What is Printful all about?

Printful is a print on demand service that helps budding entrepreneurs like you to start an online eCommerce business. Printful allows you to put your custom designs on T-shirts, hats, leggings, phone cases, mugs and various other accessories without worrying about holding any inventory. 

Printful user interface is highly user friendly and super easy to integrate making it the best platform for all the beginners who knows nothing about online selling and just getting started with their online e-commerce business. 

If you guys don’t know what print on demand and eCommerce is and why in no time it became so popular, don’t worry. Printful offers free step to step guides, online video tutorials and webinars that cover everything you need to know such as digital marketing methods, designing tips etc to create your online brand and start your eCommerce business from scratch. 

In this Printful review, we’ll explain what makes Printful  #1 choice for your online ventures over its peers like Printify and Gooten.

How does Printful Work?

• Step 1 – Carefully read and follow Printful guidelines before and creating your design to get the best print quality on your selected products.
• Step 2 – Start creating your own design. It can be anything from a picture of your handmade drawing for phone cases to a tagline or custom design for any part of a T-shirt, Leggins, shorts, Jacket or any other item of clothing.For beginners, we recommend using free designing website like Canva and Placeit to create your custom designs. These platforms offer pre-designed amazing templates with drag a drop feature making them easy to use. 

If you’re planning to make simple designs like a Slogan or a tagline for a T-shirt, then it can be created and customised directly in the Printful dashboard. 

• Step 3 – When your designs are ready, you can upload your file and Printful integrates it on the product through interactive visualisation software directly in the order menu. Once done, you can further customize your designs to get the best look on your selected product. 
• Step 4 – Printful will start the production process only after the payment and thereafter, will handle end to end production and shipment process.

Why Printful is the best for you? 

The most interesting part about Printful is that their team handles all the hard production and logistics part of your business. and automates the complete process to an extent that you can forget about it and put your focus on your next design all day long. 

Tip – To completely automate your process, you can hire low-cost designers from the website like Fiverr.com wherein you find thousands of creative entrepreneurs creating amazing designs looking for recruiters like you to showcase their talent and earn a steady income.

You must be thinking that the hiring process will reduce your profit margin, dont worry. Integrating designs into end products and selling it to the consumers allows you to make higher returns as now you can stop worrying about the designing part of your business and focus more on selling and increase your business by targeting different niche audiences. 

With this Printful review, you also need to keep in mind, that you don’t have to pay anything upfront. The process of hiring and paying starts after your customer orders a product from your store. You can use the incoming cash from your customer and pay to start the product production and shipment process.

Another great benefit of Printful is, even though the production process starts after your customer makes an order. With Printful production plants located both in the United States and Europe, they can produce products much closer to your customer making sure that your customer receives the product within 2 weeks from the date of purchase and considered a reasonable shipment time by most customers.  

Printful shipping prices

You can set Printful shipping price to either flat rates or live rates. 

Flat Rates

Flat Rates for the most product varies from $5 – $7 per item in th United States and €4-€6 in EUROPE.

But, If you order more than 1 product at once, the shipment cost gets drastically low for additional products. For example, if you order more than 1 Jacket or T-shirt, the shipping price for each additional jacket in the order will cost you only $0.90. 

Flat Rates is the maximum shipping price that Printful charges you to deliver an item. If in case the shipping price is higher, Printful will cover it on its expenses. And if the shipping price is lower, you pay less. 

Note – Printful Flat rate shipping price changes when the product is frugal or of orthodox shape such as a poster, banner etc. In that case, Printful charges may rise to $30 per item. 

Live Rates

You can integrate Printful Live rate services only with platforms such as Shopify, Ecwid and Woocommerce. You may note that Live rates are calculated during the checkout process and vary significantly depending on your end consumer’s geolocation. 

Also, Live rates are only available for limited product types, which means in most instances you will have to use their Flat rate option. For more information, check Printful shipping prices. 

Another great news for you using Printful, having production plants located both in the United States and Europe, your customers do not have to pay any import taxes in maximum cases. This means fast and timely delivery with higher customer satisfaction.

How to Integrate Printful with eCommerce platforms?

Printful works with over 12 eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Ecwid, Etsy, Big Cartel, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Storenvy, Gumroad, Weebly, Prestashop and giants like Amazon and eBay.

We recommend you to either choose Shopify or WooCommerce to as they are most easy to use and well-known platforms out there other that giants like Amazon and eBay.

Integrate Printful to your Shopify Store:

It takes less than an hour to setup up Printful to your Shopify store. Just follow these 4 simple steps:

• Step 1 – Register Printful Account
• Step 2 – Go to the Apps menu or its analogue on your eCommerce platform you are using and download the Printful App.
• Step 3 – Follow the straight forward instructions to sync your Printrful account to the eCommerce platform you are using.
• Step 4 – Finally, add products with your custom designs to your store.

Pretty Simple Right!

After the Printful App is downloaded to your Shopify store you can:

Use the free mockup generator tool offered by Printful app to start creating your custom products such as a custom jacket, T-shirt, phone cases. mugs, hats and much more. Printful offers more than 200 products to choose from. 

Set up your shipping prices and fulfilment services for your online store. Carefully read and fill all the blanks so that your orders go smoothly to your customers without any delay and troubles. 

The next step for you is to set up the notifications about incoming orders to get automatic alerts from Shopify when your customer orders a product from your store. The Orders will automatically go through Printful for fulfilment services.

