Printful Overview

If you’ve ever heard of dropshipping, read articles on how to start a t-shirt business, or even ones about starting your own clothing line, or print-on-demand products, then you’ve probably heard of Printful. With over 1 million items shipped every month, 33 million products million items delivered since 2013, and 272 high-quality products to choose from, they’re a leading supplier of dropshipping goods and services. Since Printful provides great products at a great price with great service, they’re often an entrepreneur’s first choice when it comes to partnering with a dropshipper. But is Printful worth the hype?

In this Printful review we’re going to discuss what Printful does, the products and services they offer, what makes them so good at what they do, and whether they’re worth all the hype that they get.

Printful is a dropshipping service provider of apparel, accessories, and homeware goods such as t-shirts, hats, posters, throw pillows, mugs, jewelry, tote bags, stickers, phone cases, and much more. Their service is ideal for several reasons:

They don’t require any minimum purchases (MOQs), meaning you can order as little as one item at a time

You don’t have to purchase any inventory upfront or manage any inventory (no printing machines, no products, etc.)—Printful handles it all for you

Printful ships products straight to your customers so you don’t have to manage the shipping process

There are no monthly fees (unless you opt into Printful Pro)

Items ship, on average, within 3 days

Printful ships items again in the event that they are lost or damaged in transit

They offer personalized branding options such as adding logo stickers to packaging or custom packing slips

Printful provides the products, prints on the products, packages, and fulfills the order, and sends it directly to your customers—all you have to do is send orders to them with the order’s details and they’ll handle the rest.

To learn more about how their process works, check out the Printful Print Order Lifecycle.

They’re in the business of helping you create products for your business, and they provide all the necessary tools and resources to help you easily integrate the dropshipping process into your ecommerce website so you can provide a seamless experience to your customers.

Printful also offers plenty of ecommerce platform integrations so you can connect your Printful account directly to whatever website you use to sell your products on, whether it’s Shopify, BigCommerce, Etsy, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Amazon, and more.

Printful is also transparent about their product and shipping prices so you can easily understand their costs and decide on your product markups. They also provide design, photography, and branding services so your products have the best chance of looking their best and what’s more—Printful has warehouses around the world so products ship quickly to your customers and even bypass shipping and duty fees on locally available items.

And, if you’re a business that has its own inventory separate from Printful, you can use Printful’s warehousing and fulfillment services to stock your products in their worldwide warehouses so your products can be shipped, stored, and fulfilled more easily and inexpensively than if you were to do it all yourself.

We’ll cover all of these points in more detail down below, so keep reading!

Printful is for ecommerce entrepreneurs who want the ease of selling dropshipping products without losing quality or their branding in the process.

Whether you’re looking for a way to sell your own designs to your customers be it on custom t-shirts, canvases, phone cases, pillows, and more, or if you’re interested in starting any kind of product-based business without the hassle of owning inventory or production materials, then Printful is for you.

PRINTFUL IS FOR BUSINESSES THAT DON’T WANT TO COMPROMISE

Printful wants to make their merchants happy, so they continually add new products to their catalog so merchants can add new products to their stores often. As a merchant, this is great because it means you can keep your store fun and exciting by bringing out new products without having to source them from anywhere else.

For businesses that don’t want to compromise on their product quality, shipping speed, profit margins, and product selection, Printful is one of the best choices on the market. Why?

Printful doesn’t compromise on quality just because they offer dropshipping products—they keep things high quality

Printful has warehouses located all around the world so products get to customers fast

Printful is transparent about their prices and suggests RRPs so merchants know what their profit margins are before they sell a product

Printful adds new products all the time, so their product selection keeps growing

Printful’s efficiency, transparency, high-quality product offering, and varied selection are part of the reason why they’re so successful, and their ability to work with businesses to help them provide the best services for their customers is what keeps them growing.

PRINTFUL IS FOR BUSINESS OWNERS WITH NO EXPERIENCE

Best of all, you don’t have to have any prior business experience if you want to source from Printful.

The services they offer are accessible to both seasoned entrepreneurs and new business owners alike, so if you’ve never started your own business or haven’t sourced products from a dropshipping supplier before then you can still give Printful a try! There’s no minimum order requirement, no monthly fees (unless you choose to opt for Printful Pro), and you only pay for orders as your customers make them so it’s a low-risk way to start your own business.

