Apliiq Review 2024: Evolutionary Print on Demand

In this Apliiq review, we’re going behind the scenes of a popular Print on Demand solution, to determine just how valuable it might be for your POD business. We took a deep dive into the platform, to define everything from how easy it is to use, to how Apliiq handles shipping, customer service, and even product packaging. 

If you think Apliiq could be the ideal platform for your budding print-on-demand business, read on for everything you need to know about the features and benefits. 

Apliiq Pros and Cons

It’s worth noting there are some downsides too, such as limitations on shipping options, and fewer integration options than other alternatives.

Apliiq Pricing

Like many POD vendors, Apliiq won’t charge you anything to get started with the service. You can make an account for free, and you don’t have to pay for any products until you actually sell them.

There are various “additional fees” you’ll need to keep in mind.

First, you’ll need to pay for the base cost of your items.

Pricing starts at around $3.85 for a men’s simple t-shirt, and can increase depending on the materials and designs you want to use. Speaking of designs, you’ll also need to pay for the cost of customizing your products.

Different customization methods come with their own costs. For instance, embroidery is often more expensive than simple screen printing.

You’ll also need to pay for shipping, which starts at $5.49 in the US, or $7.95 for international delivery. There’s also free shipping available for bulk orders of more than $100.

On top of this, if you want to access some of Apliiq’s extra services, like custom packaging and labels, graphic design services, or warehousing, there will be extra fees to consider here too. These services are often priced on a per-quote basis.

What is Apliiq?

Apliiq is a print-on-demand company, which first launched in 2009.

It set itself apart from other innovators in the field, like Printify, Printful, and Gooten, by focusing specifically on the “streetwear” industry. Using the Apliiq.com platform, creators can design and sell a variety of unique products, ranging from t-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts to stickers and joggers.

Like many POD vendors, Apliiq provides users with access to design and mock-up tools, as well as a range of printing options, including embroidery, digital printing, and screen printing.

It’s also one of the few companies that can offer specialist woven labels for apparel companies.

As an added bonus, Apliiq also goes beyond print on demand selling. Companies can use the platform to invest in dropshipping, high-volume sales, and more. Plus, there are warehousing and fulfilment services available too.

The private label company even offers discounts on bulk orders, sample orders, and support with both shipping and returns, so you can deliver the best possible experience to your customers.

The Top Apliiq Alternatives

Our experience with Apliiq throughout this review has been overwhelmingly positive. While Apliiq may be an excellent choice for many POD vendors, it’s not the ideal solution for every company.

If you find this platform just doesn’t work for you, there are plenty of alternative solutions out there. Our top favorite options include:

1. Printful

Printful is one of the most popular print on demand vendor on the market today, Printful offers a huge range of high-quality products, for affordable prices. Perhaps most importantly, it offers extensive customization tools, and can integrate with a huge selection of sales channels, marketplaces, and ecommerce stores, for omnichannel selling. 

2. Printify

Similar to Printful, Printify has an excellent reputation in the print on demand market. It’s well-known for its eco-friendly products, as well as its fantastic customer service. It also gives vendors a range of suppliers to choose from, so you can select the partner that’s closest to your target audience, or best suited to your budget. 

3. Gelato

With production facilities in more than 32 countries, Gelato is a fantastic global print on demand company, with local production services. It has tons of products to choose from, and promises superior quality items with cutting-edge printing technology. Plus, Gelato products feature sustainably sourced materials from industry-leading companies.

4. Redbubble

If you’re looking for a simple way to get started with Print on Demand, Redbubble allows you to create and list products on a comprehensive marketplace, where you can connect with a huge range of existing customers. It’s extremely easy to use and affordable, though your profit margins may be limited.

Apliiq User Reviews

For a comprehensive insight into just how valuable Apliiq can be for ecommerce vendors, we read through some of the reviews other users have left for the app. On Shopify, Apliiq has a fantastic reputation, earning an average rating of 4.7 stars out of 5.

At the time of writing, more than 400 users have left reviews on the Shopify app store, and 353 people have given the solution a five-star rating. Some of the points mentioned by happy customers include:

• Incredible quality customer service
• Quick turnaround times
• High-quality garments
• Easy to use interface
• Exceptional customization options

Unfortunately, there aren’t many other review sites that feature Apliiq (such as Trustpilot or G2). However, it might help to know the company has a 3.9 star rating on Indeed.com. 

If you want to learn a little more about Apliiq from its customers, you can find a variety of reviews listed on the company’s website too. 

