Printful vs Printify vs Teespring: Choosing Your POD Solution

Printful vs Printify, vs Teespring: which is the best print on demand solution for your budding ecommerce business? On the surface, all three platforms seem to have a lot in common. They all allow merchants to add their own customizations to white-label products.

Plus, they all help companies to manage the fulfillment and production processes of creating a new brand. With these tools, you won’t have to store inventory or handle shipping yourself. Everything is managed for you by manufacturing and shipping partners.

However, there are some major differences between Printify, Printful, and Teespring.

In this comparison, we’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look at all three solutions, to help guide you towards the right decision for your brand.

What is Printful?

Printful is one of the most popular, and well-known print on demand solutions in the market today. It serves more than 1 million registered users, with hundreds of customizable white-labelled products. Options range all the way from eco-friendly items, to backpacks, hats, and home décor.

Printful sets itself apart in the print on demand marketplace, with integrations to various marketplaces and platforms, cross-channel selling, and a variety of branding options. Plus, it offers various advanced printing techniques, such as DTG and DTF printing, all-over printing, and embroidery.

What is Printify?

Printify is similar to Printful in a lot of ways. Launched in 2015, the platform serves merchants with more than 800 white label products to choose from. Options include phone cases, apparel, home accessories, and more. Plus, there are also eco-friendly and sustainable options.

Unlike Printful, Printify doesn’t produce items directly, but instead connects retailers to a variety of printing partners, located around the world. These partners handle all of the production and fulfillment processes for each brand. However, Printify also integrates with a range of platforms, offers handy design tools, and provides businesses with various branding tools, including a pop-up store generator.

What is Teespring?

Teespring, now known simply as “Spring”, is a simple all-in-one solution for print on demand selling. There are fewer products to choose from on the platform than you’d get with Printify and Printful, but creators still have various options to choose from, including apparel and accessories.

One thing that sets Teespring apart from Printful and Printify is the ability to sell directly on Teespring “storefronts”, which offer instant access to potential customers. Spring also provides direct integrations to the YouTube merch shelf, Twitch merch store, Google shopping and Streamlabs.

Ease of Use: How Do Printful, Printify, and Teespring Work?

Most print on demand solutions are designed to help merchants launch and run their own online store with minimal effort. In fact, print on demand is one of the simplest business models for beginners, with few upfront costs, no logistics to worry about, and no inventory management.

However, the exact functionality and ease of use of each platform can vary. Here’s what you need to know about the behind-the-scenes workings of Printful, Printify and Teespring.

How Printful Works?

Let’s start with Printful. This platform ensures any retailer or merchant can start selling instantly, with a simple sign up process. You can create an account without spending anything, and start using Printful’s design tools straight away.

The state-of-the-art design tools and mock-up generator allows retailers to add their own logos, custom designs, and other components to each white label product. Plus, there are various printing methods to choose from, including all-over printing and embroidery. As you experiment with designs, you’ll see an estimated price for your product displayed within the mock-up generator.

Once you’ve created your designs, you can add them straight to your online store, marketplace, or a variety of social media sales channels. When customers place orders, they’re directed back to Printful, and the team produces your items, and packages them according to your requests. You can even add personalized stickers and thank you cards to each order.

Printful also offers useful warehousing services (for an extra fee), so you can store all of your products in the same logistics center for rapid order fulfillment.

How Printify Works?

Printify works similarly to Printful, with a few caveats. Once again, you can sign up instantly with an email address, and spend nothing on your subscription. There’s an integrated mock-up generator for customizing products with images and designs. Plus, you can upload content straight from Google Drive, Dropbox, or your device storage.

After you’re finished creating your products, you can preview what they’ll look like, and choose a print partner from a range of options. Printify allows you to sort through printing partners based on their location, estimated shipping costs, and rating. You’ll then be able to instantly list your products, either on a supported marketplace or ecommerce platform, or using Printify’s pop-up shop generator.

Whenever a customer places an order, their information is passed through to your printing partner, who handles the production of your items, as well as fulfillment (packaging and delivery). Printify also allows merchants to customize packaging options with print-outs and packing slips.

How Teespring Works?

Teespring is a little different to both Printful and Printify in terms of functionality. You can sign up for an account for free, similar to both of the other platforms. Plus, there are design tools to help you add unique components to a variety of different products, customizing image, text, and art.

Teespring shows you an estimated price for creating your products after you’re done designing. From there, you can list your products on the Spring platform, using the all-in-one dashboard to manage your storefront, and adjust listing details whenever you like.

