Printify and Teespring are two popular eCommerce platforms and POD services. Print on demand service is a form of dropshipping business where you work directly with product suppliers and print providers to sell goods to customers when they’re ordered.
You don’t store inventory so it’s a cost effective means of selling online. Many successful eCommerce stores sell print on demand products. With either Printify or Teespring, you can easily start a print on demand business.
However, which of the two platform’s should you use? This article compares both and you’ll know which is better at the end.
Let’s jump right in!
Printify
Printify is a print on demand company that makes it very easy for you to become an online retailer. Printify integrates with Shopify, Woocommerce, and even Etsy.
The setup process is easy. It will simply ask you a few questions to help set up the type of look and feel you want for your store. They have a “store setup checklist” that makes it a very easy set up. You simply walk through the wizard and input your information.
Furthermore, Printify features an affiliate marketing program.
Products
Printify has over 200 different products to choose from that are broken out by the following:
- Men’s Clothes
- Women’s Clothes
- Kids Clothing
- Accessories
- Home & Living
- Bestsellers
With their various printing providers, they can do anything that you need. You also get high print quality, so you know that your customers will be satisfied with their purchases. Unlike other Printify alternatives, it features the Monster Digital state-of-the-art printing method. Not to mention, Printify ships white label products.
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!
Product Design
Printify does a wonderful job of producing high-quality products due to their printing methods. You won’t have to worry about producing a low print quality if you use Printify. And designing the product is even easier.
As soon as you get through your store setup, you will immediately be taken to a screen that says “Design Your First Product.” Once you click on that button, it will take you to a screen where you can begin choosing the products you would like to design.
You can also get to the design portion of the product through Printify’s Mockup Generator.
Let’s say that you would like to design a stationary product. You simply would go under Home & Living, then click on Stationary, and you will see the options you have to build products.
Once you click on the Spiral Notebook link, you will find all kinds of product information about the product. There is even a great Youtube video that gives you some good ideas and benefits of the Spiral Notebook. It’s kind of quirky, but cool.
Right below the pictures of the available products will be a “start designing” button.
Once you click the “Start Designing” button, it will take you to the screen where you can pour all of your creativity into your project.
In this section, you will add your logo or the design that you will be using on the cover. You can change the color of the Spiral Notebook as well. You can see below an example that I mocked up very quickly.
Please also note, that if your logo doesn’t have a high enough resolution, then you will see the red warning in the bottom right-hand side of the screen.
At this point, once you’ve designed your product, you will click the “Next” button, and it will show you your finished product. Then you will want to select the image you are going to use for an ecommerce store.
Once you’ve picked out the image you want for your store, you will want to add a description to the product so that consumers who visit your store know what your item is about
Then one of the final pieces is to set your price. At this point, depending on what you are selling, you may want to spend some time doing some research to find out if anyone else is selling a similar item so that it will help in determining price.
You can set your prices to reflect whatever profit margin you would like. I would highly recommend that after each product you create, you ship yourself a sample to make sure that it’s exactly what you expect.
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 worst thing you could do is design a product that you think looks great on your computer screen, then start selling them on your store, only to find out that your shoppers don’t like it and they start requesting their money back.
Setting Up Your Store
One of the more fun parts of the selling process is setting up your store. I found this to be a little more confusing than Teespring, but once you figure it out, it’s simple enough.
I just had a little bit of a harder time when I first started figuring out how to set up my store.
So when you first log in, you probably get to the “Design Your Product” step and go straight to having fun.
Now that you’ve created your first product, you are going to go back to the home dashboard by clicking on the Printify logo in the top left, and you will proceed to “Connect Your Store.”
You can have multiple stores on Printify, depending on what account level you buy into. I will talk about that below. But for now, to set up your first store, you will simply walk through the wizard and go through the steps.
You can start by clicking on “Settings.”
It will take you to another screen where you can enter your store name. Use your imagination here and think of something that is catchy and easy to remember if possible.
Remember, you will be building a brand around your store, so think about this carefully. You can always come back and change it later though, if you change your mind.
The next step is adding your ship from the address. I really like this feature because Printify allows you to customize your information easily to the shipping label. You can use the default setting, which will show the address of where your product was printed.
