Gooten: Print on Demand

to difficult to use compared to other POD apps. I think they spent to much time on design and not enough on user friendliness

Here's a message I sent to their customer support a few moments ago:

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I don't have a request. Just want to make a statement that hopefully someone in your company will see.

I have a new Shopify store and am considering which vendor to use for POD. I've connected Printful, Printify, and Teespring so far; am considering Custom Cat. I've gone back and forth about which vendor to use but then ran across you. Great products, excellent prices. I was worried about some of the negative reviews in the app store -- specifically difficulties getting the app to work, and in how it's set up as a workflow. I decided not to sell t-shirts through you because the thought of uploading a design for *every single variation* of a product made me want to scream.

So I was going to do some of my products with you -- ones without a bunch of variation per item. And... went to try to set up an account. First I get a security warning that won't let me proceed. So I figured I'd give it a minute and move forward. Then I returned a few minutes later, but because I'd entered my email address *but wasn't able to continue setting up* it said there was already an email address in use. Okayyyy, I'll pick a different email address. Then I try to set up my account and connect to my Shopify store. I enter the information and hit the button "connect my store," it connects for a few moments... then the screen returns, with the wrong information in the Company Name and Shopify URL fields. Try again. Same thing. After each time of trying to connect my Gooten account with Shopify, I return to the Shopify Apps page to see if it's there. Nope. I tried this a few times and I give up.

Guys: nothing on your site seems to work! I'm sorry but all those people complaining on the product reviews are trying to tell you something. I've connected now 3 POD apps and they took moments and were a breeze.

I really wish you'd get your act together. Because as it is, there's no way on this green earth I'd continue to press on *even if* I could eventually connect my store... there are just too many problems here, and I've only just gotten started. Who knows what would come up down the line when I actually had customers on the line getting frustrated.

Please get it together, Gooten!

I highly recommend Gooten's customer service - received prompt response to design questions with direct information! The app interface is clean and simple to use. It also allows for easy design customization.

Love what they have to offer and it's easy to connect to my shopify store and easy to use.
They have a nice variety of items to customize

Gooten customer service is wonderful. They are very quick to reply to emails and sends through detailed images along with their answers. The platform itself is very easy to use and exactly what I was looking for. I am very excited to recieve my first tea towel sample to begin selling these all the time on demand!

Great POD partner, way more helpful and hands on than others in the space. I have it integrated into two separate stores. Amazing variety of products above and beyond other providers. Overall the Shopify integration works perfectly, as well.

A Nightmare to use.
Let's say I want to create a baby onesie with my own print. I want to offer it in multiple sizes and colors. Any other POD app I have used, lets you see the colors available in a way that quickly allows you to decide whether your print works on a certain color. A few check boxes to choose what you want after uploading your design and you're done.
With Gooten, you get a text list of all the different combinations of colors and sizes available, making it a nightmare to choose what you're looking for and sometimes impossible to know whether your print will look good on a certain color because you can't see that color until you select it and move to the next screen. The pricing is all over the place with small variations in garment prices as well as shipping prices. So if you choose to price your product the same way, your margins will be different on pretty much every item you sell. If you price them differently, it'll make it almost impossible to manage later if you want to raise or lower prices.
Want to offer a tank top? The company offers 6 types but due to color and size variations you have to scroll through 73 (yes!) pages of tank tops to choose the ones you're looking for. You can filter, which is nice, but what good is filtering by name of product if I have no idea what this product looks like.

The reason this app gets 2* instead of just 1 is that it looks very promising. They do have A LOT of options and the base prices for some of the products are decent. Sometimes I wish other POD apps had some of the customization options Gooten is offering. I will check it again in a few months and hopefully they'll improve it by then. Until then, I'm sticking with other services.

The products looked promising. But I gave up trying to use it, because it is just too slow, and too difficult to use.

Too many details needed to be handled manually - using a terrible interface.

Would have appreciated it if it was presented in a step-by-step manner. Like

0. Upload a design.
1. Choose a Tee
2. Choose all sizes you want
3. Choose all colors you want
4. Choose underbase
5. Mock up options

Or something. Instead I see page after page of words that drive me nuts.
That's even before i see the damned mockup.

Pity.

Of all the POD companies I have worked with and received samples from, Gooten is the most difficult to work with. The specs required are difficult to work with (making repeating patterns wasn't possible), making uploading images for a sample very trying. Then, once I finally got the files approved for printing, there was an issue with billing - which I was not notified about whatsoever. Consequently, I had an order sitting in "billing" for well over a week. Rather than a quick resolution, even that issue (a simple address update) had to wait in their system for another 12 hours before approval. At last the order shipped and the colors of the blanket were muted, the blanket thin, and it was shipped in a polymailer that arrived ripped. Perhaps other products might be better in quality, but after the initial order and the difficulties in getting it made, I am less motivated to try other products from Gooten.

The process was fairly smooth. I sold a canvas with them and it was produced and shipped on time, they manually checked to make sure my design was the right dimensions before they printed it which was nice