*UPDATE: This article was originally written in January 2016, and has been updated as of December 2016 with new information to reflect the current state of print on demands for the artist. This is the most accurate and up to date information you’ll find on this subject anywhere.
By now I’m sure you’ve all heard of a little thing called print on demand (POD for short), but do you really know what it is, why you should be using it, and which print on demand services to avoid like a hoard of hungry zombies?
No?
Well then, this is the post you’ve been looking for.
Before we talk about what qualities we should be looking for in a POD service provider, I feel the need to talk a bit about the big companies that come to most people’s minds when they think of print on demand. I think for most people, print on demand means companies like Redbubble, Zazzle, or Fine Art America. While it’s true that these companies have a POD service attached to their sites (several different ones in fact), they’re not strictly PODs themselves. Companies like this should be thought of more as online art galleries as opposed to print on demands. Their primary goal is to show and sell an artist’s work. Their print on demand service is simply a by-product of that goal.
Wait…
Strike that.
Their primary goal is to make tons of money by taking advantage of artists, paying small percentages of the total sales, printing low quality items, and using the artist to bring them customers which they promptly steal and market other artists’ work to. Companies like this put your art in their packaging with their company logo and name, invoice in their company name, and add your customers to their mailing list, all of which is horrible for you as the artist.
A good POD, a real POD, does the exact opposite of those things.
When considering these companies as a viable option for selling your art, you should ask yourself this question – how do sites like Redbubble, Zazzle, and Fine Art America stay in business? Their websites are huge and expensive to maintain. Their email service alone sends thousands of emails each month to artists and people who have made purchases. The bigger the email list, the more expensive it is to manage it. I can guarantee these companies spend thousands of dollars each month just to send out emails.
So where do they get the money to pay for their expensive sites? How do they pay their bills? It’s free for an artist to put their work on these sites, so they aren’t getting it from the artist. That only leaves them one choice – to get it from your customers. These sites use you to bring them customers. They always get more money than you do, and they add your customers to their list so they can make even more.
Remember last week when I said that in order for a business to be profitable it must:
- Increase its customer base
- Increase the average transaction amount
- Increase the number of transactions per customer
These companies use you to bring them customers to increase their customer base.
Then they suggest artwork by other artists to the people you worked hard to bring over to increase the average transaction amount for each customer.
They then add your customer to their mailing list so they can spam them with special deals and product offerings in an effort to get them to purchase again, to increase the overall number of transactions per customer.
It’s good business for them and very bad business for you. These guys are not PODs, they are art-for-the-masses megastores, and they are in business for themselves. They do not give a shit about you.
What to Look for in a
Print on Demand Company
A good print on demand company should be first and foremost, invisible to your customer. Your customers, the ones you worked hard to acquire, are not their customers. You are their customer. As their customer, you are the source of their income, and they should work hard to make you happy with quality products and services. You are the reason they are in business.
A good print on demand company should:
- Have white-label shipping with your branding on everything
- Have set prices for their products and services
- Clearly state their shipping charges
- Have fast turn around time
- Let you set your own profit margins
- Get paid by you after the sale, and not the other way around
- Have excellent customer service
- Have no minimum order amounts
- Integrate with your store
- Make products that have quality printing
Fortunately for us, there are several companies that meet most or all of these criteria.
The following recommendations are based on how well each of the companies meet the qualifications laid out above. While there are at least ten options in the POD category that an artist could use for this service, I have narrowed them down to three for this post.
Each of these companies made the list for different reasons, and we will be using all of them on our store at the same time. All of them use white label shipping, and between the three of them, we will be able to build out our brands, automate product creation, payment, and shipping, and keep our customers for ourselves. The companies I recommend and will be using to build out our test store are The Printful, CG Pro prints, and Printify.
Let’s take a look at them one at a time.
Throughout the rest of the posts in this series, we will be using The Printful as our primary print on demand service. The Printful is a small startup company that operates out of California. They print everything in house and their quality is top notch. More importantly, their quality control is one of the best in the business.
Because they are a startup, a relatively new company that needs to prove themselves in the market, they understand the needs of small business owners like us. They know what it’s like to start a new business from the ground up.
The Printful currently integrates with:
The Printful interface is easy to use. They make it as easy as possible to connect their service to your store and to mock up your art on the products they offer, so you can show pictures of your products in your store. They don’t have all of their products available in their mock up generator yet, but they provide mock up images and templates for every product to easily create product images using Photoshop or other image editing software.
The Printful’s customer service is amazing. They are quick to answer any question you have and will work with you if you have a problem. They also have an extensive collection of how-to videos on their YouTube channel and plenty of other resources to help you get up and running. These guys really are the shit.
If I had any complaint about The Printful at all, it would be that their low-priced product offerings are a bit limited. They don’t do stickers, and their art print sizes are rather limited as well, with no small, low cost sizes available.
While I see these as limitations, these things could also be seen as a testament to their commitment to quality. They don’t make everything in every size and shape, they only make what they are really good at making, and consequently, everything they make is really good.
In the model that we are building in these posts, we will use The Printful for our high quality, higher priced items including:
- All-over die sublimated shirts, dresses, and skirts
- Digital printed (DGT) garments (including shirts, sweatshirts, socks, baby clothing, and pet clothing)
- Phone cases
- Mugs
- Tote bags
- Pillows
- Leggings
- Hats and beanies
That’s actually a lot of products, especially when you start thinking about size and color variants. For example, let’s say you have ten images you want to put on products. If you put those images on shirts, you’ll need different sizes like small, medium, and large, and you’ll want different colored shirts as well, let’s say white, black, blue, gray, and pink. Each color is offered in the sizes above, so if we do the math, that equals 150 shirt styles to choose from. Not too shabby. Add in the other product types and you’ll have several hundred products all from a single print on demand company.
But as good as they are, The Printful doesn’t offer everything we need (yet). To make our business model run at peak efficiency, we need to have at least some low cost items to offer as incentive to turn “just lookers” into paying customers. For our model, we need some products, perhaps small prints or stickers or buttons, that we can sell at cost. Ideally, we want something that we can offer to our customers for 99 cents.
What we want is a product that is so desirable and so cheap and easy to buy that our prospects can not hep but add it to their cart, thereby changing their relationship with us from just lookers to valued customers.
Since The Printful doesn’t offer any product that we can sell for 99 cents and still break even, we will need to use another print on demand to fulfill this need.
CG Pro Prints (CGPP) is a print on demand company that caters specifically to artists and photographers, and specializes in art and photographic prints on paper and canvas. CGPP is a division of Circle Graphics Inc, one of the largest producers of large format digital graphics. They have close to 500 employees and work around the clock 7 days a week producing orders for their customers. Their facility can print over a million square feet a day, and their quality and price are hard to beat. With white label shipping and outstanding customer service, these guys are simply one of the best in the business when it comes to printing your art on traditional art surfaces.
CGPP integrates seamlessly with Shopify and WooCommerce, and they are in the process of adding integrations for Magento, Open Cart, Storenvy, Volusion, Etsy, and Bigcommerce.
Their mockup generator offers multiple different product views, and a 3D preview of your products to make sure that everything looks the way you want it to before you upload it to your store. Products that aren’t currently available in their generator can be created in Photoshop or another photo editing tool by using their extensive product image library, which is really pretty awesome.
CGPP also provides an extensive how-to manual with detailed instructions on how to set up the app, create products, and add them to your store. These guys really do care about your success with their products and services and are quick to provide detailed answers to even the most complex questions. When it comes to printing your art on traditional artist surfaces, CG Pro Prints really can’t be beat.
Click for enlarged details
In our model, we will be using CG Pro Prints for:
- Gallery minis (our low cost offer)
- Gallery wrapped canvas
- Giant repositionable wall clings
- Standard prints
- Canvas prints
Printify is a print on demand company built specifically for use with Shopify storefronts. Because they are designed to work with Shopify and Shopify only, integrating them with your Shopify store is a breeze. Their mockup generator does everything automatically. You simply add an image and it goes to work putting that image on whatever products you’ve specified.
Like the other companies here, they offer white label shipping and are invisible to your customer. Printify’s product offerings are very similar in most respects to The Printful. They offer a selection of garments, prints, mugs, phone cases and laptop sleeves. Printify offers a wide range of device cases for both Apple and Samsung phones, while the only cases that The Printful offers are iPhone cases. They also offer notebooks and journals at a pretty low price in comparison to the other products. From a quality standpoint, their garment printing is lower quality than The Printful, however, their posters, wall decals, and canvases are actually printed by CG Pro Print, so their quality on those items are obviously top notch.
We really only need to add Printify to our model if having both Apple and Samsung phone cases is important to us, and if we want to offer laptop sleeves, notebooks, or journals.
We will be using Printify in this model for:
- Device cases
- Laptop Sleeves
- Notebooks
- Journals
By attaching the three PODs we’ve discussed above to our Shopify storefront, we can offer a wide range of very high quality, affordable products to our store.
Our list of available products looks something like this:
- Phone cases
- Laptop sleeves
- Mugs
- Pillows
- Journals
- Notebooks
- Direct to garment T-shirts
- Die sublimated shirts
- Die sublimated dresses
- Die sublimated skirts
- Tank tops
- Long sleeve shirts
- Pullover hoodies
- Zipup hoodies
- Socks
- Kids T’s and tanks
- Baby T’s
- Baby onesies
- Hats and beanies
- Leggings
- Doggie tanks
- Posters (with and without frames)
- Repositionable wall decals
- Prints
- Gallery wrapped canvas
- Rolled canvas
- Gallery minis
- Giclee prints
- Momento ornaments
It’s quite an extensive list, and when you consider size and color variation as well, you literally have thousands of products you can put on your store to be printed and shipped by someone else while you sit back and collect the check.
So there you have it. My best recommendations for the print on demand companies we will be using to build out the business model for our store. If you need a refresher on what that model looks like, you can find that info here and here.
Oh and one more thing…
Choosing a print on demand company to make your products is a personal choice. You can’t really know which one is best for you if you don’t know what products you intend to sell, and you can’t really know what products to sell unless you’ve done the market research to determine who your audience is and what kind of products they like to buy.
