10 Best Print on Demand Companies You Need to Know - Full Comparison and Review

[Music] choosing the right print-on-demand company as a supplier for your business is extremely important it takes lots of time and effort to populate any e-commerce store with your product listings and picking the wrong print on demand supplier could mean wasting hours days maybe even weeks of work worst case scenario an unreliable supplier can mean the end of your business all together so it's very important to collect as much information as possible on these companies before putting so much effort into building an e-commerce store and promoting your products [Music] there are several factors to take into consideration when we are researching print-on-demand companies unfortunately the whole research process can be very time consuming and even frustrating at times simply because basic information like shipping costs or production lead times is not always easy to find this information is often either buried somewhere in the suppliers online help center or faqs or spread out on a variety of different pages on their websites for these reasons i have decided to collect this information and organize it so that we can compare some of the major print on demand suppliers currently on the market and hopefully make a more informed decision when picking out the company that possibly suits us best the following comparison i am only taking into account print-on-demand companies like printful and printfi which are suppliers that integrate with e-commerce platforms like shopify and woocommerce or even e-commerce marketplaces like etsy and amazon the difference between these platforms and other print-on-demand marketplaces like red mobile and t public is that even though their business models are based on the same principle of print on demand that being printing custom designs on popular consumer products in the case of printful and similar services you will have to take care of creating your own online store presence be that in the form of either a shopify or woocommerce store or an etsy or amazon storefront and eventually integrate or connect the print-on-demand company software with your store this particular print-on-demand model also implies that you will be facing your own customers directly when it comes to replying to customer service queries and you will also be monitoring the whole order fulfillment process by yourself whereas in the case of websites like redbubble you are simply uploading your custom designs to the platform and every time a product with one of your designs is sold they will take care of customer service and order fulfillment and you get rewarded with whatever margin you set on top of their base price as you can see they represent two very different approaches to print on demand and much of the criteria i will be using in this comparison like production lead time shipping costs and warehousing locations aren't normally taken into account when choosing to sell on marketplaces like redbubble or t public and that is the main reason i have decided not to include them in this comparison video [Music] to support the data presented in this video with more of a visual guide i will be referring to this video's corresponding blog post at my personal website ecom2.com here you'll find the full article with detailed information on all the suppliers included in this review if you're interested and want to check it out links will be provided in the description box below the print on demand companies that will be reviewed in this comparison video are printful printfy contrado guten custom cat applique arteware t launch gelato and spa the main criteria and key factors that were chosen for this comparison are authority and brand awareness that translates into how big of a company these suppliers are product prices plus shipping costs that's basically the total cost of goods of a sample product i chose but i'll give you more information on that in a second production plus shipping lead times integrations that are basically which e-commerce platforms like shopify or commerce or etsy these companies software integrate with printing facilities locations current review star ratings printing and production methods branding options so if for example they are they offer custom branded labels or custom inserts um then we'll check uh the apparel brands and size ranges and also the assortment of products these print on demand companies have in their catalogs we'll also see if it's possible to benefit from any subscription plans bulk discounts or wholesale accounts and finally we'll find out if they offer any additional services or tools or if they host a seller marketplace similar to redbubble where you can generate some extra passive income alongside your own website or storefront earnings [Music] with this key factor we want to determine how authoritative the following print on demand suppliers websites are and understand how well established and recognized these suppliers are as a brand and more broadly as a company just so that you know where i'm getting my numbers from i use a chrome extension from a web market research company called simular web to find the estimated number of users these print on demand suppliers websites have please note that these are just just estimates since only website owners can know exactly how many visits their websites get as you can see from this bar chart is quite obvious that printful and printf i receive way more total website visits than their competitors occupying a significant portion of the market printful uh clearly stands apart uh by a healthy margin of around 1.5 million visitors over printify um spot occupies a peculiar place on our list although its website is the least visited of all the print on demand companies in comparison it is supported and run by spreadshirt spot is actually an acronym for