Printify is a print-on-demand company that enables users to create custom-designed products for their online stores. It’s a simple way to design shirts, socks, facemasks, mugs, phone cases, blankets, and much more. Use the platform to design your merchandise and Printify will connect you with a print provider to handle the creation, fulfillment, and shipping.
Read on for our in-depth review of Printify, covering its pros, cons, pricing, services, and use cases, to see if Printify is right for you.
Printify Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free-forever plan
- 20% discount on products on select plans
- Global shipping
- Over 800 product options
- Drag-and-drop design tool
Cons
- Extra shipping costs on orders from multiple printers
- Printify API only available on Enterprise plan
- Complex refund policy
About Printify
Printify is an all-in-one print-on-demand solution for dropshippers. Ecommerce platforms can integrate with Printify, making it a snap to add customized merchandise to your online product catalog. A customer places an order and then the production company gets notified to produce the product, fulfill the order, and ship the items directly to the consumer. It’s as easy as that. Ecommerce retailers never have to touch the products, but can still offer customized items to their customers—making Printify one of the best ways to start a print-on-demand business.
It also represents a fast and affordable way to order other types of customized merchandise. For example, businesses can rely on Printify for creating branded corporate apparel or accessories. It’s also a way for schools and sports teams to place bulk orders for students, athletes, and fans. You can even use Printify to order custom items in bulk to sell through your brick-and-mortar retail stores.
Printify Health and Stability
Since Printify’s launch in 2015, the platform has been used by over 6 million merchants selling over $500 million in products. Printify has an extensive product catalog of over 800 items, ranging from socks, shirts, and hats to tree ornaments, backpacks, kitchen accessories, and more—which can all be customized through the platform’s free-to-use design tool.
Since Printify doesn’t actually produce, print, or ship products, they’ve partnered with over 110 printing and manufacturing companies. They’re simply providing the software and logistics to connect their users with production companies that can handle a wide range of items.
This is a fast-growing tech company in the United States that’s privately owned. With more than 600 employees worldwide and backed by over 40 investment companies that have raised over $50 million in funding to keep up with Printify’s demand and growth, Printify is reliable and stable for the foreseeable future.
As long as Printify continues to partner with quality production companies and add more to their network to meet the growing demand of ecommerce sellers, it’s safe to assume they’ll be around for a while. You can confidently use Printify’s platform and infrastructure as the foundation to start or expand an ecommerce business.
Printify Pricing
Printify is 100% free to use. You can integrate your online sales channels with Printify and create an unlimited number of product designs for up to five stores, all on Printify’s free-forever plan alone. Alternatively, you can pay for a Printify membership that gives you access to product discounts, order management tools, and support for more storefronts.
Printify Pricing Structure
There are two main components to Printify’s pricing structure—memberships and product merchandise costs.
For memberships, you have the option to select a Free, Premium, or Enterprise plan. We covered everything included in the Free plan a few paragraphs above.
Premium plans start at $24.99 per month and unlocks discounts of up to 20% off all products you order through Printify. You also get access to Printify Connect, which helps you with order management elements like fielding returns and exchanges. Enterprise plan pricing is completely customized to match the number of stores you want to sell on. You can use Printify’s core services and design tools at every membership tier.
Regardless of whether you pay for a membership or opt for the Free plan, you’ll need to pay for the products that you’re customizing via Printify. The cost per item varies based on the manufacturer and product type. For example, you might find t-shirts starting around $5, bathing suits for $20, and car mats for $60. But you only pay for these items when a sale is made through your online store.
Printify Trials and Guarantees
Printify does not have a free trial, but it does have a free-forever plan that offers much more value. In fact, the Free plan can be a viable option on its own for businesses that are just getting started or anyone with lightweight printing and fulfillment needs. It offers access to Printify’s mockup generator, 24/7 support, and integrations with all major sales channels—including Shopify, Etsy, and eBay.
All of Printify’s partner merchants are backed by a thorough vetting process they conduct on all providers they add to their network. In-house Printify experts will regularly order different samples with complex designs as a way to assess quality. They also send weekly performance reports to all providers with specific complaints and additional performance metrics.
If merchandise is printed incorrectly, damaged during delivery, or falls short of quality standards, you can contact Printify for a reprint. If there are additional issues or a reprint can’t happen, you may be eligible for a refund. With that said, the refund policy outlined in Printify’s terms of service is somewhat complex, and refunds are issued as a credit to the merchant’s Printify account, not as cash.
Printify Overview
Printify delivers an easy-to-access, easy-to-use print-on-demand solution with dropshipping fulfillment services and bulk ordering options. We’ll take a closer look at these three facets of the service below.
Print on Demand
Printify is arguably the best print-on-demand service on the market. Aside from its extensive product catalog and vast network of print providers, using Printify is ultra-simple.
Even if you don’t have a design background, it’s really easy to use Printify’s mockup generator. This tool is 100% free to use by just creating a Printify account. You can play around with different colors, fonts, sizes, and images on products using the drag-and-drop editor until you’ve created something you like.
Then you can preview your designs as a realistic 3D image. You can even use these exact same images for your product listings on your website or as promotional materials on social media.
