Apliiq ‑ Print On Demand

Software is outdated and frustrating. Orders waiting 10+ days and they didn't even have the blanks to print yet. Out of the 4 orders placed i ended up canceling all 4 because they never got the blank in. No official process for refunds and they said they would charge a 15% restocking fee for orders canceled that they had blanks for. I was able to get in touch with someone when needed so that is a positive for them. Overall just not what I need, might be good for tiny shops who don't have many orders and can babysit them.

Update: 2 star because simply they dont care, specially if you`re small fish! Simply absurd what they are doing! It`s not so simple cancelling orders like they suggested! Extremely disappointed

I've just opened my store and I`ve been impressed with Apliiq since day one! As soon as i got my first sample I was hooked! It was the most perfect embroidery ever! Also the customer service has been spot on, cant complain. The fact that they have a designer to overlook the prints helped me a lot. So far has been an incredible experience and hopefully we will grow together! !!

Customer service is A+. I had some bumps along the way, but Peter has been able to smooth the path for me, and the team of reps have always been polite and helpful. Production has been fast. Faster than I expected. I will say, as an international buyer, I have been a bit frustrated with shipping times. While they do their best to get the product out on time, the shipping to Canada has been quite disatisfying. Hopefully, some new shipping options become available for us in the future.

Totally disappointed with my order. I just received my Order which waits 15 working days. Order two t-shirts a bella canvas white and a charcoal cali crop, the latter a total disappointment because when they sent me a design for revision I communicated by chat and asked if the white areas would be white on my shirt and they said yes. This crop t-shirt is very thin and has no seam termination on the sleeves or on the bottom. The painting looks watery and poor.

I had great expectations for this energetic, young company, but I'm pulling the plug, and here's why:

1. Lagging Fulfillment and Turnaround Times: The fulfillment and turnaround times were nothing short of disappointing. Countless frustrated customers bombarded me with questions about the whereabouts of their orders. Despite Apliiq's claim of a two-week average turnaround from door to door (still too long), it often stretched to three weeks. At this rate, you risk losing your valued customers, mind you, this is during the less hectic months. I shudder to think what chaos the fourth quarter and holiday season timelines would bring, with a potential wave of irate customers left waiting for their t-shirts.

2. Customer Service Requires Urgent Enhancement: While customer service is somewhat acceptable, it desperately needs improvement. Live chat is agonizingly slow, and email responses are no better. Waiting for a 48-hour turnaround is common, and sometimes I had to send two or three follow-up emails to address a single issue.

3. Mistakes and Blunders: Yes, we all make mistakes, but Apliiq's frequency of errors and the timing of these mistakes is simply unacceptable. Several of my customers received soiled shirts, one received an unraveling shirt and a few received the wrong shirt. The process itself is part of the problem - Apliiq orders the shirts from vendors/wholesalers only after your customers have placed their orders. So, if one of those shirts is defective (which can be often) I'm sure they just print and ship that dirty shirt. An unwieldy business model at best. What are the alternatives? Apliiq suggests pre-purchasing printed shirts from them, so they can ship out quickly. But at that point, why even involve them? The ENTIRE allure of on-demand printing is to avoid such complications!  Alternative #2, Apliiq suggests allowing them to print on ANY shirt they have available and if anyone knows anything about t-shirts, they know that they vary wildly in quality and many of them stink!  

Declining Quality: I periodically ordered sample shirts from Apliiq to check my designs and received shirts with designs printed crooked and poorly printed. My theory is that they're onboarding way too many new shops and can't cope with the volume. And who pays the price? You, as your hard-earned customers walk away.

I had high hopes for Apliiq, but ultimately, they fell short. The team is undoubtedly kind-hearted, but they urgently need to overhaul their processes and logistics. Rapid expansion at the cost of small businesses like ours leads to dissatisfied customers and disappointment. If you're considering Apliiq for your t-shirt shop, think twice.

