Printify Review 2022

Printify — simplify dropshipping and start selling with this popular print-on-demand service.

Value
Functionality
Features
Customization
Support
  • Simple to use for ecommerce newbies.
  • Lots of control over custom products.
  • Excellent 24/7 customer support .
  • The design tool doesn’t support .ai files.
  • Inconsistent printing and product quality.
  • Slow delivery time.

Printify overview

Dropshipping is perhaps the most accessible way for beginners to enjoy the fruits of ecommerce — a thought particularly true in the world of online fashion. Why? Because dropshipping requires little to no startup costs, nor a need to store masses of stock. 


Print-on-demand services go hand in hand with dropshipping. This is due to the fact you can link apparel designs to your store, leaving your chosen platform to handle the fulfilment process. These platforms are more popular than ever, but some are better than others.


Printify and Printful sit among the best print-on-demand services on the market — but is there a clear winner? In this article, we focus on the former (Printify) as we leave no stoned unturned, reviewing every element of its service from print quality to shipping fulfilment.


Who is Printify for? 

Printify are print providers that simplify dropshipping — this makes the platform ideal for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to enter the world of online fashion. 

Oberlo Pricing

Using the Printify platform is free of charge… 


Without paying, your ecommerce store can integrate its sales channels and publish an unlimited amount of designs using Printify, but certain features are placed behind paywalls that require a monthly or annual subscription to unlock. 

Printify pricing is split into three unique categories — Free, Premium, and Enterprise — see the breakdown here: 


Image: Printify


The Free plan is recommended for merchants who are starting in the world of dropshipping. You can integrate with up to five stores and create as many designs as you want, but if you require anything more than the basics you’ll have to pay the money. 


The Premium plan allows your business to scale and grow by raising store capacity to ten and applying a 20% discount on all products, which is great if your business is ordering in bulk to keep up with demand.


The Enterprise plan is a selection of customisable features that make Printify more flexible and able to fit around your business structure — this is particularly helpful for high volume businesses that need custom integration and features. 


Features

We explore the core features and benefits of Printify throughout this review, but it’s important to note a few of the platform's most notable features in this section. After all, there are many features unique to Printify that will improve your print-on-demand experience. 

Here are some of our favourite examples: 

  • Order routing: choose the best print provider to fulfil the order
  • Custom order import: easily import orders to the platform
  • SOS folder: a gold standard help centre
  • Selective publishing: update small details on your product listing
  • Product migration: a tool that migrates products from other platforms

These features enable you to save time, so you can focus on your business.


Products

There are a variety of Printify products available from its vast catalogue. 

Printify offers a huge range of generic and custom products from accessories and fashion to stationery and artwork. 


Here is a list of its print-on-demand products/categories: 


Image: Printify


Products are key to any dropshipping platform, but quality control is just as important, given you’re reliant on services like Printify to carry out the fulfilment process without your oversight. 


On the whole Printify products are of good quality and you can rely on them to satisfy your customers, but its options are rather limited, focusing primarily on long-established favourites like hoodies and t-shirts. On the other side of the market, however, Pritnful has invested big in having an array of exciting products, including eco-friendly collections and Champion branding. 


Image: Printify


Moreover, Printify has had its fair share of complaints about quality. See this Trustpilot review for example: 


Image: Trustpilot


From the reviews available online it appears that customers have experienced issues with fading and low print quality, which can be explained, in part, by Printify not printing its own products. Instead, Printify employ the services of third-party companies 


If we’re ranking print-on-demand services based on products alone, this round goes to Printify’s biggest rival, Printful. 


Ecommerce integrations

Want to sell? Printify integrates with a range of ecommerce platforms from store builders like Shopify and Woocommerce to online marketplaces such as Etsy and eBay. 


Here is a full list of Printify integrations for your reference. 


Once you set up your Printify account (and download the app), any design you create on Printify automatically syncs with its integrated platforms — Shopify store, Etsy store, eBay, Woocommerce — which is a convenient feature that saves your business time and effort. 


But unlike competing print-on-demand services like Printful, Printify has less to offer in terms of ecommerce integrations. For example, if you send products to a marketplace like Amazon, Printful has native integration for it, and Printify does not.  


However, don’t worry if your online store doesn’t directly integrate with Printify…

The print providers support most recognisable online stores, but manually creating listings for platforms that aren’t integrated with Printify can be a long, tiring process.


Alternatively, you can integrate individual accounts and platforms using Prinify’s API service, which lets you enjoy automated functionality without using an integrated sales channel. 


Dashboard

While dashboards are slightly lower on the priority list than factors like product design and ecommerce integration when talking about a dropshipping provider or printing service, that’s not to say it should be discounted. 


The dashboard makes a big difference, especially in terms of usability and user experience (UX). If a dashboard is not properly designed, it’ll take you and your business longer to create products, set prices, and process orders — this costs you time, money, and effort. 

Thankfully, the Printify dashboard certainly gets the job done: 


Image: Printify


Printify opts for a simplistic design that complements its simple service — so with this in mind, the dashboard is ideal for the job at hand. 


