Lulu Direct

I highly recommend the Lulu Direct app. The setup took just a few minutes, and now every order flows straight to Lulu for printing and fulfillment with zero manual work on my end. Print quality is consistently excellent, shipping is quick, and customers get tracking updates automatically.

I’ve tried other POD services, but Lulu Direct is the only one that delivers the same high quality every time and ships reliably worldwide. If you’re a small publisher looking for a dependable fulfillment partner, Lulu is hands-down the best choice.

Shipping errors: Lulu should be applying the lowest available shipping rate, per their documentation, but this doesn't work in practice, it's not "set and forget", and the head-scratching caveats essentially mean you can't manage shipping effectively unless you're on the Shopify Advanced or Plus plans.

Phone number required by Lulu: There's no way to collect phone numbers for one product in Shopify, so if you're not *only* selling books then you'd be forced to collect phone numbers for every product, which is a total disaster for digital product sell-through. It's not Lulu's fault per se, because the global phone number setting is Shopify's decision, but I'm sure Lulu could find some way to collect phone numbers via their app instead.

So... I mean, technically it is an app that works, so yay. The caveats are critical though.

Lulu is a disaster. Their service and support is atrocious. I am trying to create a Book for publishing, have printed samples with other providers to Shopify so I can assess all quality, service and delivery times etc.

The minute I requested help - You are sent on an AI loop, that keeps asking you to send the error message or to re-read their guides.

You eventually raise a ticket and the support person asks the same thing. Attach a copy of the error message. (even after you begged in the ticket for them to access your account and assist)

I am trying to build my store - and the amount of time I have wasted with Lulu is ridiculous.