But if you use the custom address option, you can have your name and address printed on the label. You can see an example below where your address would be printed on the shipping label.
Once the product is ordered, one of the last things you do is set up your store to decide when you would like to send the order to production. You have the following options:
- Manually
- Automatically in 1 hour
- Automatically in 24 hours
- Automatically at a certain time every day
This is going to be all up to you. I don’t think there is any right or wrong answer here, but I always set mine to “Automatically in 24 hours.”
When it’s set to automatically be placed in production, you don’t have to worry about pushing any orders through by yourself or forgetting something.
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!
And then the last piece is setting your tracking notifications for your customer’s orders.
You can have the tracking notifications sent to you as soon as they are available, at a certain time of the day that you specify, or you can simply not receive any tracking emails at all.
I wouldn’t recommend that last one because you need to stay on track of what’s happening with your customers and their orders.
Then, once you have set up the details of how your product will ship and how it will be tracked, you will need to connect your store to either Etsy, Woocommerce, or Shopify.
With Printify, you don’t have an actual storefront like Teespring. You simply integrate the products that you have created into one of the three platforms listed above.
Marketing
Printify doesn’t help you much in the marketing department as Teespring does. There are several different ways you can promote your store, but most of these ways will require all the work to come from you.
Teespring takes pride in the boosted network, but Printify doesn’t have one. Therefore I would say that Teespring has better tools to help the beginning e-commerce person get their products out there online.
Order Fulfillment
Order fulfillment is relatively easy with Printify. They have fantastic options and useful tools for helping make your life a whole lot easier including various shipping options such as their Print-On-Demand shipping method. The shipping cost varies for each method.
If you are wondering who Printify uses to ship their products, you can find them here. They have a ton of information on their shipping partners so you won’t be left guessing.
Printify Pricing
Printify has three different pricing options to fit your needs. With the free version, you will be able to have up to 5 stores per account and unlimited product designs. This is recommended for the smaller ecommerce business who simply wants to make just a few product sales.
The next tier up, and the most popular plan, is the Premium plan for $29/month. If you choose to pay annually, the price is $24.99 per month which is charged at $299.88. With this plan, you can have up to 10 stores as well as unlimited product designs.
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!
And if you are a business that needs more than ten stores to sell your different products on, you can call Printify and request a custom quote.
Overall, Printify is an amazing and simple platform that you can use to create any type of product you want.
Next, we will look at its competitor, Teespring.
Teespring
Teespring, now known as Spring, is a wonderful print on demand marketplace that lets you create a product, market it, and does all the shipping and customer service for you so that you don’t have to weigh yourself down with that stuff.
All you need to do is collect the money in the end!
Product Creation And Ease Of Use
Let’s start by talking about how easy the Teespring print on demand marketplace is to use.
The user interface is quite simplistic, which makes it wonderful for beginners to create their own products and their own storefront in a snap.
When you first login in, it gives you an easy “get started” wizard so that you can set up your store.
Once your store is set up, then you can design your first product.
Teespring has over 20 products to work with. It’s much smaller than Printify, but the platform is free and does all of the heavy-lifting for you.
Just like Printify, everything is handled for you including printing, shipping, and customer service.
I know what you may be thinking at this point, “I’m not a designer. How am I ever going to create a good design that sells?” Well, a lot of people have this same question in their mind and that’s why Teespring gives you some good ideas on how to create winning designs.
Teespring even offers a design support page for new people who need help coming up with ideas. You can also hire a freelance designer to help you design the images for your t-shirt.
When creating designs, you can use Teespring’s Product Launcher. This is an amazing tool that easily lets you create custom logos and fit them to products such as pillows and t-shirts.
But whatever you do, make sure to read Teespring’s design policies and don’t violate them or else you can get your account shut down for good.
So let’s take a look at the user interface of Teespring and how you would design a t-shirt, for example.
Once you get an account set up, you are simply going to click on “Create a Product,” and it will begin the entire process.
You can choose from a number of different types of products including apparel, home, accessories, die-cut stickers, iPhone cases, and leggings.
