Printful vs Teelaunch (2023): How Do They Compare?

Are you considering adding print on demand products to your ecommerce store? Or do you want to operate a POD-only business model?

In either case, you'll need a POD service. However, if you’re unsure which to use, you’re in the right spot because I'm comparing two such options: Teelaunch vs Printful.

By the end of this review, I’m hoping you’ll have a clearer overview of the two so you can decide which (if either) is best for you.

However, if you don’t have time to read my entire Teelaunch vs Printful comparison, here are the headlines:

Although Teelaunch seems like a decent print on demand service, especially regarding product variety (300+), Printful boasts a more extensive offer while still offering a good selection of POD products (200+). Not least, Printful provides more in the way of in-built product design features and native integrations. Overall I think this makes the platform more accessible to a greater number of users.

That’s enough intro; let’s get the ball rolling!

How Printful Works?

To get started, create a Printful account and integrate it with your store.

You can quickly sign up for Printful with any of the following:

Google account
Apple ID
Facebook account
Your email address and a password

Once signed in, you’re taken straight to your Printful dashboard, where you can manage your account, search the product catalog, customize items to sell, manage billing, and more.

Printful offers 230+ products to choose from, organized into the following categories:

Apparel (including leggings, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and much more)
Accessories (including phone cases, backpacks, shoes, and much more)
Home and Living (including stickers, tumblers, candles, blankets, and much more)
Hats

Printful works with various brands, including Adidas, Bella + Canvas, Columbia, and Liberty Bags.

From my dashboard, I decided to customize a Unisex Eco Raglan Hoodie.

On the product page, I could see an estimated shipping time, product price, sizes, color choices, and the option to add embroidered customization or DTG printing.

I clicked the ‘Start Designing' button and used Printful’s design manager, which allowed me to:

Add text
Add clipart
Upload a design or image via dragging and dropping a file, Dropbox, or Google Drive in PNG or JPEG format.
Access free sample design files created by Printful designers
Create a logo

Once you’re done designing, you can preview your design before pushing it to your store.

Earlier on, I mentioned the Teelaunch profit calculator shown on each product page; well, Printful helps in that way too. For example, it has an Etsy profit calculator and a guide to payments and pricing.

Again, we won’t go into shipping and fulfillment here, as we’ll discuss this in more detail below.

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

How Teelaunch Works?

Although you can check out Teelaunch’s different products before signing up, you can’t design POD items until you’ve signed up for a Teelaunch account.

To register, head to Teelaunch’s home page and click ‘LOGIN.’ You’ll then be prompted to provide the following details:

Name
Email
Password
Your store name

After you’ve done that, check your email inbox. Hopefully, you’ll see an email from Teelaunch with a link to click to verify your account.

Once you sign in, you’ll see your Teelaunch dashboard.

This is where the action happens, I.e.:

Account management
Creating and viewing customer orders
Integrating your eCommerce store (Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce)
Accessing support
Accessing Teelaunch’s POD product catalog

…and more.

There are 300+ products to choose from, organized into the following categories:

Accessories
Apparel (including brands such as American Apparel, District, and Champion)
Drinkware
Home Goods
Jewelry
Kitchenware
Lifestyle
Office
Pets
Wall Art
Sports

You’ll find the most extensive product choices in the apparel, wall art, and sports categories.

When you choose a Teelaunch product, you’ll see plenty of detail about it. For example, if you’re selling apparel products, you can review info about the product’s colors, sizes, item weight, shipping rates, fabric details, and price.

Let's look at an example to better illustrate Teelaunch’s product customization features. Here, I went for an American Apparel Men’s T-Shirt:

To customize the product, click the ‘Add Artwork’ button and add your image in a PNG file. Each product page has a guide on designing it, such as this Product Design Guide for apparel.

Suppose you’ve used other POD companies before, like Printiful or Printify. In that case, you’ll notice that Teelaunch doesn’t have an in-built design manager/editor. As a result, you can’t directly customize products within Teelaunch with text, access stock images, or develop designs to place on Teelaunch products.

At this point, it’s worth noting that Teelaunch offers design templates for some of its items. For example, its cuff bracelet has a template you can download to the Teelaunch app to customize and upload to your design. Alternatively, you can just upload a PNG file instead.

When your design is all set, click the ‘Next’ button.

You’ll now be asked to add:

A product title
A product description

Please note: This info will be pushed to the eCommerce store you’ve integrated Teelaunch with.

You can customize your product title and description's font size and type.

I also like that when you go to write your product description, you’ll find that Teelaunch has already pre-populated the basics for you. For example, what the product is made from, how it’s stitched, etc.

Teelaunch also suggests a retail price for the item and shows how much profit you stand to make once the base cost is deducted. Of course, this is just a suggestion; you can edit product prices however you wish.

We won’t go into shipping and fulfillment here; we’ll discuss this in more detail below.

For more information on how Teelaunch works, read our full review.

Printful Pros and Cons

Pros

It offers branded print-on-demand products (particularly apparel)
It’s easy to sign up for an account
You get access to a simple-to-use, in-built POD design tool
Printful accepts both PNG and JPEG files
It’s free to use (no subscription fees!)
Its dashboard is incredibly intuitive
It offers bulk order discounts; for example, if you buy 25+ units of select products, you can get up to 30% off.

