Printful: Print on Demand

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.

I could swear everytime they update the mockups something goes wrong. The new all over print hoodie mockups are crooked. The issue really is that it will now take around 4-5 hours to change all the mockups because the system is slow and the bulk editing options are not as useful as I'd wish.

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.

The app works okay, however it requires me to manually refresh the data in order for an order to be placed. If I miss that a customer ordered a printful item it never starts the order. If someone orders a printful item I would prefer it to automatically submit the order to printful and get production started.

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....

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I first started printful in 2019, because they made dropshipping easy, they are trustworthy and they have one of the best apps easily. However, I am taking branding more seriously and i realize printful becomes less and less useful for anybody who wants to brand their clothes.

1. I find shirts that only offer outside labels. That means, you have your logo on the outside and another brands logo on the inside. That's like having nike on the outside and adidas on the inside. That's brand confusion.

2. And those same apparel models are offered by other dropshippers with the option to remove or peel away the inside tags and add your own tag. Why in the world would i pay for an outside below the collar print, when you still have the inside tag from another brand? Would you trust a person if they told you their real name was Paul, but then you see their ID and it says Jeff?

I am literally trying to use printful even though they are more expensive. But they don't take branding seriously imo. I moved printful up to 3 stars because they have excellent delivery track record and makes dropshipping easy, especially for beginners. But we would love to have the inside tag sorted out somehow.

Lately, they have been having issues with developing good products, some customers received bad printed products, shipping times are not as fast as they were, prices are expensive, I give them 4k per month and I don't get any kind of support from them, they haven't improved in any important aspect since months. I think if they keep treating customers like that they will keep losing them, but it's their business so. In my personal opinion a good company that is not taking care as they should.

Great service, but some of the pricing is too high and needs revised, people are trying to make a profit and still grow, yet the majority of your sales go to Printiful - unless you set 50%(+) margins and make your customers pay ridiculous prices OR use the cheap lower quality clothing (which still feels slightly overpriced). But I'm clearly no expert or else my business would be thriving. Also, not a big fan of the new Shopify dashboard at all. Hopefully it’s updated or becomes a customizable setup.