spreadshirt print on demand um spreadshirt being a very well established print-on-demand marketplace that runs a network at of of websites that currently receives around 10 million visits globally every month guten holds the middle ground between contrado and the bottom half of the list all deferring slightly in website traffic but still quite far from the head obviously the fact that a company is a recognized authority on the market is not necessarily a decisive factor in choosing a reliable print-on-demand supplier that can fit a merchant's specific needs many other aspects like production shipping costs or lead times catalog product range or customer care standards may also come into play nevertheless the bigger brands tend to be more experienced and have greater resources than their smaller counterparts which may translate into offering an all-round better service print on demand product prices and relative shipping costs can vary considerably from one company to another finding suppliers that offer a good quality price ratio is essential to any print on demand business considering the slim margins you may have to maintain to be competitive on the market to compare product prices among the following print on-demand companies as a sample product i chose the bella canvas 3001 t-shirt which is a standard t-shirt you can find on basically almost all print-on-demand platforms t-shirts are probably the most popular print on demand product and comparing the prices of the same catalog item across different platforms may give us an idea of a specific supplier's pricing strategy the shipping price will get charged by your print-on-demand supplier to get the product shipped to your customer represents another essential cost that factors in on your total cost of goods it may also vary quite a lot depending on where the company's printing facilities and distribution centers are located for this metric i will also use the bella canvas 3001 t-shirt to reference the shippers the supplier's shipping costs as you can see from the chart showing the total cost of goods for the small regular size white bella cameras 3001 t-shirt shipping to the us varies from printf is 12.82 cents way up to 22 uh dollars 50 cents per art of wear that makes up an almost uh 10 margin between the two that is uh quite significant for all fairness we have to point out that outerwear is the only company based in canada which surely impacts shipping costs in particular also note that all contrado products are developed in-house and made to order by hand in one facility located in london uk this means they don't hold stock or carry any specific brand so i chose the lowest price fitted t-shirt they offered [Music] another extremely important aspect of any print on demand business is the time it takes your supplier from the moment they receive the order to print your artwork on the product you choose and prepare it for dispatch and eventually have it delivered to the address provided by the customer despite advising customers that print-on-demand products by nature may take longer to fulfill since they are custom made in this day and age where ultra fast delivery seem to be the norm in commerce quick production and shipping lead times are very important to maintain high customer satisfaction levels from the chart you can see that contrado and printfi deliver the quickest to the us and respectively maximum eight and ten business days while printful spod and t launch deliver in maximum 13 days to the us please bear in mind that although this information was provided by the print-on-demand companies themselves through their websites these companies do not generally have much control over shipping times and cannot usually guarantee they will be honored we should also consider the fact that shipping times may vary greatly during holiday peak seasons and that they may be affected by unforeseen events like natural disasters and health crises um like the recent uh cobit 19 pandemic we are currently experiencing all the print-on-demand companies included in this comparison offer some level of integration between the design tools and order management systems they have developed in-house and most major e-commerce platforms and marketplaces like shopify woocommerce and etsy if you can't find the integration you're looking for you may want to check out third-party e-commerce order management services like orderdesk that allow integrations between quite a big list of e-commerce platforms and print-on-demand companies as you can see from these uh information boxes i've created on my blog post um printful offers the highest number of integrations with both e-commerce platforms and marketplaces and it is the only company to integrate with amazon the amazon seller program that's not to be confused with the merch by amazon which is a dedicated print-on-demand program similar to redbubble we can also notice that shopify is the only e-commerce platform that integrates with all the print-on-demand companies listed followed by woocommerce that integrates with 6 out of 10 of the companies and big commerce that integrates with 5 out of 10. etsy on the other hand is the e-commerce marketplace that has the most integrations and that would be seven out of ten we should also mention that t-launch's application is native to shopify meaning it only exists within a shopify dashboard and not as a separate web application you can access directly through your browser so if you want to integrate tlaunch with etsy you have to own a shopify store to do so in this section we'll be having a look at the locations where the suppliers printing facilities and distribution centers are based printing facilities locations are important because they can obviously impact shipping cost and shipping times depending on where your target customer audience is located gelato has undoubtedly the largest network