Printful: Print on Demand

Awesome concept (no inventory), easy to integrate and quality breadth of products to choose from.

The mockup design/upload process has been problematic for us at times (we're perfectionists), requiring some re-work and a lot of back and forth with Printful support. They've generally been ok to deal with, but the process can be slow.

We'd also like to see more products added to the mockup generator...currently, this only includes certain shirts and no hats (which require a 3rd party generator and some guesswork)

If you're looking for an easy way to add a lot of new products to your store, Printful is definitely worth checking out.

Printful is nice and easy, but could be a lot better in a bunch of ways. For the most part, it’s set it and forget it. HOWEVER, I ran into several issues in the last few months and Printful’s support is miserable. They are responsive, sure, but that doesn’t matter at all since they aren’t actually helpful at all. Several times I was left figuring huge issues out on my own. Orders stopped syncing at one point and never got any help from Printful other than “lol sorry. Hope you fix it!” A shirt size went out of stock, and I never got a notification. Printful said it would automatically restock when it was stocked again. Cut to 3 months later and I had to find out on my own that the product was back, had to remove all products, and manually add them all back. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if support was helpful, but again, they are miserable. And the profit margins aren’t nearly enough to make it worth the hassle.

Update: 10/27/20 - issues with the automation persist with regard to inventory levels. Only fix for the conditional logic appears to be scheduled to roll out 1st quarter 2021. Updated rating to reflect.

SO happy that they keep updating their services! Quality of posters are amazing! Super vibrant colors!

Quality of apparel is so so.. The prints don't always print straight. half of my samples came with obviously crooked prints, its great that they offer tag removal, but sometimes they remove the tags too roughly and the stitching comes undone, I also had an experience with a tag that was shipped with the tag still on.

Their customer support team are super friendly and helpful but. Had nothing but good experiences with them.

I like the product offerings I cannot stand how difficult it is to find answers or get help on SIMPLE issues that consistently arise and prevent me from selling my products!

Could be better

I've been using them for small batches for months now, with mostly good results, but a few hitches. In terms of apps, this is probably the better ones on the market currently, with some great resources and a decent selection of products and printable areas. I'm mostly happy with the results of my DTG prints, and have moved to testing their other services. One major issue that I would love to see addressed is the fairly arbitrary method of dragging and dropping artwork onto a sample product image in order to set the printing placement. If you are doing prints in varying colors (say a black logo on white shirt as well as white logo on black shirt), you will have to create two entirely different entries. Because the drag and drop method is small, vague, and has snapping on edges, AND this is placed above a placeholder mockup image (which differs between all products - even amongst t-shirts), placement of artwork is largely a guessing game and requires some test ordering to get right, and has a large margin of error when trying to make variants of the exact same design.

In terms of customer service, I've had mixed results. When one shirt arrived blurry, I had apprehension over the fact that customer returns and refunds are determined by photos; when I sent pictures of the blurry shirt, it only looked like a blurry photo and customer service admitted that their initial determination was that it was totally fine. But after showing to them the differences in quality between shirts in the same order, they refunded the amount and I was very pleased with the whole exchange. Soon after, however, I had a large order get put on hold. If your order is through their app and not pushed from Shopify, you will not receive an email notification about the status; you will need to check on these orders manually by going to their site. If the order is still pending, the app allows you to modify an order, and I attempted to use this feature to remove the item which was holding up the order, as well as pay for expedited shipping to compensate. The change was saved in the app but never appeared, and so the next day I messaged customer service to confirm it went through. Over the next 3 days, I had messages and emails from 3 different customer service reps, none of whom answered or even seemed to read my inquiry (2 of them merely copy and pasted the initial automated hold message from the app and nothing more). At the end of it I entirely gave up on expediting, as every interaction with a customer service rep has caused me another day in delays for the hundreds of dollars in product I ordered. I can understand the order change being lost at first, but it's very disappointing to have to deal with multiple reps and not have a single one of them address my actual questions - and that's the kind of issue that might make it or break it for any merchants looking for a solid and reliable relationship with their manufacturer.

Honestly, I am conflicted. I am very pleased with the customer service and have felt they truly have a genuine interest to make their customers happy. I have also been quite pleased with how easy their dashboard is. However, my major concern is with the quality of their leggings. I have ordered several samples and the print quality looks fantastic. I was also quite pleased with the quality of the material. The paramount issue involves two things......
1). the stitching along the crotch area doesnt seem to hold very well. 3 out of the six samples we ordered is already starting to come undone after wearing only once.
2). The lining inside the legging is white and shows through any legging that has a dark color (most especially on the black color).

To be fair, I haven't addressed the issue with them just yet. But I will be contacting them in the morning. I wish their customer service was more readily available as they seem to only stay open from 10:00 am - 5:00 (MST). I am hoping they will have a resolution to this problem.

Depending on what you want, you might find your self happy with you can do with printful. I would 100% avoid their embroidery. It is very unpredictable and doesn't seem to reflect the print area the designer shows. It would seem as though they have 0 quality control when it comes to what they send. I've had ordered sample of my own shirts only to have them come to me on the wrong garment in a color i wasn't offering. I've also had the wrong size shipped to me as well as my customers. If you're a gambler then I would recommend the bella canvas shirts as they seem to not fall apart or shrink. The color quality has loss and the detail will be lost on some of your designs. I would keep your hopes low and be surprised.

Printful is definitely stepping up their game! I used to hate this app but they definitely improved from last year. The only thing is limited colors and options for their European warehouse and prices are still high....