In this article, we will review the POD supplier Printful.
You may have heard of them and want to know if they're the right supplier for your business.
| Printful Overview | |
| Shopify App Store Rating | 4.8 out of 5.0 (5k+ reviews) |
| Trustpilot Rating | 4.6 out of 5.0 (4k+ reviews) |
| Pros | - No outsourcing - Fantastic print quality - Quick turnaround - Store setup services |
| Cons | - Premium pricing - Product shortages and discontinuations - Limited product mockup images |
| Pricing | $0 / $24.99 per month |
| Shipping location | Globally (Except these locations) |
| Shipping time | 2 to 11 days (depending on the warehouse location) |
| Free trial? | It's free to use Printful, but there's a free 14-day trial for Printful Growth here. |
Let's read on as we help you decide!
What is Printful?
Printful is a leading print on demand (POD) service that allows you to design, print, and sell custom merchandise.
Its easy-to-use design tool and product template builder make creating branded merchandise a breeze!
How does Printful work?
At its core, Printful offers a three-part service:
- Product creation tools. Choose from over 340 customizable print items. Once selected, you can easily design and brand these products using Printful's intuitive product designer.
- Ecommerce integrations. Connect Printful to 22 different sales channels, including popular platforms like Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix. This seamless integration ensures that order data and payments are automatically synced.
- Fulfillment services. Once a sale is made, Printful takes over. They print, package, and ship the item directly to your customer.
Pricing
Printful is free to start and doesn't have any monthly fees.
However, additional customization features, such as embroidery digitization and premium images, are paid for.
Printful's product pricing
What do you pay for? Printful has a clear way of charging:
- The product. The product's price depends on what it is, its size, and its color.
- Printing. The total cost of a product on Printful, like a high-quality hoodie, includes printing and customization. For example, a hoodie with a standard print might total $25.45, while one with embroidery could be $27.95. These prices reflect the complete product, not just the customization.
- Shipping. The cost to send the product to your customer depends on how you send it, where you send it, and how heavy it is. For the hoodie example, sending it to the US costs $8.49.
Here are some prices on Printful for popular products:
| Product | Price with printing | Shipping to the US |
| Men’s T-Shirt | $14.95 | $4.69 |
| Poster (11" x 14") | $9.75 | $4.99 |
| Premium Hoodie | $25.45 | $8.49 |
| Dad Hat with Embroidery | $15.95 | $3.99 |
| iPhone 14 Clear Case | $10.95 | $3.99 |
Additionally, if you want to buy products from Printful to check their quality before selling them, Printful gives a 20% discount.
You can do this once a month for up to three products!
Printful memberships
Printful offers two memberships to help businesses grow and save money:
Printful Growth
This plan is ideal for growing businesses.
It costs $24.99 monthly and is even free if you reach $12K in yearly revenue.
Still, even if you pay the $24.99 monthly, you only need as few as four orders per month to recoup the investment!
Here are the benefits of getting the Printful Growth membership:
- Get 7% off on branding.
- You can add as many stores and designs as you want, giving you flexibility.
- Free 14-day trial
- Save up to 20% on direct-to-garment products.
- Get up to 30% off on other categories.
Printful Business
Printful's Business membership is tailored for high-revenue businesses.
You'll automatically be upgraded from the Printful Growth membership once you reach $60k in sales over the last 12 months, which equates to $5k per month.
Here are the benefits of getting the Printful Business membership:
- Save up to 22% on direct-to-garment products.
- Enjoy up to 33% savings on other categories.
- Benefit from 9% off on branding.
- Get 25% discounts on sample orders.
- Get free digitization for embroidered items.
- Unlock large front print for selected products.
- Access priority support.
- Add unlimited stores.
For more information, you can view Printful's membership page.
Which ecommerce integrations work with Printful?
Printful offers integrations with all major ecommerce platforms.
Over 180,000 users have integrated Printful with Shopify, while others connect with Wix, WooCommerce, or others.
For more information on how you can integrate any of these ecommerce platforms, head over to their integration page, which will help you set it up.
What's the print quality and product selection like?
Printful promises good print quality and a wide product range. We checked how true this is. Read on to see how they perform!
Print quality
Printful is known for having the best print quality among print on demand suppliers.
They have earned this reputation because they've spent a lot of money (over $83 million) on their printing machines in the past ten years. This means they can make sure every product looks perfect.
Whether you look at the reviews on Printful's website, many say Printful is reliable in its printing quality.
Many other companies use outside printers, but Printful does everything themselves.
Printful offers different ways to print on products:
- Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing. Put ink directly onto clothes or fabric. It's suitable for detailed and colorful designs.
- All-over printing. This prints a design on fabric before making the final product.
