available on Shopify. You can create automated email campaigns to inform customers about order updates, or automatically publish content according to your chosen time frame. Shopify even offers “Shopify Flow” to help you create more comprehensive automated workflows.

On top of all that, Shopify also offers access to a mobile app for on-the-go store or site management, banking solutions, merchandising tools and more. If you upgrade to the “Shopify Plus” plan, you can even create a headless commerce experience with advanced coding tools.

What Can You Do with Printify?

While Shopify supports companies in creating virtually any kind of website, or business online, Printify is a slightly different solution.

It’s basically a directory for print-on-demand companies which simplifies and automates the process of sourcing and creating custom products.

The easy-to-use platform connects business leaders with manufacturers and fulfillment providers worldwide, so they can:

• Create custom products: With Printify, companies can choose from a range of over 850 products to customize with their own designs. Options range from hoodies and t-shirts to tote-bags, phone cases, stickers, leggings, and tank tops. Users can leverage the convenient mock-up generator to add their product designs to any item in an instant, then order discounted sample products from printing partners for quality control.
• Build their brand: With Printify, you can use a range of fulfillment companies around the world to create branded merchandise, then package each item with your own custom components. There are tons of branding options to explore, such as custom invoices, pack-ins, and branded labels for your garments.
• Simplify fulfillment: Printify’s global partner network ensures you can ship your products to virtually any customer worldwide, no matter whether you’re located in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, or in Europe. The order fulfillment partners handle all of the shipping issues for you. However, shipping costs and times can vary depending on your partner.
• Sell across a range of channels: Printify integrates with a range of marketplaces and ecommerce platforms, such as Etsy, Ebay, Shopify, and Wix, so you can sell anywhere. Plus, on advanced plans, you’ll be able to leverage a custom API for more advanced integrations with a range of tools and applications.

Printify promises exceptional quality prints, amazing service, and excellent support to every customer, with an easy-to-use environment that any vendor can use.

Shopify vs Printful: Pricing

Printify and Shopify both have a range of fees to consider when you’re building your new business. While Printify has fewer “upfront costs”, you will still need to account for the costs of building your own store, creating products, shipping them to customers, and so on. 

When it comes to pricing, you can expect to see some pretty significant differences in subscription fees between Shopify and Printify.

	Shopify	Printify
Subscription fees	$5 – $2000+	Free plan or premium plans starting at $24.99 per month.
Transaction fees	0 – 2%	None
Additional fees	Fees for transactions, third-party payment processing, extra services, and premium themes or add-ons.	Fees for extra services, base product costs, shipping, and add-ons.
Conclusion	Printify can be cheaper to get started with if you’re selling on social media or a marketplace like Amazon or Etsy.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers a range of five packages in total, starting with the “Starter” plan for $5 per month if you’re selling on social media channels and in messaging apps. 

There are also three core plans which should appeal to most companies, including: 

• Shopify Basic: $39 per month for 2 staff accounts, shipping discounts, 1000 inventory locations, store building tools, and a host of extra features like customer segmentation, discount codes, gift cards, abandoned cart recovery, and analytics.
• Shopify: $105 per month for all the Basic plan features, plus lower transaction rates, 5 staff accounts, standard reports, international commerce, and ecommerce automations.
• Shopify Advanced: $399 per month for the features of Shopify, plus extra staff accounts (15), even lower payment processing rates and advanced reporting features.

Shopify also offers an enterprise plan, “Shopify Plus”, which is priced according to your specific needs. Monthly fees generally start at $2000 per month. On top of that, there are extra costs to consider, such as payment processing fees for Shopify Payments, and extra transaction fees if you use a third-party payment processor. 

Plus, you might need to pay extra for things like premium themes, expert support, integrations and add-ons, and Shopify Fulfillment services. 

Printify customers can get started with the service for free. The free plan supports up to 5 stores per account, and comes with access to integrations, the Printify mockup generator, manual order creation, 24/7 merchant support, and custom order importing. There are also two paid plans:

• Premium: $24.99 per month for all the features of the Free plan, plus up to a 20% discount on all products and up to 10 stores per account.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for all the features of the premium plan plus early access to new features, unlimited stores per account, API access, a dedicated account manager, and branded customer support for your clients.

