Printify vs Printful – What Are The Differences
So, you want to leverage your creativity to launch an online T-shirt business? Or perhaps, you excel at producing stunning mug arts and looking to get into the eCommerce business to sell them? But you find the risk to be too great, and it’s holding you back.
That’s where print-on-demand (POD) companies like Printify and Printful come in! These two are the most popular print-on-demand service providers. They have made it incredibly easy for artists and graphic designers to run eCommerce stores.
If you are on the fence about which one to choose, our in-depth Printify vs Printful comparison will help you make the right decision!
What Is Printify?
Printify is one of the leading print-on-demand service providers connected to a wide array of online marketplaces and eCommerce platforms around the world. It will produce, sell, and ship custom-made products to the customers, for your business.
In other words, Printify is committed to handling everything from production, fulfillment to shipping the products to the customers for drop shippers. So, you will only have to worry about growing your business.
It has 300 types of different products ranging from t-shirts, shoes, and mugs to home décor items in its collection, ready to be personalized and sold!
Working Process of Printify
The way Printify works is pretty simple. To get started, you need a Printify account, which is entirely free. Afterward, you will be presented with a catalog of white-label products, from which you can choose the one that suits your business.
Then you will be introduced to the company’s Mockup Generator. With that, you’ll be able to apply your own design to your preferred product easily and add the finalized product to your eCommerce store.
Printify collaborates with the top-class printing companies that offer fast and quality results. It gives you the freedom to choose your preferred printing company. Additionally, you can order samples to see if the result is of your desired quality before finalizing it for sale.
When you’re happy with the print quality, you can go ahead and put the product up for sale on your online store.
As the orders roll in, Printify will take care of everything including billing, production, packaging, shipping, etc. All you need to do now is focus on growing your business and wait for profits to come knocking!
What Is Printful?
Printful is also a prominent print-on-demand service provider and warehousing company. It’s a lot like Printify, except it produces everything internally instead of relying on third-party suppliers and manufacturers.
With Printful, you can create your own brand and sell personalized products without worrying about production, storage and shipping! The only thing you’d have to do is put your own spin on the products by customizing them.
Everything else starting from production to shipping will be handled flawlessly by Printful! It works with almost all the major eCommerce platforms and online marketplaces for your convenience.
Working Process of Printful
Printful requires you to make a free account and connect it to your eCommerce platform. It’s free so you won’t have to pay anything to get started. Much like Printify, this company also has a vast collection of white-label products. You can freely customize them to add your own design and brand personality.
When you get an order from your online store, Printful will get to work right away. It will manufacture the products in-house instead of outsourcing the task to others. Afterward, it will handle packaging, billing, and of course shipping! You won’t have to worry about anything at all.
As we have mentioned before, Printful also offers warehousing and fulfillment services. So, it will store your products for you as long as you want and ship them to the customers whenever you get orders. The best thing is you can use both the print-on-demand and warehousing services at the same time!
Printify Vs. Printful : An Insightful Comparison
Now that you’re familiar with both the companies, you’re of course wondering which one is better. Well, that’s exactly what we are here to help you decide today!
1. Printify vs Printful: Based on Customer Support
Let’s start with the customer support of Printify and Printful. They are both pretty amazing!
Printful has an attractive way of engaging the customers and it’s always willing to provide helpful information for free to familiarize them with the system. It boasts a rich blog section filled with plenty of tips, guides, documents, video tutorials, and answers to frequent questions for your convenience.
You can reach the company easily as it offers multiple methods of providing customer support like 24/7 live chat, email, phone, and contact form. It’s very quick to respond.
Printify too has a resourceful help center that offers various informative and helpful articles to answer most of your questions. It covers a wide range of topics like troubleshooting, payments, integrations etc.
This POD service provider also has an impressive blog section with tons of useful content for you to read. You can reach its customer support via email and phone call. It’s known to be a bit slower to respond than Printful, and there is no 24/7 live chat which can be a bit troublesome for some people.
Result: All things considered, we can say that Printify and Printful provide a similar level of customer support.
2. Printify vs Printful: Based on Pricing
Pricing is obviously a vital criterion to consider when choosing a POD platform or anything for that matter. So, let’s compare the pricing & plans of Printify and Printful.
Printful Pricing
Printful is very inviting as it does not charge anything to get started. You won’t have to count any money to pay subscription fees or meet any order requirement. It’s completely free! You will only have to pay each time an order is processed.
The company charges based on the services it offers. So, how much you will be paying will depend on the type of services you take. There is an optional Pro plan you can opt for to gain extra features like background removal, premium images, promo maker etc., which costs around $49 a month.
Printful allows you to test out the pro plan completely free for 14 days so that you can see if it’s something you would like.