Because your market may be different than mine, I will go ahead and include a list of the print on demand companies we looked at while writing this post. A word of caution though – I did not choose these companies for one reason or another, even though some of them appeared to be viable options in the beginning of our research.
These are the print on demand services that did not make the list:
MAKEABLE/PRINT.IO – Lots of products, but poor quality, horrible customer service, poor quality instruction, difficult product mockup process
PRINT AURA – No mockup generator, low quality garment printing
GALLOREE – No integration with e-commerce platforms
AMPLIFIER/MERCHIFY – Inconsistent quality, turn around times, and customer service
SCALABLE PRESS – Very slow turn around times
LEVEL PRESS – Good quality, but only 1 product type (shirts)
TEELAUNCH – Inconsistent customer service and turn around time
PRESSERA – Slow customer service, slow delivery time
KITE – No mockup generator, unclear product and shipping prices, poor instruction
Feel free to look these over and decide for yourself. You can never have too much knowledge, and the better informed you are, the better choices you’ll make.
Next we’ll take a look at the email service providers we’ll be using to build out this business model. Until then, sound off in the comments below and let me know you’re still listening 🙂
DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links to services that I have researched fully and highly recommend. I will receive a small commission if you purchase through one of these affiliate links, but the price you pay is the same.
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Awesome post! I’ve been silently following along with this business series and love this advice! As a budding illustrator I will be considering print in demand companies
Thank you Alissa! I’m glad you’re finding them helpful 🙂 and thank you for posting a comment, it always helps me to know which posts are really meaningful to you guys.
Hi – really enjoying this series. But this seems to be the last art marketing post – at least I can’t find any more after this one. Are you planning on doing any more. I had joined redbubble and a similar UK site, but I could see that they were only marketing themselves. Do you have any UK POD companies you could recommend please? I am keen to read more on this series,
Hi Annie – thank you for the kind comment. Currently we don’t have any plans to revisit this subject any time soon, and unfortunately I am unfamiliar with UK PODs. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
Thank you, thank you!!
I had not known those things about FAA, Redbubble, etc before. I know others in my field use them for selling prints, and I’m glad I read this before going down that path.
Hi Yvonne 🙂 I’m glad you did too! I really hate to see an artist go down that path. It takes a lot of work to get people to your site, regardless of what kind of site you’re using, but to do all that work for a single sale and then have someone else swoop in and steal the customer ought to be a crime. By the way, happy to have you here!
Printful has a Europe site now.
alloverprint.it is a UK site recommended by another site.
Excerpt from their ‘About Us’ …”We print everything by hand, on demand, in-house. We care about what we are doing because we know what it means to start a new clothing business…”
Thank you so much for all of your posts. This one really helped me out.
You’re welcome Michael! Thanks for the comment, it really helps ME out when you guys let me know I’m delivering content that is worthwhile to you!
Hi Christopher,
What a wealth of information you are! I had a quick question…..how do you set up multiple POD’s? Are they each separate stores on your site? And do you know any POD’s that do greeting cards, boxed set of stationary or magnets?
Thanks for you help, I really appreciate it!
Kajal
Hi Kajal, thank you for the kind compliment. These are great questions. If you want to use multiple PODs, you don’t need separate stores at all. You will just set up each product to be synced to the particular POD that it will be fulfilled by.
As for your second question, there ARE PODS that offer those kinds of products. Makeable is one, but I personally wouldn’t recommend using them unless those types of products are absolutely necessary for you. I found Makeable to be difficult to work with for many reasons, but depending on your situation, the benefits of using them and having the larger selection of products could outweigh the struggle you may have with them.
You can always give them a try. If you have a Shopify store, an Etsy, or website with Woocommerce, just install the Makeable app and see if it’s something you can make work for you, and since it’s free, you have nothing to lose if it doesn’t 🙂
This ia a awesome write up! thanks for taling the time!
I have been quite impresses with rhe quality of Printio/Makeable when it comes to phone cases.
Right now I am looking for someone that does what CG does, but ship worldwide…
Also, how do you charge for shipping if the cart contains items from 3 different POD services?
Thank you!
Hi Jonas, thanks for the comment. Glad to hear you’ve had a good experience with Makeable. What different product types have you ordered from them and what did you think of the quality?
CG Pro Prints actually does offer international shipping 🙂
Most PODs generally have flat rate shipping prices for each product, so if you’re using an e-commerce platform that allows you to set up “per product shipping”, setting up the shipping for multiple PODs shouldn’t be too difficult.
If using Shopify, there is an app called “Better Shipping” that lets you set up per product shipping rates, and it is 15 bucks a month.
The method that we will be using for the Shopify store we’re building is to offer free shipping in the United States, and then bump up our product prices to cover it. For international orders, we’ve come up with a method to set up weight based shipping rates to kind of mimic per product shipping, but it’s a bit too complicated to explain here. We will be going over the details of this more in the near future.
With Printio/ Makeable I have only seen the phone cases so far, which I think were really good. I am waiting for some Giclee prints to check the quality.
I just talked to CG Pro prints today and they told me they only ship to US/ Canada, do you use them to ship prints to other countries than that? In case, that would be awesome!
Thanks for taking the time, really appreciate it!
I have not had the need to ship CG products internationally yet and was quoting information they had provided me at the time this post was written. After your comment I contacted them again today and you are correct, US/Canada 🙁 sorry for the misinformation!
Use Printify for worldwide shipping for prints and wall art. CG Pro prints is the manufacturer Printify uses in US for products like canvases and prints.
Oh, and sorry for all the spelling errors… I wish I could edit them 🙂
Do you know of a POD that will print just pages? I don’t mean for a book or anything like that, but actual 8×11 pages on nice thick card stock. Similar to posters but on thicker card intended for coloring on. I’ve been looking around and I am just not finding anything.
Hi Jade, I’m not sure if there’s a POD that would print single pages as you have described. Honestly, even if there were, I don’t think I’d recommend it, as the expense would be higher than you’d want it to be.
The best solution to your problem is to save the images that you want to print to a thumb drive and take them down to your local copy center. Ask them to print on smooth 100 lb. or heavier paper, and you’ll be super happy with the results and the price.
Hope this helps.
Thank you for this. I also thought that FAA are in for themselves. I joined and they sent me a US tax form, (I live in the UK) obviously not ideal to pay taxes in 2 countries! Also, I pointed out that there were several Andrea Sartoris (a common name in Italy) on their site, and could we all have different user names 1,2, etc, and they shoved me off to the very bottom of the list and now no one can find me! Also, prices very expensive for prints and you only get cents back on each sale that you worked so hard to get.
Hi Andrea, I’m sorry you had that experience. You’d be surprised how many horror stories like that I hear. Or… maybe you wouldn’t. No worries, now you know there’s a better way. As artists we deserve to keep our profits for ourselves. Happy to have you here and happy to help in any way I can.
Thank you for your prompt reply. I can always tell if the website is good if there is a person on the other end, willing to reply quickly to even little comments like mine. I am happy I found a good website for artists (there are many, not all good likethis one) and really happy that your content is reliable and relevant, and I hope to learn a lot & make many new contacts here!
Hi Andrea, thank you for the kind reply. We do our best and I’ll always be here to help. Happy to have you here 🙂
Hi I live in Melbourne Australia do you know of any PODs I can use here or do I use the ones you have mentioned? Im knew to all this online stuff though I’m keen to sell my artwork !
Thank you for your wealth of info I’m glad I found this site!
Hi Debra, unfortunately I’m not aware of any POD located specifically in Australia. I do know of one in London which may be a bit closer to you, but I’m pretty sure any decent POD ships worldwide. Your best bet is to find the POD that fits your product types best, and then inquire about their shipping. Hope this helps 🙂
Thanks Christopher for your speedy reply I will look into it! Cheers 🙂
Wow, this is good.
I was interested in POD, but had no idea where to start. A friend who owns a gallery suggested FAA, but to date she has only made one sale. Finding out what you discussed about those big mega-marts, I understand why. That, plus digging into the actual POD services really helped open my eyes, and now I have a place to start.
I am excited that I can begin to sell the art that I’ve been making!
Thanks, Christopher!
Hi Mikey, I’m glad you got to read this before signing up for one of those other sites. I’m a firm believer that as artists we should keep our profits for ourselves. I’d love to hear any insights you may have uncovered.
Hi Christopher, So glad I came upon your site. Thanks for your wonderful info!
In terms of finding a good print on demand company that prints quality art books, do you have any recommendations?
Also have you heard of http://www.paom.com?
Glad you mentioned FAA – currently on the site, but in the process of creating our own Shopify store so we can have control!
Hi Michele, happy to have you here! I took a look at POAM, and I have to say, if I had to choose between them and getting the plague, I might choose them, but it would be a hard choice 🙂 Basically any site that gives you only a percentage of YOUR sales is a site to avoid. You’re much better off keeping your profits for yourself with a site you control.
As for a company that prints quality art books, can you please be a little more specific on what you’re wanting to have printed so I can feel comfortable making a recommendation?
I noticed that you mentioned that you need a product that sells for $0.99. You talk a bit about it, but then go on to CG Pro Prints, which does not appear to offer smaller items, like stickers. Were you speaking of CG as a place to sell smaller items and I just have to dig really deep into the site for smaller item information or was that just an awkward transition? It is fine if it was just that, but what is a good site that will print smaller items?
Great question, Danie! If you plan to use CG Pro Prints for your low cost $0.99 item, I’d recommend choosing the ‘Gallery Mini’ product. The cost on their site for a 4″x6″ or a 5″x5″ is $4.49 and includes USPS shipping, so this item offered for $0.99 plus $4 shipping and handling covers that requirement quite nicely 🙂 Technically, this product could be used as a free + shipping offer as well. The whole point with this strategy is to get them to open their wallet and make the transition from a prospect to a paying customer. Hope this helps. Let me know if you still have questions.