Let’s say that you wanted to create your own women’s tank top design. You simply click on the item you want and the following screen allows you to choose the type of tank top you want.
Once you choose your selection, it is going to ask you whether or not you want to buy this newly designed tank top for yourself, or if you are going to be selling this item.
At this point, you are going to move to the design screen where you have free reign and can start creating your masterpiece!
In the left navigation bar, you will be able to add your image, add text, choose the color you want and price your product. So in less than 5 minutes I was able to set up my own account and create a cool looking blue shirt with my logo on it. Very cool!
One thing you want to check is that you have a high-resolution image to begin with, or else you are going to get an error message like this:
Obviously, I am giving you the quick down and dirty of how this platform works, and there is much more detailed information below on how to design products and find custom audiences for your t-shirts. But for the overall first look at the software, it does a bang-up job of getting the job done.
Marketing/Selling
When you are done creating your new t-shirt design you are going to need to promote it somehow.
Having the right tools in place to help you do this is vital to the success of your online store. But before you go about creating a product, you need to know who you are going to target.
Targeting
When creating products on Teespring, it’s important to pick your audiences carefully. Selecting your target audience BEFORE you create a t-shirt, for example, is one of the smartest things you can do.
You can go after niche markets so that you narrow down who you will eventually be marketing to. Teespring does a great job of giving you the tools that you need to find the right audience for the product you are going to create.
Marketing/Promotion
There are several great tips that Teespring helps its users with. Some of the options you have to market are as follows:
- Google Shopping Network
- Facebook Ads
- Email Marketing
Teespring also has a wonderful boosted network that they take pride in, to market your newly created products online.
Marketing your product takes work and Teespring is very good at providing tools for you to do this.
Designing Your Storefront
Create your own storefront using Teespring’s platform. This allows you to easily sell all of the products you create right from this storefront.
To begin, you can start editing your storefront and customizing it to your liking. You can change the theme color and upload your own logo.
From here, you can customize much deeper by designing your own banner to go across the top. It’s in this section you can start designing products as well and creating an “About” page so that the people who visit your store will know a little bit about you.
Other Tools
Teespring lets you communicate via email with your past and potential clients through their user-friendly email platform built into the backend of the system.
This is a nice touch that makes it easier to run your business.
Can You Use Teespring With Shopify?
A question most prospective merchants ask is if there is a Teespring Shopify app. Shopify is the most used platform for building eCommerce stores and Printify supports Shopify.
Unfortunately, you cannot use Teespring with Shopify. This is because Teespring features its own marketplace where you can build your artist shop and sell your customized products. This is unlike Printify. With Printify, you must integrate with third-party platforms like Shopify, Etsy, and Wix.
The only places you can sell with Teespring aside the native marketplace is on YouTube via Merch, Google Shopping, Instagram, and Twitch, amongst others.
What Is The Major Difference Between Teespring And Printify?
As print on demand websites, Teespring and Printify share similarities. Notably, you control your profit margin.
Nevertheless, both platforms have some major differences. First of all, there are more products to sell on Printify than Teespring, although they both feature a similar catalog. Printify has more products because there are more print providers and on demand suppliers to work with.
If you need flexibility, you’ll have to go with Printify. The platform gives you multiple integration options as you can sell on Shopify, Etsy, Wix, and a few other web platforms. With Teespring, you’re limited to selling on the native marketplace. The third-party integration options available are social media platforms.
Nevertheless, Teespring is more affordable. First of all, the platform is 100% free while Printify is free with some premium options. You’ll pay some extra cost to set up your store on Shopify, Etsy, etc. with Printify.
With Teespring, the base price – which is the production cost and shipping rate – are only what you pay for. You even get discounts with higher sales.
Conclusion – Printify vs Teespring
Between Printify and Teespring, the best print on demand site to go for depends on your budget and how you intend to run your store. If you don’t want to spend much, Teespring is the POD company to use.
Nevertheless, Printify is the better POD site. There’s a lot you can do with Printify that’s limited to Teespring. If you plan on running a branded business, Printify is ideal. You get better branding options and Teespring products aren’t entirely white label compared to Printify.
