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If you're looking for a print-on-demand service that can handle all of your needs, Printify might be the perfect option for you.
In this comprehensive Printify review, we'll take a look at the pros and cons of using this platform to print your products.
We'll also discuss the pricing, quality, and delivery options available through Printify.
So, if you're considering using this print-on-demand service, read on for our honest assessment!
What is Printify?
Printify is a print-on-demand service that offers high-quality printing and fulfillment for businesses of all sizes. With Printify, you can create and print custom products without having to worry about minimum order quantities or inventory management. Plus, Printify has a wide range of print partners across the globe, so you're sure to find a printer that meets your specific needs.
Who Owns Printify
Printify was founded in 2015 by Latvia-based entrepreneurs James Berdigans and Artis Kehris. They originally launched as a Shopify app and have grown considerably in a short time, boasting a valuation of $300million in 2021.
How Does Printify Work?
Essentially, Printify acts as a “middleman” between you and one of their print partners. This means that they don't own any physical printing facilities or infrastructure. They outsource all of that to their partners.
When you create a product on the Printify app and make a sale, they will send your design to their print partner closest to your customer. This ensures that your products are printed quickly and efficiently, with minimal shipping costs.
Plus, because Printify has print partners all over the world, you can be confident that your products will be delivered to your customers no matter where they are, without massive shipping costs or lengthy delays.
Printify Product Catalog
As it stands, Printify currently has a product catalog of over 500 products that are printed and shipped from around the world. You can read about their print locations further down in this article.
I often refer to “standard” print on demand products as t-shirts, hoodies, long sleeve tees and other day-to-day type apparel that people wear. When it comes to standard products, Printify's network of suppliers has all bases covered.
You may also notice a few familiar names amongst their catalog of suppliers too, like our old friends Subliminator and CustomCat (MyLocker). Yep, they also supply Printify customers.
In terms of unique products, Printify is similar to Printful in the way that they offer a lot of cool products from baby clothes to accessories like bags, socks, and phone cases, right through to a huge range of homewares including blankets, pillows, kitchenware and more.
Printify Pricing
Due to the size of their product catalog I won't list every single price here, they are easy to navigate on their website, but the one cost I will cover is the monthly app fee.
Printify is free to start and install on your Shopify store (or your platform of choice), but they do also have a Premium option.
The premium option will set you back $29 per month, or $24.99 per month if you pay annually. The main benefit of paying this monthly fee is the product discount that is applied to your account.
You will get up to 20% off the product prices in the catalog as a premium user. If you are doing any sort of sales volume, this is very much worth it.
It's not widely advertised on their website, but you also get a $29 credit in your Printify account when you start your premium plan. This is great to use to buy samples, which is a practice I highly recommend.
Printify Integrations
No matter where you sell, Printify covers most of the big eCommerce software platforms and marketplaces. At the time of writing, the only “big” one missing is Amazon which is not really a huge issue for print-on-demand in my opinion.
Here's where you can integrate and sell with Printify:
- Shopify
- Etsy
- eBay
- PrestaShop
- BigCommerce
- WIX
- WooCommerce
- Squarespace
- Printify API
Printify Shipping Rates
Shipping costs with Printify will largely depend on where you are shipping from, and the final destination of your order.
Generally you will choose your desired supplier based on these factors, but Printify also does have an order routing feature. Order routing means your order will automatically be sent to another supplier if your chosen supplier is out of stock. This is a great feature.
So when it comes to shipping costs, a lot of print on demand companies make a small margin on shipping which is fine in my opinion. They are running a business and so are you. Just look at the total product cost and then the final profit and work out what works best for you and your business.
One of the great things about Printify and their business model is that they are very transparent. You can check each individual supplier for one specific product and compare not only product prices, but shipping costs too.
In the above example, you can see it costs $4 to ship a t-shirt. This is pretty standard for a t-shirt. Other large bulky products like hoodies or blankets will cost more, but again this is the same across all print on demand companies.
Where Does Printify Ship From?
Because Printify has printing partners, they have locations around the globe. At the time of writing, they have 41 printing partners in the USA alone! Not all partners offer the same products though.
In terms of other countries, Printify has partner facilities in Australia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, Poland and the United Kingdom.
Printify Product Mockup Generator
The product and mockup generator inside Printify is very easy to use and it's quite cool. Once you have connected your store, you simply select a product and below the product you'll see the different print providers. To start designing, you simply need to choose “Start designing”. Genius, huh? 🤣
Once you get inside the product creation section you can upload your design, position it on either the front, back, or both.
You'll notice the product creator shows an illustration of the garment but if you want to see your design on an actual mockup, just hit the preview button at the top and voila!
Once you're happy with the design you can choose your variants, adjust pricing and publish it to your store.
As you can see, the mockups look realistic and super clean. If you do want fancier mockups though, you may want to check out something like Placeit.
Print Provider Ranking
Something I love about Printify is their transparency with their different print partners. If you are browsing the different partners, you'll notice there are various stats next to each provider, one of which is “average production time”.
Average production time is the measure of the average time it takes to produce a product in the past 30 days. This figure, along with the number of re-prints that provider has had to do in the past 30 days, makes up the “ranking”.