Hi Christopher,
thanks for this elaborate information. I am looking for this service in Europe, would you know who does this?
txs,
Anneke
Hi, Anneke. You’re very welcome, I’m glad you liked it 🙂 I don’t know of any European PODs off the top of my head, but I do recall running across at least one or two of them as we were researching these posts. You’re best bet would be to do an extensive search based on your geographic location. Would love it if you would share with us what you find!
Hi Chris, thank you for sharing this information! I was wondering if you’re familiar with “Art of Where” or if you’ve heard any reviews about this company? I’d like to know how it compares to the Printful
Hi Viktoriya, thank you for the question. Art of Where is an interesting company in that they seem to be trying to fit every artist’s need. For those who are comfortable making a small percentage on their own work, their storefronts fill that need. For those who want to keep most of the profits for themselves, their drop shipping seems to do the trick.
However, it’s difficult to be everything to everybody, and so being as well rounded as they are, it appears to come with some downsides. If you’ve read many of my posts, you know that I am adamantly against storefront type arrangements for artists, so in my mind, that’s not an option. Their drop shipping service is clunkier than a dedicated print on demand since you have to manually enter each order you receive. That’s a lot of extra work that the other companies on this list do not require you to do.
Having said all of this, I don’t have any personal experience using them, so I can’t give a definitive thumbs up or thumbs down. My best advice would be to look over their policies carefully and if you think they are a good fit for you give them a try.
What a great article, followed up by amazing discussion!
I work at Art of Where and since folks keep coming to read this article I thought I should share current (July 2018) info about AOW. Our drop ship service is now less “clunky” with 4 integration options (Etsy, Shopify, WooCommerce & BIg Cartel). No need to manually enter orders anymore! We’re always working on adding more integrations and making the process smooth for artists and their customers.
We offer greeting cards, notebooks and prints (fine art, digital, poster, canvas, acrylic), all made locally (Montreal, Canada), as well as a variety of clothing and accessories. We don’t print on existing clothing, we print, cut and sew everything in house. We’re constantly developing new products, and welcome customer suggestions.
Our customer service is available Mon-Fri 9-5 (EST) so if anyone has questions, get in touch: [email protected]
Hi Christopher,
I do not usually post in comment sections but your post addressed a number of questions I had and so I’m compelled to express my gratitude. I am in the process of starting a small company that will be selling prints and other gift items and stumbling across your refreshingly honest post was super timely and oh so so valuable! Thank you for taking time to share your wealth of knowledge. Thank you for taking time to share your wealth of knowledge. I’m all subscribed to your site and to learn more 🙂
Wow, what an awesome comment! Thank you so much for taking the time. I’m happy you found this useful. Please feel free to ask any questions you may still have 🙂
I was thinking of starting to sell some things. I’m glad I read your page beforehand. I was rather dubious of the minimal amount a lot of these pod sites give artists to begin with, and now I can see why.
Have you checked out threadless, crated and teespring? These look pretty tempting compared to a lot of other pod sites. Crated nets you 80 percent of profits without any markup beforehand if one so wishes, and teespring has an interesting setup where one campaigns a t-shirt design, a minimum needing to be sold for the prints to go. Threadless offers variety the above two don’t have, but getting around 50 percent of the cut as opposed to say redbubbles 20 without any increase sounds a lot better then the standared pod site.
Hi Vic, thanks for the kind comment. I’m familiar with each of the companies you’ve mentioned, and they’re not bad for what they are. However, you’re still putting your products under the control of someone else. They’re still taking your customer and adding them to their email list to market other products to the people you worked so hard to bring in. For me, sites like this simply cannot compete with a Shopify store build by an individual who controls all aspects of marketing and message.
Hey!
great post,
but it is October now, you have wrote this in January,
i was wondering if there is already a printing service for greeting cards and calendars with the end of the year coming up.
i can’t find it and i see printify isn’t doing this yet.
greetings
Hi Sanne, VistaPrint.com does print on demand greeting cards. I haven’t done a lot of research into them so cannot vouch for their quality etc, but that may at least give you a starting point. Hope this helps 🙂
Thanks SO much for this well-written, well thought-out article, Chris. I have run a gauntlet of fulfillment companies, starting many years ago with (suppress gag reflex) CafePress, moving on to Spreadshirt (just left them days ago), to most recently Red Bubble. Despite the same business model as the other two, I have had the most success by far with the latter. But then I stumbled upon Printful and haven’t been able to stop playing with it for the last 4 days. I just placed a one-off order and am waiting for the product before making a final decision to use them. If results are anywhere close to the mock-up generator, I will be a very happy camper.
Hi Ed, oh wow that’s awesome! Thank you for taking the time to leave me a comment. I think you’re going to be super happy with the quality you get from Printful, and if you take it one step further and build out the whole process for yourself, your profits will increase dramatically. I think it’s amazing that you’ll be able to bring all your past experience with those other companies and put it to use in your own endeavors. Please keep us updated, and I’d love to see some photos of the articles you get from Printful 🙂
Will do! I hope it’s okay to post product photos, even if the art was created with Adobe Illustrator (and not copic markers). 🙂
Absolutely, post away! 🙂
Here’s my report on Printful’s 100% polyester allover printing:
1) The design was off center by about 1″. (Normally a minor issue. But the design was a Union Jack, requiring symmetry.)
2) The creases customers are told to expect with allover printing weren’t just around the armpit and side seams, but the shoulders as well.
3) While the overall aesthetic result is decent, the American Apparel Sublimation tees they use are WAY too thin. I did a side by side with Red Bubble’s Graphic Tee shirt (a California flag motif where the majority of the design was white), placing a magazine underneath both shirts. Even the colored portions of the Printful t-shirt (allover design-Union Jack flag) are unacceptably thin. While they are full-front panel only, I don’t know who Red Bubble sources their Graphic Tee shirts from. It’s impossible to tell from the garment.
That said, that will do it for me, mostly for the garment quality, actually. I am bummed. I was looking forward to cranking out some nice allover designs. But I’m afraid the return rate would be too high. I did find two more operations that do allover prints
Hi Ed, thank you for the update. Wow, that sounds disappointing. The test garments I had printed with them while researching this post seemed very encouraging to me. Thank you so much for the additional information, and I would love to hear your thoughts about the other options you are exploring. Based on your comments here and the results you get from further exploration, perhaps it’s time to update this post. Again, really appreciate you taking the time to update and would love to hear any further information you may acquire.
Great post. I wish you guys all the best.
Thank you, Jorge! Same to you 🙂
Thanks so much for this!
I am still considering selling prints by buying a high quality printer for my home but this seems a lot simpler!
I live in Canada so I’ll have to see if your suggestions are feasible here!
Thanks so much for the info! I plan to read the rest of the articles too!
Sarah
Happy to help, Sarah. I made my own prints for a long time, and I’ve gotta tell ya, it always ends up being more work than you think it’s going to be 🙂 Good luck which ever direction you decide to go.
Hi Christopher,
Thanks so much for this- I’ve been struggling with redbubble, society 6,etc. and I had never heard of the 3 pod’s you recommend before. I am definitely looking into those right away. Do you know if any of them have plans to feature integration with a Godaddy store? One other thing, when I first found your site, I was mistaken about you- with the style of your writing, I was thinking that any minute I was going to come to the part of the post where I would have to pay to learn the valuable info… and then I didn’t. And then I didn’t again, and it was a really welcome surprise. (That’s not a criticism on your writing, I just am used to being hooked like that)I thank you for these articles, it’s like a lighthouse for us trying to figure out how to make a living with our artwork.
Hi Tyler, thank you for the super kind comment. It’s really great of you to say that 🙂 I’ll be honest, it’s a hard balance to strike, and sometimes I feel like we go a little to the dark side every once in a while, but we do try our best to reign it in. So again, thank you. As for integration with GoDaddy, I didn’t even know GoDaddy had a store! So unfortunately, I can’t be of much help to you there, but I’ll try to take some time to look into it.
Hi Christopher,
Thanks 🙂 I contacted the 3 PODs and they said they don’t have plans to integrate with godaddy soon. After doing some of my own research, I canceled the hosting I had set up with them and will open a store with shopify instead.
I think that was probably a good decision 🙂
Thank you for this very valuable post! I’ve been doing the POD dance for about two months now and sure am learning a lot. There definitely is a difference between the sites so it pays to do some/a lot of research. You helped immensely.
Thank you for the kind comment, Jean! I’m happy we were able to help, and would love to hear any insights you have gained through your experiences 🙂
I’ve probably put in at least 45 hours of research on PODs. I’ve stumbled and made mistakes. I finally opened my Shopify store and am stocking it with products from Printful, Art of Where, and Gooten. I keep a spreadsheet to remind me which store I want to make specific products. But honestly, you have to buy your own products to make the decision about which POD does better on which items. I’m working out the kinks on my Shopify site before doing a big social media push. I’m going with Saatchi Art for prints because I can’t stand the thought of selling them for $15-20 bucks. I’ve spent too much time honing my craft to do that.
Hi Jean, thanks for the update! Sounds like you’re well on your way. I agree with you that it’s unfortunate that to really get a sense of which products work best with which company, buying them seems to be the only way to go… but it’s worth it in the end when you know that you’re putting out the best quality products that you possibly can. Again, please keep us updated, and feel free to post a link to your site when you’re up and running. Looking forward to hearing more 🙂
Hello Jean. I would love to read or hear about your experiences with different sites and which one you think are more suitable than others.
Hi, Shareefa! Thanks for asking! I’ve used CafePress, Zazzle, Society6, Printify, Printful, Gooten, and Art of Where. I left CafePress and Zazzle because, frankly, the quality of a lot of the art being uploaded there is amateurish – a lot of users use stock photos and clip art. I really want to be affiliated with sites that feature original art by skilled artists. I realize that people have different tastes and it is a subjective experience-I don’t mean to sound like an art snob. But if I do, well, I do. Anyway, I was with Printify for a long time, but I wanted a POD site that makes all over print T-shirts and that’s why I switched to Printful. Both sites are easy to use. Gooten has an incredible amount of products to choose from and that’s why I went with them. I chose Art of Where because I wanted to design Beanie hats and they’re the only place I know of doing all over printing on them. Now, at my expense, I plan to order products from these sites- mainly the fabric-based items, so that I can see what the quality is. I had my first bad experience with Gooten tea towels, the quality of which was abysmal. They’re doing a reprint for me, but I’m very skeptical that their manufacturer will provide a better product the second time. It really was appalling how bad the quality was. So now, I’m reconsidering staying with Gooten. I’ll be placing some orders this week from my Printful store and I’m waiting to see what the Beanie my sister ordered from Art of Where looks like. What a process it is! It’s very time consuming, but I really want my work out there.
