Printify vs Printful: Which Print on Demand Service Has Better Quality, Pricing, and Products?

In today's ecommerce environment, many online stores are leaving the hassle of traditional inventory management behind.

How?

With print-on-demand (POD) services.

POD services let you customize and make products only when customers place orders. By doing this, you can eliminate the risks associated with overstocking and ensure that customers only receive the freshest product available.

But how do you pick the best POD platform for your company when there are so many options available? That's where we come in.

Today we'll be doing an in-depth comparison of the two biggest names in the POD industry: Printify and Printful.

We'll be going over everything from the history of Printify and Printful, to the product ranges they stock, how customizable the options are, customer support, and more.

By understanding the key features, pricing structures, and target audiences of both Printify and Prinftful, you can make an informed decision that aligns with your specific needs and goals.

Printful and Printify: Two Titans of the POD Industry

Printify and Printful are two of the biggest names in the POD game. They let you design, manufacture, and sell custom products on your website or through online marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, or Etsy.

POD services like Printify and Printful work on a made-to-order business model, which means that products are only created when a customer places an order. This is in contrast to traditional printing companies, which require you to invest in large quantities of products upfront before selling them. As a result, you eliminate the risk associated with buying stock upfront and hoping that you manage to sell it all.

Both Printify and Printful provide you with a wide range of printable items that you can personalize with your ideas. Not only do these services print the products for you, but they also package and ship them to your clients.

The Best Print on Demand Products

Now, some history about these companies before we dive into the details.

Printful's beginnings

Businessman Lauris Liberts launched Printful in 2013. Latvian-born Liberts was operating an on-demand poster business from his room when he got the idea for Printful.

11 years later, Printful employs around 1,700 people and currently owns and operates 15 printing and shipping facilities on 4 continents.

To this day, Printful has completed 86 million deliveries, with an average of over a million items shipped each month. At the moment, the business is worth about 1 billion US dollars and has received $130 million in investments over the years.

With its headquarters located in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, Printful uses its internal shipping facilities and international partners to reach customers in North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia.

By utilizing its services, you can maximize your reach to new international markets and grow your company.

The history of Printify

Coincidentally, Printify was founded in Latvia as well. Three businessmen, Artis Kehris, James Berdigans, and Gatis Dukurs established the company in Riga.

Printify has since shipped goods worth more than $500 million.

Since its founding in 2015, Printify has grown into a massive print-on-demand business with more than 500 workers and a $300 million valuation. Up till now, Printify has effectively sent over $500 million worth of print-on-demand goods to clients throughout the globe. This number is still rising quickly, with over 8 million users.

In contrast to Printful, Printify has opted for a different strategy by acting as an intermediary between multiple unique third-party print providers and POD merchants. It has headquarters located in Wilmington, DE, USA, and Printify maintains relationships with more than 110 printing facilities throughout the globe. This extensive worldwide printing network is spread among 12 countries in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and Africa.

Using Printful as Your POD Platform

To determine whether Printify or Printful is superior, an in-depth review of both apps is necessary. We’ll be looking into 8 essential components – price, product range, product design options, shipping, tool features, integration, branding, and customer service.

Let’s have a look at Printful first.

Printful's product range

Printful provides products in a variety of categories, including accessories, home and lifestyle goods, and clothing for women, men, and kids. Printful offers a catalog of 355 items, with 29 eco-friendly options.

The ability to customize the products and use tools for producing mockups lets you visualize how your items will turn out. Printful provides up to 2,550 template options for this. Additionally, you can use mockups from its catalog.

Printful maintains a strong presence across the globe, with 7 fulfillment centers located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada, Latvia, and Spain. It owns and operates 15 printing and shipping facilities. The use of their own factories ensures quality control (QC) with a 3-step QC process. This also results in a fast production cycle of 2-5 business days.

With Printful, you can expect 5 primary printing methods. These include Direct-to-Garment (DTG), Direct-to-Film (DTF), embroidery, all-over printing, and sublimation.

Printful’s design and customization options

POD solutions like Printful offer many user-friendly tools for users to easily design their desired products. You can add text and edit images, with both PNG and JPEG files supported.

You also have the option to add stock photographs to your designs with Printful – for a fee. And because of their integration with the Getty Images library, you have access to more than 80 million stock images.

Meanwhile, if you want to use your own images, Printful lets you upload files sized 200 MB. There are also 790+ fonts in their library, and you get access to free clip art on Printful.

Branding options

Printful offers solutions that can aid in brand promotion. With Printful, companies can brand inner neck labels for dress items or include custom branding inserts, like thank-you notes, with their products. It also allows you to mark caps and add outside labels to clothes.

You can add embroidered logos, sleeve printing, and inside or outside labels. White-label packaging, custom packaging, pack-ins, free custom packing slips, and a free personalized shipment tracking page are all available from Printful as well.

Printful tools

Printful is easy to use with friendly drag-and-drop tools. Additionally, there's a mobile app that makes everything easier.

This platform appears to have a somewhat better system than Printify (which we will explore later in this guide). For example, the pricing is immediately updated by the algorithm when you choose free shipping. This means that POD sellers can save time and effort by utilizing this feature, which simplifies the procedure.

Printful's Design Maker tool offers a variety of choices, including premium image libraries, clipart, fonts, and readymade designs. This powerful built-in tool makes it easier to create visually appealing print-on-demand designs.