On top of these costs, you’ll need to think about the fees involved with creating your products and shipping them to customers.

The price of each product varies depending on a range of factors, as does shipping, but you can review costs when you’re sorting through Printify vendors. 

While there are no transaction fees on Printify, there could be additional fees, for things like ordering product samples, or accessing services like Printify Express Delivery. 

Sales, Marketing, and Inventory Management

Though Printify and Shopify are two very different platforms, they do have some overlapping sales features. Both tools allow you to create “pop-up stores” which include links to your products you can share on messenger apps and social media. 

They both offer access to product catalogues, so you can track the items you create, and both tools allow you to ship products to customers worldwide.

Plus, Shopify and Printify can both integrate with various sales tools and platforms, including online marketplaces. They both allow you to maintain comprehensive control over the products you sell, and they both can help elevate your brand. 

Both Printify and Shopify also both manage order fulfillment on your behalf. However, with Shopify you need to use a third-party service, or the Shopify Fulfillment Network. With Printify, you work with a global network of fulfillment partners. 

Unfortunately, there are also a range of sales, marketing, and inventory management tools available from Shopify that you don’t get with Printify, such as:

• Inventory management: Shopify comes with comprehensive inventory management tools where you can monitor stock levels, access instant low stock alerts, and even attribute SKUs and barcodes to your products. 
• Marketing features: With Shopify, you can integrate your store with a range of marketing tools for different types of campaigns, such as email or social media marketing. There are built-in SEO tools, and you can create your own blog. Plus, Shopify has “abandoned cart recovery” tools to increase your sales. 
• Additional sales channels: Although both tools support omnichannel selling, Shopify has more options to explore. It even offers customers a POS solution, so they can sell products in-person with minimal effort. 

Winner: Shopify

Shopify has a more advanced selection of sales features for omnichannel selling, inventory management, and business growth. It also offers more opportunities to grow your business with marketing campaigns. 

Ease of Use and Development Time

We’re big fans of the user experience both Printify and Shopify offer to customers. Both tools are great for beginners, even if you have no prior business management and coding experience. However, Printify might be more attractive to entrepreneurs who want to get their store up and running fast.

Shopify

Shopify is a world-renowned ecommerce platform in part for it’s excellent ease of use. The dashboard is clean and easy to navigate, with well-labelled sections. You can add products, customize your store, and manage orders effortlessly, with just a few clicks. 

Plus, thanks to the Shopify “theme editor” changing your store to match your brand couldn’t be simpler. Though we do recommend working with a Shopify Expert if you want to make coding changes, as the “Liquid” language can be harder to master. 

Shopify also makes it easy to run your store, with solutions for order fulfillment and shipping, order tracking, and comprehensive store management.

You can even track sales, customer information, and performance metrics in the admin console. Although the wide range of features available to Shopify users can mean it takes a little longer to master everything.

Printify

Printify makes it very easy to get started with print on demand. You can sign up for an account in seconds, and use the integrated mock-up and design tools to create amazing custom products.

The platform even guides you through the process of connecting your ecommerce store or marketplace storefront to your Printify catalog. 

Like most leading POD companies, Printify handles order production, packaging, and fulfillment for you, which makes it much easier to launch your company (even without inventory). Plus, you can easily sort through manufacturers based on their location, pricing and shipping times. 

One thing that’s particularly appealing about Printify is you don’t necessarily need your own ecommerce store to start selling. You can create a Printify popup shop in a few seconds, and sell through links. Alternatively, you can connect to a marketplace like Amazon.

Winner: Shopify

While Shopify is more comprehensive as an ecommerce platform, Printify is a bit easier to use. You can develop your online brand and business in seconds, and you don’t have to invest time and money into building a website (unless you want to). 

Themes and Design Tools

When it comes to “web design” and themes, there’s a huge difference between Printify and Shopify. Shopify is a comprehensive ecommerce platform and website builder.

That means you get access to a massive theme store, full of premium and free designs to suit every business model and industry.

