Printful Reviews
Chances are, if you’ve ever heard of dropshipping, read articles on how to start a t-shirt business, or even ones about starting your own clothing line, or print-on-demand products, then you’ve heard of Printful. With over 2 million t-shirts printed since 2013 and currently serving over 300,000 sellers, they’re a leading supplier of dropshipped goods and since they provide great products at a great price with great service, they’re an entrepreneur’s first choice when it comes to partnering with a dropshipper.
In this Printful review we’re going to discuss what Printful does, the products and services they offer and what makes them so good at what they do, so let’s jump into it.
What is Printful?
You must have already known – at least a little bit – about Printful, especially if you’re looking for Print-on-Demand providers, as it is one of the leading companies there is on the internet. They are a dropshipping service provider that offers clients an easy way to create and customize original designs for their respective customers.
There are hundreds of products that Printful is able to customize but the most common searches are:
- T-shirts / Tops
- Skirts / Dresses
- Hoodies
- Sportswear
- Canvases
- Throw Pillows
- Hats
- Phone Cases
This would be an ideal choice for your business if you’re more into utilizing various elements to your products such as logos, funny stickers, emojis, and the like. With this, you’d be able to sell products of your niche by adding profit to the company’s default price.
How Does Printful Work?
Every time a customer places an order on your store, they pay a mark-up price while you only have to pay the wholesale price for the item.
This app automates the entire process, which means you have to deal with fewer headaches than normally associated with an e-commerce business.
Features Of Printful
Mobile Application
In this age, mobile devices are used more often compared to desktops and laptops and if you’re one of those who want to easily access their business account with Printful, you can do so using your smartphone. Simply download the app on your iOS or Android device and be able to do the following:
- Talk to support
- Order hold
- Track your orders
- Report problems
- 3-Day Shipping
On average, orders from Printful are shipped within 3 business days or less. However, it might also take a week for your customer to receive their item.
Sample Policy
While Printful cannot provide the item to you for free, you can get a 20% discount and free shipping on up to 2 sample items. This is useful when you want to see the product that you'll be selling personally without paying for its full price.
Meanwhile, if you have $300-worth of orders in a month, you can get up to 3 sample orders on a discounted price.
Printful Mockup Generator
On their site, you can see a free mock up generator that lets you create and see your finished product. It’s also helpful when you want to save time and money. You can easily use it even without special skills and expertise. As long as you have a photo of your logo or the design you want to use, you can simply upload it and add text or clip art.
High-Quality Printers
In case you’re wondering, Printful uses high-quality Kornit printers to come up with a professionally-designed apparel, accessories, etc.
Printful Reviews: Pros & Cons
Pros
- USA & European based warehouses, therefore easily accessible to those major consumer markets
- Low-risk business model
- High-quality products
- High-quality printing capabilities
- No minimum orders
- No monthly fees to use their service
- Transparent shipping prices
- Ship out products to customers, on average, within 3 days
- Customizable branding options
- Re-shipments for lost or damaged products
- Plenty of online resources for guidance on their products and services
- Automate your business with their ecommerce platform integrations
Cons
- Their product selection is tailored to the apparel, accessories, and homeware good categories only
- Slim margins for dropshipped goods
- Although some branding options, they are limited (you can’t use your own boxes, poly-mailers, tissue paper or anything beyond what customizations they offer)
- Some products, such as the framed posters or canvases, may not ship everywhere
It works by efficiently fulfilling all your orders: they provide you tools to put your designs onto their products, they print those designs on the specific items and ships them out to your customers.
All you are supposed to do is install the app on the e-commerce platform you use, and you will be operating a fully automated online business. Printful Shopify app integrates with the platform with just a simple click.
Printful Pricing Reviews: Shipping Costs
Estimated delivery = Fulfillment + Shipping
- Fulfillment: It takes 2–7 business days to create apparel products and 2–5 business days for non-apparel products.