Teespring also offers a dedicated “Boosted Network” which allows you to list items on channels like Amazon and Ebay to increase your sales potential. There are even options for creating promotional codes, and listing products on social networks, like the YouTube merch shelf.

When a customer places an order, Teespring takes care of order production and shipping, and adds the profits from each sale to your “Payouts” account. Notably, Teespring can also handle customer service on your behalf, responding to customers rapidly if they have problems with deliveries.

Printify vs Printful vs Teespring: Product Quality

With print on demand selling, you’re reliant on your printing or manufacturing partners to produce high-quality products on your behalf. This means it’s extremely important to ensure you’re working with a vendor you can trust. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to know for certain what you’re going to get, until you create your designs and order samples.

In terms of overall variety, both Printful and Printify offer a lot more options than Teespring (Spring). They also specialize in premium and eco-friendly products, which gives businesses more opportunities to stand out in a crowded market.

However, all three vendors will allow you to order samples of your products before you start listing them on your website. They also all have their own quality assurance programs, which help to guarantee you’ll get an excellent product.

Every platform also comes with design guidance, to assist you in uploading and using the highest quality photos for your items. The biggest difference between these three platforms is that while Printful and Teespring create products in-house, Printify works with a printing network.

This means there’s more potential variation in product quality and prints depending on the supplier you choose to work with. The good news is that Printify does regularly review all of its printing partners, and holds them to very high standards, so you should be able to expect decent quality.

Printful vs Teespring vs Printify: Pricing

Alongside ease of use, pricing is likely to be one of the first factors you consider when choosing a POD solution. Notably, while Printify, Printful, and Teespring all allow vendors to create an account for free, there are various costs and optional fees to consider with all the platforms.

Printful Pricing

If you choose to use Printful for free, you’ll get instant access to the platform’s design maker, with built-in tools for customizing your products, and automatic order fulfillment. The free plan also supports a range of integrations, white label packing slips, and global order fulfillment. Plus, 24/7 customer support is included on every plan.

Printful even offers free users a logo maker with hundreds of templates, so they can get a head start on creating their brand identity. However, if you’re running a growing business, you can opt into Printful’s “Enterprise” plan, which is offered a custom price, with access to exclusive perks.

Whether you pay for the premium service or not, there are various add-on fees to consider with Printful. You’ll need to pay the base price for every item, customization costs, and shipping fees (which start at around $2.99 for standard shipping). There are also extra fees for solutions like additional branding options, warehousing services, graphic design support, and custom packaging.

Printify Pricing

Printify also offers a generous free plan, packed with everything you need to launch your new POD store. You’ll be able to access all of the design tools on the platform, create unlimited product designs, and integrate Printify with up to 5 stores per account.

Printify does offer two paid plans to vendors too. The Premium plan, starting at $24.99 per month, comes with support for 10 stores per account, and a 20% discount on all of your products. The Enterprise plan, which comes with a custom price, supports unlimited store connections.

On top of those fees, you’ll also have the base cost of your products to think about, which can vary depending on your choice of printing partner. There are also shipping costs to consider, and fees for extra branded packaging services. Fortunately, Printify does show you an estimated price for each order when you’re creating your designs.

Teespring Pricing

Teespring is available to access for free, just like Printful and Printify. However, it could be a little cheaper all around, as you can use the platform to sell without creating your own ecommerce store. Since ecommerce platforms come with their own subscription fees and costs, you can save a little extra money this way.

Teespring allows users to choose the selling price and product of all of their profits. Whenever a product sells, you keep the profit. For instance, if a t-shirt costs $10 and you sell it for $25, then you’ll keep $15 from each sale. The payouts are placed directly into your Teespring account. Additionally, the more you sell, the more you can potentially make, as Teespring offers discounts to high sellers.

You don’t have to worry about shipping costs with Teespring, as that’s all handled for you. However, you may have to pay for extra features, like access to the boosted network or help with promotions.

Printful vs Printify vs Teespring: Fulfillment and Shipping Rates

As mentioned above, one of the major costs you’ll need to consider when running a print on demand store revolves around fulfillment. With all of these platforms, you can choose whether you want to cover shipping costs yourself, or collect delivery fees from your customers.

The price you’ll pay for shipping and fulfillment from all vendors varies depending on the location of your customer, the size of your parcel, and whether you’re applying any branded packaging. On Printful, prices start at around $2.99 for a basic t-shirt shipment. Printify offers domestic and international shipping rates, which vary depending on your print provider.

Every additional item you add to a parcel will also incur an additional cost on both platforms. However, with Printify, you can browse through different providers to find the cheapest option.

