Are you confused between Printful vs Teespring? Don’t look further, I will help you solve your queries.
POD (Print-on-demand) is one of the best business models sellers use to generate thousands of profits every month. POD is part of dropshipping but offers better opportunities. With a POD partner, you can upload your own designs before listing products for sale.
Printful and Teespring are two big names in the POD industry. Both platforms offer user-centered solutions to potential sellers. Both platforms offer a free plan to get started. However, there are some differences that set them apart from each other.
In this post, I am going to do a side-by-side comparison between Printful and Teespring. By the end of the article, you will under which POD platform is best for your eCommerce store.
Let’s get started.
Key Differences between Printful and Teespring
Here are some of the key differences between these two POD platforms:
1. Product Selection
- Printful offers a wider range of products to choose from, including clothing, accessories, home decor, and more.
- Teespring is more limited in its product selection, focusing primarily on clothing items such as t-shirts, hoodies, and tank tops.
2. Fulfillment Options
- Printful offers a variety of fulfillment options, including custom branding, packing slips, and even adding promotional materials to your shipments.
- Teespring offers more limited fulfillment options, with less customizability.
3. Pricing
- Printful’s products tend to be more expensive, but they also offer higher quality items.
- Teespring has lower prices but may sacrifice quality.
4. Shipping
- Printful offers worldwide shipping, while Teespring only ships to certain countries.
- Printful has multiple fulfillment centers around the world, which can help reduce shipping costs and times.
5. Integration
- Both Printful and Teespring offer integrations with popular e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Etsy.
- Printful’s integrations tend to be more robust and offer more customization options.
6. Design Tools
- Printful offers a variety of design tools to help users create custom designs, including mockup generators, design templates, and design services.
- Teespring also offers some design tools, but they are more limited in comparison.
7. Customer Support
- Printful offers 24/7 customer support through various channels, including email, chat, and phone.
- Teespring also has customer support, but it may not be available 24/7.
Printful vs Teespring: In A Nutshell (2024)
Before starting the comparison, let’s know more about both platforms.
Printful Overview
Printful is no stranger in the POD industry. In fact, it is considered one of the best POD suppliers for people who want to start a dropshipping business. The company offers over 430 product options, such as t-shirts, hoodies, phone cases, mugs, jewelry, etc., that you can choose to promote in your store.
Printful also owns many manufacturing facilities, warehouses, and fulfillment centers across the US, Australia, Japan, and Europe. 80% of orders come from these regions; Printful still offers international shipping options to customers. Till now, Printful has shipped over 70 million products across the globe.
Teespring Overview
Teespring is also a POD company that offers dropshipping solutions to its customers. The platform offers 50+ quality products, such as hoodies, t-shirts, mugs, socks, wallpapers, etc., that you choose to upload your designs. The best part is that the platform is 100% free to use.
Like Printful, Teespring owns in-house printing houses and fulfillment centers. It integrates with top eCommerce platforms, but you can also create a standalone website to sell on its built-in marketplace.
Printful vs Teespring: How It Works?
Both Printful and Teespring are POD companies, and almost all the PODs follow the same process. And luckily, both follow the same sign-up and onboarding procedure. Let’s check out how a POD proceeds.
- Set up an Online Store: Before you start a business with a POD partner, you need a place to sell products. So you need to set up an eCommerce store where you can sell or promote products. Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix, and Etsy are a few best options for starting your own online store. (If you already selected a POD for business, make sure to check it integrates with your eCommerce platform.
- Sign up For a Free POD Account: Both Printful and Teespring offer a free subscription, so you can easily sign up with your email address.
- Connect the POD Account with your Online Store: After creating a POD account, connect it with your store so the POD’s manufacturing facility can receive orders from your customers.
- Select Product Type on Your POD: Now, you can select a white-label product from your POD’s catalog. Make sure it matches your niche.
- Upload Your Design: Now, this is the most crucial part of this whole procedure. With a POD, you can either upload a custom artwork/design or create a new one in real-time using an in-built mockup generator. After uploading a design, you can preview your product’s 3D model to check how the final product will look after being manufactured.
