Printful vs Printify vs Print Aura: Battle of the POD Platforms

Printify vs Printful vs Print Aura: Which print on demand solution is really best for you?

Each of these platforms has earned a significant reputation in the POD market, offering potential merchants an easy way to customize and sell products online, without having to worry about fulfillment and logistics.

While Printful, Printify, and Print Aura all have a lot of features in common, from built-in design tools to solutions for automating order processing, there are some major differences between them.

Today, we’re going to take a look at the pros and cons of each tool, to help you make the right choice for your growing business.

Let’s dive in.

What is Printful?

Printful is one of the most popular print-on-demand platforms available today. It launched just before Printify in 2013, and offers access to more than 300 white-labelled products, which can be customized with different designs, text, and components. Printful offers a range of printing technologies, including DTG, embroidery, and all-over printing.

Like Printify, it also supports integrations with a wide range of ecommerce platforms and marketplaces, ranging from WooCommerce to Ebay. Printful also offers various branding options, and supports multi-channel sales across social media.

What is Printify?

Let’s start by defining each Print on Demand platform. Printify is a POD solution that was first launched in 2015. It offers companies access to a wide range of white labelled products, created by manufacturers around the globe. The platform comes with built-in design tools, and integrations for a variety of ecommerce sites and marketplaces.

With Printify, you can create products with no minimum order quantities, or order products in bulk. Plus, the company also offers a simple store-building solution in the form of “Printify Pop up”, so you can create your own ecommerce platform if you don’t have one already.

What is Print Aura?

Print Aura is the oldest platform on this list, launched in 2012. Like both Printify and Printful, it offers merchants a variety of white label products they can customize, with hundreds of design options to choose from. The platform is a little more basic than Printify and Printful, but it does offer rapid turnaround times and quick delivery speeds across the US.

Print Aura integrates with a handful of ecommerce tools, such as Etsy, WooCommerce, and Shopify. Plus, it offers a range of branding tools, such as customizable labels and packing slips to help your company stand out from the crowd. There are also no minimum order quantities on any product.

Printify vs Printful vs Print Aura: Ease of Use

On the surface, Printify, Printful, and Print Aura all offer very similar functionality. With all options, companies can sign up for an account for free and start designing straight away.

All you need to do is choose the product you want to customize from each library, and use the built-in design tools to start customizing. Let’s take a closer look at how each solution works.

How Printful Works?

You can sign up for Printful instantly, without spending anything. Just enter your email address, create a password, and you’ll be ready to go.

Printful’s design tools are particularly powerful, with a range of different customization options and templates to choose from. The interface is very similar to the one you’ll get on Printify, allowing you to alter the colors, text, and designs of each product easily.

Printful offers a range of printing methods, from all-over printing to embroidered garments. It also allows companies to access branding tools, so you can add your own personalized thank you cards, stickers, and coupons to each parcel. The company also offers warehousing services, so if you sell other items outside of Printful, you can store everything in one place.

How Printify Works?

Printify is similar to Printful in terms of functionality. You can get started straight away with nothing but an email address, and start designing straight away. The integrated mock-up generator makes it easy to customize your designs according to your specific needs.

Plus, Printify also offers its own pop-up shop generator, so you can create an ecommerce storefront if you don’t have one already. handle manufacturing directly. Instead, when you create a product on Printify, you’ll be given a selection of printing partners to choose from. You can filter through options based on delivery speeds and costs, as well as pre-existing ratings.

Once you’ve created your items, you can simply add them straight to your store, and every time you receive an order, Printify will pass the details onto your printing partner for fulfillment.

How Print Aura Works

Like both Printful and Printify, Print Aura allows users to get started with the platform straight away, with a free account. Print Aura’s design tools are a little more basic, but they provide similar functionality, with templates to help ensure your designs look fantastic on any item.

All of the platforms will also provide you with an insight into how much each product will cost as you move through the design process. Once you’ve created your items, you can order a sample product, or upload your items straight to your online store.

Whenever a customer places an order on your store, their information will be sent to the back-end printing team, who will create your product, and ship it to customers, using their desired shipping methods.

Printify vs Printful vs Print Aura: Pricing

One of the main things you’ll need to consider when choosing a print on demand vendor for your business, is how much you’re going to spend on products and fulfillment. The good news is that all of these platforms offer free plans, with no subscription fees.

However, just because you can use the platforms for free, doesn’t mean there aren’t fees to pay. You’ll still need to pay for the base price of each product, delivery fees, and extras like customization and branded packaging. Print Aura is perhaps the cheapest option of the three in terms of base products, it’s also the only platform that doesn’t have a premium service.