Printify Pricing
Printify offers three different plans for meeting the demands of the users, each offering more benefits than the previous.
The Free Plan is suitable mainly for anyone who is just starting out and making small sales. When you’ve got a growing business and you’re receiving tons of orders, the Premium Plan will offer the best value for money. It costs around $24.99 a month now and the main benefit of this plan is a 20% discount on all products.
If you’re getting over 10,000 orders per day, you will have to switch to the more expensive Enterprise Plan. This plan allows you to sync unlimited stores to your Printify account, in addition to offering a whole bunch of fantastic benefits.
Result: Printify offers slightly better pricing options as it’s comparatively cheaper than Printful.
3. Printify vs Printful: Based on Product Designs and Quality
Deciding which company offers better product design is a tough nut to crack. After much speculation, we’ve found that both companies have a large volume of different types of products in their collection.
Printful is a bit more focused on creating better designed products to win the market. On the other hand, Printify is satisfied with offering already popular conventional products to the users. In comparison, it has more products in its collection than Printful.
Printful Print Quality
Printful is committed to delivering the best print quality to the customers. To achieve that, it has invested $49.9 million to acquire the highest quality printing equipment. It handles production in-house and takes care of everything by itself to make sure the quality is top-notch.
As a result, their printing cost is a bit high, but the products always come with colorful, vivid and sharper prints.
Printify Print Quality
Printify also offers decent print quality but it doesn’t do the production by itself. Rather, it outsources the task to third party printing manufacturers. It works as a middleman, so it does not own any printing equipment.
Hence, the end result completely depends on how the third-party company handles the printing. Printify doesn’t have any quality control over the products.
Result: Printful is the clear winner here as it delivers much better print quality than Printify.
4. Printify vs Printful: Based on Overall Features
Let’s find out which company takes the prize when it comes to the overall features. Printful has a neatly organized structure with perfectly classified services that makes anyone feel right at home. It even comes with a special photography service, something that’s rarely seen in any other POD companies.
Printful excels at offering high-resolution images and better print quality. It’s much better when it comes to building a brand persona because it provides a variety of graphic design options for branding and promotions. You will get a plethora of discounts on various services which makes this company appealing to most.
Furthermore, Printful is always ready to send out samples so that you can quickly check out your designed products before they are out for the public. It’s surprisingly fast with its fulfillment as it can deliver the ordered products before noon.
This company gets you equipped with an accurate pricing calculator that you can rely on to set competitive prices.
As for Printify, its quality and services are quite similar to Printful as you might have already noticed. You will have a rich catalog of products to choose from which is amazing. But it falls a bit short when it comes to designs and print quality.
However, the freedom of being able to choose between multiple printing companies is definitely appealing.
Result: The overall features of Printful are noticeably better than Printify.
5. Printify vs Printful: Based on Integrations
Both Printify and Printful are integrated with major ecommerce platforms and online marketplaces. They come with fully functional APIs to get you connected to your desired platform.
However, if we’re talking numbers, Printful is partnered with about 21 ecommerce platforms including WooCommerce, Etsy, Shopify, etc. It even offers integration with Amazon, eBay, Magento, and more!
In comparison, Printify is only compatible with 7 major platforms and marketplaces. So, your option is limited to these 7 if you go with Printify.
Result: Printful wins again as it offers significantly more integrations than Printify.
6. Printify vs Printful: Fulfillment and Shipping Costs
The growth of your business will take a hit if shipping takes too long, so it’s undoubtedly a vital factor to consider.
Let’s begin with Printful. This company usually takes 2-7 business days to produce apparel products after getting orders. Non-apparel products are estimated to take 2-5 business days.
Shipping time depends on the location of the customer and the performance of the shipping company. Printful works with the major shipping companies like FedEx, USPS, and DHL. On average, the customers receive their purchased goods within 4 business days.
Printful offers a detailed guide on calculating the shipping rates. So, finding that out shouldn’t be a problem for you.
Printify is also quite fast with its fulfillment and shipping with the help of the leading carrier companies. It also works with local fulfillment companies to streamline the shipping process.
However, the shipping rates of Printify tend to be slightly higher than Printful. This company doesn’t offer any insight on the time it usually takes for its third-party companies to manufacture the products. You will find Printify to take longer to complete international orders.
Result: Printful is faster in producing, packaging, and shipping the products. Its shipping rates are lower too.
Final Verdict
Hopefully, we were able to provide a fully detailed Printify vs Printful comparison. We’ve covered all the important features of both the leading POD companies so you can easily make an informed decision.
Printful is evidently more popular than Printify as of now, and if you’ve read through the article, you should already know that it’s better in many aspects. However, choosing the right POD depends on your business model and priorities.
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