All of these themes are highly customizable, so you can tailor them to match your brand identity. Plus, the design tools on Shopify are extremely easy to use. 

Printify, on the other hand, doesn’t offer a full website builder.  It does allow users to create “pop-up stores”, where they can showcase their product designs by sending links to friends and consumers.

However, the design options are pretty limited. You can only customize basic things, like the products on your pages, not your overall website design.

We’d recommend going the extra mile and integrating your Printify account with a pre-existing website builder like Shopify if you really want to make your brand stand out. 

On the plus side, Printify does have other design tools to offer. There’s a convenient mockup generator to show you what your designs will look like on different products.

Plus, you can create custom designs on the Printify platform with templates and convenient tools. 

Winner: Shopify

Shopify is clearly miles ahead of Printify in terms of design tools and themes. It might not have a mockup generator, but it does allow users to create entirely unique custom websites and pages. You can even create a logo with Shopify using their Hatchful logo generator. 

Apps, Integrations, and Scalability

Even if your business and store starts off pretty small, it’s always good to have the opportunity to scale. Fortunately, both Printify and Shopify offer some excellent solutions for scalability.

Shopify

First, Shopify promises vendors a range of subscription plans to choose from, so you can access new features and capabilities as your business grows.

Shopify’s servers are robust enough to handle high amounts of traffic and fluctuating order volumes too. Plus, you can even use Shopify headless commerce features to disconnect your front and back-end to create unique customer experiences.

Shopify also has a comprehensive app marketplace, where you’ll find thousands of apps and integrations for everything from marketing to accounting.

You can link your store with fulfillment platforms, dropshipping companies, and tools like Printify. 

Plus, you can use tools like Shopify Flow to automate workflows through a variety of different apps, saving your business time as it scales. 

Printify

Like Shopify, Printify offers subscription plans to high-volume sellers, that give them access to extra discounts and benefits as their business scales. Thanks to its global network of fulfillment partners, Printify can easily handle companies with larger order numbers and bigger audiences. 

Plus, the fulfillment network means you can easily send your products to customers all over the world.

Printify also integrates with a range of different ecommerce platforms, like PrestaShop and WooCommerce, and marketplace platforms, so you can sell on various channels.

Additionally, unlike some POD vendors, Printify has it’s own open “API”, so you can create custom integrations and workflows to suit your business needs. 

Winner: Shopify

Shopify is just a little more scalable than Printify, due to the huge app marketplace it offers sellers, and it’s headless commerce capabilities. However, both tools are excellent if your brand is rapidly growing, or just getting started. 

Shopify vs Printify: Customer Support

Even when platforms are as user-friendly and intuitive as Printify and Shopify, it’s till important to have good customer support. Printify and Shopify take a similar approach to assisting vendors, both offering a wide range of self-help resources and tools. 

Shopify has a comprehensive help center packed with documentation, tutorials, guides, videos, and FAQs.

Printify has a fantastic help center too, featuring blogs, articles, and troubleshooting tips. Plus, both platforms have excellent communities, where you can get help from like-minded business owners. They also both allow companies to pay for “expert assistance”. 

You can reach out to Shopify’s Experts for development and marketing support, or connect with Printify’s network of specialists through the “Experts Program”. 

In terms of direct customer support, Shopify has an edge over Printify. Both companies offer chat and email support, but Shopify can also communicate with customers via phone in certain regions of the world.

The company also commits to 24/7 support, whereas Printify can take a little longer to get back to companies outside of standard business hours.

Winner: Shopify

We chose Shopify as the winner here because it offers a wider range of self-help resources, more contact options (including phone support) and faster responses to customer queries. Printify doesn’t always have the best reputation for exceptional customer service.

How to Sell with Printify on Shopify

The reality is, you don’t really have to choose between Printify and Shopify at all. If you want to start selling custom products, you can use the two services together. In fact, Printify even has a dedicated Shopify integration to make this simple.

All you need is a Shopify account and a Printify account to get started. Once you have an account with both services, add the “Printify” app to your store from the Shopify app marketplace.

Head over to Printify, log in with your credentials, and click on the “Ecommerce Platforms” tab. Click on “Add a New” store, and connect to your Shopify account.

