Gooten Review (2023): Everything You Need to Know

Is This The Right POD Company for You?

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If youโ€™re looking for a print-on-demand drop shipping service, Gooten could be exactly what you need. They offer an impressive array of services ranging from product production, distribution, and logistics.

Alongside this, theyโ€™re also said to provide great customer service and native integrations that empower you to connect your eCommerce store with minimal hassle.

With all this being said, letโ€™s dive into this Gooten review and see what this print-on-demand service can offer you!

What is Gooten?

If you’ve never heard of Gooten before, it’s a worldwide distribution, production, and logistics company that offers a print-on-demand drop shipping service for online merchants.

At the time of writing, Gooten has shipped over 4 million items and boasts under a 2% error rate and an impressive 95% ship-on-time rate. So, it’s safe to say, your business is in safe hands with Gooten.

Gooten Overview

gooten review - homepage

Gooten prides itself on ease of use. So, whether you’re looking for a new side hustle, or want to launch a new line on your eCommerce store, Gooten could be the POD company you’re looking for.

What they offer:

  • Keeping up with the trends: Up-to-date benchmarking and trends reports.
  • Your success is their goal: Gooten wants you to succeed, so they have the necessary operational processes in place from start to finish to make that happen.
  • Ordering, manufacturing, and fulfillment without fail: They donโ€™t just end their service with fulfillment, but rather begin it here.
  • Excellent, dedicated customer service: Customer satisfaction matters to them. Gooten has a dedicated team of account managers and customer service reps, to make sure your voice is heard. Because your voice matters to them, they want to hear your opinions in their Partner Advisory Committee.
  • Right product, right price: Gooten helps you source the right product, at the quality you need, for the right price; they want your end customers to be satisfied too.
  • Low error rate: In 2019 alone, Gooten processed nearly a million orders, with a production error rate under 2%.
  • Hand-selected partners: Though they service over 70 locations worldwide, over 70% of their production is from the U.S and they hand-select all their manufacturing partners to make sure they provide the best possible service.
  • Efficiency: With their decisioning engine and proprietary order management, Gooten can always ensure efficiency for routing orders to whichever manufacturing location’s closest to the end customer. Paired with their 95% ship-on-time rate, this not only means theyโ€™re getting your products into the hands of your customers faster, but theyโ€™re also able to reduce shipping costs.

๐Ÿ’ก Pro Tip: While we’re on shipping, check with Gooten to see whether their shipping times have been affected by the COVID pandemic.

Is Gooten Easy to Use?

Absolutely! Gooten is easy to use from start to finish. You can start selling custom products in just a few simple steps:

  1. Create a Gooten account.
  2. Tick the different products you want to sell (hoodies, phone cases, t-shirts, etc.).
  3. Add your custom designs to them.
  4. List those new products on your e-store to sell.

Thatโ€™s it!

Best of all, each Gooten product comes with pixel dimensions to guide your artwork. On top of that, some products also come with design templates that you can download and use to help get the ball rolling.

Of course, itโ€™s down to you to advertise, market, and grow your store, but Gooten makes sourcing and listing custom-made products easy and efficient.

Gooten Pricing

gooten pricing examples

Below are the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about Gooten’s pricing:

Is there a membership fee or cost for using Gooten?

No, you’re not charged a membership fee, and you’ll be delighted to hear that there aren’t any surprise hidden costs either.

Where can I view Gooten’s product prices?

You can view all their products and prices on their website by clicking through to their Product Catalog.

How does product pricing work?

The prices listed in Gooten’s Product Catalog include the item’s base price and the cost of printing your custom design. Then, you can market your customized product for however much you want. You set your own margins (but don’t forget to factor in shipping costs!).

When and how will Gooten charge me?

When a customer places an order through your ecommerce store and receives payment, the order is processed. Then, Gooten charges the order’s cost (thatโ€™s products + shipping) to your debit/credit card or your PayPal account.

Do I need to set up shipping costs for my products?

All orders sent to Gooten automatically use the standard shipping option (unless youโ€™re using Advanced Shipping Rules). Therefore, Gooten charges you their standard shipping costs regardless of whether you decide to charge customers extra for shipping or not.

๐Ÿ’ก Pro Tip: Gooten recommends using Advanced Shipping Rules to enjoy complete control over your shipping prices.

Are there product discounts?

Gooten has products that start at around $7. However, Pro and Elite VIM (more on this in a sec) partners should consider talking to Gooten’s Partnerships manager to see if theyโ€™re eligible for a discount on product sales.

