You want to set up a side hustle and decided you want to set up a print-on-demand (POD) shop. You've created some designs but now you need to decide where to place your shop.
In this article, we compare two well-known print-on-demand services.
In this article, I will take a look at what two of the heavy-hitters in POD services, Printify and Printful, have to offer, having used both of these myself.
Let's start by just explaining what POD services actually do.
POD services enable a single customer the ability to order a single product from your online shop. The advantage for you is that you do not require any stock, and you don't need to print large quantities. These services are great for small business owners that wish to scale their businesses and take advantage of what POD services have to offer, which in most cases means that they also take care of production, printing and shipping, fulfilling the order to your customer - all you need to do is come up with great designs and select the products you wish to promote!
PRINTIFY
Printify is one of the leading print-on-demand/dropshipping services. Printify enables you to select, customise, sample, publish and sell all as one service, with no inventory and no involvement in order fulfilment.
Their catalogue offers 800+ products, including t-shirts, socks, and home accessories that you can customise with your own designs. You select the products you wish to sell, you add your design, refine the description, select a supplier, and specify the pricing. Being UK-based, I struggled initially to select a supplier; Printify offers a selection of global suppliers, so you need to research and select products from print providers who match your location, fulfilment and pricing requirements.
It's easy to upload your designs, select different colour options and preview your products in high-quality images. Printify even has a free mockup generator.
You're also able to order samples from selected print providers to check the quality and use them as marketing samples. This is essential in testing out different products and designs and ensuring your selection of the right print provider.
Once you've designed your product and selected a print provider, you can publish to your online shop automatically. Printify integrates with several leading eCommerce platforms, including Shopify and Etsy.
From this point, selling is pretty much automated, with production, quality control and shipping directly to your customer completed for you by the print provider. You can simply track the order process, and focus on growing your brand.
Printify offers several pricing plans, starting with a Free option. I tried the Free option and was very impressed. All the plans offer unlimited product designs, integration with eCommerce platforms, access to 24/7 merchant support, a mockup generator, a self-serve help centre, manual order creation, and custom order import. The Premium option costs US$24.99/month (correct at time of publishing). In addition to the main features of the Free plan, you can set up an additional 5 more stores per account, on top of the 5 stores per account you can set up on the Free plan. You are also eligible for up to a 20% discount on all products.
The Enterprise plan is for merchants with 10,000 + orders a day. Pricing for the plan is customised so you will need to enquire. With the Enterprise plan, you get unlimited stores per account, up to 20% discount on all products, and some additional features including, early access to new features, custom API integration, a dedicated account manager and branded customer support.
Printify currently offers a selection of global print providers in the Uk, USA, Australia, Canada, China, The Czech Republic, Germany, and Latvia.
PRINTFUL
Printful is an on-demand printing and fulfilment service. They work in a similar way to Printify, providing support all the way through from you uploading your design, selecting a product, to automatically receiving the order, either from you or your customer, and fulfilling and shipping it directly to the customer.
Printful offers more than 330 products to customise, with more than 1 million items fulfilled each month. They have fulfilment centres worldwide, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Spain, Latvia, Japan and Australia.
They offer you services which require no upfront costs or minimum orders. The process is completely automated, you simply create and upload your design, select the product you want to sell, create mockups and confirm the pricing.
Their online platform is very user-friendly. Printful offers a Free, Printful Plus or Printful Pro plans. The Free option offers customisation of 336 products, integration with over 28 eCommerce platforms, and the ability to create product templates and designs in the Design Maker. You can download mockups and you also get access to over 16,000 clipart images, although I would recommend using a tool like Canva or Adobe Photoshop to create your designs.
Printful Plus costs just £9/month, with all the features of the Free plan, plus access to the Custom Mockup Maker, Promo Maker and Background Removal Tool.
Printful Pro, at £45/month, offers an additional 480+ clipart images, Promo Maker (create original ads and posts to market your products), a custom Mockup Maker, Background Removal Tool, and embroidery files digitised for free, and access to carrier-based shipping.
Overall, my preference has been to use Printful as it suited my needs and integrated very easily with my Etsy shop. Printify, however, is definitely a platform to scale a print-on-demand business, with international suppliers. In my opinion, check out both platforms and decide based on your needs and preferences.
A couple of additional key points:
Pricing and Profit Margins: Products vary in pricing. Even different sizing in the same product can also impact pricing. Some sites recommend a minimum of 30% profit margin, but research the products you select, and pick the products you want to sell based on price and quality. Be aware of the fulfilment provider you select as well as this could impact your shipping costs.
Print Quality: Competing with high street stores is a challenge. They produce in quantity, reducing their production costs, meaning they can sell their products at a lower cost and get a greater profit margin. You have to compete with that, but don't let quality suffer. Printful prints all of its products in-house, meaning there is consistency in quality, whereas, Printify uses external print providers, which may vary in quality. I'd always recommend getting a sample of your products so you can evaluate quality for yourself.
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