The company started off decent but has gone down hill since early 2020. The sizes arent correct and the quality is horrible. Not to mention customer service is rude and the time and cost is ridiculous. Took over 2 months to get my order and the size wasn't the correct size. Sent packages to the wrong address and takes longer thab a week to respond to emails. Chat is never available and the phone number just sends you to an auto message.

I designed and ordered two items from this vendor. I also had someone order one item from my store. The product that the customer received was poor print quality... to the point of being an embarrassment. I did not follow up with Appliq - I felt at that point it was a waste of time since it was the first product I had seen from them, and I had already put my own order in for samples, so I wanted to see how it turned out to give me a baseline for their level of consistency. The print quality of the samples I received was 100% better, as expected. I selected branded label tags to be placed on both the garments I'd ordered as a sample. Only one came with a product tag, and it was literally the poorest quality garment tag I have ever seen. So if you go with them, maybe pay for the woven labels? In one of the designs, I had selected the option they offer to remove the white background from the graphic. They did not. The product came with white surrounding the graphic. Both orders were a week or more later than the company communicated on their app when it first updated on my account. As the order progressed, the shipping info was not updated in their app (which would be my minimum expectation), much less emailed. I did have to email them to make sure that it was shipped at all. And this was a week and a half after the expected delivery date. I found their process does not complete the fulfillment of the item on your Shopify store. You have to email them and ask them to close it out - and when you email them, they don't necessarily respond to you - they do what you ask. Which ---thank you, but acknowledgment communication on how to avoid the issue in the future would be appreciated. I still have one order that has been fulfilled that is marked unfulfilled on my store. Lastly, their design platform is not consistent with the design size that you upload, so even if you triple check the file that you upload or upload, it huge to make sure the DPI is ok since the platform apparently is not consistent in reading the file size, you're never really sure if you're on target. I did email about this, but the response was less than helpful, and time is precious. Too many inconsistencies and poor customer experience for me. I wish them the best. So, on to the next...

At first glance, i was hopeful: good branding options, and decent selections for hoodies and tees. The first issue i saw, was that some of the models for their products don't seem accurate. Secondly, when you push the product to your shopify store, the image quality greatly decreases to a blur. That would sure turn away customers. But due to their branding options, i thought i could put in the extra work and just use mockups. Though the mockups may not have the right look as the model hoodie chosen.

But none of those things stopped me, i was hoping there would be a better option to printful and others. But someone made an order on April 4. Apliiq contacted me twice to confirm print placement and logo and i confirmed immediately to make sure no delay occurred. Now it's April 10th and the product isn't even pushed to the floor to be printed. Then It's April 14 and i had to contact them. They apologized and said they would accelerate it. Now it's April 18, and nothing. Crickets. By around April 19 it finally gets printed and shipped off. Luckily, i knew the person who ordered the shirt. they liked the print but even they advised me to not use Apliiq, because the wait was too much.

Not to mention, while waiting on apliiq, i ordered 3 samples from Printful and they were printed and delivered a week before Apliiq. Printful isn't perfect either because they don't offer branding on some important products. so it's like choosing between two not great options, but customer satisfaction wins for now.

Now, how am i going to run a business that takes 15 days to put a print on a shirt. I might as well drop ship from Antartica at this point. You know when you really want a company to do well and be the answer but they find a way to screw things up. I had no choice but to delete all Apliiq products and undo all the work i did, because customer satisfaction is the most important thing to me. I could care less about branding options when you are going to take 3/4 of a month just to print a product.

Their DTG print quality is a major disappointment. On darker base layers, you can tell they aren't printing the white underlay prior to dropping in color, which means the vibrance of the print is nowhere near what Printful and Printify provide. I still give them two stars because they provide garments that can't be found elsewhere (especially for kids). But if DTG is a major part of your business, Apliiq is not the one stop shop you may be hoping for.

If you are in only in the european market forget about this app.