On demand production is revolutionizing personalized retail. Individual artists who would normally have to partner with a large production company and take low profit margins now have the ability to scale their operations at their own pace.
The technology for on demand print has improved to the point that nearly anyone can make a one-of-a-kind, personalized product. The only limitation is the creativity of the artist.
If you are looking for a way to bolster your artistic career, or simply make some extra money creating personalized retail items, take a look at the 10 cheapest, best print on demand sites below.
1. Printful
It is the granddaddy of print on design, and with good reason. Because it has been in business since the year 2000, it has perfected the model that many of the other websites are still trying to tweak.
This POD platform is good for pure entrepreneurs as well as artists. It gives sellers a much better platform for communicating with customers, and it boasts a wide array of different products that you can print on – pillow covers, tote bags, towels, greeting cards, and phone cases.
What started as a t-shirt store on Shopify, is now a dropshipping giant that delivers what its customers demanded: affordability, quality, and great support.
Their $16 million in technology has seen its customer base grow exponentially over the years, with fulfillments of more than 8 million items using industry-leading equipment such as Kornit and Epson.
Since Printful was launched, users – including those of Shopify – have sold more than $82 million worth of products.
They not only sell risk-free, quality embroidery and print goods, but also handle inventory, production, and shipping.
Its catalog includes a wide array of products from t-shirts, to swimwear, leggings, hats, backpacks, and even posters.
Interestingly, Printful offers wide integration options with eCommerce platforms and online marketplaces. Also, you can integrate Printful with your custom online store or web app via its RESTful API.
Once a customer buys a product on your Shopify store, his order is imported automatically to Printful, who then fulfills and ships it to the customer under your brand.
Also Read: Printful Review
Printful helps you design and sell products online with ease. Try it today!
Features
Printful equips you with the easiest setup and integration, overall user experience, and great features such as:
Free Design Template using its product generator.
Control over your own profits as you get to set retail prices, and the only cost you incur from Printful covers production
Product Personalization so you can create designs customers can personalize on your Shopify store
Fulfilment & Warehousing – you get to store your whole inventory at Printful’s warehouse and they handle the fulfilment of all your orders for you
Stress-free Shipping – Printful offers shipping methods with tracking, plus they handle lost shipments
Discounted Samples – you can order product samples and get 20 percent off plus free shipping to specific destinations
Branding Services – Printful is a white label so your brand can stand out with branding services such as branding stickers, customizable tags, return address, pack-ins, and packing slips are available.
Design Services – Printful designers can make designs for you or glam your existing ones
HQ Pickups – if you live in the neighborhood, you can pick up the orders yourself thus save on shipping costs
Photography – Printful does professional product photos with/without models, or on location
In-house Services – Everything from product development, programming, marketing, and fulfillment is done in-house. Printful controls the entire process.
Printful’s timing in the market is impeccable, with the business benefits of the minimum on-demand model, while selling quality merchandise at one-off costs and at a profit on-demand.
The company, which has doubled effectively in size every year, now has over 400 employees in its different locations: North Carolina, California, Europe, and Mexico.
Printful helps you design and sell products online with ease. Try it today!
Is Printful Better Than Zazzle?
The most straightforward answer is Yes. Printful laid the foundation upon which the print on demand market is built. It seems to have perfected everything within the POD industry and even set the pace for the rest. Not even Zazzle can match Printful. Printful is a clear choice here.
Get Started For Free With Printful
2. Printify
Printify is up there among the top print on demand platforms in the market.
It is an on-demand Dropshipping service, which means that they handle billing, shipping, and fulfillment, while you are left with marketing and sales.
Printify works with third-party applications like WooCommerce, Shopify and Etsy which widens your options on which platform to choose based on the different functions that they perform.
Using Printify is basically a three-step process. The first step is to choose from the hundreds of POD products they have in their catalog, including T-shirts, mugs, and hoodies, and place your designs on what you have chosen.
Give shape to your dropshipping dream. Printify gives you the liberty to create, design and sell your custom prints using 3000 plus products. What's more, it is absolutely free!
The next step is to sell your product on your Shopify store with zero investment.
And finally, once a buyer orders the product, Printify will handle the production and shipping regardless of the final destination.
The platform makes it very easy to set up an e-commerce site and gives you the opportunity to make some money while saving you a lot of time with their rich array of tools.
According to the company’s website, they have an enterprise plan to cater for large corporations that will need print on demand services at scale, and an average fulfillment time of 2.2 days.
Also Read: Printify Review
Signing up is free and easy.
Plus there are lots of user manuals, design, and shipping guides to help you through the process of creating products and managing orders.
