Printful vs Teepublic, which option is really best for your print on demand business?
As interest in print on demand selling continues to skyrocket, platforms like Printful and Teepublic are growing increasingly popular. Both of these tools provide would-be sellers and creators with an opportunity to dive into the POD space, expected to be worth around $43.07 billion by 2030.
However, while both options offer similar features, from mockup generators to a wide range of customizable products, there are some differences between them.
Here’s everything you need to know to make the right decision for your budding business.
What is Printful?
Printful is one of the world’s most popular print-on-demand solutions. With more than 1 million registered users, the platform has taken the world by storm. It comes with everything creators need to customize and sell sensational products, ranging from backpacks and hats, to t-shirts and hoodies.
What’s more, Printful sets itself apart in the POD industry, with eco-friendly, premium products, and a host of printing techniques to choose from. You can opt for DTG, embroidery, DTF, and even all-over printing methods.
What is Teepublic?
Similar to Printful, Teepublic is a solution designed for print-on-demand sellers. It’s owned by the Redbubble company, and operates as a marketplace, where creators can not only customize their own products, but sell them directly to a wide range of customers.
Teepublic offers some of the same features as Printful, such as access to a range of products, design tools, and more. However, instead of listing your products on your own ecommerce store or marketplace storefront, with Teepublic, you sell directly on the site.
How Does Printful Work?
One of the reasons Printful has become such a popular tool for print on demand selling, is its simplicity. Printful makes it easy to run a creative company, by providing all the tools you need to create products, sell items, and fulfil orders.
You can sign up for an account for free, then use the design tools and mockup generator on the Printful platform to add your custom designs to a host of products. The design maker comes with pre-made designs and fun fonts to choose from, as well as a range of high-quality images. However, you can also upload your own custom designs from scratch.
Once you’ve designed your products, you can then integrate Printful with your existing ecommerce platform, and list all of your items on your store. Whenever a customer makes a purchase, the order is sent through to the Printful team, who produces the product “on demand”. The company packages your products for you, using branded labels, pack-ins, and more.
Then, the Printful team ships the product straight to your customer. All you need to do is decide on the shipping rates you want to use.
How Does Teepublic work?
Teepublic works a little differently to Printful, although you still get a lot of the same benefits of the print-on-demand business model. With Teepublic, you sign up for an account, and upload as many designs as you like to the various products in the Teepublic library.
Instead of linking Teepublic to an existing ecommerce store, or a platform like Ebay, Amazon, or Etsy, you create a custom storefront on the Teepublic website. This gives you instant access to Teepublic’s existing audience of dedicated buyers.
Every time you upload a new design to your storefront, it’s featured at a “sale price” for the first 72 hours, to increase your chances of sales. After that, the product stays on the site at the regular product price, for customers to purchase. When orders are placed, Teepublic handles the production of your items, and ships them directly to your customers.
Printful vs Teepublic: Ease of Use
If you’re looking for a simple way to launch your business, both Printful and Teepublic are excellent choices. Both tools require very little “technical knowledge” from beginners to get started.
With Printful, you can sign up in seconds, and start experimenting with designs instantly. There are even photography and design tools available so you can create products, and product pages with ease. There’s even a 20% discount on samples, so you can test the quality of your items.
Printful also makes it easy to promote your products, with social media connections. Plus, you can access same-day order fulfilment for a handful of products. This is a great way to ensure your POD store stands out from the other options on the market.
However, while Printful is extremely simple, Teepublic may be even easier for beginners. With Teepublic, you don’t even need to create your own ecommerce store. All you need to do is sign up for an account and start designing.
You can create a compelling storefront within the Teepublic platform to showcase your items, and use buttons to drive customers back to your pages from anywhere on the web. Plus, since you’ll already have access to Teepublic’s huge customer base, there’s less demand for marketing.
Customers can even choose to “follow” certain artists, to stay up to date with their latest releases. However, you will still need to ensure you’re creating amazing designs and products to improve your chances of earning a profit.
Printful vs Teepublic: Pricing
Pricing is an important consideration for any company investing in a print on demand solution. However, figuring out exactly how much you’re going to spend on your Print on Demand service can be more challenging than it seems. There aren’t just monthly subscription costs to consider, after all. You also need to think about the base cost of products, shipping fees, and extras.
Printful gives you two options when you first get started with the platform.
The free plan includes access to the Printful design maker, automatic order fulfilment, white label packing slips, efficient global order fulfilment, and 24/7 customer support. You also get full access to the Printful resource hub and logo maker.
If you want to upgrade your experience, you can pay an extra fee to access features like additional branding options, custom pack-ins for products, custom packaging, creative services like graphic design support and video shoots, and warehousing services. All of these options are custom priced.
On top of that, you’ll need to think about the base cost of your products, the price of shipping (which varies depending on speed and location), and the costs of running your ecommerce store.
Teespring is also completely free to use. There are no subscription plans, and you set the selling price for your products. However, you don’t keep 100% of the price customers pay for your items. Instead, you earn a “royalty” from every purchase. You’ll get somewhere between 18-22% of the full price paid for every item. However, this also means you don’t have to pay for the base price of anything.
Since you’re not earning the full income from your sales, it can be a little tricky to maintain a consistent profit margin with Teepublic. However, you can minimize costs since you don’t have to think about packaging, shipping, and ecommerce hosting fees.