Cons

There are fewer products to choose from than some of its competitors, including Teelaunch and Printify.
Some customers complain about poor print quality and poor customer service
It doesn’t offer phone support

Teelaunch Pros and Cons

Pros

There’s a wide range of products to choose from (300+), some of which are branded.
It’s easy to sign up for an account
Some customers love their product quality.
It’s free to use (no monthly fees!)

Cons

Its design features are near-on non-existent
Some customers report poor customer service
There’s a learning curve at the start
Its website isn’t very accessible, and you can’t really see its full suite of features unless you sign up for an account.
Phone support isn’t available

Teelaunch vs Printful: Pricing

Printful

Printful is also free to use.

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As for product costs, here are a few examples:

Unisex Gildan Pique Polo Shirt $17.75
Bella + Canvas Unisex Staple T-Shirt $11.25
Knit Beanie $13.50
Organic Fashion Tote Bag $16.75

Printful also has an Enterprise offer for larger-scale businesses. However, no prices are listed, so you’ll need to contact Printful’s sales team for more details.

Teelaunch

It’s free to sign up, and there are no monthly subscription plans. The only additional outlay you might have is if you subscribe to its partner Creative Fabrica to access unlimited fonts and graphics. This costs $29 a month.

As for product prices, here are some examples:

Bella Women’s Racerback Crop Tank $13-15
Unisex Hoodie $19-24
Apple Watch Band $16
Full-Size Single Panel Basketball $36.50

Teelaunch vs Printful: Integrations

Printful

Printful, on the other hand, offers way more in the way of integrations:

Shopify
Etsy
WooCommerce
Wix
Squarespace
Adobe Commerce
BigCommerce
Prestashop
Weebly
Ecwid
Shipstation
Gumroad
Big Cartel
Shift4Shop
Launch Cart
Webflow
Square
Base
Nuvemshop
Amazon
eBay
Tik Tok Shop
Storenvy

Teelaunch

Teelaunch integrates with Shopify. You can also integrate with Etsy; however, you’ll have to integrate it via your Shopify store dashboard.

In addition, you can also integrate Teelaunch with Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce stores.

Teelaunch vs Printful: Fulfillment and Shipping Costs

Printful

Printful also provides information about shipping on its product pages; for example, looking at the Men’s Long Sleeve T-shirt, we see that shipping prices start from $4.59, but no further details are listed.

Like Teelaunch, shipping costs depend on where you’re shipping from and to. Printful goes into more detail about domestic and international shipping in a blog post and its detailed shipping guide.

It also walks you through the difference between offering customers flat shipping and live rates. The latter is when you get live shipping prices from the carriers you choose based on your product’s weight and destination. Live rates have eligibility criteria, so it’s crucial you check to see if you meet these.

Printful stresses its shipping times are estimates, not guarantees, and don’t include the time it takes to create the product. As for order fulfillment, it can take two to five business days for Printful to print your customized POD items, with three days being the average time.

Printful has fulfillment centers in the following locations: the US, UK, Canada, EU, Brazil, Japan, and Australia.

For more info on this, you can watch a helpful video guide about Printful’s fulfillment process on its website.

Teelaunch

It’s easy to see Teelaunch’s shipping costs. As mentioned earlier, they’re shown on every product page.

Shipping costs vary depending on where you’re shipping to and from.

For example, our American Apparel Men's Shirt costs $6 to ship in the USA, $11.50 for Canada, $10.50 to the UK, $12.50 for Australia and the EU, and so on.

As for order fulfillment, orders are batched every four hours. Once an order is in the Teelaunch system, it’s checked and then sent to a print facility, where it’s printed onto paper and sent to the production floor. Once it’s here, Teelaunch can’t guarantee that you can alter or cancel the order.

The order is checked to meet (unspecified) quality control standards. Once satisfied, a shipping label is printed, which triggers a tracking number sent to your online store to be emailed to your customer. Please note: tracking can take 12-24 hours to update.

Teelaunch vs Printful: Customer Support

Printful

You can reach Printful via:

Live chat
Printful app chat
Email
Submit a problem report via your dashboard

There’s also a blog, self-help guides, an online Help Center, a store set-up checklist, and much more, including video lessons, eCommerce marketing tools, etc.

Teelaunch

You can get in touch with Teelaunch via a contact form. There's also a chat widget where you can leave a message if the customer support team is offline. Plus, there’s an online Knowledge Base. Here you can type in your questions; however, the information isn’t very fulsome.

There’s also a blog. But posts aren’t organized into categories, so you need to wade through to find what you need.

Lastly, there are links to podcasts hosted by third parties where Teelaunch is referenced.

Teelaunch vs Printful: My Final Thoughts

So you’ve made it to the end of my Teelaunch vs Printful review. I hope it’s given you enough information to move forward with your print-on-demand business.

As for which of the two is the best print-on-demand company, I think that although Teelaunch has lots to offer, especially in terms of product variety, Printful boasts the more extensive offer.

Printful’s website is incredibly user-friendly and has tons of advice and guides on how it works, how to capitalize on your business, and much more. But, where Printful really stands out when compared with Teelaunch is its design tool, which far outshines its competitor. Not least because it offers much more in the way of design features and is effortless to use.

On top of that, Printful also offers more in the way of integrations, so you’re more likely to be able to connect with whatever eCommerce platform you’re already using.

However, as with all my reviews, I recommend trying both for yourself before committing to either. Both are free to use, so why not?

That’s all from me! Let me know what you think in the comments below.