Printful UK Review (2024) – Is Printful Good for UK Users?

Are you an ecommerce business in the UK, or do you want to sell in the UK and are considering print-on-demand (POD) as an option? If so, this review gives you the low-down on one of the most popular POD providers: Printful. 

Here, I’ll look at what Printful is, its features, prices, advantages, customer service, and more so that, having read this blog post, you'll have a better idea if Printful is the right platform for you.

However, if you don't have time to read my full Printful review, here are the highlights:

Printful Pros and Cons for UK Users

What is Printful?

As mentioned above, Printful is a print-on-demand platform with fulfillment centers worldwide, including the UK. This means you can pick products to customize and sell online. For example, t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, tote bags, etc. 

At the time of writing, Printful has printed 71+ million products worldwide and fulfills over one million products each month. 

You can use Printful's mockup generator to customize and sell goods on your online store. Then, when a customer buys from you, Printful handles all aspects of the sale, i.e., printing, packing, and shipping the order to its endpoint. 

In other words, Printful operates as a POD dropshipping company, so you don’t have to buy products, store them, or send them out to customers. Instead, all of that is taken care of by Printful.

Key Features

That said, below is an overview of Printful's standout features:

• Free Design Maker tool: This tool provides an intuitive way to create product designs and mockups. Just upload or drag and drop your graphics and add text or clip art. Within the Design Maker, you can also hire a designer via Fiverr to bring your vision for your design to fruition. 
• Free Mockup Generator: This is part of the aforementioned Design Maker. Once you're happy with your final design, you can place it on a mockup to give you a better idea of what your custom product will look like in real life. You can access 2,550+ free mockup templates created by Printful's professional designers. 
• As mentioned above, Printful offers 338 products to customize and sell, including hats, jackets, swimwear, t-shirts, hoodies, and home and living products. However, it’s worth noting that Printful doesn’t always stock every one of its items in the UK. So, when it comes to product selection, if quicker turnaround times are essential to you, it would be wise to filter for products that are stored and fulfilled in the UK. 
• Logo Maker: This is a free logo-making tool with 100+ customizable logo templates
• Promo Maker: This is another free tool with 100+ templates for creating Facebook and Instagram posts and ads.
• Getty Images: From your Printful dashboard, you can access Getty stock images to upload onto your design, but these come at a fee, with prices starting at £0.83 each. 
• Integrations: As mentioned, Printful integrates with 18 eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, WooCommerce, and Wix, plus 4 marketplaces, including Etsy and Amazon. On top of that, you can access Printful's API, so if you have the coding smarts, you should be able to set up your own custom integrations.
• Samples: You can order 1 sample order each month with a 20% discount with a maximum of 3 different items per order.
• Branding: At the moment, the only branding option available in the UK is kiss-cut stickers. These are packaging inserts you can put your own brand on. The cost of these varies depending on the amount and size of the stickers you want. However, per unit for the 3″x 3″, you can expect to pay £1.95. However, discounts are available if you buy in bulk.

Printful Product Examples

That said, here’s a bit of information about Printful's product categories and a few item examples within each one:

• Men’s Clothing: t-shirts, polo shirts, hoodies, sweatpants and joggers
• Women’s Clothing: t-shirts, hoodies, dresses, swimwear, and sports bras
• Kids and Young Clothing: jackets, shirts and leggings
• Hats: beanies, baseball hats, and mesh hats
• Accessories: bags, footwear, phone cases, and tech accessories
• Home and Living: wall art, home decor and drinkware and coasters

Best Selling Printful Products

Quick Verdict: When searching Printful's product catalog, if you look at the left-side menu, you can see a Collections Tab. I clicked on this and chose the first option: Bestsellers. You're then taken to a page that lists Printful's best-selling products.

Naturally, Prinful’s best-selling products change over time, but at the time of writing, here are a few examples of their best-selling products: 

• Unisex Staple T-shirt, Bella + Canvas
• White Glossy Mug
• Cuffed Beanie

In addition, I found a helpful Printful blog post that walked me through the 23 best-selling print-on-demand products on the platform. 

One thing to note is that not all best-selling products are marked with a red best-selling flag. Some just appear on the aforementioned best-selling products page. 

How Printful Works

I’m working on the assumption you already have an eCommerce store. If you don't, you need to create one. 

Pro Tip: If you're set on using Printful and still need an online store, create one using one of the platforms Printful integrates with!

First, create a Printful account by providing any of the following information:

• Apple ID
• Facebook Account
• Google Account
• Your email address and password

Once done, integrate Printful with your eCommerce store. 

When I created my account, I was taken straight to my Printful dashboard. From here, it’s possible to:

• Manage your account
• Browse the product catalog
• Customize items to sell by uploading your own designs, adding text, colors, and more.
• Create a logo

…And much more. 

From my dashboard, I chose a Unisex Premium Hoodie to customize. 

On the product page, I could instantly view the product's:

• Price
• Color options
• Product description
• Sizes 
• Estimated delivery times for the UK 
• Estimated shipping rates for the UK
• Bulk price calculator (a sliding tool that showed what discount I’d get if I placed a bulk order of this item, e.g., 10% off for 100 items). 
• Customization options (e.g., front, back, left sleeve, right sleeve)
• Style and fit of the product
• The option to add DTG printing or embroidery to my sweatshirt

I then clicked the Start Designing button to use the Printful Design Maker.