- Shipping: Our average shipping time is 4 business days depending on the order's destination.
- Estimated delivery: Your customer gets their order after we fulfill and ship it.
If you choose Printful, you’ll be able to utilize the complete features available on their platform without paying a cent, because it doesn’t have account upgrades or the like. There is absolutely nothing that you need to pay first before you can avail of their Mockup Generator that comes with various tools which are useful in creating and designing merchandise.
You set up your own product and shipping prices for your customers. When an order is made, you charge your customer and then Printful charges you for the product and shipping to fulfill your customer's order. Whatever is left over after Printful charges you is your profit!
So how does Printful profit, you ask? In this case, the company can only benefit once a customer is able to purchase your merchandise. Their orders will go straight to their hubs for fulfillment and shipping. Products sold will automatically be processed and fulfilled so they can be shipped out to your respective customers.
What you need to keep in mind here is that Printful may have different prices for the same product depending on the place where orders are made. This is done so that it will keep on being competitive with the local markets in different regions of the world.
Now, we want to share with you about some reviews from member who used Printful
- I'm a t shirt designer myself and to be honest I charge $200/minimum per design . 100$ investment into t shirt designs for your whole store is a bit low as said before. I think in the long run just tweak a few things and you'll be fine. It's a part of the process.
- I use Printful through Etsy as well. I use the same shirt as it’s pretty decent quality and one of the more popular for the price range. I sell my shirts for $25 with free shipping. Usually each transaction it makes around $8-11 before Etsy takes their cut. I would say on average I make about $8 profit per shirt sold. Nothing killer, but it’s automated and don’t need to carry stock.
- It's a totally different process. Printful used direct to garmet printing. Screen printing is a very different process where they have ti make screens and basically layer the colors 1 by 1. Screen printing will always be superior but print in demand is great for 1 offs or small websites.
- I work at Printful and as others have already mentioned the results between DTG and Screen printing will vary. Also, you need to look at many other factors here like the color of the shirt, material, design. Feel free to submit a problem report with us and we'll check your shirts. We offer a reshipment or refund for any defective items (no need to send the original item back to us).
- I did Printful/Etsy for about 2 years with great success. I probably had 120-150 listings just for shirts, and sold close to 100 shirts a month (200ish during November and December). I never once advertised or posted to social media. Why did I stop? The customer service took a toll on me. People complain daily about the material, sizing, never received (although marked delivered), returns after wearing them out, etc. I even had one lady tell me I personally ruined her Christmas because her $20 shirt didn't arrive on time, but she ordered after my holiday deadline. People literally irate over dumb stuff, such as not knowing what size would fit them best.
- I guess it depends on the brand and what your designs look like, but I've sold ~90 shirts from Printful and I haven't received a complaint. I got a whole bunch of samples and found the colors to be reasonably accurate. I use the Gildan 2000 t-shirts, American Apparel 2408 Fine Jersey Tank Top Unisex (some color discrepancies with these), and the Gildan 2400 Ultra Cotton Long Sleeve T-Shirt. Overall the colors for the Gildan shirts have been accurate and I haven't had a problem with the design print quality either.
- You can go to your Printful dashboard > Stores > Select store > Select product > Check all variants > "Edit prices". This will change the price in Printful and in Etsy. You can also manually update each of the variants and change/switch the product by clicking "Edit" and then going back and changing to the new product.
Conclusion
Printful provides the best apparel, homewares, and accessories dropshipping service in North America, and now that they’ve started working out of a base in Europe, they’re sure to rise to the top there as well. Their high-quality products coupled with their valuable printing, shipping and fulfillment service make them an easy choice for sellers who want to start their own business without the risk associated with purchasing large quantities of products or expensive equipment upfront. They go above and beyond simply offering a dropshipping service as they aim to improve seller’s experience with their services by offering useful tools and resources to help them provide a better experience for their own customers. If you’re interested in starting your own ecommerce store via a dropship business model, we highly recommend checking out Printful.