- Set a Price: Each white-label product has a production cost. And when a customer orders your product, POD adds up the shipping cost to the basic cost according to the customer’s location. So you need to set up a price keeping the base price and shipping in mind because making a profit is your only goal here.
- Promote Your Product: Now, download a CSV file of your designed product and import it to your eCommerce store to create a product listing. You can follow the same process to create multiple product listings for different POD products.
Now you just have to wait for orders to come. When a customer places an order, it automatically redirects to your POD partner. It confirms your order, manufacture, pack, and ship to the customer’s location. Meanwhile, POD deducts production and shipping costs from final pricing, and you keep the profit. Suppose you have listed your product’s price at $30. The production and shipping cost of POD is $20. After the product’s sale, you keep a $10 profit without managing any inventory or manufacturing.
9+ Major Differences Between Printful And Teespring
Now, let’s see how both platforms differ from each other.
1. Ease of Use
Printful follows a straightforward process when it comes to using the tool. As I mentioned above, all you need to do is create an account and choose a product to print your design on it. You can easily upload your ready-made design or use its mockup generator to create a design in real time. Overall, both beginners and professionals can set up and start using the tool pretty easily.
Like Printful, Teespring also follows the same process as any other POD. Whether you are a beginner or a professional designer, Teespring is one of the best companies to get started with. As soon as you sign up on the platform, you get access to all the tools for design and other purposes. There are plenty of templates and designs available that you can tweak or modify to create unique designs.
Winner: Tie
2. Online Store Integrations
Printful integrates with the top 25+ eCommerce platforms and marketplaces so that you won’t run out of choices. Shopify, Etsy, Wix, WooCommerce, Squarespace, and Amazon are a few big names that you can choose to connect Printful. You can also create a standalone website with Printful. Apart from that, you can easily push printed products to your store via a CSV file. Printful also displays an out-of-stock tag when a product is not available in their inventory.
Teespring also integrates with 20+ eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, and many others. If you think you can’t find your store on Teespring, you can use API integration to connect your store with the POD. Apart from that, Teespring has an in-built marketplace where you can create a standalone website and sell your products.
Winner: Teespring
3. Mockup Generator
Printful’s mockup generator is sleek and user-friendly. Even a beginner can easily get familiar with its tools and ease of use. All you have to do is choose a product, preferred color, size, design, and material. There are 16,500+ clipart images (2400+ for free plans) that you can choose to create your design. If you are a Pro member, you can also get access to over 480 exclusive clipart images that are fully customizable. That means, with Printful, you get endless opportunities for designing.
When it comes to Teespring’s mockup generator, users get a little annoyed using the editing menu. Compared to other POD platforms, Teespring’s mockup generator is pretty standard. However, you can also add texts in multiple fonts and sizes with the tool.
Winner: Printful
4. Samples
Users can order samples from Printful to check its product quality. And you can get a 20% discount on the original price. But there is a limit to ordering samples per month. However, if you cross a certain threshold of sales over time, you can increase the number of samples per month.
With Teespring, you can also order samples to check the product’s quality, but you won’t get any discount. Like your customers, you have to pay the regular price.
Winner: Printful
5. Product Quantity and Quality
Printful owns a number of warehouses and manufacturing facilities in the US, Europe, Canada, and Mexico. Every manufacturing facility of Printful is equipped with top-class printing and sewing machines. So the printed design on the product never fades away. There are also eco-friendly options available that you can offer to your customers. And there is no minimum order rule, so you can order individual or large quantities at once. You can get a flat 30% discount on bulk orders if you want to store printed products in your warehouse. But in that, you have to take care of order fulfillment.
Teespring still uses the screen printing method to print designs on products. This method may be old-fashioned, but the result products are extremely durable and don’t easily fade away. While you upload the design for a product, Teespring also suggests whether your design looks great or terrible on your product. However, there is a minimum amount that you need to order if you are going for bulk orders. You will also get a flat discount on bulk orders, but it will depend on the product you choose.