The Sample Order

Gooten doesnโ€™t offer fabric swatches or product samples for free. However, before deciding on what products to sell and before listing them on your online shop we recommend doing the following:

  • Investing in samples before creating products: Before selling any customized products, it’s good to invest in some samples beforehand. Doing so allows you to check product quality and whether it 1) meets your expectations, 2) is the right fit for your brand, and 3) is suitable for the range of products you have in mind.
  • Use high-quality images: Using high-quality photos for your sample is always wise. It increases the likelihood that the image quality is up to standard before going live with the product.

Because Gooten doesnโ€™tย  provide samples for free, you’ll still have to pay for the sample. But doing so is worthwhile for quality control purposes. Plus, you also have the product in hand to photograph for your website.

Gooten Integrations

Gooten offers a sparse number of built-in plugins: WooCommerce, Etsy, Shopify.ย  However, you can build your own, as Gooten does offer a JSON-friendly and well-documented API, so if you’re a developer and love a bit of coding, you should be able to create whatever integration you need and connect Gotten with platforms like Squarespace or BigCommerce.

Connecting Gooten to an Ecommerce Platform

Gooten wants you to focus on growing your business, so they make connecting your ecommerce store hassle-free. Then once your ecommerce integration is up and running, Gooten ensures it’s:

  • Quick: Gooten automatically processes, produces, and ships orders without needing you to do anything.
  • Simple: You can connect as many platforms and stores to Gooten as you want and can manage everything from one place.
  • Accurate: Gootenโ€™s automated fulfillment doesnโ€™t make mistakes that people might make, which goes a long way to protecting your brand from accidents caused by human error.

Gooten API

For the tech-savvy user, Gooten offers an open, well-documented API. This gives you the freedom and the tools you need to extend any of Gooten’s built-in integrations like Etsy, WooCommemrce, and Shopify. Or, you can take things a step further and create your own custom integrations.

What else is there to love about the Gooten API?

  • Ease of use: Gootenโ€™s API is loved by developers for being JSON-friendly, well-documented, and imminently readable.
  • Scalability: You have the ability to process thousands of orders every day. The API is tested to handle large and complex e-commerce businesses.
  • Security: Gooten has focused on secure transactions from day one, and its API is a reflection of this.

The Merchant Dashboard

Gootenโ€™s merchant dashboard hosts multiple features to empower merchants to get the most out of their online stores. Its interface is nothing short of intuitive, making it a fabulous choice that is more suited for experienced users.

From here you can:

  • Manage multiple stores from the convenience of one Gooten account
  • Sync products to facilitate automated fulfillment
  • Easily place one-offs, sample orders, and/or bulk orders via CSV if needed
  • Create and publish products to multiple stores or sales channels at once

Gooten Customer Support

Customer service is vital to Gooten, and they pride themselves on tailoring their service to meet their partner’s needs. As such, you can contact their customer support team via live webchat from Monday to Friday between 8 am and 4 pm EST.

Or, if you prefer, you can email Gooten’s customer support, and theyโ€™ll aim to reply to you within 72 hours.

Alternatively, if you prefer to find solutions for yourself, you can browse through Grootenโ€™s online blog and knowledge base. These resources are pretty thorough, so you should find what you’re looking for!

The Loyalty Program

In September 2020, Gooten launched a first-of-its-kind in the PoD industry loyalty program, or VIM (Very Important Merchant). The program is designed to support, educate and benefit merchants as they expand their online business.

It has four levels of status, based on the volume of business merchants transact with Gooten. Each VIM status addresses customer service, business intelligence, and operational transparency.

With that in mind, the key benefits of Gooten’s VIM program include:

  • Personalized status reports and updates on delivery time and production.
  • Assigned partnership managers to aid business growth.
  • Exclusive discounts on industry events, services, and products, to help grow your business with Gooten’s partners, which include Shirt Lab, Wevo, Hawke Media, Avalara, and Privy.
  • Office hours with Gooten executives to answer questions on shipping, marketing, operations, and manufacturing, as well as offering additional advice to merchants.
  • Early access to Gooten’s new features.
  • Business intelligence insights, including webinars that feature Gooten leaders and industry experts, as well as campaign planning support, and sample credits.
  • Improved customer support, with better communication channels.