Virtually all of these reviews are five-star, or four-star ratings. While you might argue that Apliiq would deliberately only show positive comments from its customers on its own site, most of the messages resonate with what we’ve seen on the Shopify app store. 

Apliiq has an excellent reputation for producing high-quality products, with exceptional materials, and fast production times. It also has a great reputation for delivering amazing customer service, so if you need extra support with your POD business, Apliiq may be a good choice.

The Services Offered by Apliiq

As mentioned above, Apliiq has updated the services it offers to merchants over the years, giving companies a variety of different ways to sell online. As an “apparel partner”, the company can work with you on creating private label products, dropshipping and more.

The core services offered by Apliiq include:

Print on Demand Selling

If you’re looking for an easy way to customize and sell streetwear garments, badges, and more online, then Apliiq is an excellent choice. The company can handle all of the back-end aspects of logistics and fulfillment on your behalf, so you can focus on growing your brand.

All you need to do to get started with Apliiq for POD selling is create an account and browse through the wide range of products offered by the company. Options range from hoodies and headwear to stickers and accessories. Once you’ve selected a product you like, you can use the built-in design tools on the Apliiq website to upload custom designs, add text, and customize the item.

When your design is ready, the Apliiq apparel experts will use top-of-the-line technology to bring your idea to life. The product will then be carefully packaged, and shipped to your customer. Orders can ship within 2-3 business days. Plus, you can choose from a range of customization options.

Apliiq offers clothing labelling on demand, branding on demand, embroider, digital printing, and more. There’s even the option to take advantage of branded packaging, with personalized shipping labels and packaging slips. Plus, you can add discounts and extras to your packages too.

Warehousing and Bulk Selling

Although many retailers prefer the print on demand model because it doesn’t require them to invest in a lot of inventory up-front, you might decide that you do want to purchase larger quantities of your best-selling products in advance.

Fortunately, Apliiq can help with this. You can save up to 50% on the cost of your customized items with bulk purchases, and Apliiq will even handle the inventory management and warehousing side of thing for you. The company offers a warehousing service that ensures your items are stored carefully, protected, and shipped to customers quickly around the globe.

Like with Apliiq’s print on demand services, the warehousing and bulk product options come with similar benefits and features. You can still add your own unique designs to a range of items, and implement branded shipping and packaging components.

Apliiq even offers “apparel finishing” services, which allow you to add embroidered patches and unique labels to each of your items.

Labeling and Branding

The labeling and branding options offered by Apliiq are one of the main ways the company sets itself apart from other competitors in the Print on Demand space. While many companies offer the option to customize your packaging, Apliiq goes above and beyond.

With the company, you can create and add custom woven labels to your private label products, with guidance and support from the Apliiq design team. There’s also the option to create private label tags, neck prints for your tees, sweaters, and hoodies, and embroidered patches to add to all of your clothes.

Apliiq also offers a limited edition labels service, which allows creator to create unique collections for between 50 and 100 items at once. This could be ideal if you want to create something exclusive for your most valuable POD customers.

Apliiq Ease of Use

Apliiq is an incredibly simple platform for print on demand sellers, packed with easy-to-use design tools, and plenty of resources to help get you started.

The website’s help center can guide you through everything from choosing the right sized prints for different items, to preparing your artwork.

With the FAQs on the website, you can also learn more about the kind of print files you should use with each item, and how you can improve the impact of your apparel products.

If you need extra guidance, the Los Angeles company offers plenty of direct assistance from design professionals on their team. These experts can help give you direction on how to take advantage of integrations with ecommerce platforms, build the perfect product portfolio and more.

Additionally, the Apliiq website is basic but very intuitive. Products are arranged into categories, and step-by-step direction is offered within the mockup generator, to keep you on the right track as you upload and customize your designs.

Apliiq can also help you create product descriptions if you’re struggling to come up with intuitive ideas for how to attract your customers. You can edit these descriptions however you like before publishing them to your store.

Apliiq Print on Demand Products

Like most print on demand vendors, Apliiq makes it easy to track down the ideal products for your company, by sorting everything into handy categories. If you’re not focused on selling a particular item, you can use the “hot new” tab to see the latest products added to the marketplace. 