A large mockup collection with over 2,550 free choices lets you visually improve your product images. With so many different backgrounds and vintage alternatives at your disposal, you can bring your design to life.

Printful integrations

Printful offers a wide range of platform integrations to help with your ecommerce operations. Printful boasts a large network of 24 print-on-demand partners, providing more flexibility and options for businesses.

There's also direct integration with Amazon, as well as with TikTok Shop within the United States, allowing you to sell your products directly on the platform.

The Ultimate Guide to Selling With TikTok Shop

Shipping locations

Printful offers flexible shipping options with custom return addresses, providing convenience for both you and your customers.

Delivery times: Typically, Printful orders take 1-8 business days for US and EU customers and 1-20 business days for international orders.
Shipping rates: Printful offers both flat and live shipping rates, allowing you to choose the most suitable option for your business.
Delivery partners: Printful works with reputable carriers like USPS, FedEx, UPS, Canada Post, DHL, Australia Post, and Royal Mail.

Printful maintains greater control over its supply chain as it handles printing, packaging, and shipping internally.

Customer support

Printful delivers excellent customer support with an active help center. It provides guides for POD sellers, covering everything from subscriptions and integrations to return policies and practices. Printful cares about its global sellers and provides customer support in 6 different languages.

The customer service is available 24/7 with live chat and email support, but no phone calls. It usually takes around 2 hours to get a reply to an email, but you can expect to get an instant reply if you can connect to a live chat channel.

There's also 30-day free return policy with Printful if there is a problem with the product, in addition to a 30-day free exchange policy if there is any sort of problem with the item.

Printful pricing

Printful has both free and paid plans, with the free option providing basic features. The platform also offers a Printful Growth plan for $24.99/month.

Printful Growth

Product Discounts: Up to 30% discount on POD products and 7% discount on product branding.
Unlimited stores: Manage multiple stores under a single account.
14-day free trial: Test out the features before committing.
Potential for free plan: If your store reaches $12K+ in annual sales, you can use Printful Growth for free.

13 currencies can be used for Printful payments: USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD, CHF, AUD, NZD, DKK, MXN, SEK, HKD, and BRL.

Printful integrates with Shopify for free. It also offers a 20% discount for 3 items per order per month, while Printify does not.

What are users saying about Printful?

Now, let’s see some user reviews about Printful.

ONTIKO SIA (on Trustpilot) has nothing but praises: "Exceptional Quality and Service!
I have been using Printful for a while now, and I am absolutely thrilled with the quality of their products and the efficiency of their service. The printing is always sharp, the colors vibrant, and the materials they use feel premium. Every order has been fulfilled accurately and delivered on time.
The platform is incredibly easy to use, and their integration with my online store has been seamless, which makes running my business so much smoother. I also appreciate their transparent pricing and wide range of customization options.”
Brian W. (on G2) about late orders: “Their printers are not held accountable for quality or timelines. We have 2 orders that ran past the deadline and both customers are filing a chargeback as they do not want to wait past the promised dates. This will cost me the price I pay to gain these customers, the negative reviews they leave, and the fees Etsy will charge. Their customer service describes this as an 'inconvenience'. When the money comes out of my pocket and not Printful's and the negative reviews are seen on my store and not Printful's, this seems like they care only about padding their pockets and not customer service. The products were purchased on Aug. 29th. This should have been a few days to print a hat! Finally after chasing their horrific customer service when Etsy flagged the order as 'past due to ship', they think maybe they can finish producing it by Sept. 20th but offer no guarantees. Throw in an additional 7-10 days for USPS, which brings delivery to the customer around the 30th of Sept....at least. This is not only laughable but pathetic.”

What About Printify?

Now let's look at the same 8 aspects with Printify so that we can compare the two print on demand providers.

The product range on Printify

Both companies have chosen to use different strategies for print-on-demand manufacturing. Printful offers quicker response times, although Printify promises a wider selection of international printing vendors.

When it comes to product range and basic pricing, Printify beats Printful with its catalog of 950+ offerings. Printify also offers more eco-friendly items than Printful, with an offering of 62 items. It also wins with lower pricing for the majority of items because it outsources most of the work. However, because of this, Printful products are of better quality in some cases.

Because of outsourcing the production work to relevant companies, the Printify production cycle is typically longer than Printful, ranging from 2-7 days.

Printful offers 7 primary printing methods. These include Direct-to-Garment (DTG), Direct-to-Film (DTF), dye sublimation, embroidery, all-over printing, screen printing, and digital printing.

Like Printful, Printify's supplier network spans multiple continents. It has 80+ suppliers with 110+ print locations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Latvia, Poland, China, Australia, and more.

This extensive presence enables Printify to cater to customers in various regions and offer competitive pricing.

For quality control, it also employs a 3-step quality control process.

Printify's design and customization options

You can also add text and edit images on Printify, and it also supports both PNG and JPEG. Printify also works with vector graphics by allowing SVG file submissions. It also offers royalty-free T-shirt designs.

While Printify merged with Shutterstock, which has more than 3.5 million stock images, Printful still wins out, with over 80 million images. In contrast to Printify, which only allows 100MB of files, Printful allows 200 MB. Also, you will get access to over 790 fonts on Printful, while Printify only provides about 300.

Additionally, Printify has an AI picture generator that transforms your text prompts into images. You also get free clip art on Printify as well.