Printful Pricing

Printful’s free plan includes access to the Printful design maker with built-in visuals and tools, automatic order fulfilment with free integrations, and white label packing slips with custom messages and logos. You also get global order fulfillment, round the clock customer support, access to the resource hub, and Printful’s free logo maker with 100+ templates.

If you want to upgrade your service on Printful, you can pay for extra solutions, like additional branding options, custom pack-ins for orders, custom packaging, creative services like graphic design, and warehousing services. There’s also an “Enterprise” plan, available for a custom price, which comes with exclusive perks like an embedded design maker.

Printful’s product fees vary depending on your chosen item, printing methods, and customizations, but shipping rates start at around $2.99 per product for standard shipping with 2-5 day delivery times.

Printify Pricing

Printify’s free plan comes with all of the design tools included on the platform, support for unlimited product designs, integrations, and 5 stores for each account. However, there are also two paid plans available if you want to upgrade your experience.

The Premium plan starts at $24.99 per month, with support for 10 stores per account, unlimited product designs, and a 20% discount on all products. The Enterprise plan, with custom pricing, supports unlimited stores for every account.

On top of those fees, you’ll need to think about the costs of making your products, which can vary depending on your printing partner. Plus, shipping costs can vary from one vendor to the next too. Fortunately, Printify will show you the price you can expect to pay when you design a product.

Print Aura Pricing

As mentioned above, Print Aura is the only platform on this list that doesn’t offer a premium service. However, you can opt-in to paying extra fees for custom packaging slips, and branding. The exact price you’ll pay for Print Aura products can vary, with shirts starting at around $7.25.

The company also offers a range of shipping options. Standard shipping in the US costs around $5.50 on average, with an extra $1.25 cost for every additional item added to a parcel. There are also premium delivery options which incur a faster fee. You can also request expedited production times, which might increase the price of your final product.

Products and Print Quality

By far, some of the most important things to consider when choosing a print on demand provider are the products you can customize, and the quality of the prints. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know for certain exactly what each vendor can offer without ordering samples for yourself.

Fortunately, all three vendors do allow merchants to order samples with no minimum order quantities, so they can check for themselves if the quality meets their requirements.

Let’s start by looking at Printify. First, there are more than 800 products to choose from, giving you a lot of variety when it comes to building your online store. Products range from men, children, and women’s clothing to accessories like phone cases, stickers, and even home décor.

Since Printify works with a number of different print partners, there may be some variations in printing quality. However, Printify does have a stringent quality check process, to ensure that every item lives up to expectations. Print providers are regularly reviewed, and providers earn ratings for their print quality, production speed, and stock reliability.

Printful also offers hundreds of items to choose from, categorized into lists of eco-friendly products, premium products, best-sellers, and more. You can even filter products by delivery time if you’re looking for ultra-fast shipping. Printful also offers a range of customization options, including DTF and DTG printing, embroidery, and all over printing.

Like most POD vendors, Printful has a quality assurance guarantee, and uses state-of-the-art technologies to combine sustainability and quality for every product. The company also stocks some of the best white label brands in the industry.

Finally, Print Aura does have fewer products available compared to Printify and Printful, but it does have its own quality assurance guarantee. The company even offers eco-friendly and sustainable products to reduce your carbon footprint.

The biggest issue you might face with Print Aura is that the company uses the CMYK color mode for printing, which means colors might differ slightly if you upload designs in RGB format.

Packaging and Branding Options

One of the things that sets Print on Demand apart from other low-risk business models, like dropshipping, is the ability to build and showcase a unique brand. However, not every vendor offers the same branding options.

Printify takes a straightforward and sustainable approach to packaging, ensuring every item is packaged according to its specific needs. The company offers various branding options, including the ability to add neck labels to certain garments, and change the appearance of your shipping labels.

Printful allows for custom packaging, so you can alter your parcels according to your specific brand needs. There’s also the option to include branded packaging inserts with your products, and even enhance your brand with Printful’s free logo maker. The company aims to ensure all products are created and delivered in the shortest time possible to preserve your reputation.

While Print Aura offers fewer products than Printful and Printify, it still ensures you can make your brand stand out. There are various options to choose from, including custom return labels and packaging slips. Plus, you can add hang tags and neck labels to a range of garments.

Print Aura will also ensure all of your products are protected with the highest quality shipping precautions, to minimize the risk of damage. If products are damaged and Print Aura believes the issue is their fault, they’ll replace your item, free of charge.