I would suggest looking at Teescape for shirts as well. Nice selection, super friendly support, and I haven’t had a single order that was either done poorly or late.
Hi Kristi, thanks for the suggestion. I’ll look into them for sure!
Hi Jean,
Do you have an update on Gooten? I’m thinking about giving them a try and would love to hear how it’s going for you. thanks
I sampled their yoga mat earlier this year and was very disappointed by its quality. The image was not vivid and it still is “off gassing”. Customer service is not connected to product quality since Gooten is a middle man, working with the manufacturers. All they could do was reorder the same bad yoga mat. The customer service person was very nice, but only seemed to know the specs of the products from a spreadsheet. No detail. But now I see that they have a new yoga mat product with a fleece top which I’m tempted to sample for $42 plus $10 shipping. I’m not confident with the Gooten model though.
I want to suggest an unmentioned gem of a company for product quality: SKYOU.
They print on cotton!! cut and sewn high quality shirts, long and short sleeves. They make them in China, but are also located here in California. They make other things as well and are serious about product quality.
Also, INTERESTPRINT is a fun site that has tons of products including lots of shoes. Some of the quality is not great, but if you sample, there are some nice things. They are in China too.
I’m so glad to see you respond to comments on here! I’m overwhelmed and could use some advice. I am a former Cafepress seller. I still have a store on there, but I rarely update it. Back in the day it was far more customizable and easier to integrate with my own website. Now, as you say, they are all about promoting their marketplace and other people’s stuff instead of mine.
I am wanting to get back into the printed merchandise business. I also want to set up a store for the company I work for. The problem I’m seeing with the sites you list is that none of them seem to offer stickers or buttons. Those are both really important for my personal business and my employer’s. Are there any other POD sites that offer them and can be integrated into Woocommerce or Shopify? Or a site that is like Cafepress but has embed codes or separate stores that are classy, customizable and don’t drive my customers to other people’s products? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Hi Karin, at the time of this writing I searched high and low for a company to do high quality stickers and buttons, and while I was able to locate several, none of them integrated with Woocommerce or Shopify. Honestly, for me, stickers and buttons would be must have items as well. If I can find the time, I’ll try to do a little bit of looking and see if anything has changed. In the meantime, if you happen to find any sticker or button companies that integrate during your own research, please post them here. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
Gooten has buttons and stickers.
Wonderful article with lots of useful info. I kept looking for Society6 on your list. Did you check them out and they were so bad they didn’t make the list? I haven’t used them but an artist I know sell her stuff there and has ordered from them too.
Hi, Maxine. Just personal preference, of course, but I would avoid Society6 the way I would avoid swimming in shark infested waters with a paper cut. Just sayin’ 🙂
anyone have thoughts about the shopify printing app “Pixels” which links to http://www.FineArtAmerica.com ??? Would love to know how that compares to the apps mentioned in this article!
I love your article, Thank you so much for awesome information. I am looking for the best POD that offers Housewares such as , comforters , duvets, Pillows, etc. I used to use Zazzle and Society6 but after being on zazzle for years and seeing some of my products get thousands of hits and only seeing 2 or 3 sales I began to doubt that I was receiving the sales that were actually made so I am seeking PODs that offer wholesale and Dropshipping especially for the housewares. Thank you!
Hi Jericho. Have you looked into Makeable/Print.io? We did extensive research into them while preparing this post, and of any company we looked at, they offer the most variety, including comforters, duvets, pillows, etc. Unfortunately, I found their quality unacceptable, and so did not include them in this post. However, it might be worth your time to take a look. Hope this helps, and thank you for the kind comment 🙂
Thank you very much for the information, great post!
Do you know of any companies outside of the US that do the same services?
Cheers
Kim
Hi Kim, have you looked into http://www.kite.ly ? I haven’t done a ton of research into them so can’t vouch for their products or services, but a cursory glance suggests this might be a good place for you to start. Hope it helps.
I’ll check it out, thanks so much!
I’m setting up my Shopify site right now. I’m starting with Printify for mugs, totes and pillows and Merch by Amazon for t-shirts.
Thank you for this article, I found it a couple of months ago and it has been so helpful to me as a resource.
I never thought about the importance of having cheap items like buttons and stickers until I read it here. Now I’m on the hunt to find a pod for this.
I’m on the fence about trying PrintAura. They have a great selection of totes that I would love to sell my designs on but the reviews are not that great. So I’m still on the fence about whether it’s worth it.
Also, I just found a new one called Gooten, it has a great site with a ton of products but my research sent me to an article (http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160217005163/en/Makeable-Rebrands-Gooten-Secures-Financing-Management) that says Gooten is Makeable/Print.io (just rebranded). So after your review, I’m hesitant to try them.
Give them a try, Brier – see my latest comment about Gooten’s redo of my tea towel and the hand towel I just received. They are a great company and I probably spoke too quickly and too harshly about them. They’re very responsive to the customer as well.
Hello
What is your update with art of where? Im using them for scarves. They seem alright. What do you think?
Hi Brier, that’s awesome. Sounds like you’re really getting things going! Please keep us updated, and yes, Gooten is simply Makeable/Print.io rebranded and under new management. I’m keeping my eye on them, but right now I’m still undecided.
Here’s an update on my Gooten for everyone here – They quickly redid the Tea Towel that I had complained about and the final product was superb. It was a vendor-related issue and the vendor admitted their mistake. I’m thrilled with the Tea Towel. Also, I ordered one of their hand towels and got it the other day, and I was immensely pleased with the result. The fabric is just beautiful. It feels good and my illustration was spot on perfect. So, everyone, please give Gooten a try. They have such a fantastic array of products and I’m looking forward to seeing more of my art on their products soon. I’ll post a pic of my products from Gooten soon.
You’ve convinced me to give them a try. It’s nice to hear that they made things right for you.
I really do hope they get my items right the first time. I don’t want this company to wind up being the kind that only prints quality for you if you have to complain about it first, if you know what I mean…keeping my fingers crossed!
I wish you a ton of luck, Brier! I really do think you’ll be pleased. They are quite responsive and I would imagine it isn’t easy for a POD having to rely on vendors who sometimes make errors. Let me know when your shop is up, Brier! I’d love to check out your stuff!
Jean and Brier – you guys are awesome. I love seeing a back and forth like this and am grateful to you guys for being so helpful 🙂
Hi Jean, thank you for following up with us on this, I really appreciate it. Gooten recently approached me about doing a guest blog post for them, and based on your review I may seriously consider it. Thanks again!
Wonderful, Chris! I definitely think Gooten deserves a look from those of us with online stores. They have an amazing array of products, too, which I’ve not found anywhere else.
Before you do a guest blog on Gooten, please do your research. I believe they are working with legit printing companies, but they themselves don’t print the products, so sellers could be buying directly from these printing companies instead of via gooten. Now since Gooten offers overall good pricing, I’m suspicious of how they earn a profit from this. I thought at first they might get reduction because they order more units per month via all the resellers who order via their site, but my suspicion is growing. Just check out their ‘about us’ page. If they can give such low prices without being a printing company themselves, how come they can hire so many people (49) and why would they need all of them? Are they even real? Many have these Slavic names when they pretend to be from the US? Although it’s not clear where this company is based..which is suspicious in itself. And then 5 big investors. Why would they invest in this company??
The latest review from someone on their facebook page:
“Alex Jefferson
· 17 februari 2017
We were so excited to find Gooten, glowing reviews and reasonable worldwide pricing. But now we are at a total loss what this company thinks customer service is. We tried this company and on our first order three items were “shipped”. All the other shipped items had a tracking number the same day or day after. We emailed 3 days after “shipped” asking for one. They could not get us one because the vendor would not respond to them. That’s right they have means to get a response from their own vendor. So 2 more days passed requested again same thing. We finally had enough and asked for a refund and ordered the products elsewhere. We were told and we quote “sorry we know not have a tracking number is an uncomfortable feeling but we dont do refunds. It should be there by Wednesday (today is Friday) if it is not please get back to us and we will see what can be done. I let the rep know tracking numbers are expected normal procedure from a shipping company and that I will still need a refund. We are now waiting for the manager to see if we are worthy of a refund. Well I will tell you one thing we are done with Gooten and you should be as well.”
The first 15 or so 5 star reviews on their fb page is clearly from their “team members”
They’ve also announced a contest to win $1000 for the artist who sells the most phone cases in 1 month. https://www.gooten.com/blog/gooten/2016/06/13/make-your-case-to-win-the-prize-powered-by-gooten/
The winner would be announced a month later on their social media. I have not seen this announcement on their social media, so I assume it was just a fake contest to attract people.
On their facebook page, the address of this company is supposedly in
200 Broadway
10038 Manhattan
Googling this address, it seems to be the address of fulton center, a shopping mall in NYC.
Most of their team members can be found in their reviews and liking posts with Slavic names, mainly based in Serbia, so why would they even have a company in Manhattan? Their previous company ‘Makable’ was based in Denmark btw.
So basically I think it’s safe to say that Gooten is a fake company and we are all best to work DIRECTLY with a printing company not via via companies like these that aren’t transparent at all and trying to make a buck off of us, meanwhile ruining your business with their poor customer service.
Hi Gianni, thank you so much for taking the time to write such an insightful comment. You raise a lot of good points, and I appreciate you making them public here. I agree with you that all of this seems more than a little bit shady. For my part, I never heard back from them after they initially contacted me, but given what you site above, I’ll be skipping that guest blog post 🙂 thanks again, I really appreciate it. It’s awesome when the community comes together and helps each other out the way that you’ve done here.