Now that we’ve taken a look at what Gooten has to offer let’s see how it squares up against its competitors…

Alternatives to Gooten

Now that we’ve taken a look at what Gooten has to offer let’s see how it squares up against its competitors…

Gooten vs Printful

printful homepage - gooten review

Like Gooten, there’s no monthly or startup fee associated with Printful. Similarly, you’ll need to create an online account with Printful and integrate your ecommerce shop with them.

In terms of how orders are processed and charged, Printful and Gooten are also very similar. By this, we mean that Printful also allows you to create and sell customized products via your online store. Then, when a customer buys a Printful product from your ecommerce store, it fulfills the order and ships it directly to the customer. You then pay Printful for the base cost of the item(s) and shipping.

Printful has a product catalog of 240+ items to choose from, so there’s plenty of selection!

Both Gooten and Printful offer products starting at around $7, though, overall, Gooten has the edge when it comes to offering more affordably priced products. In contrast, Printful’s products are on the slightly pricier side. However, Printful offers monthly discounts up to 9% on your previous monthโ€™s sales volume. So, the more you sell, the more you can save on order fulfillment. You can also secure discounts on bulk purchases, i.e., 25 of the same product or more (you can mix colors, sizes, and designs).

Both are easy to use for beginners and have similar fulfillment times (printing and sending). However, one of Printfulโ€™s strengths over Gooten is its mockups functionality. Once youโ€™ve linked your online store to Printful, you can start creating โ€˜mockupsโ€™ using their mockup generator. This easy-to-use tool enables you to create custom prints for your product virtually. Though Gooten does offer a similar feature, it isnโ€™t one of its major strengths and isn’t as sophisticated as Printful’s.

Gooten vs Printify

printify homepage - gooten review

Like Gooten, Printify handles everything on the fulfillment side so that you only have to concentrate on marketing and sales. Like Gooten, Printify also integrates with Etsy, WooCommerce, and Shopify stores, and the process of creating custom-made products is just as simple.

With Printify, you can browse through their variety of products (over 300 items) and create mock-ups to help you visualize your creation. On top of that, you can order samples to get an insight into what your end-product will look like.

Printify’s pricing uses a three-tiered system:

  1. The free option, which allows you to connect five stores per account and create an unlimited number of product designs.
  2. Premium, at $29 a month. This allows you to integrate up to ten stores per account and create an unlimited number of product designs.
  3. Enterprise, for which you’ll have to contact Printify directly to receive a customized quote. This allows you to connect unlimited stores per account and create unlimited product designs.

Printify also offers 24/7 merchant support to help you handle order-related questions.

Gooten vs Teespring

teespring homepage - gooten review

Despite the name, Teespring has expanded since the days when it only sold custom-made t-shirts. Now it sells many other items, from custom coffee mugs to custom wall art and loads in between. With no startup fee and competitive product pricing, you should make a good profit margin with Teespring.

Though Teespring’s design process and backend are relatively simple, it’s limited to only customizing the fronts and backs of products (no sleeve designs, for example). And as with the other sites, youโ€™re able to order samples at base cost.

Teespring offers exclusive integrations with platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and Streamlabs.

Gooten Review: Who Should Use Gooten?

All in all, Gooten is best for those looking to create and sell quality, custom-made products with little hassle. Their on-demand print fulfillment service handles the logistical side of your e-commerce business, so that you can concentrate on marketing and sales.

On top of that, Gooten helps you keep up with sales trends by sharing their on-topic, on-demand reports so that you can see what’s most sought-after and likely to produce the most sales. They also guide you on what promotions to run, strategies to increase sales, marketing channels to focus on, and how to overcome and be ready for challenges that may come up. Remember, they get money when you get money, so they want you to succeed!

Not to mention, Gootenโ€™s user-friendly blog is full of interesting, useful, and inspiring posts, full of knowledge to give you a boost in your business. Gooten also prides itself on simplicity, so if youโ€™re new to the print on demand business model, Gooten is a good option for you. After all, it does most of the heavy lifting; you just need to set up your ecommerce store, custom design Gooten’s products, and get selling.

With competitive prices, friendly and approachable customer service, and no membership fee, Gooten may be just what youโ€™re looking for.

Or, are you considering other print on demand services? Let us know how you get on in the comments box below; we’d love to hear from you!

Rosie Greaves

Rosie Greaves is a professional content strategist who specializes in all things digital marketing, B2B, and lifestyle. She has over three years of experience crafting high-quality content. Check out her website Blog with Rosie for more information.

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