Printify seamlessly integrates with a lot of major ecommerce platforms and sales channels, including Shopify, Etsy, Walmart, eBay, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, and PrestaShop. Businesses with an Enterprise subscription can also access the Printify API for building custom integrations and addressing unique sales needs.
Overall, Printify lowers the barrier to entry for anyone who wants to sell custom-printed products online. You can create your own designs and let Printify handle the rest.
As for the products available, your options are virtually endless. Here’s a small sample of the different categories within Printify’s catalog of over 800 products:
- T-shirts
- Hoodies
- Shoes
- Socks
- Underwear
- Baby clothing
- Hats
- Car accessories
- Tech accessories
- Travel accessories
- Posters
- Mugs and glassware
- Towels
- Blankets
The list goes on and on.
With that said, Printify’s extensive merchandise options can sometimes make things more challenging than they need to be. For example, let’s say you want to sell something simple on your ecommerce website, like a custom shirt. You’re going to see dozens of different options from dozens of print providers, all around the same price, without having the products in front of you to compare in terms of feel, fit, and the like.
So, finding the right t-shirt to customize and sell can take some trial and error. If you’re serious about selling high-quality products online, it’s probably in your best interest to order some samples from different printers before you formally add the merchandise to your product catalog.
Premium plans start at $24.99 per month with an annual subscription. Sign up for free to get started.
Dropshipping Fulfillment
Printify’s dropshipping and ecommerce fulfillment is part of its print-on-demand solution that takes things a step further.
Let’s say you’ve already customized an item through Printify, integrated the platform with your online store, and listed the product for sale. Once a customer places an order on your website, the printer will be notified to actually create and fulfill the order. They’ll add your custom design to the item purchased and then ship it directly to the consumer.
It’s worth noting that the shipping rates are not part of the price you pay per item. These are calculated separately, and shipping rates are based on the printing company, product type, and customer’s location.
One cool part of Printify’s fulfillment solution is that it can automatically prevent issues due to stock shortages. If enabled on your account, you can set it up so orders are automatically sent to another partner to fulfill the order if there’s a shortage with the provider you originally selected.
You can also use Printify’s geo-routing feature for overseas shipments. They’ll automatically find the closest printing facility to help cut down on shipping costs for international orders. This is also a faster way to get these products shipped to your customers.
There are a few potential downsides to the way orders are processed, especially if you’re using multiple suppliers for different products on your site.
For example, if one of your customers orders a t-shirt and hat from your website, but your shirts come from a printer in New York and your hats come from a printer in California, these items will be shipped separately to your customer. And, you’ll be charged two different shipping rates for each.
Passing these shipping fees onto your customers can be tricky because they’re just ordering from a single website. Depending on your pricing structure, you may have to absorb these extra shipping costs or have this baked into the price of each product listing.
All of the dropshipping and fulfillment services come free with your Printify account. But, you’ll need a Premium or Enterprise plan if you want Printify to handle reprint requests and refunds on your behalf.
Bulk Ordering
Most people use Printify’s print-on-demand service to sell products online. But it’s also a great way to create large quantities of custom merchandise for other use cases.
If you’re ordering 60 or more qualified products from the same print provider, your purchase may be eligible for a bulk discount, saving you up to 30% on shipping rates.
There are lots of different use cases for Printify’s bulk ordering service. Maybe your company is sponsoring a local event and you want to hand out t-shirts to all attendees. Or, maybe you want to order 100 custom mugs with your company logo as gifts for your employees.
This service is also commonly utilized by non-profits who want to sell merchandise to support a specific cause. Whether you’re selling merchandise or giving it away for free, the bulk ordering service from Printify still puts you in total control of the item designs.
You can even use the bulk purchasing option to order inventory for your brick-and-mortar retail stores.
The only potential downside of a bulk order is that you’re paying in full for all items. So, if you’re planning to use this service for inventory, you need to have the cash in advance. It’s not the same as using Printify for ecommerce fulfillment, where you only pay for items when a sale is made.
Submit an offer for a bulk order on Printify and save up to 30% on shipping.
Printify’s Reputation
Printify has an excellent reputation across the web. It’s highly rated on several different third-party review sites, with glowing reviews from real Printify users.
Most of the reviewers have positive things to say about Printify’s support and ease of use. Several users mention how Printify has made it easy for them to start selling online via a print-on-demand business. Lots of reviews also mention how Printify offers competitive pricing and a vast selection of product options.
However, not everyone had glowing things to say about Printify. But, it seems like the majority of bad reviews were tied to poor product quality or issues with a specific printing company. While Printify has to approve the printers within their network, these types of issues are otherwise out of Printify’s control. To us, these seemed like one-off problems and shouldn’t be enough to stop me from using Printify to sell custom products online.
Final Verdict
Overall, we recommend Printify as a solution for all your print-on-demand needs. Whether you’re starting a new ecommerce store from scratch or just want to expand your product offerings, Printify is an excellent choice to consider for custom designs on over 800 product types.
It’s 100% free to sign up and get started using, and you’re in total control over your designs. Printify helps set you up for success, making it easy for you to find the right printing providers for all of your merchandise.
Source: quicksprout
Printify Review