Printful vs Teepublic: Integrations
Printful and Teespring take a very different approach to POD selling. Printful is designed to allow you to automate your sales and fulfilment processes with integrations to ecommerce stores and marketplaces. Teepublic aims to give you a dedicated marketplace directly.
Printful integrates with everything from Shopify and WooCommerce, to Wix, Squarespace, BigCommerce, Big Cartel, Weebly, and Ecwid. You can also connect the platform to Magento (Adobe Commerce), and Gumroad, as well as Etsy. Or you can use a custom API.
Teepublic, on the other hand, doesn’t offer any API integrations or native connections. This means you’ll have a pretty hard time selling on any other platform. Notably, however, you can add an external “linking button” to your site.
This allows you to direct visitors to your blog or standard website straight to your Teepublic storefront. All though all transactions will still happen on Teepublic.
Printful vs Teepublic: Fulfilment and Shipping Costs
As mentioned above, there are extra fees to consider when you start a POD store with Printful. You earn 100% of the income from your sales, but you also need to pay for the base price of the product, the packing, and the fulfilment.
Printful is pretty quick when it comes to order fulfilment, processing most orders in about 4 days. Although it may take slightly longer to get your products to distant customers. You also have various shipping solutions to choose from with Printful, including DPD, FedEx, and USPS.
The exact price of shipping will depend on the number of items you ship, and where you’re delivering too. For instance, worldwide shipping for a single product is around $5.99, while every additional product costs another $1.25.
Teepublic doesn’t charge you directly for shipping as a creator. In fact, merchants don’t pay anything at all. Instead, you simply receive a commission for your pieces, rather than the full price.
The percentage of your earnings that Teepublic keeps pays for the product manufacturing, shipping, and fulfilment costs.
Printful vs Teepublic: Customer Support
Just as it’s always important to consider ease of use and pricing when choosing a POD solution, it’s worth thinking about customer support too. Even with an easy-to-use platform like Printful or Teepublic, you may occasionally need some extra help.
Printful is excellent at delivering fantastic customer service. It produces a range of educational resources for its merchants, including blogs, videos, and guides. Plus, you can even pay for extra support with things like graphic design and video recording.
Printful also allows customers to get in touch via chat, email, or phone call, so if you can’t figure out an issue for yourself, there’s always someone available to help.
Teepublic offers a similar range of blogs and resources to help educate merchants and customers alike. There’s an FAQ support center on the website, and even a complete “Design Guide” for artists. However, if you need extra help, there are only two ways to get in touch.
You can reach out directly through physical mail, or email, but there’s no chat or phone option. This means Teepublic lags behind in terms of direct customer service.
Printful vs Teepublic: Products and Design Quality
Examining the quantity and quality of products you can create with a POD vendor is crucial to your success. However, it can be difficult to determine exactly what kind of quality you’re going to get at first, even when using handy mock-up generators.
Printful does its best to deliver exceptional quality. The company offers a huge selection of products to choose from, as well as a range of printing methods. Plus, it owns its own amazing printing equipment, rather than outsourcing design to other third-parties.
With Printful, you get comprehensive guidance on design placement, and all products go through quality checks before they ship to customers. What’s more, if you want to check out your items yourself, you can order sample products at a discount.
While Teepublic does offer a variety of products to choose from, there are slightly fewer options than you’ll get on Printful. Additionally, while the company promises exceptional quality, there are some reviews out there that suggest Teepublic’s items can sometimes suffer from printing errors.
On the plus side, with Teepublic, you do get the benefit of knowing your production processes aren’t going to harm the environment. All apparel products sold through Teepublic are produced with non-hazardous materials, and certified by WRAP.
Printful vs Teepublic: Pros and Cons
Just like all POD tools, Printful and Teepublic have various pros and cons to consider for business leaders. Let’s take a closer look at the positives and negatives for each solution.
Printful Pros:
- Huge selection of products and printing methods
- Integrations for automating order fulfilment
- Support for marketplaces and ecommerce platforms
- Rapid turnaround times and delivery
- Convenient fulfilment locations worldwide
- Easy-to-use technology and design tools
- Excellent printing quality
- Fantastic customer service
Printful Cons:
- Some products can be quite pricey
- Expensive premium shipping
- Does require some work building your online presence
Teepublic Pros:
- Extremely easy to get started
- Simple design tools for beginners
- Existing market of dedicated customers
- Excellent environmentally friendly printing
- Lots of ways to build your brand
- Reliable order fulfilment
- No upfront costs
Teepublic Cons:
- Profit margins may be slightly lower
- Lots of competition on the marketplace
- No integrations with marketplaces or ecommerce platforms
Printful vs Teepublic: The Verdict
While Printful and Teepublic may seem very similar on the surface, it’s difficult to compare the two solutions on a like-for-like basis. They both take very different approaches to print on demand selling. With Printful, you create your own store, and automate order fulfilment with integrations.
With Teepublic, you create a storefront on an existing marketplace, and earn a commission whenever your products sell, rather than paying for anything upfront.
If you’re looking for a scalable solution for print on demand, Printful is likely to be the best option. However, if you just want an easy way to start selling customized products online, then Teepublic may be the right solution for you.
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