Print on Demand Comparison
For the past 2 years, I have been going down a lot of rabbit holes comparing different print on demand companies. I have tried ordering a lot of different products, all that are realistically products I would want to put my designs on, and I wanted to put together a summary of my experience for the places that I’ve tried so far.
The print on demand platforms that I have tried out so far are:
Printful
Printify
Gelato
Awkward Styles
Bonfire
Zazzle, and
Amazon KDP.
I have tested greeting cards, art prints, stickers, t-shirts, postcards, wrapping paper, and notebooks.
Here is what I experienced…
Printful
Printful has been my go-to print on demand platform for the majority of products in the Art Shop. I have tested my designs on kiss cut stickers, sticker sheets, 2 styles of t-shirts, hard cover journal, 8x10 matte poster prints, 4x6 and 5x7 greeting cards, 4x6 postcard, and the 15 oz mug.
What I like about this platform:
Getting a discount on a sample order each month. Printful lets you place one sample order per month (with the Free account) where you can order a maximum of 3 products and get a discount on them. Since a lot of my sample orders have been testing out new products or new ways of creating a design on a specific product, I have loved this feature.
Fast production for most products. The most surprising thing for me was placing an order for a sticker, sticker sheet or mug and then getting a notification a few hours later that it had shipped. This isn’t always the case with all products or all times of the year but it’s still impressive to me
What I dislike about this platform:
5x7 greeting cards aren’t done in the US. The 5x7 greeting card size is only done in Europe and comes with an envelope that’s too big for card size. I really wanted Printful to be my go-to place for all products that I wanted to offer on my website, so realizing that this wasn’t going to be the best solution for my greeting card designs was a bit disappointing. They do have a 4x6 greeting card size that is created in the US, so a bit faster of a delivery timeline, but I tested it and wasn’t a fan of the card size.
Printify
Printify is the platform that everyone seems to talk about online. When I was first researching, I spent so much time looking at “Printful vs Printify” videos on YouTube and stressed myself out trying to decide which platform I should go with.
What I realized was that a lot of the people promoting this platform must be Americans because as a Canadian, this just wasn’t going to work.
What I like about this platform:
Product variety - Printify has tons of different products to choose from and I was most impressed with the options for printing stationery and paper products.
What I dislike about this platform:
They don’t do a discount on a sample order or sample orders in general
Pricing is very expensive for Canadian customers. When you look at the price of the product itself, it’s pretty comparable to what Printful has for product pricing but as soon as you look at the shipping cost, Printify just becomes ridiculously priced for shipping to Canada. As a Canadian myself, this is an important factor because I know that fellow Canadians will also be wanting to purchase my products.
Stock is not accurate - Despite having issues with the pricing, I became desperate to order a specific t-shirt style and decided to give this one a try. When my first attempt to order this through a different platform was cancelled due to not having the shirt style in stock, I made sure to double check availability before placing my order with Printify. I attempted to place my order on a couple of different shirt colours for the style that I was looking for. The first one, I realized, was my fault for not noticing that there was no stock for the size and colour that I ordered but for the second one, it did clearly say that the size and colour had my size. So, it was really frustrating to have the order immediately cancelled with the reason that no stock was available
Gelato
Gelato did pop up on my radar when I was first researching print on demand platforms but I, initially, wasn’t a huge fan of the lack of product diversity on the platform. I decided to revisit this platform after seeing a fellow creative talking about this on YouTube videos and was able to test out a couple of products.
What I like about this platform:
Being able to order foiling on greeting card designs. So far this is the only print on demand provider that I’ve come across so far, that’s given the option of adding gold or silver foiling to a card AND to only a specific area of a design
Delivery was pretty quick from the time an order was placed - so far the products that I’ve ordered have arrived within about 7 business days after placing the order
What I dislike about this platform:
For greeting cards, the only option is to order a pack of 10 cards that all have the same design. A lot of my greeting card designs are meant for single greeting cards so this aspect is a bit disappointing. It doesn’t completely turn me away from this product, I just have to think of different designs to use with this product.
Stock is not accurate - Similar to my experience with Printify, I placed an order for a specific t-shirt style after checking to make sure that it was actually available. When I noticed that 2 of my products shipped but this one did not, I reached out to customer support via their chat and they said it was cancelled by production due to stock issues. They say production will resume once they have stock but as of the time of writing this (June 1st), I still have not seen any change with this. I originally placed this order on March 6th and feel like I wasted my sample, first order discount on a product that was never available
Limited time frame for a discounted samples order. You can order a sample order and you do get a discount on it BUT it only applies to the first order and must be placed within 48 hours after opening your account. I wish I had known this before opening my account because I was really stressed trying to come up with designs to test in order to take advantage of the discount in a short amount of time.