Right now I’m using shopify for my new shop and I am going to give Gooten a try and maybe on or two others. You can use shopify free for 2 weeks. Maybe look into Gooeten and see if they work better for you. Good luck!
Does anyone know of any POD companies for canvas sneakers, like the ones being offered here? https://www.printedkicks.com/
Hi, I’m not aware of any, sorry.
INTERESTPRINT. Lots of shoes to choose from!
Printful throw pillow was printed on shinny polyester and was over filled like a marshmallow. Print Aura printed the same pillow on spun polyester and felt and looked wonderful!
Gooten having small issues with their Woocommerce app/Wordpress. Trying Shopify and Gooten.
Attached is real photo not moch-up.
Using multiple apps works smoothly front and backend?
Thanks for these posts. I’ll be back with more to report!
That pillow looks great, is that the Print Aura one? I’m thinking about using them as \well.
I did get a throw pillow sample from Printful. I thought it was stuffed fine but did note that it’s a smooth, shiny fabric. I like the way you describe the Print Aura pillow.
Thanks for the photos and info, can’t wait to hear more about your experiences with the different platforms.
Thanks for keeping us updated, Mark. I love getting real time feedback like this. 🙂
Yes, pillow is Print Aura. And it’s printed both sides. Back is just background texture. Make sure . Gooten offers the same fabric (spun polyester) as well as cotton twill, natural faux linen, suede and white faux linen in 4 different sized up to 26×26.
Selling mine without insert, commonly done and saving $4 –
Here’s a tighter shot of the fabric.
I would like to hear more from others as well!
When you ordered from Printful, did you also order there swatch samples? I did and now I have a pillow, cup and the allover tote with swatch colors printed on them.
But then I decided to go with Gooten and they don’t seem to have print samples. Now I’m wondering if I can use the Printful swatches for Gooten and Print Aura.
Are the colors the same on both of yourpillows (Printful and Print Aura)?
Thanks
I meant to say their, not there, lol. I know the grammar nazis are going to get me!
I bought the black and white t-shirts with color swatches. I found them not up to my standards.
Regarding samples, this is an email to me from Gooten…
GET FREE CUSTOM PRINTED PRODUCT SAMPLES
All you need to do is create 3 different custom products using your Gooten Account, push them to your WooCommerce store, and then contact us at [email protected]. Your free product samples will be on their way in no time.
For example:
You connect 2 t-shirts, 3 mugs, and 3 cell phone cases to your WooCommerce store through Gooten.
You then email Partner Support informing them of the products you’ve connected, asking for samples and providing them with an image of what you want printed.
You are eligible to receive: 1 Mug sample and 1 Phone Case sample (If you want a sample t-shirt you would need to connect 1 more t-shirt product to your store in order to meet the minimum of having 3 of those products connected.)
If you have any questions or need help please contact us at [email protected].
Best,
Gooten Support Team
I think it may be different if you have a Shopify website. Hope this helps Brier and good luck!
I just bought a headband from Art of Where – I’ll let you all know how the product turned out when I receive it. I love that they’re carrying this item.
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for the really great and informative article. I’ve been doing a lot of research on website building and print on demand. Are you familiar with fotomoto, and if so, what’s your opinion?
Thanks!
Hi again Sharmon, clearly you have seen the other articles in this series 🙂 To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with Fotomoto, so I spent a little bit of time on their site before responding to your comment. Thank you for sharing them with me. At first glance they look pretty good. I’m a little confused about the way they add a buy button to the images on your site, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information on whether or not you can use your own branded packaging and invoicing, which in my opinion is a crucial consideration… but maybe I just didn’t dig around deep enough. As I mentioned before, I’m not overly familiar with them so I can’t recommend them, but at first glance they seem like they’re worth looking further into. If you decide to use them, please be sure to update us here with your thoughts and experiences.
Hi Christopher! Thanks for responding. The reason I asked about Fotomoto is that I have read (wish I could remember where) that you can somehow integrate their service into a Squarespace site. Given everything I’ve read, I’d probably go with CG Pro Prints, but don’t know if it integrates with Squarespace. I want to use Squarespace’s ecommerce for selling my originals, and then have the POD on a different page. It doesn’t seem that you can integrate any POD service with Squarespace. WordPress would be my other choice, but it looks a little too technical to me, and it doesn’t look like they offer a free trial, so I’m afraid I’d get stuck. Right now I’m on artspan, which does have its own POD service, but I think the templates look really amateurish and it’s very glitchy. Also, I’ve sold zero prints there, and they don’t allow for certain things like Richpins.
It seems I’ve actually asked about twelve questions here; sorry about that. Your article on POD for artists is far and away the best I’ve read, and I think it’s awesome that you take the time to answer questions from clueless people like me. Any insight you have would be helpful. Thanks!
Hi Sharmon, you’re very welcome. Keep ’em coming!
WordPress is free to use but does require a bit more technical knowledge, so if you don’t feel comfortable going the WordPress route and prefer to use Squarespace, Printful integrates with Squarespace and is an excellent POD.
Hope this helps, and thank you for the kind compliments 🙂
Actually, Gooten uses Circle Graphics for their canvasses. They use different companies for their products. I even think they offer lower prices than if you order directly from Circle Graphics. Maybe they can do that because they have a lof of clients (resellers).
I am bummed you give Scalable press a bad rating, because I was really interested for their low prices. I’ve seen an Etsy store who uses Scalable press and they had overall good rating for their t-shirts. Some complain on their facebook page about slow delivery though. They also have a facebook group where you can ask questions.
This is one of the most helpful articles I have ever read. Thanks for sharing it! You covered a lot I didn’t know and will use now. Outstanding site and great work. Thanks.
Thanks man! I really appreciate it. These kinds of articles always take a lot of work, so it makes me very happy to get comments like yours.
Gianni and Christopher, I’m trying to get my head around the idea by Gianni that Gooten is a “fake” company. I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are they trying to steal our money and not deliver product? Is there something wrong about them being based outside the U.S.
I’ve spent that last 2 months setting up and creating products using their templates, ready to give them a try and now this news in really discouraging. I would love more info about this from you Gianni, if you will. Thanks
Brier, I apologize if my reply to Gianni gave the impression that I think Gooten is a “fake” company. They are not. Technically they are a company that has been around for a while but has recently re-branded themselves. So for all intents and purposes they are a real company. My best suggestion to you would be to place a couple of test orders with them and see what you think. But I would definitely recommend testing them, or for that matter, any other POD before shipping any orders out to your customers. When a good POD ships, it looks like it came from you, so if the quality is bad or the orders are late, it looks to your customer like it’s your fault. Hope this helps.
Thanks for responding Christopher. I am going to be ordering some samples on Monday. I will be sure to do post an update and let everyone know how it goes. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Also on their website under the options area, you can see that they may use 1-3 different suppliers for certain products. It was obvious to me that they use other printers around the world to print. Is this bad? thanks
Hi Everyone!
I love the discussion going on, wonderful to see articles like this that generate such a free flow of shared experiences and information.
I work at Gooten and reading through the comments there were a few statements I just wanted to clear up about us so there was no confusion.
Our office headquarters is located at:
200 Broadway Suite 2013 NY, NY 10038
We are on the 2nd floor of a WeWork which is a shared co-working space:
https://www.wework.com/buildings/fulton-center–new-york-city–NY
If anyone is in the NYC area and you would like to check out our offices and meet some of the (I know I’m biased) absolutely wonderful people that work here, I would love to take you on a tour and chat some about your business and what you’re interested in.
We also have remote workers from all over including Chicago, parts of Europe, and some lucky nomads who travel around from AirBnb to AirBnb and work with us from wherever their location is.
Gianni asked a great question — “Since Gooten offers overall good pricing, I’m suspicious how they earn a profit from this.”
We have this answered on our home page under the ‘Make Money with Gooten’ section where it says:
“Visitors are amazed to see how low our product costs are. The reason for this is that we have the capability to buy in bulk from our print manufacturers. We receive negotiated prices on manufactured products and we pass those savings through to you.”
So basically because we provide vendors with so many orders due to the size of our platform, we are able to negotiate lower product prices . That is essentially the foundation of our business model, and something that differentiates us from others in our industry. We do the work of finding quality manufacturers through outreach and sampling, and once we’re confident in their dependability, we onboard them into our platform for store owners to use.
Also, Gianni referenced our $1,000 contest we had for artists to see who could sell the most phone cases in a month. We did in fact post the results of that throughout our social media channels, and we even wrote a blog post about it that is still on our site:
https://www.gooten.com/blog/gooten/2016/08/01/announcing-the-winner-of-the-make-your-case-contest-sponsored-by-gooten/
As the article mentions, everyone who participated in the contest kept 100% of the profits from their sales so even those who didn’t win the grand prize were able to make money and gain their brand some more exposure.
So to address his final comment — we are definitely not a fake company, we are a young company that has recently rebranded, and honestly we are going through the same experiences the rest of you are in trying to build your brand and make your product better and better with each iteration. We believe in this community and we hope that above all our service empowers artists, designers, creators, makers, entrepreneurs to grow and run their business how they want to.
For Gianni and anyone else who would like some more information about the specifics of our company, please feel free to email me — [email protected] — and like I said, if you’re ever in the NYC area, stop by and say hello! 🙂
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Frank. I appreciate the fact you addressed everything that Gianni claimed in his post. Interesting he hasn’t responded.
I have high hopes for Gooten and I hope it’s the company that I will be able to rely on and whose quality in printing my items is something I will be able to count on.
Please note: Gooten offer posters advertised at 16″x20″, but they arrive larger than this and therefore they don’t fit 16″x20″ frames. Despite not supplying the prints at the size they advertise they wouldn’t offer refunds. Also, prints took a long time to arrive (2-3 weeks) and varied a lot in quality depending on the printer they used to fulfill that specific order.
I don’t recommend using Gooten.
After reading thru most of the comments and Gooten got a bit of bad press 🙂 I have worked with companies from all over the world including Africa (which does not always have the best reputation or China), but when you are doing business, bad and fake companies are everywhere including here in the USA. Not that I am saying they are fake…..You have to do your own due diligence including online research. Always test products and shipping so your customers will not be disappointed in you!