- Sublimation. This puts your design inside a product's material. It's used for things like mugs and some clothes.
- Embroidery. They can make designs that are flat or raised on clothes.
Before sending products to buyers, Printful checks them three times to ensure they look good. They use computer programs and their team to do this.
Very few products (less than 0.26%) are returned because of quality problems.
Printful cares a lot about quality. If they find a problem with a product, they will stop fulfilling it until it's fixed.
Product selection
With 344 products in their catalog, Printful offers many items, from clothing and hats to home and living products.
They also have a frequent new product cycle, including recent variations of colors and materials of their best sellers.
Custom packaging
Printful gives you many ways to put your brand on your products and their packaging, more than most other companies that print designs on products.
You can put your brand or logo on different parts of your products:
- Inside and outside labels
- Sleeves of clothes
- Sides and back of hats
Printful also lets you show your brand on the page where customers track their orders. You can put your logo, contact details, website link, and social media links there.
For the packages that customers receive, you can change the packing slip and add items inside, like:
- Flyers or discount coupons
- Business cards
- Stickers with your brand
- Postcards
- Thank you notes
What about the outside of the packages?
First off, Printful's packages don't have their name on them.
If you want to put your brand on the outside, you can. But you need to get it printed by another company and send it to Printful. They will charge extra for storing and using your packaging.
You can manage all these branding options on their webpage. You can set branding for all products or different branding for each product.
Eco-friendly
Eco-friendly products have seen a surge in demand as consumers become increasingly aware of their environmental impact.
Recognizing this trend, Printful offers a range of eco-friendly products.
Here's a brief overview of some of the products from Printful's eco-friendly collection:
Eco Tote Bag | econscious EC8000
This organic cotton twill tote bag is trendy and environmentally conscious. It offers a large print area, making it ideal for showcasing designs.
It's spacious enough to carry groceries, books, and more.
Premium recycled bomber jacket | threadfast apparel 395J
This versatile bomber jacket, made of recycled polyester, is suitable for various styles, from streetwear to semi-formal.
It also features a unique inner zip pocket that hides the back of embroidery designs.
Organic crop top
Made of 100% organic cotton, this crop top is soft and comfortable. It's perfect for the eco-conscious fashionista.
What are the shipping times and costs?
First of all, here is an overview of Printful's fulfillment centers:
Keep in mind that it's not possible to choose where your products are fulfilled. Printful will help you pick the best option for you.
Shipping partners
Printful works with top shipping companies to deliver your products. These companies include:
- FedEx
- DHL
- UPS
- DPD
- Australia Post
- Royal Mail
- Latvijas PAST
If you use Printful with Shopify, WooCommerce, or Ecwid, you can show live shipping prices from these companies on your product pages.
You will always pay Printful for shipping. You can choose if you want your customers to pay for shipping or if you want to offer free shipping and include the cost in your product price.
Shipping times and prices
Printful has different shipping prices for different types of products. Here are some examples of shipping in the US:
| Product name | Shipping cost | Cost per additional product |
| Shirts | $4.69 | $2.20 |
| Hats & Beanies | $3.99 | $2.00 |
| Beverage Containers | $10.49 | $4.50 |
| Bags | $3.99 | $2.00 |
| Tech Accessories | $3.99 | $0.75 |
| Posters | $4.99 | $0.40 |
For some popular products, here are the shipping times and costs:
| Product name | Shipping time | Shipping cost |
| T-Shirt | 4-11 days | $4.69 |
| Hats | 4-13 days | $3.99 |
| Sports Water Bottle | 5-11 days | $10.49 |
| Tote Bag | 4-11 days | $3.99 |
| iPhone Cases | 4-10 days | $3.99 |
| Poster | 6-9 days | $5.50 |
Printful's shipping prices might look high at first. But when you compare with many other companies, you'll see Printful's prices are similar or even lower. Plus, Printful makes shipping easy by taking care of it for you.
If you want to learn more about their shipping, check out their shipping page.
How is Printful's customer service?
Printful offers strong customer support.
They provide help in seven languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German, French, and Portuguese. You can contact them any time, day or night, through email and live chat.
Although the live chat is mainly in English, they have a tool that can translate and help people in many languages.
It's an excellent way to help more people; other online stores could learn from this.
Printful aims to answer questions in two hours or less. But if you use live chat, they often reply even faster.
Printful's help center is prominent. They have many articles and videos that explain everything.
Whether you want to know how to connect your print on demand store to Printful or learn about specific printing details, they have the information.
Printful also offers free courses in the 'Printful Academy.' These courses teach about online selling, design, and more. They also have short videos on many topics.
When you finish these courses, you earn points. You can use these points to get free things or discounts from Printful. You can find these rewards in your account's Printful Rewards part.