They have not issued any refund yet. I have not requested it either yet because I wanted to see if they would admit that this t-shirt was never going to be made because stock was never available to begin with and never going to be available
Awkward Styles
Discovered this platform after experiencing ordering issues of a specific t-shirt with Printify, Gelato, and Bonfire. I had never heard of this platform but kept seeing videos on YouTube so decided to give it a try.
What I like about this platform:
They do eventually refund you when an order can’t be fulfilled due to discontinued stock. I originally placed my order for the t-shirt I wanted on March 29th and recently got an email on May 23rd that I was refunded. Better late than never, I guess.
What I dislike about this platform:
Stock is not accurate - Again, I placed an order here after being unsuccessful with both Gelato and Printify for the specific t-shirt style that I wanted for a design that I created to remember my dog that died a couple of days before placing my first order with Gelato. Again, when I was placing my order, I checked the availability and it said the size and colour were both in stock. My order stayed “in production” for a long time but I didn’t think anything of it because online reviews said this long production time was normal. Then, I received an email on April 17th to say that the t-shirt style was discontinued. There was no word on what was happening with my actual order until another month later, on May 23rd when I got the email about the refund.
Bonfire
Bonfire isn’t like the other platforms that I’ve tried in that you can’t connect it or add it to your website. Bonfire acts as its own platform or store, similar to how Etsy shops are.
I learned about this platform after a content creator that I follow decided to start a merch shop using this platform. I decided to try them out, mainly because they had the t-shirt style that I had tried to order from Gelato and Printify but was unsuccessful.
What I like about this platform:
They actually had the t-shirt style I was looking for in stock - this platform is where I actually ended up getting my t-shirt done of the design I created of Itzia, my little puppy, after she was killed- this was also after my failed order attempts with Gelato, Printify, and Awkward Styles
Delivery was quicker than I expected - originally the delivery timeline was quoted for about 3 or more weeks but it arrived in about 2 weeks
What I dislike about this platform:
It’s not something you can connect to your own website - Bonfire is a stand alone website so you would have to send traffic from your website to this external website. As a result, there are limitations when it comes to branding your merch store on Bonfire
Pricing is high for me as a Canadian - Prices were charged in USD and pretty high to begin with, so with the conversion and shipping, I ended up paying a bit more than $60 CAD for the t-shirt style that I wanted
Zazzle
I don’t remember how I heard of this platform when I was originally researching print on demand platforms but so far I have tested their greeting cards and wrapping paper sheets.
What I like about this platform
I like the quality of their greeting cards - the one I tested was a matte finish and had feedback that this paper texture was easier to write on than glossier paper finishes. The envelope was also an appropriate size for the greeting card size I order, which was 5x7 inches
I like the quality of the wrapping paper - I did learn that it works better with darker colour just because the grid pattern on the other side for cutting with show through a bit on lighter ones. I’ve tested both the matte and coated version of this product and like the coated one just a little bit better, doesn’t show scratches as easily
Prices are reasonable for the 2 products I tested.
What I dislike about this platform:
It’s not something you can connect to your own website - Zazzle is its own marketplace so you would end up sending traffic away from your own website and to this external platform. There’s also not a lot of options for adding your own branding.
Delivery time can be a little bit long. The first time I ordered it took about 3 weeks to get my order, mostly due to the cheapest shipping method I selected. The second time I ordered, I paid a bit extra in shipping to get it quicker.
Amazon KDP
I’ve included Amazon KDP because it is technically print on demand but just specializes in books.
What I like about this platform:
You can sell books where you can customize the outside cover design as well as the inside page design. On some other platforms, you can only customize the cover and then just have generic lined page design for the inside.
The books are available to purchase on Amazon, which is platform that most people are used to buying from as customers
What I dislike about this platform:
As a Canadian, hard cover books aren’t available so I’m limited to just creating soft cover books. I don’t like selling products that I can’t test first, so it’s disappointing not to have this option available.
I know that there are a lot of other print on demand platforms that I’ve yet to discover or try out. I’ve also looked at Art of Where and Gooten but haven’t actually opened an account or tested any of their products to be able to include them in this review post.