of printing facilities it's 30 in total situated all across the globe it may be interesting to note that the lower half of the print on demand companies on this list that are spod apliiq customcad hardware and contrado run their own printing and distribution centers in contrast the others rely on third party suppliers for production and manufacturing with the exception of printful that adopts a sort of a hybrid approach although they do own the majority of their fulfillment centers here we will be checking the current review star ratings on shopify on shopify app store and trust pilot of each of the print on demand companies we are comparing to assess customer satisfaction and the suppliers efficiency mainly in the areas of production product and printing quality customer service and shipping although shipping doesn't totally depend on the supplier if not for the supplier being capable of selecting a reliable shipping courier obviously it'll be up to your own judgment to determine uh if a review is trustworthy or not both on the sellers and on the buyers side considering that both positive and negative reviews can be biased or skewed by self-interest examples of this could be a seller launching a new product and inviting friends and family to write a quote-unquote honest and unbiased review or on the on the other hand a competitor deciding to play dirty and leave a negative review with the only intention of undermining someone else's business and then you have customers that are just too lazy or impatient to submit support tickets and write reviews instead knowing that they will get the sellers immediate and full attention by doing so you may also get the random attention seeking buyer who will divert straight to the one star review rather than trying to solve any issue directly with the seller unfortunately these are buyers who completely disregard the fact that uh sometimes things just go wrong despite the seller's best efforts and who completely neglect how damaging negative reviews can be to someone's business one more thing to point out is that although we can get a glimpse of what kind of experience an existing customer may have had with a particular print-on-demand company by reading the reviews they decide to publish it's always better to go through the whole process of buying a sample product so we can assess the overall quality of the products the supplier offers and the supplier's general performance and proficiency first hand plus it gives us the added advantage of seeing what sort of marketing strategies these these suppliers are using and possibly model them with our own business according to my research uh t launch contrado and spot are the most uh reputable print on demand companies on the list um printful printf guten and gelato are all rate uh pretty well on shopify but seem to be getting a bit more negative reviews on trustpilot while a plea custom cat and art of wear are lagging a bit behind when it comes to customer reviews and ratings print-on-demand companies offer a variety of printing and production techniques that range from the most common and versatile dtg direct to garment printing to actual woven designs for throw blankets and custom woven labels knowing the different types of existing printing and production methods and finding out if your supplier offers them as part of their service is essential to attain the particular style you desire with your print on demand demand products if you're looking for a specific printing or production technique i advise you to check out the complete list of printing methods these companies offer at econtube.com as mentioned earlier i will place a link in the description box below the video [Music] another important factor to consider when choosing a print on demand supplier is whether or not these companies offer branding options like custom packaging custom labeling or even custom inserts you can use to thank your customers and maybe do some further marketing like offering discounts on future purchases branding is clearly important because it conveys a sense of trustworthiness to your business and makes you stand out as an established company in your marketplace applics main focus as a print-on-demand company is to help customers create their own clothing line and that is clearly reflected in the level of branding and customization options they offer that range from private label tags meaning they remove the manufacturer's tag and replace it with a custom tag showing the brand logo and the product specifications all the way to embroidered patches to custom applique that is a sewing technique by which pieces of material that are cut out to a desired shape are then attached to another material or garment printful also has a fair number of branding options together with contrado art of wear and gluten the remaining print on demand companies offer either limited or no branding services at all [Music] in order to maintain consistent quality standards some merchants mostly rely on specific brands of clothing for their print-on-demand projects as you can see from the uh these information boxes on my blog post almost all of the print on demand companies in the comparison offer the most popular plain t-shirts for printing like gildan anvil bella canvas next level and america american apparel just name a few spot and custom cat are the only two companies that offer lt large tall sizes for men some suppliers offer up to four xl plus sizes for women like custom cat printf gluten and tea launch and up to six excel unisex shirts um like a spod [Music] print on demand companies offer an array of different products that range from the more obvious t-shirts and coffee mugs to some more unique products like bean bags and candles contrado definitely sets apart from the other print on demand companies in this comparison as mentioned earlier all their products are