If you want to talk to others who use Printful, you can join the 'Printful Insiders' group on Facebook. It's a big group with 26,000 members.
They share ideas and tips about using Printful and selling products online.
The pros of Printful
You may have already heard about the good things about Printful, so here's why they're true.
No outsourcing
When you use Printful, they do everything inside their own company.
This means you don't need to watch or control other companies. If something goes wrong, it's probably inside Printful.
Understanding this is important. It's a big reason why Printful does well. They talk easily inside their company because everyone is close. Everything happens in one place.
Printful is trusted because they do everything themselves. They make printed items all in one place.
Fantastic print quality
A big plus over Printify is the consistent quality of the printing on your products.
Printful has invested a lot of money in printing equipment. They treat their product quality seriously.
For example, here's their 3-step quality control check before they ship orders:
- Their automated software checks graphics for quality before fulfillment, and their AI tool evaluates if the image needs any adjustments before printing.
- Fulfillment specialists check quality while orders are being fulfilled.
- They run a final quality check after the blank product is customized.
Sustainability is another factor that plays a role in their printing success.
The eco-friendly equipment means the process is clean and ethical.
They also have excellent tools like the mockup generator that you can use to create mockups to ensure your designs look as you want them to look.
You can also create a product template, which are reusable templates for a product.
Quick turnaround
Printful has warehouses to print and ship your designs in Mexico, the US, and Europe.
This means they can offer fast and transparent shipping times.
They also show you the shipping costs upfront, and you can easily track all your orders with their tracking page.
Another good thing is that they offer a 20% discount on product samples.
Store setup services
Printful is a print on demand supplier at its core, but it also offers Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix store setup services:
This service is great if you need a store but dread the technical setup, as you avoid all the setup, design, and other headaches.
With Printful's setup services, you get:
- An up-and-running store with a complete layout, content, and design
- Full product setup and sync to your store
- Expert support at every step
- And much more!
And the costs?
A reasonable $495 to $695, depending on the complexity of your store:
The cons of Printful
Even though Printful seems like a perfect unicorn, there are still a few cons.
Let's look at Printful's shortcomings and how to avoid them as much as possible:
Premium pricing
Printful offers quality and durability that's hard to match, with materials that are robust and art prints that can rival gallery pieces.
However, it's worth noting that even though Printful has adjusted its pricing in recent months, some items might still carry a premium cost.
This can be seen in the pricing generator, which indicates that after accounting for expenses like shipping, taxes, and platform fees, your profit margins could be tighter compared to other services.
While their pricing generator suggests a retail price that maintains a healthy margin, sellers must price carefully to ensure profit margins without pricing out their customers.
Product shortages and discontinuations
Printful is an all-in-house supplier with an impressive catalog of products, sizes, and colors.
However, from our experience, there is a chance one of your items can be discontinued. This means it will no longer be printed or supplied.
It happens not too frequently but enough to take note of.
Limited product mockup images
Printful offers user-friendly mockup generators that simplify the process of showcasing your products.
However, some users might find the variety of styles somewhat limited. While Printful strives to have models for nearly all its products with multiple options, there's a possibility that the selection may not meet every specific need.
That said, Printful is actively working to enhance this aspect of its service. They are expanding their mockup options to cater to a broader audience.
Also, Printful offers the flexibility to customize mockups, allowing you to tailor them more closely to your brand. This customization feature can help showcase your products in your online store.
What do other users say about Printful?
Users often praise Printful for its print quality, with many highlighting it as a key differentiator from other POD services.
Trustpilot
I love the products but the fact they are not transparent about the added VAT at the stage on the system where you are adding the prices, I did the calculations myself and it takes ages to do it for each item, I wish that they had this visible on the pricing page so I could make sure I'm not loosing profit for my design. if you set this wrong you can end up getting very little for the time it takes to set this whole thing up.
Harriet Myfanwy Nia Tahany
Printful has a 4.6-star rating on Trustpilot, with over 4,200 reviews. This suggests a generally positive reception from customers.
G2
I have been using Printful everyday for 4 years. Printful has several international locations to help your customers around the world get their products. They make it easy for you to start your own business without having to spend any money! It only takes a few simple clicks to sync it with your store. The customer service is absolutely wonderful. I have always spoken to a kind and patient person about my concerns.
Via G2
Printful has received a rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars based on 64 reviews on G2.
Users have highlighted the platform's ease of use, quality of products, and integration capabilities.
Shopify App Store
I've been using Printful since I started my store seven years ago! I've seen them grow the product offering over time. I like the quality, price point and the prompt turn around of every order I have placed over the years. Thanks Printful, here's to seven more great years.
Brush Point Studio
On the Shopify App Store, Printful has an impressive 4.8 out of 5 stars based on 5,287 reviews.
