Gelato: Print on Demand

I don't normally write reviews, but in this case I think it is very important that I share my experience. People say you get what you pay for and that is true with Gelato. I placed an order of fifteen 11oz mugs for a boutique according to Gelato's schedule to arrive before Black Friday. No biggie for a company of this size. Their printing partner split the order of 15 mugs into 3 packages. AND DID NOT SHIP THEM ALL TOGETHER. They waited 6 & 7 days between shipments. I received 2 boxes of 3 mugs today, (6 total), on Black Friday. I have no idea when I am getting the other 9. When I opened the boxes, Wow! The print quality is terrible. The colors are off and way to light. I did double-check the print quality using Gelato's 3D and regular mockups with customer service before I placed my order to make sure there was enough saturation to get a good print. The customer service assured me there was, and my mugs would print with the regular mockup quality, not the 3D which was terrible.. They did not. Not only that, but this partial order of 6 mugs contains SOME that are 11oz and SOME that are 15oz. THEY SENT TWO DIFFERENT SIZES!!! This order of 15, 11oz mugs are not uniform in size or quality of color print. Also, the packaging is terrible and not uniform. Some of the mugs are in brown boxes with bubble wrapped. Two of the mugs came squeezed into boxes that are too small and held together with packing tape. I gave them 1 star because their customer service responds quickly. However, Gelato seems to have no communication, control or oversight of their printing partner.
I installed this app and was also going to use this company for cell phone cases, but as an independent artist who works with bold colors, I cannot put my name onto anything from this company. They have no concern for the quality of the items they sell only the quantity.
This company has embarrassed me with a client and put me into a bind, because I cannot possibly display/sell mismatched colors/sizes of mugs, and I have missed my deadline. They have cost me countless hours of aggravation, phone calls, follow-ups, sales and now time as I have to redo all of my cell phone templates.
If you are a small business owner, independent artist like myself or startup, I would really think twice before relying on this company. We really get one chance to make a first impression and they have cost me dearly. I cannot recommend this app or this company.
UPDATE 11/27/2023
I finally received the rest of my order from Gelato. Not only was it a mismatch of mug sizes, the order was missing three items. RECAP: I ordered fifteen (15) 11oz mugs. From that order I was actually sent eight (8) 15oz mugs & three (3) 11oz mugs. Total of 12 mugs . MISSING 3 ITEMS. I don't carry 15oz mugs so this is an issue as is the poor print quality on all of the items I have received. It is quite apparent that Gelato takes your money and washes its hands of the final outcome. It would appear as if their printing partner never read or checked my order before shipment and just threw whatever they had available in these shipment boxes. Gelato did refund my money with very little fuss, which leads me to believe this kind of disfunction is normal for them. On a final note, while customer service is available, on three different occasions they did say they would "investigate" and get back to me. They never did.
I now need to reorder everything with less than 4 weeks before the holiday season. If you are an artisan, artist or small business owner who depends on your production partners to be reliable with quality merchandise, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH to go elsewhere. There are better companies out there. I usually use a different POD company and will be running back to them. Do your homework. Less expensive isn't always better. Sometimes it is just cheaper, but will cost you a bunch.

The business model is very promising but unfortunately the technical solution (including the Shopify integration) does not live up to the high expectations. Errors occur too often causing orders to fail or be charged incorrectly.
In addition to this they have severe problems with products (particularly frames) out-of-stock. There are no automatic notification neither when an item it out-of-stock or back in stock. This of course leads to bad customer experiences. Support is generally helpful but they are fixing problems that should never have occured. Once Gelato manages to finish the development of their platform they will be a powerful partner. Until then you should expect to monitor all orders manually and to spend time writing the support team.

i tried other print on demand companies as well but so far Gelato is the best. The quality of the prints and the materials much more better than the others. Also print on tote bags doesn't disappear after the first wash like i had in the other companies, it is still the same after washing many times. Order process is easy to manage, shipping is fast, the way the packages arrive is great, the customer service is amazingly helpful. i am so happy of working with gelato.

Working with Gelato as our fulfillment partner has been an absolute pleasure. Their fully hands-off fulfilment has allowed our business to grow smoothly. I'm able to use my time for product development, marketing and planning, rather than fussing over fulfillment every day. Their localised production means we were able to seamlessly expand from Europe to the US without any heavy lifting on our end. The customer service is top notch (I haven't had to wait more than a minute to reach an agent). If you're looking for a print-on-demand partner, I have no hesitations in recommending Gelato. Bill Malin & Mizen
malinandmizen.com

Fantastic App and service, i have been looking for a very long time for a POD service that offers fast shipping at a good price, high quality prints and proper integration with all my platforms. I love that I can integrate/sync products with my existing products on Etsy and in Shopify. I have used many of POD services that don't offer this crucial feature.
The shipping is unbelievably fast! some of my customers receive their order within two days!
I still use Printify for my cushions and phone case orders but I'm hoping Gelato add more products soon so I can switch entirely to Gelato.

Easy to use!! I had been trying to launch my store and I wish I would've find you earlier!! Thank you for making it use. I also want to give you kudos for the excellent customer service that answered my questions at 11:30 pm!! I am in awe that you guys have this available 24/7

If you’re new to POD, as I am, Gelato has a lot of seemingly great features. I was especially excited about the option for customers to utilize the personalization feature. I like their approach to sustainability and supporting local printers. After several months of trying to work through issues with their customer service team, I am giving up on trying to make this relationship work. Here’s a few problems I have had: Upload/Product creation can be glitchy. Sometimes you have to start from the beginning when the system stalls or crashes. Frame quality is super low. The frames used by the printer I was matched with are horrible and look nothing like the frames shown as examples on gelato’s site. There is barely a single coat of white paint, which is chipping. The joints are barely attached, and the wood grain is rough and totally visible. When I received one frame as a sample of this poor quality, I reached out to customer service. They refunded me and told me this was never the quality of work that I should expect. I went ahead and ordered more samples - and got the exact same low-quality frames again. My plan was to rephotograph some of the frames and keep going with gelato in spite of these two issues. I thought about eliminating frames as an option. As of February 2021, however, they changed how product variants sync to Shopify, with no notice or explanation. When I contacted customer service, they told me that I would need to go into each and every product after uploading and update all the variants myself. They gave me no explanation or recourse or assistance. Sent off instead to a general customer service email that simply sends links/articles from their FAQ instead of addressing the actual issue that I had detailed 3 times by this point. I was frustrated and found a new POD app/printer. I was never given a solution and have had to put a halt to building out my inventory, instead spent the time re-uploading my entire inventory with a new supplier. They have wasted my time and my money. If you are a larger company with your own team to address issues with the API and build out your own system, perhaps Gelato can work for you. If you are a small company or individual, especially creating a store on Shopify, they don’t seem to care too much about your business, and the constant changes to their API will throw a massive wrench in creating and maintaining an evolving inventory.

For me the best print on demand service thats available. Very good products, fast shipping worldwide, decent pricing and very kind, quick responding customer service. Well deserved 5 stars!

Working with Gelato has been great so far and I can't recommend them enough. I have been with them for over 5 months now. Product delivery is very fast compared to other POD providers I tried in the past and pricing is very reasonable as well. If there is any issue, the customer service team is always there to help via chat with usually just one minute waiting time. Gelato has gone above and beyond to help us grow and expand our store which included free video calls with their talented team. This personal approach is something that really makes them stand out. Once again, can't be happier. Thank you, Gelato!

Fine-tuned app with great customer support. Recommended. If I can suggest something, that would be a bit more diversity in papers and frames.