What makes Printful better than its competitors?

The two main competitors of Printful are Printify and Gooten. Let’s compare our Printful review with both of them in terms of:

• Overall Pricing.
• Product Range.
• Customization Options.
• App Rating.
• Integration Platforms.
• Production Plants.

PRINTFUL VS PRINTIFY

• Pricing – Printful pricing is cheaper than Printify.
• Product Range – Printful offers a bigger product range than Printify.
• Customization Options – Printful has more customization options than Printify. For example, Printful allows you to customize sleeves from inside and outside to match with your brand.
• App Rating – Printful – 4.6 & Printify – 4.5
• Integration Platforms – Printful allows integration with 12 eCommerce platforms including giants like Amazon and eBay. Whereas Printify does not integrate with Amazon, eBay, Bigcommerce and many other Ecommerce platforms.
• Production Plants – Printful owns its production plants whereas Printtify outsources its production to outside vendors. Which makes Printfut more reliable and trustworthy.

PRINTFUL VS GOOTEN

• Pricing – Printful pricing is approximately 15% higher compared to Gotten. The higher pricing is justified as Gooten product quality is no match to Prinful.
• Product Range – Printful offers a massive product range whereas gooten offers quite a small range of products.
• Customization Options – Again Printful has more customization options whereas Gooten has less product customizable options available for its customers.
• App Rating – Printful – 4.6 & Gooten – 3.9
• Integration Platforms – Printful allows integration with 12 eCommerce. Gooten, same as Printify, does not integrate with Amazon, eBay, Bigcommerce and many other eCommerce platforms.
• Production Plants – Printful owns its production plants. Gooten, same as Printify, outsources its production to outside vendors. Which leads to quality issues and slower order fulfilment rate.  

What customers say about Printful?

There are so many Printful reviews all over the internet both positive and negative for you to read and judge. We suggest reading negative ones to get a more detailed understanding of there grey areas and potential problems before you choose Printful to be your print on demand partner. 

We are listing some of the negative customer feedback about Printful products and service, which you might avoid in your next venture with them.

In some cases, people (like you) have complained that they had to issue a refund to their customer because the product they have ordered severely mismatched visual description. To avoid these embarrassing situations in your business, we suggest you carefully read and follow Printful printing guidelines. People often neglect these guidelines whilst creating their design. As a result, Printful faces problems to produce a quality item with the design provided by the client.

There are other similar complaints related to mismatching colors and resolution issues which again highly depends on the compliance to Printful print guidelines. However, you can simply avoid these issues by curating a design that follows all the Printful guidelines. Otherwise, the probability increases for your clients not receiving the product they expected. 

Also, to avoid these problems from the start itself, Printful offers you to order a test version of your custom design product with a 20% discount to cross-check the quality. Further, you can get discounted orders with free shipping up to 4 times per month but it depends on your account status, integrated platform and previous month sales record. For more information, check Printful discounted sample orders.

We know that customer satisfaction is the key to success in online eCommerce or any other business and with that being said, we assure you that by far Printful is undoubtedly the best print on demand service in terms of delivery times, product quality and customer support. 

PRINTFUL PRODUCT PRICING STRUCTURE  

Printful offers only one subscription plan and its ABSOLUTELY FREE. You just have to sign up, create your designs and prepare to launch and sell your products to your customers. Yes, It is that easy. 

Remember, you only pay Printful when a customer orders a product from your store. Also, there are no minimum order requirement policies on Printful.

Printful offers the following product pricing structure:

Product type                       Price in $

Shirts                                  $7 to $27

All-over Shirts                   $19 to $30

Dresses                                $24 to $30

Skirts                                    $16 to $25

Leggings                              $16 to $27

Swimwear                           $14 to $26

Hats                                      $12 to $18

Totes & Bags                        $10 to $30

Wall Art                                 $5 to $27

Pillows                                  $12 to $16

Mugs                                        $7 to $9

Sports Bras                              $24.95

Embroidered aprons              $14.95

Towels                                      $22.61

Phone Cases                            $9.50

Sublimated Socks                    $10.50

Don’t forget to add shipping cost while deciding on the retail price of your selected products.

FINAL THOUGHTS – IS PRINTFUL LEGIT & WORTH IT?

Even though it takes 1 hour time to set up your store, but don’t think that starting and running a successful POD business is easy. Studies show that less than 3% of the online eCommerce stores make it thought the very first year. 

On the flip side, eCommerce businesses are much cheaper to start and scale compared to traditional business style. Moreover, with the right attitude and choices, It takes very less time to get successful with eCommerce business.

Ready to start your online venture? As per TheWebAppMarket’s Printful review, we highly recommend you choose Printful as your business partner as it not only a good print on demand service but the best available in the marketplace.

Remember, your online business success entirely depends on you. There is no doubt that Printful provides the best service and automates most of your Tshirt printing business. Yet collaboration with them does not certify you to achieve guaranteed success. Printful just makes it easy and simple to start your print on demand eCommerce store. 

If you want success in print on demand business, work hard on your designs and make sure that they stand out amongst your competitors.

Additionally, you must take a deep look into your target audience such as age, gender, location, interest etc and accordingly develop a marketing strategy for your product. Facebook and Google advertisements will help reach your goal. 

If you like this Printful review and ready to start your print on demand online store, then go ahead and create your free account on Shopify and click here to install the Printful App.