Printify vs Print Aura vs Printful: Integrations

There are two primary ways for companies to invest in print on demand. The first option is to list items on an existing marketplace, like Redbubble, so you don’t have to build and manage your own online store. The alternative is to link your POD provider to your existing ecommerce platform.

Printify, Print Aura, and Printful all focus on the latter option, giving companies various ways to connect their printing solutions to their existing website. Printify also has it’s own pop-up store generator, as mentioned above, so you can build your website without using a third-party provider.

Printify integrates with a host of different solutions, including Shutterstock, so you can access free-to-use designs, as well as ecommerce platforms. Printify connects with Squarespace, Wix, BigCommerce, Prestashop, WooCommerce, and Shopify. There are also direct connections for Ebay, Etsy, and Walmart. Plus, you can access Printify’s API for custom connections.

Printful has its own dedicated API, as well as available connections for a variety of sales channels, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, and YouTube. The list of ecommerce marketplace and platform integrations is huge. Sellers can connect Printful to Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, Ecwid, Weebly, Big Cartel, and many others.

Print Aura is the most limited in terms of automation and integrations. Currently, there’s no API available, and integrations are only offered for Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, StoreEnvy, and OpenCart. This means if you’re looking for lots of sales channels, Printify or Printful may be better options than Print Aura overall.

Printify vs Print Aura vs Printful: Fulfillment and Shipping

In most cases, print on demand fulfillment will usually take a little longer than direct to customer sales or dropshipping. That’s because your items are created on-demand. They’re not sitting in a warehouse ready to ship. However, all three vendors we’ve reviewed here do try to ensure your products will reach your customers as quickly as possible.

Printify’s delivery and production times can vary depending on the printing partner you choose. There are more than 110 printing locations available across the US, Europe, China, Australia, and the UK, so you can choose the solution closest to your intended customer.

Some providers also offer priority shipping options, so you can pay a little extra to get items to customers faster. Standard shipping usually takes 3-5 days for international customers, or 2-3 days for domestic customers, and shipment tracking is available.

Printful promises rapid order fulfillment, with most products delivered to customers within 2-5 business days. However, your shipping time will depend on the availability of the product, and the delivery destination you choose.

Most products are given an estimated delivery time, so you can provide your customers with updates, and tracking is available on some items.

Print Aura also supports global shipping, with prices starting at around $5.50 for most domestic shipments. Orders within the US usually take around 3-5 days to reach customers, but international deliveries can take up to 12 days. Tracking is also available from Print Aura, but only for products shipped to customers in the United States.

Printful vs Printify vs Print Aura: Customer Support

Finally, we come to customer support. Even with a business model as straightforward as print on demand, there’s always a chance you’ll need some extra support from time to time. Fortunately, Print Aura, Printify, and Printful all offer useful resources to retailers.

Printify offers a variety of support options to choose from, with 24/7 merchant assistance on all plans. You’ll have access to various self-service resources, such as a help center and FAQ articles. You can also reach out to the customer on social media or email. Unfortunately, there aren’t any phone or instant chat options available.

Printful has its own help center and blog for guidance, as well as the “Printful Academy”, where you can access a range of guides. If you need to reach out directly to Printful, you can access live chat during business hours, or send a message via Printful’s contact form.

There are also social media options available, as well as the option to reach out directly to one of Printful’s fulfillment centers, offices, or partner facilities.

Print Aura offers a host of customer support options too, although the team is only available during standard business hours. You can contact the company via phone, email, or contact form, and there’s a “Getting started” page available with step-by-step walkthroughs for beginners. However, the self-service resources are a little limited compared to what you get from Printful and Printify.

Printify vs Printful vs Print Aura: Pros and Cons

At this point, you should have a relatively good idea of what to expect from Printful, Printify, and Print Aura in terms of POD fulfillment. As you might expect, all three options have their own unique pros and cons to consider. Here are the core benefits and disadvantages of each solution.

Printful

Printify

Print Aura

Printify vs Printful vs Print Aura: Which is Best?

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to choosing the best print on demand provider. The right solution for you will depend on the products you want to customize, your fulfillment needs, and even the ecommerce platform or marketplace you want to sell with.

Printful is fantastic if you’re looking for a range of printing options, and a huge variety of available integrations.

Print Aura stands out as a great beginner-friendly option for those with a limited budget, with affordable items and easy-to-use tools.

Finally, Printify is perhaps the best choice if you want a convenient way to start selling online, with its own pop-up store generator, and a huge range of printing partners to choose from.