Themes

Printify is a third party print on demand drop shipping platform, meaning it’s a service you integrate within your existing store. As such, Printify does not have the functionality and you cannot change how the dashboard looks.


Content management

Being a print-on-demand service, Printify does not offer a content management system. After all, it’s not a typical CMS. Instead, content management needs must be addressed using your chosen ecommerce platform, be this a Shopify store or any alternative.


Plugins & extensions

Printify does not have the capabilities to offer plugins or extensions. This is because it is an extension that you integrate with your ecommerce store.


Billing & payments 

When a customer purchases an item from your connected ecommerce store, you receive the retail prices and the shipping fee. Printify charges for an order when items are sent for production. You can edit the time this takes via the approval setting options: 


  • Manual for individual approval of each order
  • Auto (1 hour) 
  • Auto (24 hours) — which is the default option
  • Certain times of day


There will be a window of time where you can edit the order before production, at which point your chosen payment method will be charged. 


Setting up payments on Prinify is easy. You have two main options: 

  1. Use a credit card: connect a debit/credit card to make automatic payments for incoming orders. 
  2. Use PayPal: to top-up your Printify, which can then be used to pay for incoming orders to your ecommerce store. 

Note that if you’re using PayPal, it’s not possible to make automatic payments. 

Ecommerce Comparison Features

Shopify Logo
Woocommerce logo
Magento logo
BigCommerce logo
Wix logo

Buy Now

Overall Rating

Price

From $9

Free to Install

Free to Install

From $29.95

From $2.99

From $5.00

Themes

100+

1000+

1000+

120

15

500+

SEO Tools

Ease Of Use

Functionality

Customization

Security

Support

Our Review

Shipping & inventory management

Print on demand works like this: print providers offer a range of generic products with various printing and shipping options, process orders they receive, and profit by charging more than the process costs. 

But where Printful and Printify differ most is shipping…


Printful handles order fulfilment in-house, whereas Printify outsources and partners with regional facilities/fulfilment locations around the world, which allows it to offer a range of product and shipping options: 

  • More colours
  • Fast delivery and shipping time (express shipping in the US only) 
  • Favourable shipping costs

This makes order fulfilment much more flexible, but also unpredictable — this is because you’re relying on smaller, third party companies to get your order right. Plus, there are no fixed shipping rates, meaning there is no guarantee of getting a good deal in your area. 


Here is a list of Printify print providers and their varying shipping rates for your reference. 


Customer management 

When using Printify for your business remember two things: 

  1. You’re Printify’s customer
  2. Your customers do not belong to Printify

The latter means it’s on you to deal with customer issues and support them — so you need to create a robust process to fulfil this. 


But the former means complaints you have about the service are dealt with directly by Printify and their customer support team. On this point, Printify’s customer support is quick, efficient, and highly responsive. In fact, it might be the best thing about this print provider (and that’s saying a lot). 


Boasting a help centre containing a library of resources, from Printify integrations to the mockup generator, as well as an industry-leading blog full of tips and tricks — this print on demand business excels with its wealth of available knowledge. 

Plus, if you can’t find what you’re looking for on the website, Printify also provides round the clock live support to pick up the slack. 


In the never-ending matchup between two print providers (Printify vs Printful), the customer support round certainly goes to Printify.


Courses & marketing

To the best of our knowledge, Printify does not have a dedicated online course you can sign-up to. But that’s not to say you’re left high and dry. Printify has an excellent database of helpful resources called the Printify Help Center, which is an extensive advice and answers platform written by the team at Printify. 

Here are some useful topics covered by the Printify Help Centre: 

  • Latest updates
  • Getting started
  • Ordering and production 
  • Shipping
  • Design tips and Mockup Generator

Getting hands-on with this database, it’s built with user experience in mind. It’s easy to find clear answers to frequently asked questions, plus it’s great to see the support team are hot on explaining updates and changes to the platform. 


Printify also has a fantastically detailed blog packed with articles that offer marketing tips and advice. This includes a range of topics from boosting search rankings with Wix SEO tips to beginner success stories -- so while the hard marketing work is left in your hands, Prinitfy certainly attempts to shoulder some of the burdens. 


Communities

Printify is a popular print-on-demand service with over 40,000 followers on Facebook. It also has an active community of users on YouTube who regularly posts tutorials and how-to videos about its services. For example, this video by ecommerce YouTuber, Leon Green, is a lengthy tutorial teaching you how to link Printify with a Shopify store

Despite Printify’s solid offering as a print-on-demand service, one key problem persisted throughout my time with the platform: it’s good, but not as good as Printful


Printful’s extensive product collections, flexible design tools, and the fact it prints in-house make it the king of print-on-demand services in 2021 (and the foreseeable future). 


As for Printify? Well, it’s getting left behind with the times. 


That said, if you’re keen to try Printify for yourself, it certainly won't be a bad experience. Simple and straightforward, it’s ideal for beginners and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to dip their toes in the world of dropshipping and online fashion. 


Click here to sign up for Printify.