Teespring takes a similar approach to shipping, with different costs based on where you want to send products. It costs around $3.99 for standard shipping for a single T-shirt in the US, but prices can range up to $15.99 for delivery in Australia. There’s also a rush shipping option available for an extra fee if you want to deliver items faster.

Printify vs Printful vs Teespring: Integrations

One of the biggest differences between Printify, Printful, and Teespring, is the integrations the platforms offer with other sales channels and solutions.

Teespring doesn’t integrate with any traditional ecommerce platforms, but it does provide access to marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay through the “Boosted Network” service.

Companies can also list products on the Twitch or YouTube merch stores, Streamlabs, or Google Shopping. Alternatively, they can simply take full advantage of their Spring storefront.

Printify also offers the option to create your own store on the platform, using the pop-up service. Alternatively, you can integrate the service directly with Etsy, Ebay, and Walmart. There are also native integration for WooCommerce, Squarespace, Shopify, BigCommerce, Prestashop and Wix. Plus, Printify has its own API for custom connections.

Finally, Printful offers the most integration options of all. It provides direct connections with a range of social media platforms for social selling. There’s a custom API for building crucial connections with other platforms. Plus, Printful also supports all of the top marketplaces and ecommerce platforms.

You can sell on Wix, WooCommerce, Shopify, Squarespace, Adobe Commerce, Prestashop, Square, Shift4Shop and many others. Printful even supports various marketplaces, like the TikTok shop, Ebay, Amazon, and Etsy.

Packaging and Branding Options

If, like many print on demand vendors, you’re looking for an opportunity to set yourself apart from the crowd with Printify, Printful, or Teespring, you’re in luck. Not only do these companies allow you to add your own logos and designs to products, but some also offer ways to customize packaging.

Printify takes a sustainable, straightforward approach to packaging products, ensuring every item is placed in the right parcel according to its specific needs. Plus, it offers various branding options, such as shipping labels, and the ability to add neck labels to garments.

Printful offers similar services, allowing for custom packaging so you can make your logo and brand colors shine through on every parcel you send. There’s also a free logo maker on the Printful website, so if you don’t have a logo design already, you can create one without hiring an artist.

Teespring, unfortunately, doesn’t really offer any custom packaging options. The company does promise to get items to customers as quickly as possible, but it uses basic packaging without any customizations. One thing that does set “Spring” apart from the other two platforms, however, is that you can sell digital products, as well as physical items.

Printful vs Printify vs Teespring: Customer Support

No matter how straightforward your print on demand platform seems to be on the surface, there’s always a chance you’ll need extra guidance from time to time. Fortunately, Printful, Printify, and Teespring all offer various resources to support merchants.

Printify delivers 24/7 customer service on all plans, including the paid subscription, with support for social media or email connectivity. However, there aren’t any phone and instant chat options available at present. You will have access to various self-service tools, however, such as an FAQ section and help center.

Printful has its own dedicated help center, a blog for extra guidance, and the Printful Academy for step-by-step instructions. You can also reach out directly to the Printful team via live chat, or a contact form, or get in touch using social media.

Teespring also offers a range of resources to help you master everything from design to fulfillment. If you want to get in touch with the team, you can reach out via live chat and email. All three platforms respond to queries quite quickly, although you might face small delays with Printify depending on the printing partner you choose.

Printify vs Teespring vs Printful: Pros and Cons

Every print on demand solution comes with its own unique pros and cons to consider. While some prioritize ease of use and simplicity for beginners, others focus on providing a wider range of unique designs, or more advanced design tools.

When choosing between Printify, Printful, and Teespring, here are the pros and cons of each solution you’ll need to be aware of.

Printify

Teespring

Printful

Printful vs Printify vs Teespring: Final Verdict

Printful, Printify and Teespring all offer would-be entrepreneurs an excellent opportunity to start selling custom products online with minimal effort. However, they all have different strengths and weaknesses to consider.

Printful offers the most flexibility for scalable multi-channel selling, with support for various sales channels and integrations. However, its products can be a little expensive. Printify gives vendors a huge range of amazing products to choose from, and has its own handy pop-up store creator. However, the product quality and delivery times offered by different print partners can vary.

Finally, Teespring (Spring) benefits from exceptional ease of use, and a fantastic range of tools to get you started with marketing and promotion. However, it doesn’t have as many integrations with ecommerce platforms, and its product options are a little limited.

The right solution for you will ultimately depend on your business goals and specific needs. The good news? You can get started with all three options for free, so there’s plenty of opportunity to experiment.