developed in-house and made to order by hand in one facility located in london uk so they don't hold stock or carry any specific brands this may be partly why they have a much wider range an assortment of products than the rest of the companies um it's worth noting that contrado seems to be offering more of a high-end premium print on demand service most likely targeted to artists with some level of recognition and social following considering um considering the quite significant price differences between contrado and uh and their competitors by visiting the art of where website the general impression is that it seems to be catering the same target audience as contrado although the scope of the product catalog is definitely less extended but still quite unique [Music] normally you only pay your supplier for the goods as they are being ordered by your customers on your website or storefront although in some cases subscription plans can either be made mandatory or offered on the site to access premium membership perks some print-on-demand companies also offer bulk discounts or wholesale prices for purchases that reach their their minimum order quantity their moq in some cases uh buyers may also benefit from loyalty programs rewarding discounts proportionate to past order volumes as you can see from from these information boxes quite a number of print on demand companies offer tiered pricing and volume discounts despite being most likely the priciest company on the list contrado provides the highest discounts at the lowest moq's followed by applicant printful as regards reward programs printful has the lowest barrier to entry at one thousand dollars in monthly sales of the print on demand companies that offer subscription plans custom cat is the only one that requires a mandatory thirty dollar monthly fee and that is for shopify users only or you can pay two dollars extra per catalog item for every purchase in alternative uh to the monthly fee and a 14 day free trial is available [Music] in this final section of our comparison we'll be listing any additional services or tools that these print on demand companies may offer examples of extra services may be custom graphic design product photography or store setup these services may be interesting for customers who don't know how to carry out one of these more specialized tasks or simply prefer to outsource them to an expert we will also touch on the print on demand companies that offer access to online marketplaces where you can use your personal artwork to sell custom printed products directly on the supplier's website just like redbubble and teespring but usually on a smaller scale of all the companies we're comparing printful offers the most extra services that even include warehousing and fulfillment meaning they will store any product not just print on demand products at the warehouse fulfill your order and ship the products directly to your customers under your own brand product photography video creation and store setup are among other services they offer you can also get access to tools like keyword scout and etsy keyword research tool and a product customization tool other companies that offer product customization tools are spod gelato and t launch which also have a combo apparel mugs feature that allows you to create pairing designs to sell as a combo for parents and children or couples for example guden offers an interesting white label customer support service where guten staff will operate customer support on your behalf and spod contrado and art of wear allow you to access their own marketplaces with contrado being the one that offers the best profit margins of the three choosing to work with a one print on demand company over another depends mainly on your business's specific priorities and goals um the fact that a brand is well established and will recognize for example would be a little use if they wouldn't offer the specific product or printing method you require for your for your product line or if the prices or lead times wouldn't allow you to be competitive on the marketplace you're selling on for this reason i hope you understand that the purpose of this comparison is mainly to pass information you can reference to choose the company that suits your business best rather than to rank these companies as if they were competing against each other please let me know which print on demand companies you may have worked with already and how that worked out for you i would love to hear your thoughts and first-hand experiences with any of these companies or any other companies in the comment section below um please if there's any information you believe that has been left out or needs to be clarified further also let us know by starting a discussion thread in the comment section i really hope you've enjoyed watching this video and that it has helped you understand which print on demand company may be best maybe the best fit for your future projects um or current projects if you have found this video useful please do like or share it share it and maybe consider subscribing to the channel and activating the notification bell so youtube can let you know whenever i upload new content once again thank you for watching and see you soon [Music] you

Channel: Ecom Tube

Views: 22,528

Keywords: print on demand, print on demand shopify, print on demand for beginners, print on demand business, print on demand etsy, print on demand t-shirt business, print on demand 2021, print on demand tips, best print on demand websites, best print on demand services, best print on demand, best print on demand company, print on demand products, etsy print on demand, printful, best print on demand sites for beginners, shopify, printify, best pod company, etsy, customcat, contrado, spod

Id: 4lMd6pM4g5o

Length: 26min 21sec (1581 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021