Winner: Printful
6. Shipping
For POD companies, shipping takes more than usual compared to regular eCommerce companies. The reason is its extra manufacturing process. The production process can take 24 to 30 hours if you’re ordering single or individual orders. But bulk orders can take up to 7 days for production and package. So shipping extremely depends on the production process and the customer’s location. You can check out the shipping charges in real-time using its shipping calculator from your account.
Teespring also has the same shipping policies, but it has a fixed shipping rate for every country and region. Compared to Printful, the shipping rates are a little bit high, but the average shipping time is way better than other POD platforms.
Winner: Tie
7. Getting Paid
Most sellers on Printful connect their storefronts with the store. So Printful doesn’t decide when sellers get paid—it all depends on their eCommerce platform. However, if you are running a standalone Printful website to sell your products, you will get instant payouts. After a successful sale, your profit gets deposited in your Printful Wallet, from where you can withdraw money whenever you want.
Since Teespring has its own marketplace, most sellers prefer to sell within the platform. Like Printful, your profit gets deposited to your Teespring account. Once you decide to withdraw, you can request a payout, and you will get paid within 24 hours.
Winner Teespring
8. Customer Support
With Printful, you can find various customer support from the internal team. If you ever encounter an issue on the platform, you can contact the support staff via email, chat, phone, or contact form. You can also find some helpful information in the FAQ and blog sections. You can join social communities on FaceBook, YouTube, and Instagram to connect with top sellers on Printful.
Teespring, on the other hand, offers a training center where you can find solutions to all possible issues you might face. If you are a beginner, you can also find a step-by-step quick-start guide to set up your store quickly. Apart from that, you can also contact customer service agents via chat and phone.
Winner: Teespring
9. Pricing
Printful and Teespring both offer a free plan to their users. But Printful’s free plan comes with basic features and limited access to advanced tools. That’s why they offer two paid subscriptions that offer additional features and access to marketing tools.
Printful Plus – $9/month
- Everything in the free plan
- Remove image backgrounds
- Create custom product mockups
- Marketing promos
Printful Pro – $49/month
- Everything in the Plus plan
- 480+ exclusive clipart images
- Keyword Scout for Etsy
- Promo Maker
- Premium images
- Digitized embroidery files
On the other hand, Teespring offers everything with its free plan. In fact, there isn’t any paid subscription to offer.
Winner: Printful
Printful vs Teespring: Pros & Cons
Every platform has its own ups and downs, and so do Printful and Teespring. Let’s have a look at them.
Pros of Printful
- Multiple warehouses and fulfillment centers across US and Europe
- 434+ product options in various categories
- High-quality products
- Low-risk and high-profit business model
- No MOQs (minimum order quantity)
- Free-forever plan
- Offers branding solutions
- Product replacement policy (if the product gets damaged during shipping)
Cons of Printful
- The average international shipping time is 20 days
- Only a few products have high-profit margins
- Few products like canvases and frames can’t be shipped internationally
Pros of Teespring
- Options to sell on various social media platforms
- 48+ premium products to choose from
- High-quality products
- Tons of integration options (API Integration included)
- Free plan with unlimited access to the tools
- Discount on bulk orders
- Faster shipping solutions
- Multiple printing options
Cons of Teespring
- Shipping prices are a bit pricey
- No marketing features
- Limited design options
- Minimum order rule for bulk orders
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Conclusion: Printful vs Teespring (2024)
Finally, after a long debate, you have come to a conclusion. Overall, Printful is the winner, as it excels in many factors compared to Teespring. Printful can be a great option if you want to connect your eCommerce store to sell products. You will also get to choose from a range of products that you can choose to print your design on it.
But if you want to use a POD platform and want to sell in its own marketplace, Teespring is the best option. You can also create a standalone storefront from where you can promote your products. It also offers fast shipping solutions for local and international orders. In the end, it all depends on you. So which platform will you go with? Let me know in the comments.
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