Features
Mockup Generator – The idea of starting up a print on demand business, or just about any business for that matter, is to make as much money as possible, but with so many sellers joining the industry on a daily basis, you must be at the very top of your game.
For print on demand, this means creating mind-blowing designs and thereafter, leaving your fulfillment company, Printify to handle the rest.
Creating these excellent designs are easier said than done, but Printify makes it a lot easier with its mock-up generator that lets you create more intuitive designs with ease.
Among other things, it lets you select the print provider and then sort the color and sizes of the product, after which you can customize the other parts of it and preview how it looks before submitting.
Different Variant Artwork – If you have an awesome design that looks great on a white T-shirt, but you have also created a lighter version of it for a darker T-shirt, uploading your different artwork for different product variations is quite easy with Printify.
Upload and customize your designs. Then repeat the same step for different artwork to save a new color variant and publish it to your shop.
From your shop, your customers will be able to choose any product variant with the new artwork you’ve added.
Print Provider Web – One unique thing about Printify is that they do not print your product themselves, instead, they partner with different top-class print providers all over the world.
This ensures that your product goes into production a lot faster since there is likely to be a print provider close to you regardless of where you are placed on the map.
Give shape to your dropshipping dream. Printify gives you the liberty to create, design, and sell your custom prints using 3000 plus products. What’s more, it is absolutely free!
Give shape to your dropshipping dream. Printify gives you the liberty to create, design and sell your custom prints using 3000 plus products. What's more, it is absolutely free!
Is Printify Better Than Zazzle?
Printify has also established itself as a force to reckon among the print on demand sites. Its ability to cater for corporate demands makes it one of the top picks. Based on this, we will say that Printify surpasses Zazzle.
3. Fine Art America
Unlike many of the other POD websites on this list, Fine Art America focuses on products such as home decor and wall art.
Yes, you can print on items such as phone cases and chargers, but the website is definitely for artists who are looking to share and sell the finer arts.
Some of the highlights of the platform include the ability to set your own prices and sell completely for free.
You also have the ability to sell the rights to your artwork or licenses. The one caveat is that Fine Art America does not publicize its commission on the product, a price the customer pays above your set price.
You may not know if you are overpricing your items until it is too late.
Is Fine Art America Better Than Zazzle?
If there is one thing we cannot take away from Fine Art America, that will be its dedication to the aesthetics – your home decor and beautiful wall arts. But it does not offer the variety that Zazzle gives. Based on this limitation, we will rank Zazzle above Fine Art America.
4. Spreadshirt
You can choose from over 100 products to customize here, giving you an almost unlimited array of retail opportunities. Spreadshirt boasts that its artists have been able to sell over 20 million items using its platform.
You can choose one of two sales channels to sell to the more than 50,000 visitors that come to the website daily.
Spreadshirt is well known for being a website that does the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing and its artists’ storefronts.
If you are an artist who is looking for a part-time job, and you do not necessarily have a great deal of online marketing experience, then you can park your products here for a great deal of help.
Is Spreadshirt Better Than Zazzle?
Well, for an upcoming artist who cannot afford marketing, Spreadshirt is a top POD platform to consider. It is like a voice to the voiceless for independent artists or designers to sell their artworks on customized products. We will give Spreadshirt the upvote on this.
Also Read: Redbubble Vs Spreadshirt
5. Teespring
You can sell products using one of two business models on Teespring. The first method is to sell products that you create by simply uploading your designs. The second way is to upload your design and put it on customized apparel.
The user interface is incredibly easy, so if you can attract people to your storefront, they have a higher instance of conversion than many other print on demand sites.
You can create a campaign that lasts for as long as 21 days; however, you are given a sales goal by the Teespring website.
As long as you’re making a profit, the website will continue to print for you. You also reduce your cost per item as you sell, so volume sellers definitely have an advantage on the platform.
Is Teespring Better Than Zazzle?
We do not believe Teespring usurps Zazzle. Artists need to put in every extra effort they get to even get noticed on Teespring.
Explore: Teespring Vs Printful Review
6. Teefury
If you are in the niche market of selling high quality pop-culture shirts, then Teefury is the ideal POD service for you.
The selling point of the company is using only high quality materials to create your prints on demand. Although they use high quality materials, they also have an incredibly good turnaround time of 24 hours.
Because of these two characteristics, Teefury tends to have a very loyal audience & this loyal audience definitely helps the artists who take the time to become popular on the website.
You also have the ability to discount T-shirts at an incredibly low rate, which is a great way to introduce new prospects to your inventory.
Is Teefury Better Than Zazzle?