I could then:

• Upload a PNG, JPEG, or image via Dropbox or Google Drive. 
• Add text and/or clipart
• Create a logo
• Access free sample designs created by Printful designers

Once I’d finished my design, I could preview it before sending it to print. I could either place my order or add it to my connected eCommerce store. 

Then, when a customer buys something you’ve created via Printful on your eCommerce store, the order is automatically sent to one of Printful’s fulfillment centers. In this case, that’d be Wolverhampton near Birmingham.

Please note: You're responsible for setting your own retail prices on your eCommerce store. So, be sure that you do the right calculations to ensure you make a decent profit margin. You'll need to factor in the cost of your product, shipping, marketing, (and whatever other costs you've incurred).

For more information about how Printful works, read our full review here. 

Advantages of Using Print on Demand and Printful in the UK

Quick Verdict: The most significant advantage to using Printful is that besides its wide selection of product choices, Printful has a centrally located fulfillment center in the UK. 

As mentioned, this is in Wolverhampton near Birmingham. 

That aside, there are other broader advantages, including: 

• Print-on-demand, more generally, is a sustainable option vs. fast fashion. Not least because there are no minimum orders, so you only print a product when there's a demand for it.
• Printful offers 40 eco-friendly products to customize
• 1 in 5 UK shoppers have expressed an interest in personalized products and are willing to pay up to 20% more for them
• The print-on-demand (POD) industry is forecast to swell at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.1% until 2030.

Printful Customer Support

Quick Verdict: Printful offers plenty of online self-help resources, and I found them easy to find and navigate. I can also attest that their live chat support was quick and helpful. However, where Printful falls down in this area is its lack of phone support. You can only contact agents via chat and an online form. 

Having said that, Printful offers the following online resources:

• Help Center: Here, you'll find articles organized by topic, including getting started, warehousing and fulfillment, and video tips
• Blog: Here, you'll find eCommerce-related posts, including dropshipping, a holiday shipping and order deadline guide, etc
• Guides: including store setup, marketing, and facts about printing
• Printful Academy: This offers free eCommerce courses on a range of topics, e.g., using Google Trends for eCommerce
• Store Setup Checklist: An actionable guide on how to set up your Printful store.

Online reviews that refer to customer support are a mixed bag. Although Trustpilot users give it an average of 4.6 stars out of 5, when I used its word search filter, I found negative reviews about support. Users complain about slow customer support responses. That said, there are positive reviews about its customer support, too, which, as mentioned above, was certainly my experience.  

Printful Pricing

When pricing your POD products, it’s essential to do a cost analysis and profit calculation before designing and listing products to sell.

With that said, here are a few pricing examples of Printful products, including VAT from each of its categories:

• Men’s Clothing: t-shirts from £6.65 
• Women’s Clothing: hoodies from £20.27 
• Kids and Young Clothing: leggings from £16.88
• Hats: from £13.01 
• Accessories: bags from £13.91 
• Home and Living: posters from £5.99

Where shipping in the UK is concerned, costs vary depending on the product. So, let’s take a look at an example. In the case of t-shirts, you can expect an average shipping time of 3-21 business days with a shipping cost of £3.59 for a single product and £1.20 for an additional product. But please note these time and cost estimates can vary. 

If you want to store your own products in one of Printful’s warehouses, that’s doable. Of course, this is an additional charge. The varying costs are too long to list, but here’s a link to the relevant fees. 

With everything else pricing-wise covered, let’s examine the two Printful membership plans mentioned above. Unfortunately, some of these prices were only available in USD at the time of writing:

Printful Growth

Eligibility is based on reaching $12K over the last 12 months. If you do, Printful Growth is free for the first year. After that, you pay a monthly fee of £19.99, and you receive the following: 

• FREE 14-day trial
• Up to 20% off DTG products
• Up to 30% off other categories
• Stable pricing you can count on
• Product branding discounts of 7%
• Personalized product transfer assistance
• Unlimited stores per account

Printful Business

Eligibility is based on reaching $60K in the past 12 months. This free plan offers everything in Printful Growth and:

• Up to 22% off DTG products
• Up to 33% off other categories
• Product branding discounts of 9%
• Sample order discounts of 25%
• Free digitization for all embroidered products
• Large front print for select products
• Priority support

You can apply for either of these plans via your dashboard. 

👉 You can read our full Printful pricing guide here.

Printful UK Review: My Overall Verdict

So, that brings us to the end of my Printful UK review!

To summarize, Printful is an international POD operation with a UK fulfillment facility in Wolverhampton. Overall, I found Printful easy to use; it's certainly suitable for beginners.

I also liked that it has a good range of products in different categories, and it was hassle-free to sign up. It’s also positive that Printful has introduced membership plans for bigger print on demand companies. But, smaller operations don’t have to pay additional fees. 

Suppose you’re looking for a simple and fast way to customize and sell print-on-demand products to your UK customers via your eCommerce store or online marketplaces. In that case, Printful is undoubtedly worth considering.

Lastly, as it’s free to sign up and use, budding print-on-demand businesses have little to lose by trying it. If that’s what you decide to do, don’t forget to tell me how you get on in the comments box below!