Merchants have praised the app for its seamless integration with Shopify, allowing them to create and sell various custom products.
They have commended the high-quality products, swift and dependable fulfillment process, and responsive customer service.
Users highly value features such as the accessible design of product templates, automatic shipping settings, and detailed product mockups.
Printful's review page
We’ve been using Printful for 3 years, it has been a great service to get great quality shirts and hoodies to our fans, with quick and efficient shipping. We love to see Printful always adding new products and features.
Cory Giordano
Printful's customer review page gives us a snapshot of their satisfaction. People love the vivid colors and sharp details in the prints, and the paper quality impresses them, too.
T-shirts get a thumbs-up for comfort and design, suggesting that the fabric and print can handle the heat. The tote bags are also a hit for their size and durability, with the artwork printed clearly.
These reviews suggest that Printful delivers quality that customers trust and enjoy.
FAQs about Printful
Next, let's review some frequently asked questions about Printful!
Does Printful own the designs I create?
No, your Printful designs are yours. Printful doesn't claim ownership over them. You can use them anywhere you want.
Can I use Printful for free?
Yes, you can create a Printful account and design products for free. But when you sell a product, Printful will charge you for making, printing, and shipping it. Adding memorable branding to your products or packages might incur extra fees.
Are there any setup costs for Printful?
No, there's no direct setup fee with Printful. You can start for free.
Printful Alternatives
Although Printful has its strengths, including its print quality, several excellent alternatives are worth considering.
We will go through three alternatives that we recommend:
1. Printify
Printify is a strong choice if you consider an alternative to Printful. They offer a more comprehensive range of products, including unique items like wireless earbuds.
For example, while Printful might offer three types of canvas prints, Printify has 15 different options.
Printify also works with more printing partners, which can mean faster shipping and sometimes lower prices.
Related article: Wondering what the difference is between Printify and Printful? Check out our in-depth comparison guide here!
2. Spring (Used to be Teespring)
Spring is designed for people who create content on social media. It connects directly with Instagram, Twitch, Linktree, and YouTube.
This makes it a good choice for creators with fans on these platforms who want to sell to them.
3. Spreadconnect
For those who want speedy shipping, Spreadconnect is a good choice.
They aim to send out orders in just 48 hours. They say half of their orders are printed and sent out in only 24 hours.
Plus, with the help of 'Order Desk' software, you can connect Spreadconnect to many online marketplaces.
Related reviews
Are you not sure yet about using Printful for your online business? Or are you interested in seeing what other companies are out there?
We've got you covered! Check out the reviews below to find great companies that will help you:
- CJdropshipping Dropshipping: How To Start (+ Review)
- DSers Review: Is It the Best App for AliExpress?
- Gelato Review: Is it the Best Print on Demand Supplier of 2024?
- Modalyst Review: Should You Use It After Wix Acquired It?
- SaleHoo Review: Is It the Best Supplier Directory?
- Supliful Review: Everything They Don’t Tell You!
And for more reviews, visit the review hub!
Taking action
Reading and absorbing information and knowledge is excellent (definitely if it's free!), But do you know what's even better?
Taking action!
So, to help you with taking action with what you have learned in this article, take a look at the bullet points:
- Test print quality. Order a sample product from Printful to personally assess the print quality and ensure it meets your standards.
- Check integration compatibility. Review your ecommerce platform and verify its compatibility with Printful's integrations. If you're not yet set up, consider platforms known to work seamlessly with Printful.
- Evaluate shipping. Place a few test orders to different locations to gauge the accuracy of Printful's shipping times and costs. This will help you set customer expectations accurately.
- Engage with customer service. Start a conversation with Printful's customer service through live chat or their help center. Give a few questions or concerns to gauge their responsiveness and helpfulness.
- Research user reviews. Read user reviews on Trustpilot, G2, and the Shopify App Store. This will give you insights into other users' common praises or concerns with Printful.
Conclusion
Printful is a popular service for selling printed items. It's unique because you can connect it to many ecommerce platforms!
The prices for Printful's products are fair, primarily since they are known for good quality. There are no extra fees to start using Printful, so it's easy to start a business without spending much money.
Printful's design and mockup tool are excellent because they allow users to visualize and customize products easily. This tool stands out for its user-friendly features and flexibility.
Thank you for reading, and have a great day!
Want to learn more about POD?
Ready to move your print on demand store to the next level? Check out the articles below:
- The 19 Best Selling Print on Demand Products in 2024
- 12 Best Eco-Friendly Print on Demand Suppliers in 2024
- Print on Demand Tips: 5 Things Every Beginner Should Know
Plus, don’t forget to check out our in-depth how to start a print on demand business guide here!
