Dropshipped POD: Printful vs Printify For Etsy

Printful vs Printify For Etsy

By Ryan Hogue on January 23, 2019

If you intend to sell POD on your Etsy shop, you'll inevitably need to choose a fulfillment partner. Lets compare two front runners - Printful vs Printify.

You've probably noticed that I haven't endorsed Printify much, if at all on this website so far.

That's because I'm such a huge fan of Printful, I hadn't taken the time to really look into any alternatives.

Over the long weekend, I decided I'd give Printify a test run, as I'd heard it offers sellers better margins on most products.

But that didn't come without its drawbacks.

In this article I'll share some of my findings, and I'll let you follow along with my first Printify-fulfilled Etsy t-shirt sale.

Printful vs Printify: User Interface

Both websites require you to use their web application user interfaces to do the following:

Upload & position PNG designs
Select shirt colors
Set pricing
Include a title + description
Set your Etsy keyword/tags (Printful only)

The Printify upload workflow actually takes longer, because by default their cheapest shirt (Guildan 5000) comes in so many color variations, you have to either manually exclude some, or click the "automatically exclude" option which will NOT select a black-backround option (which is a MUST in my opinion).

You also have to open the listing and set your tags in the Etsy listing UI if you use Printify, whereas Printful will set them for you if you provide them in their workflow.

With either platform you'll still want to go into the listing and set the production partner.

Printful t-shirt creation UI:

Printify t-shirt creation UI:

Changing / cancelling orders

One of the greatest things about Printful is that it makes it SO EASY to change or cancel an order... you can do it right in their UI! (something Gearbubble finally added to their dashboard).

I checked with Printify support & confirmed that they require you to email them to change/cancel an order, but they can't guarantee anything even if you get to them in time because they farm their orders out to their own network of fulfillment partners.

This will end up costing you money in the long-run, no matter what.

Another great thing about Printful is how they dynamically calculate & display various shipping options for you & let you choose the service... meaning if you collect flat-rate shipping, you can often profit from over charging customers (Printful gets great shipping rates... mine average around $3.50 in the US).

In summary, Printful's UI makes it faster to upload shirts, generate mockups, & easier to change/cancel orders.

Printful vs Printify: Mockups

Having a winning primary listing image is key to improve your click-through rate (CTR) on any eCommerce website.

Etsy is a little bit looser in terms of what they let you get away with in your primary images, while Amazon wants to appear as a more uniform catalog and has more rules about what's allowed (how well they enforce the rules is another story).

As for thumbnails generated, they're pretty much the same on either platform for t-shirts:

Printful t-shirt mockups:

Printify t-shirt mockups:

Not impressed? Neither am I.

Nothing's stopping you from creating your own template (or joining my DPOD course) to bring more "pop" to your Etsy images :)

I did notice Printful's got a great mockup generator for specific products and it appears to be constantly expanding to include new products.

Check out these images created in Printful:

Printful vs Printify: Pricing

The one thing Printify has going for them is that they offer lower base costs on many products, but with a catch:

You only get the lower rates if you opt in to their "Printify Premium" membership plan ($29/mo).

This would be well worth it, as you save around 20% on most products as a premium member.

BUT keep in mind what I mentioned about shipping on Printful earlier... if you're charging shipping, you'll likely end up with the same product costs from Printful once everything averages out.

I'm going to show you an example Etsy order in a second, but first, I wanted to share Printful's Etsy calculator:

Click here to try out Printful's Etsy profit calculator »

Check out this example from a recent Etsy order of mine:

I'm currently running a free shipping promotion on my shop, but the buyer was international... so they were charged the default flat rate of $10 for their order.

The cheapest option is selected by default - $2.66 - No rush (10-20 business days after fulfillment)

I made a net +$7.34 in profit from shipping alone!

I've also been looking at some very successful Etsy shops lately and noticed some extremely clever sales strategies that leverage enticing customers to buy multiple items at a time, and increasing the per-product shipping fees to subtly increase their margins.

I go more in depth on Etsy shop strategies in my dropshipped print-on-demand course :)

Printful vs Printify: Handling Time

Handling time is very important! The difference between a shop that experiences long-term success and a "flash in the pan" shop is the ability to keep customers happy.

Hint: Customers don't want to wait for weeks to receive their products... they want them as soon as possible (i.e. why Prime is so successful in America).

Printful is quite fast at churning out orders.

The picture above is of orders placed to one of my accounts less than 48 hours ago.

They're a mix of both t-shirts and hats, and as you can see they were sent out in 2 days or less, which certainly keeps the customers happy!

Also, the ability to upgrade a customers shipping service when needed is another great way of increasing the likelihood of earning a 5-star review. More social proof = more sales.

Unfortunately for Printify, the same can't be said.

Because they farm out production to various partners of theirs, instead of doing it in-house, shipping times can be variable based on what company received the order.

The most commonly sold t-shirt is their cheapest option: The Guildan 5000, & production is sent to MyLocker.

Here are some reviews from an Etsy POD Facebook group that I read earlier in the week & wanted to share about MyLocker's service:

Person #1: "My only complaint so far is that they are incredibly slow."
Person #2: "I stoped to use them, few time customers got wrong items."
Person #3: "MyLocker are too slow and will bring you a lot of open cases against your shop talking from experience"
Person #4: "They are customcat"
Person #5: "I stopped using My Locker
not worth the grief"
Person #6: "Horrible horrible mess when I used them"

It's important to keep the right perspective on print-on-demand: we're in this for the long haul, so we shouldn't sacrifice customer happiness in pursuit of slightly better profit margins.

My experience using Printify

My first day testing out Printify I uploaded 5 new designs to Etsy, and fortunately 1 got an almost immediate sale on one of the listings.

Here's the pertinent info about the order:

Order Date: 1/20/2019
Shirt Cost: $11.85 - this is the base cost for a 3XL guildan 5000 tee without Printify Premium
Shipping Cost: $8 - it was international, they charged a flat rate and kept all $8 that was collected (unlike Printful)
Order Sent Out Date: 1/24/2019 (4 days handling time)
Profit: +$11.14 - this number doesn't account for Etsy fees

All in all, my first experience with Printify was a good one, but I'll keep you guys posted for future experiences.

I'll keep you posted on my experience with Printify as a fulfillment partner for a few of my Etsy t-shirt listings, but for now, I would advise you to be cautious when using them.

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