We can say that Teefury is picky. This is because of its style and approach. It is all about printing pop culture. Its rates are attractive, and its technique can bring about customer retention. Still, it has not done enough to make it stand above Zazzle. We will call it a tie.
7. Threadless
The Threadless website is an ongoing competition. You cannot sell anything on the site unless the community votes your design into the store.
Upon joining the website, you also have the ability to vote on other designs.
Threadless gives you the ability to customize your online shop to look very distinct. Even though you are selling from a shared platform, you can actually create quite a good looking website if you take the time to do so.
One of the selling points is the actual revenues that artists have made from Threadless – the company promotes the figure of $1.5 million.
Is Threadless Better Than Zazzle?
We will go for a ‘yes’ here. Threadless enables you to fully customize your space. This might just be the difference between attracting more customers and getting lost in the crowd. Threadless gets the upvote.
Explore: Threadless Vs Redbubble
8. SunFrog
SunFrog is a well organized website that has one of the best product ID systems of any print on demand website on the list.
This is great for small business people who have trouble keeping up with their accounting. It is also great for artistic businesses that are looking to scale.
One of the best things about the website is the ability to create promotional images from your uploaded designs.
There is an artform to promote on SunFrog, but if you take the time to learn it, you will definitely have an opportunity to sell a lot of POD products.
Is Sunfrog Better Than Zazzle?
Not really. We chose Sunfrog because it is a print on demand site like Zazzle that is cheaper. Their cataloging system is commendable, and that is all. Zazzle wins here.
9. Teepublic
This is a website that is focused on apparel, mostly T-shirts. However, you do not even have to come up with your own designs to be successful here – there is another opportunity for affiliate sellers.
Its Partner Program allows you to curate the work of other artists into your own storefront.
This website is perhaps the most robust for all kinds of T-shirts. You can personalize everything from hoodies to infant onesies and tank tops.
The site is great for matching pairs of parent/children T-shirts as well. You can also print customized designs on phone cases, stickers, laptop sleeves, and canvas prints if you so desire.
Is Teepublic Better Than Zazzle?
Maybe when it comes to cloth designs and printing. The reason for this will boil down to the fact that Teepublic specializes in that. Also, the design curation system on Teepublic seems to stand out. But overall, it is on par with Zazzle.
10. Society6
Here is another entry on our list of the best print on demand sites like Zazzle that are cheaper too.
Society6 is a community that provides its best services to artists that are looking to sell print. Even if you are not necessarily in this niche, Society6 is a high-traffic website that you can count on to showcase your art to new people.
You can also gain a great deal of notoriety from this website, no matter where you are in the world. Additionally, you can become a curator for other artists.
The commission that you gain for recommending your peers is substantial, and many people make a full-time income selling their own work and recommending friends.
Is Society6 Better Than Zazzle?
We will say ‘yes’ to this. Society6 is one of the popular POD marketplaces. Even if you are an upcoming artist, be rest assured that your artworks will get noticed because of the amount of traffic that Society6 generates. Yes, Society6 above Zazzle.
Check Out: Society6 Vs Printful
11. Redbubble
This is a marketplace that relies on a community of artists, and the business model has definitely worked out for the website.
If you are looking for a print on demand website that also gives you free marketing, this may be the printer for you.
Redbubble draws a great deal of traffic that you can redirect to your products specifically (assuming that they are really awesome).
Unlike other Redbubble alternatives, Redbubble allows you to personalize a wide variety of items including smart phone cases, postcards, home decor, tote bags, canvas prints, stickers, hoodies, and miniskirts, among other things.
Is Redbubble Better Than Zazzle?
Yes, and yes. Redbubble is better than Zazzle. Just Like Society6, Redbubble already drives tons of traffic every month. The possibility of getting found on time is quite high here.
Explore: Redbubble Review
What Is The Cheapest Print Demand Site?
The short response to this is Printful. The reasons are evident. Printful is one of the oldest in the print on demand industry. Over the years, it has perfected its printing, order fulfilment process, and warehousing.
Not to mention, Printful products are cheaper than other custom printed products on other print on demand platforms such as CafePress, Amazon Merch, Print Aura, etc. So, you can set your profit margin for custom products after deducting Printful’s base price.
Final Words
Regardless of your artistic ability or niche of artistry, you can definitely find a print on demand website to accommodate you.
The websites above are all comparable to Zazzle in terms of price, and they all offer a wide variety of features to help you sell.
Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing.
Tom has been a full-time internet marketer for two decades now, earning millions of dollars while living life on his own terms. Along the way, he’s also coached thousands of other people to success.