Lulu Direct

For children's books, the print quality from LuluXpress is amazing! Their 80# glossy paper makes the color so vibrant. They ship worldwide, and easily handle large orders. Our experience with this app has been positive all the way. Highly recommended.

Lulu has been extremely helpful in setting up our foray into POD and the Shopify integration makes processing these orders simple too. The books are great quality and their customer service team has always been available to guide us and answer our questions.

Absolutely the worst app I had to use because there is no alternative that connects to Shopify. The prints take forever to get made and sent to customers. There're no notifications if there is a problem. Using this app only had a negative impact on my business's reputation and brand image because Lulu is unable to do their part. I get customers who never receive the products, only to find out that Lulu marked an address invalid because it had a special character used. Ridiculous. I do not recommend this service to anyone. It's better to not sell printed products at all then sell them with this app.

LOVE LULU!!! There is nothing I dislike about the app. Make sure you aren't using in Safari, Chrome works great. The main thing is putting turnaround times on your site so customers aren't expecting overnight shipping. Even through the Covid ordeal, this company was awesome to work with and never shut down. Once set up this app really does allow you start small and grow quickly. And AWESOME customer service. They resolved any issue quickly and were really communicative. Their printing costs are comparatively super low as well. I have moved to bulk orders and they are still the cheapest domestically.

I'm just getting started with this app but, at first glance, this looks like a dream come true! :)

I'm a small (2 product) self publisher of natural history field guides (BYOGUIDES) who was badly burned a few years back by Shipwire. The combination of Shopify / Lulu has allowed me to relaunch my business without the hassle of warehousing and arbitrarily changing Shipwire policies. The Shopify / Lulu interface / model is not 'simple' to understand or navigate initially, especially if you are trying to distribute globally to small oceanic territories as well as the big ones (e.g. North America). So if you are not a web / developer type I would say you should find someone with solid Shopify store building experience before discovering the many rough edges. I would have rate the Lulu App 3 stars but for Lulu tech support haven been STELLAR and patient as we beat a path (together) to the solution I needed for my customers. I am seeing evidence of constant improvement in the APP but there are still numerous rough edges must navigated daily. For example: there are form field character limits in the Lulu world that are NOT surfaced to the customer in Shopify world. Consequently, orders constantly crash because there is one-too-many characters in a field. The SHOPIFY system doesn't tell you this so they need to discovered by manually checking the Lulu app after each order arrives and hand managed through by me and sometimes tech support. It's a hassle but it is getting better as time goes by.... I could go on esp. w.r.t. to having to manually set up multiple freight rates around for every country you MIGHT sell to - this was auto-magic with my previous solution. But the bottom line is that the system is viable and getting better and there is good support. But if your time is worth anything (or you want to go holidays and relax) make sure you partner with a developer with Shopify store building experience and focus on doing a bunch of test orders that mimic who, and where, your customers are - especially if they are outside the US and EU. Finally, Lulu printing itself, while efficient and of excellent quality does have format limitations. For example, a limited selection of paperweights such that everything feels like a coffee-table book when you might need something with more heft for practical purposes. Also, if you coil bind you can not get a straight run of pages and are forced to have a blank page at the front and back of you book. Otherwise great.

I am noticing a very inconsistent product when ordering. I ordered 3 copies of a book entitled "Life's A Journey" that should have been printed in an 8 1/2" x 8 1/2" book format. I received 3 books in 8 1/2" x 11" format. As I didn't need them immediately I didn't open the package until to longer after the order.

Then I ordered a 2nd book entitled The Wonderfully Wacky World of those Crazy Critters Around Us!". Again 8 1/2" x 8 1/2", color book. It came in the correct size but was in B/W. LuLu's put in a request to reprint it with expedited shipping. Shipping was delayed, it arrived in color, whoever, the shipper had managed to mangle the book.

I am now attempting to secure an updated version of the 2nd book; however, the system isn't allowing me to connect it to the right item. Therefore, I can't get it in their system so I can request a printed copy to see what I might get this time.

More than a bit annoyed at the lack of quality. I can see how my customers would feel if getting charged for a product that didn't arrive as specified and requested.

Many if not most of the reviews here are terrible, especially considering that this is a company that more or less boasts that they are "Masters of the Print on Demand" book printing Universe.

Um, I don't think so.

Many here are complaining of really poor customer service as well as comically mishandled orders. Well, I haven't gotten yet to the mishandled order stage, but I have received really poor customer service.

I have been STUCK for about ten days now not getting too much done with LuLu although lately I've been able to forge ahead and make some progress mostly thanks to my own efforts. I finally managed to get one book accepted by the Lulu "platform." With AMAZON, everythng was INSTANT, worked the first time, and took mere minutes, not days. All this time I've been emailing and getting mostly ignored. Incomplete answers provided every 3 to 4 days, at best, with total radio silence in between.

I told their support via email about four hours ago that I had had it and that I was going to be leaving this one star review.

More radio silence.

THEY.DO.NOT.CARE.

They're Masters of the Universe, remember? sarc/

I am having the hardest time getting my products properly linked / set up through Lulu Direct. All of the instructional videos are out of date, so all the information and instructions that they are giving doesn't apply to this new format, making it a huge pain to set up. If you update your entire structure, you need to update your videos too. Otherwise, you are just leaving people in the dark, which doesn't make for very happy customers / users of your platform.

While the product creation was fine, and the order process appeared to go smoothly, I've ordered a total of 5 books between two orders, and haven't received a single one.

**edit**

Customer service via Joseph has been very helpful with my initial problem, my review has gone from 1 to 3 stars after resolving the misunderstandings that were easily resolved. Holding off for the exciting conclusion to give a final review.

**second edit**

After some swift service from Joseph, my initial order was reprocessed and I finally had 3 copies of our book in hand, and they're absolutely beautiful. Far exceeded my expectations.

I'm hesitant to give the full five stars, because there was definitely some kind of mix-up in shipping with the first order, but the quality of the books and customer service is four stars well earned. I've reinstalled the app and will be giving it another go.