Gelato: Print on Demand

Customer service has been a major disappointment. Products for product shoots were posted but never arrived being told that the products were sent. Some products have arrived damage, stained or with the wrong colours printed.

My store had its products disconnected due to a problem with Gelato and now I can no longer fulfill orders required. Now, I need to redesign more than 400 products because of this backend error by Gelato. It has almost crippled my business. Not happy at all - just disappointed all around.

Estoy super decepcionada con Gelato, al principio la impresión y el material era bueno, pero no sé que ha pasado que es horrible, la impresión viene con puntos y filetes, a veces la impresión es con DTG otras veces es un transfer, el envío cada vez es más lento, al principio tardaban muy poco en el envío ahora mismo es súper tedioso de 10 a 13 días. Los que tenemos tienda online bajo pedido no podemos esperar una buena calidad, es una loteria. Y por supuesto si los clientes se quejan adiós clientes, eres un pésimo profesional.

Absolute garbage support, and as of the time of this writing Gelato has yet to return my call for help on a MAJOR ISSUE that is literally a LEGAL LANDMINE for their entire company. They INCREASED PRICES DRASTICALLY on a variety of items with ZERO COMMUNICATION. I only found this out by doing an internal audit and stumbling over it by accident. Many of my posters had shot up by more than 40% cost with NO email and NO announcement. Imagine how many countless were affected, and yet they go on with business as usual. This is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen, and if nothing gets resolved and no changes are made then that shows they have lost their desire to help anyone and have succumbed to total greed. It is shameful how absolutely sloppy with their business and clients who give them revenue they have become. Many of my products are also priced DIFFERENT PRICES even for the same thing, depending on when they were created, and the dashboard price actually is INCORRECT and shows a lower price than it actually is. A year ago (early 2025) you could talk to someone immediately in their chat. Now, consistently, you can NEVER get anyone and it's always "our team members are busy" and you have to chat with the chatbot, which even if it refers you to a real person -- that person never answers you back or takes weeks to respond. HORRIBLE and SHAME on you for such poor quality service!

The print quality is very low. Some products have smudged ink, and it's clear they will wear out after just a few washes. It took a long time to arrive, and I imagined that for the price, the product would be much higher quality. I can't offer this level of quality to my customers. High cost, slow delivery, and poor quality.

constant payment issues when i have a positive balance and auto replenish set up.

Customer service takes over a week to respond. Printful isn't great but go back to it because Gelato is worse

Very poor experience with customer service. Issues with not updating stock and out of stock orders being placed. Lack of communication with support, refusing to refund even when I showed previous communications stating the items were out of stock. The following day advised it was out of stock like I had stated, blamed the app for not working and I stated i wasnt receiving information from the app.
Overall a stressful experience, while quality was good I wont be using them in the future.

Terrible unacceptable absolute no-go experiences with Gelato, continued!! ‍
Gelato platform / system is full of bugs, nothing works properly, constant hazzles, loss of effort+time!
Processes not well thought out, misleading claims
Dev team does NOT understand how to properly implement features, NO clue how to nail safe test before release
CS (Customer Support) most of times NOT aware of all those bugs their platform has!
CS AND Gelato itself committed to ABSOLUTE NO-GOs, lying & cheating, sadly
=> We switched to a competitor: Smooth, efficient + bug-free service

Lying about Printing Locations = ABSOLUTE NO-GO!!
Gelato claims to print everything in CH, but turned out only posters but NOT T-Shirts/Hoodie etc.
CS even asked "how did you find out" !! Confirming that company obviously cheats, trying to hide what they're lying about

"Product Expansion":
Made to gain time, but requires learning curve, final products contain bugs, actually you loose time!
Instead Gelatos ad claim "scale business", you ruin it with lost repeated efforts, time+money gone!

API:
Functional parts shown online unfinished, NOT WORKING, before CS told us to use it, we run into various bugs , 1st confirmed by 2 separate "junior consultants"
Then "senior implementation manager" gets into the conversation , suddenly claims
"No, there is no bug, we the merchant using their API must apparently NOT follow the API description correctly, NOT understanding the semantics of an API, the failure is on us" !!!!
This let us literally freak out: Change in policy how to communicate with merchants? Blaming on the customer their own bugs/failures?
Senior manager finally admitted ONLY IN CALL that this part of the API is actually not working !! ‍
But only in a call, not admitted in a mail knowing THIS COULD BE LEGALLY HOLDING.
=> Absolute NO-GO!

Suddenly accusing the customer is doing wrong whereas Gelato confirmed the bug before is NOT AT ALL how to interact.
You do NOT accuse your customers for doing wrong in order to avoid having to admit your own bug which has been admitted twice before by your colleagues !!
=> Finally we asked Gelato CS why lying online and not taking this part of the API doku down as it's highly misleading (aka cheating) that this shall work to other merchants as well = no reply !!

"New Personalization Studio":
"Seamless integration" incredibly slow, "DOES TAKE AGES TO LOAD", from 3 to 30 seconds Gelatos asks money for that!!!
Appears to any end customer page is NOT
Renders any product you place on your shop USELESS!
DO NOT USE GELATO!

Summary of hazzle and shame:
NOT ANY TRUST ON GELATO AS A WHOLE COMPANY! Constant hazzles-lies-cheating-bugs, loss of effort+time+money!
Gelato company has the guts to put parts of an API online CLAIMING A FUNCIONALITY while ACTUALLY CHEATING on that, willingly having to know API DOES NOT WORK!! ABSOLUTE NO-GO !!
Gelato company has the guts TO ACCUSE ITS OWN CUSTOMERs that they may not understand the technique, whereas it has been confirmed before that the API HAS BUGS, API DOES NOT WORK!! THREATENING THE CUSTOMER TO AVOID ADMITTING OWN FAILURES is NOT how to behave as a company!! ABSOLUTE NO-GO !!
We lost time again and get annoyed with the Gelato system = not intuitive, not straigt-forward, FULL OF BUGS !!
IMPOSSIBLE TO TRUST GELATO in its total!
Cause they work on fancy videos, fancy claims, fancy ads "scale your business" whereas upper management at CEO&CTO level should know HUGE PROBLEMS WITH SYSTEM, TONS OF PLATFORM BUGS, partially wrong NON-INTUITIVE manner of processes, ALL A HAZZLE. ‍

Just use any other POD provider than Gelato: Stay safe and healthy out there!

After uninstalling this plugin, I had a bunch of manual cleanup to do, including delete 40+ shipping profiles one at a time. UGH!

Gelato has unfortunately become an unreliable PoD partner.
- approaching almost 1 month delay
- no communication whatsoever, only “we are verifying, thanks for your patience”
- no transparency, no direct access to printing studios they use and thus no way to evaluate their individual quality
- no easy access to support, everything is designed to land with annoying and redundant chat bots and the apparent human support is so far useless,
- with the above, it is inevitable to feel hopeless if (when) an issue happens with Gelato

Look for another PoD partner.

Sample hoodies arrived late, not printed correctly and after 2 months DTG already fading off the product