From there, you’ll be able to access the Printify dashboard from your Shopify account, and choose the products you want to customize.

You can sort through the variety of products Printify offers, then customize them in the mockup generator, before immediately adding them to your store.

Once you upload your product catalog to Shopify, every time a customer makes a purchase on your store, their details will be sent through to the white-label partners you choose to work with through Printify.

Your chosen print-on-demand business will create all of your quality products for you, and ship them to your customers. Plus, you can monitor all of your orders in your Shopify backend, and keep track of your sales analytics.

Check out our complete guide to using Shopify and Printify together here, and also our video below:

Who Should Use Shopify?

We’d recommend Shopify for:

• Online retailers: Shopify offers a wide range of robust tools and resources to both new and established online retailers and ecommerce entrepreneurs. It’s an easy to use platform with excellent scalability, and it can support a range of business models. 
• Omnichannel sellers: If you want to sell various products through a range of different platforms, Shopify is a great option. It can integrate with marketplaces and social media platforms, and even has it’s own point of sale solution for in-person selling.
• Dropshippers and POD vendors: If you want an easy way to launch your online business, dropshipping and POD selling is easy with Shopify. The platform supports a range of different fulfillment apps and integrations, and even has its own step-by-step dropshipping guide.

Who Should Use Printify?

We’d recommend Printify for: 

• Growing companies: If you want to expand into new markets, or diversify your product range, Printify makes it easy to create a wide range of unique and customized products with minimal risk. You only pay for products when they actually sell. 
• Artists and designers: If you’re a member of the creator economy, like an artist or a designer, Printify can help you bring your designs to life with amazing products. This is a great way to monetize your skills. 
• POD companies: If you’re investing in print on demand, Printify is one of our favorite platforms for creating custom products. There are tons of items to choose from, and the worldwide fulfillment network makes it easy to scale. 

Shopify vs Printify: Final Verdict

Both Shopify and Printify give companies an easy way to start building an online business.

Here's the bottom line:

• With Printify, you can create a variety of print-on-demand products with minimal upfront costs, and no monthly fee if you like. The solution comes with access to a host of fulfillment centers, all offering amazing print quality, and straightforward functionality.

• Alternatively, Shopify gives beginners in the commerce world an easy way to build just about any kind of company, whether you’re selling online or offline, with dropshipping or your own warehouse. You can connect your storefront to fulfillment services, and manage every aspect of running and marketing your company in the Shopify backend.

If you’re not sure which option to choose, there’s no real need to make a decision.

You can create a customizable store and sell across a range of channels, using tools like Printify, Printful, and other dropshipping solutions within your Shopify ecommerce store.

Shopify vs Printify: Comparison Table

	Shopify	Printify
The Verdict	Overall Winner	Great for Selling on Your Existing Site
Pricing	Monthly subscription fee, ranging from $5 to $2000+ per month. Transaction and payment processing fees, and potential additional fees for services and themes.	Free plan (for up to 5 stores), or premium plans starting at $24.99 per month. Extra fees for base product creation and fulfillment (shipping) and services (branding, support, express delivery, etc.)
Sales Features	Complete ecommerce platform with integrated payment processing, order fulfillment, shipping, inventory management, and marketing tools.	Integrations with marketplaces and ecommerce platforms. Fulfillment and order production services, and experts program. Printify “pop-up store” options also available.
Apps and Integrations	8,000+ add-ons and apps	Integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Wix, marketplaces like Etsy, and an open API.
Ease of Use	Easy-to-use backend with excellent dashboard, intuitive features, and convenient themes.	Simple platform and design tools, and easy integration with other platforms.
Scalability	Flexible plans, excellent server infrastructure, headless commerce, and integration options.	Scalable product fulfillment and creation, premium subscription options, and integrations.
Help and Support	Comprehensive help center, and 24/7 customer support via email, phone, and chat.	Self-help resources, contact forms, community forum, and chat.
Themes and Designs	Comprehensive range of premium and free themes, with tons of customization options.	Pop-up store options, mockup generator, design tools, and expert assistance.

FAQ