And thanks Frank for picking up on this and answering our questions. Guys, this is how you handle your PR online 🙂
And thanks, Christoper Kerry for this excellent article, and the feedback has been golden. I started doing some research for my clients and stumbled on this article. Lots of fantastic information! This could probably spark another update on this article?
Hi, thanks for all the good info. Any experience with printhouse.io?
Hi Daniel, my pleasure. I’m not familiar with them but I’ll look them up.
I am curious about this as well. It’s hard to find good information on this headslappingly simple concept of selling through your own store. Looking to sell prints, framed prints, and greeting cards. Thanks! Agatha
Hi Daniel. I took a look at printhouse.io. Obviously I have no personal experience with them since I didn’t know about them until you asked, so what follows is just a general impression based on looking over their site.
It appears that they do nice quality work, although you’d certainly want to do some test prints before making any decision. Honestly, I didn’t see anything that particularly distinguished them, so If I were giving advice I would say stick with the companies we cover in this post 🙂
Printhouse.io feels like a scam…
I ordered and paid for products – nothing. Don’t answer their chat, email or phone.
Does anyone have an opinion of Jakprints or VinylDisorder for die-cut stickers or Jakprints for all-over print shirts?
Wow! I just finished the article and all the wonderful comments. I think this is great. A friend passed this post on to me because I have a Shopify store and have been trying to build it up.
I love Scalable Press. I ordered a mug and a t-shirt from them. They arrived at my customer’s house 11 days after ordering them. The customer was really excited about the mug and she said the t-shirt felt really great, even after she washed it. She is very happy with the service also. I feel great about their customer service and have used them a lot to answer questions that I couldn’t find the answers for.
I need to narrow down how many POD companies I am using as I have quite a few trying to decide which to keep. I guess probably printful, scalable and Gooten. I might use Print Aura once in a while.
Again, thank you for the wonderful Read
Marilyn
I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that Printful is actually based and headquartered in Latvia. They hire Californian employees to print the merchandise but it is a Latvian company with Latvian customer service. There is a definite language barrier with their employees and their working hours don’t line-up with North America, for anyone looking to work with an All-American company, beware.
Hello
Have you ever heard of artsadd? What do you think? I was interested in the bags, umbrella, and other items but the payment info is sketchy. They didnt ask for an account to pay me.
Since reading your blog, i have gotten better results with the info given. Its awesome because i was so frustrated with fineartamerica. My store is verselrstudio.com and i am also curious how do i decide what niche i am? I havent figured out that as yet. Any feedback would be awesome.
I’ve been using ArtsAdd with good results. You can email them for support and they’ve always gotten back to me within 24 hours. I’ve been using them for poly garden flags. The quality has been really great … except for a black background design which came out 60% darker than the artwork. For brightly colored designs, and white or light backgrounds … much, much better results. Shipping has been free, if standard, but takes about 10 days airmail. The interface is a bit tricky. It took me a while to find my account balance. It does not show up on sales history. I use PayPal and I can withdraw the funds at any time.
Thanks so much for this article. Another issue I don’t see brought up here is that although many of these companies specifically mention Etsy as a platform they “integrate” with, Etsy’s manufacturing policies state very clearly that sellers must disclose third-party manufacturers, and many of these do not adhere to Etsy’s criteria. Gooten, for example, is not allowed as a manufacturing partner on Etsy’s site. I know many sellers are not fully disclosing their sources, but personally I have tried to follow the rules and it can be frustrating finding the right combination of ethical sourcing, quality, and pricing. I will be doing a lot more research but for now my favorite POD partners are Stationery HQ and Printed Mint, both approved by Etsy Manufacturing policy.
Hi
I am so grateful to have found this info. Can you tell me what your opinion is for Society6? I didn’t read all of your comments but hope you can reply.
Thanks
Hi Christopher and others in the row!
These articles are just what I need for when trying to decide over this whole ecommerce MESS, so thank you so much for writing them!
I am yet to find a clear post about all the taxes and other tedious stuff related to the subject. I mean stuff like: I set up an account on WordPress/Woocommerse > My client makes a purchase from a PoD placed in America > PoD ships the item to India to my customer > QUESTION = Who pays the taxes, in which point, and what the heck (how much) are they!?
This is overly confusing, or am I just making it too difficult? Should I start without worrying about this at all and only get to it when I have actually MADE some sales?
I’m not asking you, Christopher, to waste your valuable time on answering all the questions here (unless you know the answers straight away : ) . I’m just asking you (or anyone out here) to tell me where I can actually find reliably information of the subject? I have tried several pages, spent last two days in the Internet, and I don’t feel like I’m any wiser than when I started…
If it makes any difference to anything I have discussed here, I’m living in Finland.
Thank you guys, so far! Would really appreaciate some guidance here!
Hi Christopher. I love this article!
Two years back I discovered this type of service (like redbbuble, society6, etc.) and was concerned about the critiques you pointed out. Recently I discovered Printful and those last days I was searching about other services like this (real POD as you said). But I read some Printful critiques that pointed problems like constantly been out of stock and only advise you many days after the sell is done and in some cases just after you contact them. Also I’ve read that they took too long to ship the products.
Do you know something about this kind of issue?
Really amazing article, you have basically read my mind, I am using Printful with woocomm’ but *need* stickers or bages, pins. Are there any places printing stickers POD that will sync with woo as wonderful as priniful do?
My next dream question: what is the best POD skateboard company that ships to US / CANADA as well as Australia ;D
Thanks!
Hi, when I wrote this article there really was no good option for print on demand stickers that could be connected to an individual store or website. One company I did run across was Galloree.com and they seem to do print on demand stickers and skate decks, but my impression was you had to have a store with them, which for me is a deal breaker. However, it might be worth your time to look them up and see what you think. If you end up using them, I’d love to hear about your experience 🙂
So CG proprint don’t ship anywhere outside of USA and smaller canvases to Canada. Doh anyone else with good quality posters etc that ships worldwide(ish)
Hi Dune, Printify ships worldwide and last I checked they use CG Pro Prints to print their canvases and possibly posters. Kind of the best of both worlds in your situation 🙂
Great article thanks! Really helpful in guiding us as we are setting up a Shopify store at the moment. What about Gooten? Have you had any experience with them?
Josh, we do have some experience with Gooten, but my best recommendation to you is to read through the comments about Gooten in this thread. I think that will answer your question better than I can.
The best article I’ve read in the last two weeks I’ve spent looking for information about dropshipping and e-commerce. I am so grateful. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer any questions. I learned as much by the comments and answers as in the original article. Thanks again.
I am preparing for the opening of my shop in August. I will keep you informed of my try with Art of Where with their scarves.
Hi Manon, thank you for the kind compliment. I’m super happy you found this useful. Can’t wait to hear how things work out for you, and I’m looking forward to your future comments 🙂
Hi Christopher,
Let me start out by saying how much I appreciate you taking the time to write this article! It has been invaluable to me in getting my own business up and running.
I thought I’d share what some of my experiences have been with the POD companies I have ended up using in the last few months. (March-June 2017)
After looking at all the options, I decided that the Ecommerce Platform Shopify, plus POD companies Printful, Teelaunch, and Gooten would fit my needs the best. My priorities were as follows:
• Easy to use ecommerce platform that would handle payments for me
• An ecommerce platform that let me keep my clients and integrated with POD services
• High Quality Print and Product offerings. (For example, only Printful seems to offer nice thick 6oz. cotton tees)
• Flat Rate Shipping (Getting a business off the ground is complicated enough. I’ll add live shipping and expediting later)
• Wide Variety of product offerings.
I did not prioritize high quality art prints, as all my original drawings are black and white ink and convert easily to vector files. Printful’s art poster quality is more than sufficient for my needs.
Printful:
As you said in your original post, Printful has far and away been the best to work with so far. Their print quality is excellent and the few times I have had problems customer service has been prompt to issue a reprint or refund (they even let me update a print file on a free reprint!)
Their API sync with Shopify has been very good, and (with a tiny bit of research on my part) the ability to edit products after creation and have multiple printfiles for one product has definitely surpassed their competitors.
The only complaint I have about them so far is that their turnaround and shipping time has been quite inconsistent. While sometimes a product takes less than a week from initial order to my customer receiving it, I have had the same product take over two weeks as well. The issue appears to be with FedEx and not the printing time, so it could probably be remedied with alternate shipping options- right now I only offer standard in my store.
As a side note, Printful is currently in a bit of a transition period because they relied heavily on American Apparel products, which are not consistently available right now (Gildan just bought them out). They have been pretty good though about finding quality alternatives in most cases.
I am currently using Printful for:
• All-over print tote bags
• Coffee Mugs
• Art Prints
• DTG T-Shirts- Going Live this week (I’m using Gildan 2000/2000L, Anvil 990B, Next Level 3710, Gildan 5100P, and Rabbit Skins 3401)
• DTG Tank Tops- Going Live this week(Gildan 2200)
I will be using Printful for:
• Sublimated Tees (I’m still in the testing phase)
• Onesies -Print quality is good, but I’m waiting for them to offer the colors I want (Part of the American Apparel problem that is ongoing)
• Beach Blankets?
TeeLaunch:
Despite the many reviews about their poor customer service, I decided to give Teelaunch a chance anyway because I wanted more diverse product offerings. Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised.
Their print quality has been good in most cases, and excellent in a few. The only exception thus far is their onesies. Stay away from the onesies! (They were blurry and the wrong color- even on the reprints, and I know for sure that it wasn’t my print file that was the problem)
Most products have printed and shipped quickly, although the accessory bags seem to take longer for some reason.
In cases where Teelaunch offers a good quality (or better) alternative to Printful, I have been using them because their print costs are cheaper, which means more profit for me!
Unlike many past users, I have found Teelaunch’s customer service to be excellent. They have taken the poor reviews to heart and really worked to improve in this area. I have sent their reps scrambling around for all sorts of weird information for me which they were able to get promptly. They have responded to emails about problems quickly, and even expedited a reprint for me because I needed it for an event (if only the reprinted onesie had been better!).