The higher the number, the better their performance has been for the past 30 days.
Printify Customer Support
One way of judging the quality of a POD company is how they treat their customers and what their customer support is like. It's easy to see a lot of negativity in Facebook groups but sadly this is rarely an accurate representation of the company. Usually it's the smaller sellers that complain the most.
Looking at Printify's help section on their website, you'll see a very organized and well thought out collection of topics relating to all parts of a print on demand business.
From getting started and connecting your store to Printify, right through to how the payments and billing works, there aren't many topics that Printify doesn't cover in their knowledge base.
Of course if there is an issue that you can't find an answer for, you can contact support directly or use their live chat.
Printify vs Printful
This comparison really is the battle of the titans. These two print on demand companies are both generally the first “go-to” POD companies that people consider when starting their print on demand business.
I've actually written an in-depth Printful review before, but for the sake of this comparison I am going to touch on some of the most common deciding factors that people look at then choosing a POD vendor.
Printfy vs Printful Integrations
Printify currently offers 9 integrations where-as Printful offers 22. Quite a big difference, but how many integrations do sellers really need?
Here's the integrations that Printful offers that Printify does not:
- Webflow
- Ecwid
- Prestashop
- Square
- Amazon
- Weebly
- Big Cartel
- Magento
- Storenvy
- Gumroad
- Nuvemshop
- ShipStation
- Shift4Shop
- Launch Cart
The main integrations on this list that I personally feel are “big” ones are Amazon, Gumroad (cool for smaller entrepreneurs and influencers), Magento, Big Cartel & Webflow.
Of course there's probably a need for all of these integrations, but no doubt the majority of sellers still use Shopify, Etsy and WooCommerce which is offered on both Printify and Printful.
Printify vs Printful Shipping Costs
With such huge product catalogs its difficult to compare absolutely everything in this one article, but let's look at the most common product shipping costs.
T-Shirts
Both Printify and Printful hover around the $4 mark for USA shipping.
Hoodies
For a standard Gildan Hoodie, both vendors start at $8 for shipping.
Coffee Mugs
Coffee mugs are generally on the high side when it comes to shipping costs due to the packaging required. Printify charges $6 for coffee mug shipping and Printful is slightly higher at $6.99.
Canvas Wall Art
Printful starts at $10.49 to ship a small 12″x12″ canvas, whereas Printify only costs $7.99 for a similar sized 11″x14″ canvas. If we're looking at the larger sizes like Printful's 24″x36″ canvas, that will cost you $30 to ship. Printify's similar size of 30″x30″ will also cost around the same.
Printify vs Printful Product Costs
Personally I don't always go for the cheapest prices, because sometimes you get what you pay for, but I know a lot of sellers do like to compare the basic product prices between different POD vendors.
Standard T-Shirt
The most common tee on the market is the “Gildan 5000 Heavy Cotton” which will set you back $11.95 with Printful or $7.40 with Printify. You can get this even cheaper with Printify if you are on their premium subscription plan.
Hoodies
The entry level hoodie most people use is the Gildan 18500 which costs $22.95 at Printful and $17.16 at Printify ($13.22 for premium user).
Women's Leggings
Another highly popular product is the Women's leggings which will cost $27.50 from Printful and $24.63 from Printify, or $18.97 if you're a Printify premium user. These are both a cut & sew sublimation product.
Custom Branding Options
Printful offers some great product branding options such as custom packaging, custom inserts and printed clothing labels.
These branding perks are amazing to build your ecommerce brand but they do come at quite a considerable cost. These are only recommended for high-volume sellers.
Unfortunately due to Printify's print partner model, they do not offer any custom branding options to sellers at this time.
Printful vs Printify Summary
Ultimately it's going to come down to personal experience, but in my opinion both of these print on demand companies are great low-risk options if you are just getting started.
When it comes to the range of products available, they are both on par with each other unless you sell something peculiar that only one of them has.
Both Printful and Printify have comparable shipping times and costs, but there are two areas where they stand apart from each other.
The first one is the branding options offered by Printful. If this is something you need for your brand then Printify won't be a great option for you.
The other main difference is the pricing. Printful appears to be considerably more expensive for certain products than Printify. If profit margins are tight then perhaps Printify is going to be a better option for your business.
Printify Review Conclusion
Now that we've reviewed all that Printify has to offer, do you feel like they would be a good fit for your Print on Demand business?
I certainly think they are great and I'm sure you do too, but they also need to be right for YOU and your business.
If great pricing and customer service is what you need and you sell t-shirts, hoodies, canvas wall art and more, then Printify will certainly meet your needs.
Just as a quick side note – If you're planning on selling more specialised items like print on demand jewelry then you'll want to check out ShineOn or if you want to sell metal wall art then either ShineOn or Teelaunch are your best options.
I hope this Printify review has answered your most important questions about choosing a print on demand supplier for your store.
I'd love to hear your opinion on Printify or any other POD vendors in my free Facebook community. We're a thriving community of almost 6,000 print on demand entrepreneurs! Hope to see you there.
