Deep diving into Print on Demand
Print on Demand is one of the trends that broke through the ranks a few years ago and is seeing increasing interest, riding the waves of an increase in interest in entrepreneurship while mitigating risk from distribution as well as an interest in the number of influencers - be they YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or other - who are increasingly turning to outputting their own merchandise.
Indeed Depyct, a text-to-image AI company focused on creating stunning branding assets for its customers, has sights locked firmly onto the opportunity to help a number of businesses and individuals in this domain. The key question is: who are the main players in the Print on Demand space and what are the pros and cons?
1. Printful
Latvian owned but now operating worldwide, including new facilities in the UK and Canada – Printful have risen fast to become the dominant force in Print-On-Demand fulfilment.
Printful works as the ‘backend’ for your store – handling the printing, packing and shipping of a product to your customers, on-demand.
You can submit orders to Printful manually, or you can use one of their many integrations that allow orders to be sent to Printful automatically, directly from your Shopify, Amazon, Etsy or Woocommerce store.
Answering the question ‘How Much Does Printful Cost?’ is not straight forward, but in general they are amongst the more expensive of Print-on-demand fulfillment companies.
This comes with the benefit of much more consistent product quality, making it more of a choice for bigger-named brands that have an established image to uphold and can afford the difference in price.
Printful are usually the most expensive when it comes to Print-on-demand T-Shirts – with a Bella & Canvas 3001 costing $12.71 plus shipping. On the other hand, turnaround is rather fast - it's stated to be 2-7 days.
They also offer sample orders at a discounted rate (20% off) – and with free shipping – which is a great incentive to try them out.
2. Printify
Printify is perhaps the biggest Printful competitor, and they differ from Printful in one significant way: they don’t do any printing ‘in house’.
Instead Printify works with various printing ‘partners’ across the world to actually produce and deliver the goods. Printify essentially acts as the middle man, where all orders are centrally managed.
Printify currently partner with 65 printing facilities all over the world including America, Europe, Canada and Australia.
Printify may be using a slightly different model to Printful, but they are still big players in the space – and have some serious backers.
As with Printful, printify works as the ‘backend’ for your store – handling the printing, packing and shipping of your orders.
They also accept manual orders, or have integrations available for some of the big players including Shopify, Etsy or Woocommerce store.
The biggest difference with how Printify works, is that you have to select a particular print facility when creating your product. The challenge with this is that, depending on the print facility, you can get variable quality.
Cost is where Printful really takes the lead compared to other competitors: using SwiftPOD, we can get a Bella + Canvas 3001 printed for $8.75 - nearly $4 less than Printful.
Turnaround is also variable on supplier, but can terrific, produced and delivered in as low as 1-2 days.
As an entry-level, more budget friendly option, Printify certainly makes a case for being one of the top contenders. However, if you want to grow your brand with features like custom labels, pack-ins or warehousing – you won’t be able to do that with Printify – and in general, if you need your hand-holding, Printful may be a better option.
3. Gelato
These guys proudly claim they are a “software company” who “do not own any printers” – They act as the middleman between you and the print fulfillment facilities, so more closely related to Printify than Printful.
The big difference between Gelato and Printify is that Gelato controls which print provider your order is sent to – Whereas with Printify you manually select your provider.
Gelato do this by using their “advanced routing algorithm” to decide where your order will be printed. This comes with pros and cons which we will get into later in the review.
Gelato started out with only paper based POD products (posters, cards, calendars etc) but have been slowly introducing more products and now offer a healthy range of apparel and merchandise.
Cost-wise, for a Bella Canvas 3001 (medium size) Gelato works out at $10.15, with shipping to US mainland at $3.18. That’s $13.33 all in, still cheaper than the $17+ you’re looking at with Printful.
However, it is worth pointing out that Gelato can work out the cheaper option in certain countries, especially those outside of the US.
For example, if you are based in the UK then Gelato are the cheapest POD option for both art prints and t-shirts (Bella and Canvas).
A Bella and Canvas 3001 will cost you £3 GBP less (inc shipping) than the UK Printify equivalent.
Gelato also offer discounts based on your sales in the previous month, but these only start at $5000. Click here to see the discounts available.
One of Gelato’s big claims is a 72 hr or less delivery time. This sounds great but is in addition to some not-as-inspriring production times. These will vary from product to product but the predicted times for apparel are slightly slower than Printify or Printful.
As a new contender and the closest alternative to Printful, they have ultimately solved their rival's biggest flaw – having to manually route orders to different providers when shipping internationally, or when stock issues arise. And they offer this alongside reasonable prices.
However, this lack of control comes with its own problems – mainly the inconsistency of the quality of the products.
A serious contender against Printify? Yes, in certain circumstances. A better option than Printful? Not yet.
4. Sellfy
Sellfy is an ecommerce platform that comes with the convenience of POD added right in. Best of all, you can sell a limited number of POD products from your free forever account, so there’s no risk.
You don’t have to pay any subscription fees, unless you want to be able to sell more than 10 products at a time. Pricing starts at $29/month ($19/month when paid annually) for unlimited products and up to $10K sales per year. Paid plans include the ability to use a custom domain, along with the ability to sell digital products and services.
For POD products, you only pay when your customer places an order, and you keep the difference as profit. These place an emphasis on ease of use compared to other platforms.
5. Gooten
Gooten seem to be using various print providers around the world, similar to how Printify operates – though you aren’t actually able to choose your providers directly like on Printify.
As far as quality goes, quality appears to be comparable to Printify, and not far behind Printful. In terms of price, Gooten are cheaper than Printful but more expensive that Printify. A Bella Canvas 3001 (medium size) works out at $9.90, with shipping to US mainland at $4.95.
What is the most cost -efficient print on demand for a new business?
As with most things, the answer is: it depends. Clothing products are the most commonly thought of print-on-demand products, but aren't the cheapest. Check out the following for some of the most competitive pricing
- Shirts - Starting at $8 at Printify
- Pet ID tags – Starting at $3 on CustomCat
- Stickers – Starting at $2.24 on Spri.ng
- Postcards – Starting at $1.10 per card, without envelopes on Zazzle
The great thing about these print on demand companies is that all of them have a free plan. Spending money on a paid plan is optional. For the startup, it’s often unnecessary – which means you can put more profit in your pocket. Most of the companies on this list don’t offer any kind of monthly plan.
The only thing you’ll pay for is the cost of the products sent to your customers. Printify offers the lowest apparel pricing, with products ranging from $7 to $63. For the least expensive non-apparel products, you’ll want Spri.ng.