Their API integration with Shopify is good, but not quite as good as Printful’s, due to the lack of editing capabilities after a product has been created. The biggest issue I have had with the API is that I forgot to add an address to a manual order through my shopify page, and although I added it shortly thereafter, the update did not sync with Teelaunch. I had to put in a whole new order for the items they were fulfilling.
I am currently using Teelaunch for:
• Accessory Bags
• Phone Cases (They support more case styles than Printful, and also wrap the design around the side)
• Shower Curtains
• Yoga Mats
• DTG Tank Tops- Going Live this week (District Women’s Tanks). May Change to Printfulthough, just to keep things simple
I May use Teelaunch for the following:
• Beach Towels
• Dog Bowls
• Pet Beds
Gooten:
I haven’t used Gooten as much as the other two PODs, because its API integration isn’t as good with Shopify, and it doesn’t have flat rate shipping prices. (I integrate shipping costs into product price and then offer “free” standard shipping- keeps things simpler for me at this time). However, Gooten has many products the other POD services do not have, so I use them for those items.
So far the print quality has been good and when I forgot to add they address to the manual order they quickly contacted me to fix the problem before I even noticed my mistake. Other than that I haven’t had to contact Customer Service yet, so I can’t give a review on that.
I am currently using Gooten for:
• Notebooks
I plan to use Gooten for some or all of the following in the future, as long as their quality remains good:
• Journals
• Notecards
• Tablet/Laptop Cases
• Bathroom/ Bedding/ Dining Products
• Flip Flops
• Aprons
Thanks again for taking all the time to research and share your knowledge of POD companies!
-Bethany
Hi Bethany. Wow! What an amazing comment! Thank you so much for taking the time and being so thorough with your description. I really, really appreciate it. I’m super happy to hear that things are working out for you and I’m very interested in what seems to be the expanded offerings from Teelaunch. Pretty sure when we wrote this article their product offerings were very limited. I’m also particularly interested in your experiences with Gooten thus far. To date they’ve not been a company I felt comfortable recommending, but your comment makes me want to take another look. If it’s not too much trouble I would love it if you could keep us updated as you go along. Also, please feel free to include a link to your website in your next comment. We love to support artists in any way we can 🙂
Art of Where discontinued its silk scarves and only prints on synthetic. Rightly so, they were concerned with print quality. But I would rather put my artwork on silk scarves.
Anyone know of a POD for silk scarves?
Thanks for this resource – is there such a thing as a service that does die cut stickers and also does fulfillment for them? I am near giving up trying to find one as they don’t seem to exist.
Mark,
Gooten and Teelaunch both offer die cut stickers. (You have to read the fine print to find that with Teelaunch though. Their product image is misleading)
Both services do POD and drop shipping.
Mark, Bethany has it right. Both Teelaunch and Gooten offer this service. With Gooten you can purchase individual stickers or multiples and the prices are decent, but the stickers are small (about 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches). Teelaunch provides absolutely no information about quantity, sizes, or materials used, so if I were to recommend one I’d recommend Gooten.
Thank you Bethany & Christopher – looks like Teelaunch isn’t an option because it’s Shopify only, and I need to use WordPress. It’s a shame about Gooten’s size restrictions, that is far too small for what I’m looking to do – seems like I am perpetually roadblocked from my business idea, due to the fact that it is impossible to find a good die-cut POD + fulfillment sticker service
Hi Mark… wait a minute. Let me put on my Superman cape… da ta da duh 🙂 Check out http://www.Galloree.com – you can thank me later 😉
@Christopher, sorry for the delayed response but you’re the greatest! Galloree looks perfect, will look into it in detail!
Oops! I didn’t realize I hadn’t left a link. You can check out my shop at http://www.unchartedink.com
I’ll keep you posted on teelaunch and gooten. ?
Hi Bethany – thanks for including the link. Beautiful work by the way, I think you’ve got something really nice here! 🙂
Hi Christopher,
What an awesome and thorough post! I read the entire post, and on a Saturday night 🙂 Thank you for posting this. Do you know of any POD options for printing good quality shower curtains?
Hi Casey – to the best of my knowledge, Gooten is the only company that does print on demand shower curtains. I can’t vouch for their quality, but if you end up giving them a try I’d love to hear what your experiences are.
Actually, Teelaunch does them as well. They are thin, but the fabric seems tough enough to do the job. I was satisfied with their print quality, but I haven’t tested them to see how they hold up to use.
If you are looking for super durable thick curtains though, I doubt you’ll find them at a POD company.
-Bethany
http://www.unchartedink.com
Thank you, Bethany 🙂
Thank you for this awesome info. So glad I stumbled upon your site 🙂
Thanks so much for an awesome post, this is by far the most informative article I’ve come across in regards to dropship/wholesale PODs. The comments are great too, with lots of useful info. At the beginning of the year I started getting my digital designs out there on zazzle, but now with quite a lot of collections under my belt have been looking into a better and more profitable way forward. I will check out the POD’s recommended here, but I also came across printedmint.com – which looks just what I’m after too. Anyone been using them? Also I’m from Australia and would love to hear from anyone using any of the suggested PODs and their experience with the shipping times. I know when I order anything from zazzle, it’s shipped within a day or two of the order but takes 6-7 weeks to arrive. Any info on these things would be great. Thanks.
Hi Annette, I signed up for PrintedMint after I discovered them under Etsy’s manufacturing list of printers. But I haven’t used them yet for two main reasons:
1. Their prices are a little high, imo and even when you think the price is cheaper than say, Printful, you will find that the shipping is higher so in the end, the prices are about the same.
2. Also, for some reason, they don’t have a review section on their Facebook page. All of the major POD players do like Printful, Print Aura, Gooten. It makes me a little nervous that they disable the ability to read reviews from real people using their service.
They have great offerings that you can’t find easily anywhere else, like their selection of different types of mugs, but I find their tee selection limited and pricey.
I may still give them a try on some things, but I’m going to wait until they make reviews available for public viewing.
Thanks Brier, yes I agree, I have done extensive searches and can’t find any reviews either, which does make you wonder why and puts negative thoughts into my mind that maybe things aren’t as good as they make them sound. Maybe their wholesale customers don’t want to give their secret weapon away by giving reviews!! I actually filled out an application to sign up last night as I figured it was worth giving things a try and find out for myself. Love to hear any other feedback on them.
What I’m really trying to find is a POD provider that does plus size clothing for more than just some of their t-shirts. I’d love to be able to offer plus size leggings, for example! All of the companies I’ve looked at barely have the whole range of non-plus sizes available for leggings, let alone anything in plus. That’s where potential customers are constantly telling me they’re disappointed! Are there any POD clothing sites that have a better size range? I’ve been digging and digging and can’t find one.
I’ve started a clothing brand and looking for a POD my site is currently set up through Shopify and I am using Printify. Is there a huge difference in the quality of Printify and Printful? I’ve been going back and forth about the two. What are your thoughts on Printful shipping compared to Printify?
I would first like to thank Christopher for this wonderfully written and very detailed article. I would secondly like to thank all the contributors for their comments and recommendations. Greatly appreciated…
I’m confused. I just went on CGPP and I do not see any POD option whatsoever. All bulk orders by professional artists to pay beforehand. Am I looking at the wrong company, their business model has changed, or am I missing something here?
NVM, I found their covert integration link. It is certainly not found on their original website link: https://integrations.cgproprints.com/home/ecommerce-plugins/
We’d love to help anyone that is looking for true gallery quality fine art printing, on demand.
A lot of what many of these companies are calling “Art Prints” should actually be called poster prints, or Economy Art Prints… There are many sites where you can’t even figure out what type of paper/s they are printing on or what equipment they are using.
Here’s some more info about what we do, for anyone that is interested:
http://fineartprinting.la/on-demand-art-printing/
Unfortunately, I have read that Printful can have a big problem with running out of stock. I am wanting to have mugs printed and indeed, the lower priced line is not available. Only the higher priced made-in-the-USA mugs are available. But they are several dollars more expensive. Together with their completely unreasonable shipping cost of $5 PER MUG, this would completely erase any profit. Their pricing is completely overly expensive compared to other companies. Other companies routinely charge about $5 shipping for the first mug and about $1.50 or so for additional mugs. They don’t have access to the same shippers? It doesn’t matter if their quality is better if I can’t make any profit. Do they really expect that our customers will be willing to spend $10 on shipping for two mugs, or pay over $20 dollars for a 15 oz mug to get the same profit margin as their competitors? And that certainly does not leave any room to increase pricing to cover the ridiculously expensive shipping. That’s the only mug actually in stock as I write this, so I basically can’t count on printing mugs with them. I can’t possibly put the lower priced mugs up on my site when I don’t even know when/if they are available. I’m sorry, but mugs should not be a problem. Totally not fine. This is just a nightmare trying to find a reliable source to print AND SHIP a simple product. Clothing shipping is just as bad.
Thanks for a really great article Christopher! You’ve answered so many of my burning question on which PODs to use on my site.
Thanks for the (honest and frank!) article. The choice of PODs (and their online fronts) is bewildering.
Oh for a POD provider that does good work (esp Giclee) adding real value to the Art (not just the potentially tacky and devaluing product variants – t-shirts, mugs etc), has global reach and presence (thwarting the debilitating import taxes), decent pricing and shared rewards; and integrates with your store, so you keep the hard-won Buyer as a direct Customer.
Everything else, as you say, is just the Artist working for some company’s business model, not yours. Someone had to say it; well said you!
Wow Christopher
This is really super article! Packed with information and facts. I am right at the beginning of my POD search and consideration and you’ve given me plenty food to digest.
My Etsy shop is already set up. Your article has taken the pain out of testing process. I had been looking at FineArtAmer., but your advise helped me expand my vision. My concern is how to coordinate and keep track of all the different PODs. I think I will start with 1-2 items w/one POD and then expand.
Re: Greeting Cards – I only see that Makeable so far seems to be the ‘proceed w/caution’ suggestion.