Other than that, Apliiq offers the following product categories:

• Brands: Here, you can find high-quality branded products, suitable for fashion dropshipping. Options range from Bella & Canvas, to Jerzees, Yupoong, Tultex, and Gildan. All of these products are customizable, and come with specific features, such as unique materials, eco-friendly production process, or specialist color palettes. 
• Men’s clothing: In the men’s clothing category, you’ll find standard t-shirts, long-sleeved shirts, v-necks, tank tops, polos, tie-die shirts, and flannel shirts. Most products are available in a variety of colors and patterns you wouldn’t find from most POD vendors, and there are even hoodies and eco-friendly options available. 
• Women’s clothing & unisex: This category includes most of the garment options available in the men’s clothing section, with a few added extras. For instance, you can create jackets and outerwear, crop tops, and sweatshirts. There are also leggings, and customizable bottoms (such as jeans and joggers) available. 
• Kids and Youth: The Kids and Youth section features all of the popular items you might expect for younger consumers, such as organic t-shirts, tops and long-sleeved t-shirts, hoodies for children, and even baby grows. There are also special blend sweatpants for children, lightweight jackets, and tie-die options to choose from. 
• Accessories: Alongside a range of garments, Apliiq offers a huge variety of accessories to choose from, focusing mainly on hats and beanies. Popular accessories include baseball caps and dad caps, snapbacks, rib hats, classic visors, trucker caps, and bucket hats. There’s also a decent selection of bags and toes on offer, including eco-friendly options for sustainability.
• Supplies: The Supplies section on Apliiq is where you’ll find all of the additional “extras” you can use to make your branded products stand out. For instance, you can apply custom neck prints to t-shirts and sweaters, or add woven labels and private labels to all of the products you create. Apliiq will even produce high-quality embroidered patches you can add to jeans, sweaters, jackets, and accessories. 

All of Apliiq’s product categories stand out for their commitment to using high-quality materials, including eco-friendly and sustainable products.

While the quality of print on demand products can vary regardless of which marketplaces you choose to work with, Apliiq has relatively good reviews for most of its items. There are graphic design tools and templates to help you make the most out of your pieces.

Plus, ordering samples is easy, with discounts available so you can test the quality of your merch before you add it to your online store for the first time.

Apliiq Printing Options and Packaging

Not only does Apliiq help ecommerce store owners stand out with a wide range of products, but the company also offers various ways to customize your apparel products. As mentioned above, you can customize your clothing line with a range of different strategies, including:

• DTG Digital printing: Direct to garment digital printing allows retailers to add stunning high-quality images and photos to their products with a variety of colors and details.
• Screen printing: Screen printing is excellent for hoodies and sweaters, offering excellent longevity, durability, and quality.
• Applique: With the applique option, you can stitch custom labels, patches, and other components onto your garments.
• Embroidery: If you don’t want to rely on printing, Apliiq offers an excellent embroidery service, for a more luxurious feel.

All of Apliiq’s printing and customization techniques are designed to be environmentally friendly, with organic and vegan materials, biodegradable packaging options, and non-hazardous inks. Plus, as mentioned above, Apliiq offers a variety of great ways to upgrade your packaging and branding, to make your clothing brand stand out from the crowd.

You can design and add your own custom clothing tags and labels to every item you produce. Plus, you can customize the packaging used by Apliiq to deliver goods to customers.

Apliiq Shipping Options

When it comes to shipping products, Apliiq offers a handful of options. Currently, for print on demand and dropshipping orders, you’ll only be able to access “standard shipping”.

However, if you’re leveraging the sample ordering options or bulk orders from Apliiq, there are two extra options:

• Upgraded shipping: With upgraded shipping, you can expect products to ship to customers within 2-7 days. This option is available for all items weighing 16oz or more.
• Rush shipping: While shipping timescales aren’t included for this option on the website, Apliiq does say rush shipping is an extremely fast delivery service.

Apliiq can also ship products internationally, through a partnership with USPS. This ensures you can deliver products to customers in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Apliiq Collaborations and Integrations

Since Apliiq isn’t a POD marketplace, like Redbubble, you’ll need to access a connection with an existing ecommerce marketplace or platform to sell your branded products. There are currently three options available from Apliiq.

You can install the Apliiq Shopify app, to automate sending orders on Shopify directly to the Apliiq team, and list all of your items on your existing store.

There’s also an app available for WooCommerce (WordPress customers), and sellers on the Etsy marketplace will soon have an app availble.

Interestingly, Apliiq also offers some interesting “collaboration” services you won’t find from most print on demand vendors.

These services essentially allow you to work with Apliiq’s team to promote your brand, create paid advertisements, and access graphic design skills.

Apliiq Review: The Final Verdict

Ultimately, if you’re looking for a straightforward, and reliable print-on-demand company to help you launch your unique streetwear brand, Apliiq could be perfect for you.

It offers tons of high-quality products to choose from, plenty of design options, and a host of great features for sellers.

Plus, Apliiq can help you brand your company and market your products too, so you can boost your chances of potential sales.