Hi Christopher! Great article, thank you for sharing your insights! I am a photographer and soon-to-be etsy store owner being held back by the POD process. etsy now has a beta manufactures site that lists printers, but thus far only one has responded to me, so I am not sure I take that as a responsible and professional sign. ;-O I live in Europe and so need a POD service that delivers globally and also, I don’t know if you or anyone else on this thread has come across this, but many of the POD companies roll photos in tubes, which of course is not ideal because when the photos are unrolled there are ‘roll marks’ on them. I have found a POD called Art of Where. Are you familiar with them? Thanks for your insights and feedback. This is pretty much holding me back from turning on the ‘open for business’ switch.
Hi, Chris. Thanks for the informative write-up. I was wondering how these POD services have been working out for you since? I was looking at a few options for my store and I love the product lineup PRintify has along with their pricing. Howver, I also found that the quality seems to change vastly on the print provider you select. how did you go about selecting your providers? Did you get samples from all of them and compare the physical products or just research online?
Thx!
Thank you for a great and timely article.
Wanting to use Storenvy, I was encouraged to see CG ProPrints was working on integration. But in contacting them, I was told they were NOT working on integrating with Storenvy at the moment. They offered an alternative of installing the “Shopify Buy Button”, that really isn’t an alternative. If I wanted to pay Shopify I would just have a storefront with them. Interestingly, they didn’t offer any other alternative, which makes me wonder if they are even working on other integrations. WooCommerce wasn’t even mentioned, so maybe support just wasn’t thinking along those lines.
The search for a reliable photo printer continues…..
I’ve used Printful for shirts and posters with few issues. Very high quality and customer support very responsive.
Fantastic article. I am in the process of utilizing the internet and social media to market and sell my art. While searching google for POD’s, I came across this article. I not only like your art, but your up front and honest writing style. In fact, I like it so much I read every article in your art marketing thread this weekend. I’ve been doing my due diligence, but you present it in a very organized and sensible matter making it very clear as to what needs to be done. Thank You!
I do have some information about Printful though. Prior to reading your articles I had heard about Printful as a POD company. I had ordered a DTG t-shirt from them as a quality control measure. After receiving the shirt I wanted to fine tune a few things prior to implementing them into my business plan. I have called them 3 times and left messages requesting a call back as well as sending an email. It has been a week and I have yet to hear from them. So as you can imagine, I have lost faith in their company and will not be utilizing their services.
When using multiple print-on-demand fulfilment companies, how do you manage the shipping? Say if someone was to order one product from each respective company? Thanks
Thank you foe the review! what about Gooten?
I just received my sample order from Gooten for their die cut stickers. My first observation is that the vinyl sticker is matte. It is matte but not water absorbent. I put multiple images with transparent background on 1 sheet and each image had a 1/8 inch border around them, just as their site says. The cut around the stickers were sharp and smooth (not those kind of stickers that leave a bit uncut). I was not too impressed about the shaggy cut around the rectangle sheet but it’s not too big a factor for me cause it will be discarded anyways. Some people may find that unacceptable as far as customer experience goes. So I am deciding if that is all right to sell to my customers. The print quality is good. The sticker backing peels without residue and can be restuck anywhere with no problems. They have great prices for cost, which means bigger earnings. I like that you can place single orders. I find that most pods offering stickers always make you buy in bulk. The shipping was right on time as well, with tracking.
Thank you so much for your very informative post and EXTREMELY detailed comments section! 🙂
But I am still looking for recommendations please…I need a POD that handles large size canvases preferably up to 48″ and has Etsy integration.
Other plus points would be able to handle panoramic (wide) prints and has cheap international shipping costs….
Right now I am with prinftul and they seem great but their Canvas sizes are very limited.
Hi all –
Excellent article here.
Any thoughts / opinions on Volusion Vs. Woocommerce Vs. Shopify?
I’m specifically curious about Volusion, since they’ve updated their branding.
John
As a Shopify Partner and ecommerce marketing agency, I’ve worked with the online POD model since it began, and the companies involved, and have watched both evolve enormously over the past few years.
Kudos on a really useful, articulate, and well-researched article – and equally terrific comments & follow-up!
I see this was written in 2016 – any chance that you’ll be doing a re-write soon? I’ve just started investigating POD’s and discovered Gooten, and wondering if, as you mention in one of the comments, you have learned any more about them. They have the products I’m looking for – front and back cards / pillow with choices of fabrics. (Not so much Printful/Printify.) Is their integration with Etsy easy? Thanks.
I agree with Sue K. Are there any new suppliers as of August 2018, or updated reviews of the above suppliers that would change your rankings? Business and tech change so quickly, I would really love to get a fresh look and comparison.
Thank you for article. How about gooten?
I found a POD in Europe called CONTRADO because I am looking for high quality cotton all over printed aprons. The prices of their aprons were too high to be profitable and competitive. Are there any other quality apron POD sites? The aprons I’ve found are pre-made small and thin poor quality with printing only on the center front
Any idea if any of these POD sites will connect to GoDaddy’s store option now? I read (waaaay up there) in the previous comments about it, but there was never a difinitive answer. Thanks in advance!
thanks for sharing relvant information about t-shirt printing company . there are various t-shirt printing company which provide customized t-shirt at very cheap price v. so print t-shirt from champu
Amazing article! Thank you so much for sharing- I noticed you listed giclee prints in your sample list and am wondering if you use CG Pro Prints for these? I’m looking for someone who handles high-quality unframed fine art prints and it looks like on CG Pro their options are mostly canvas or framed. Also, does anyone know of POD Shopify companies that specialize in eco-friendly home goods fabrics (organic cotton tea towels, etc)? All I’ve seen are the organic cotton t-shirts on Printful.
As someone running an ecommerce marketing agency and working with a lot of artists and creative people, I’ve had to become immersed and expert with POD – print on demand.
When clients ask me for information, the first thing I do is point them to this article as their ‘primer’ to the field.
Well done – thanks!
Michael Ullman
Analogy Marketing
Thank you for such a wonderful article. I am just getting started in the POD & e-commerce thing for my art and photography; I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with where to begin. You have really given me direction, and have saved me tons of time and heartache.
Just letting you know CGproprints say the no longer integrate with Shopify or woocommerce and are using a third party like gearlaunch. Trying to see how one can still integrate with them directly. Any ideas?
THANK YOU for this post….been researching for the differences and offerings in POD companies, and ecommerce sites so I can choose and get started and am always happy to find an experienced opinion. I’m trying to set up a streetwear business starting out with t-shirts and am desperately wanting to sell at a lower final shirt cost (including S&H) than the seemingly internet-wide price of approx. $25.00 (!!!). There has to be a way-who is paying $25.00 for one t-shirt!?! I want to provide a good product at a better price point. Printful may be the best, but theyre also expensive and they integrate with big cartel (free to lower start-up plans), but only accept their paid plans. Printify and some of the others integrate with ecommerce platforms, and prices are $30.00 or more a month…that’s a lot to promise when you’re starting out. Of course, you get what you pay for, and I want quality product, but need a lower cost store, website, platform, etc to jump-start from. I haven’t found it yet. Some offer 15 days free, ha!, that gets you no where fast. I am currently looking at the combination of big cartel and Where of Art as possibly being the least expensive way to start, but I need to find out if Where of Art works with big cartel’s free plan, (still though, BC is only $10.00 to start). Any suggestions for a way to start-up at lower costs until up and running and able to make some sales? Thank you for your help.
Thanks for the wonderful share. Your article has proved your hard work and experience you have got in this field. Brilliant. I love it reading. I also would like to share with you about online visiting card printing.
Amazing blog. Ogen Infosystem is one of the leading website designing and Development Company in Delhi, India. Here you will get the well professional website designers and developers.
It is well written article, but it is very interesting too! Thank you for sharing it with us! I will wait for you next posts.
This is wonderful information, even though it’s from 2016. I’d love to know more about your updated opinions.
Oh! Looks like CG Pro Prints is phasing out Woocommerce and Shopify integrations, that’s too bad. 🙁
Great article. Really informative and helpful. Thanks for sharing it with us. Appreciate it.
How interesting that you talk about how the custom printing company should be invisible to the customer. I am starting a new business this summer. I will find a reputable custom director to garment printing service in our area for this as well.
Thank you for sharing this list but at least Gooten is missing from here
UrPrinters.com is an online e-commerce portal which deals in b2c & b2b .The main key brand is visiting cards .A Visiting Card plays an important role in the development of any business. Visiting card comes first when you meet with prospects or customers and works as a highly personalized form of marketing.
Thank you for this wonderful information looking forward for more
Thank you for this wonderful information looking forward for more. At some point in time, we all are Amateur Bloggers. And at the beginning of our blogging journey, amateur bloggers make many mistakes
At some point in time, we all are Amateur Bloggers. And at the beginning of our blogging journey, amateur bloggers make many mistakes
How amazing this print looking.
With Printio/ Makeable I have only seen the phone cases so far, which I think were really good.
Hii,
Thanks for sharing with us!
This is great article for me. please keep updates it on regular basis.
thanks dear for sharing your blog with us, such a nice blog.
Interesting point about Zazzles…never thought of them as an art gallery, but yes – technically I guess they are.
Previously have used both Printfull (with Shopify store) and Prinseekers.com (with WooCommerce store) – liked working with them both. For automation, Printfull is a great choice. Printseekers are a bit smaller company, yet they actually pick up their phone when you call their office. Call me old-fashioned, but I like that in the business world.
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Great guide on some solid POD companies! Have you come across MyDesigns? It’s been a game-changer for automating basically all time-consuming tasks for artists / creators and enabling bulk publishing directly to Etsy and Shopify. Might be worth a look for an update to your list. Thanks for the insights!
Great guide on some solid POD companies! Have you come across MyDesigns? It’s been a game-changer for automating basically all time-consuming tasks for artists / creators and enabling bulk publishing directly to Etsy and Shopify.
With Printio/ Makeable I have only seen the phone cases so far, which I think were really good.
Previously have used both Printfull (with Shopify store) and Prinseekers.com (with WooCommerce store) – liked working with them both. For automation, Printfull is a great choice. Printseekers are a bit smaller company, yet they actually pick up their phone when you call their office. Call me old-fashioned, but I like that in the business world.
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