Printful’s Features & Services

What Printful provides sellers extends far beyond just their product offering and standard dropshipping services. Those things are a huge part of what makes Printful so valuable—but they also offer so much more.

Printful offers a wide range of features and services like tools that enable sellers to get their stores set up easily, resources that help sellers create more beautiful products, and additional services that enable merchants to use Printful’s services to their fullest extent.

Let’s get into everything that Printful offers.

PRINT-ON-DEMAND PRODUCTS

Printful Print on Demand Products

Printful offers one of the biggest catalogs of print-on-demand dropshipping products on the market, and they’re constantly growing their product offerings.

Their products fall mainly within the apparel, homeware, and accessories categories and every product they offer can be printed, and/or embroidered, and/or engraved.

Their product offering currently includes:

T-Shirts/Tops

Hoodies

Sweatpants

Jackets

Leggings

Shorts

Underwear

Skirts

Dresses

Swimsuits

Sports Bras

Kids Clothing

Baby Bodysuits

Baby Bibs

Posters

Canvases

Coffee Mugs

Hats

Beanies

Throw Pillows

Tote Bags

Phone Cases

Socks

Aprons

Blankets

Duffle Bags

Jewelry

Laptop Cases

Facemasks

Keychains

Backpacks

Notebooks

Stickers

Fanny Packs

Flip Flops

Water Bottles

Postcards

Towels

Bean Bags

Pet Tags

And more. For information about their products and product pricing, check out Printful’s Custom Products page. They also listen to their sellers and they add new products regularly, so if there’s a product you want to see just let them know via their New Feature Requests page (note that you must sign in to your account with Printful to access their Feature Requests page).

PRINTING, EMBROIDERY & ENGRAVING OPTIONS

Printful Features and Services

There are several different printing methods out there, but the one that Printful primarily sticks to is Direct-to-Garment (DTG) printing. This is Printful’s printing method of choice because it’s a cost- and labor-effective way to print single-order items and the reason why they don’t require minimum orders. They also offer all-over sublimation printing for some clothing items, screen printing in some cases (for large orders only), embroidery for hats and apparel, giclée printing for art, and engraving for jewelry and metal items.

When it comes to printing, Printful makes it easy for you. You don’t have to worry about picking the best printing method for the item you’re printing on—every product offered on their website is printed in the way that best suits the product. Check out Printful’s Printing FAQ page for more information and answers to commonly asked questions.

DROPSHIPPING: PICKING, PACKING & SHIPPING

Since Printful provides a dropshipping service, there’s no need for you to ever handle or manage any of your products or inventory, and you don’t handle the packaging, shipping, or fulfillment aspects either. Printful stores, prints, picks, packs, ships, and fulfills every product—so you never have to.

This is why dropshipping is such an attractive business model for entrepreneurs who are starting their first store or don’t have a large budget to invest in product inventory or manufacturing tools. It provides a low-risk way for sellers to provide great products to their customers, and it allows sellers to focus on other aspects of their stores such as the designs, branding, customer service, or marketing without having to worry about the technical side of things like printing products and shipping them.

Currently, Printful dropships from their warehouses in:

Charlotte, North Carolina

Los Angeles, California

Dallas, TX

Toronto, Ontario

Tijuana, Mexico

Riga, Latvia

Barcelona, Spain

Birmingham, UK

São Paulo, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Amakusa, Japan

Melbourne, Australia

Brisbane, Australia

This does, of course, mean that you’re paying for Printful’s services and for them to warehouse, ship, and fulfill your products for you. While you don’t pay for their service in monthly fees or minimum orders, your profit margins will be affected and will be smaller than if you were manufacturing products yourself. This disadvantage is not exclusive to Printful, it applies to the dropshipping business model as a whole. It is, however, an important aspect of dropshipping to keep in mind so you can prepare your margins accordingly.

WAREHOUSING & FULFILLMENT FOR ECOMMERCE STORESPrintful Warehouse and Fulfillment Services

Printful also offers a warehousing and fulfillment service where they store, pick, pack, and ship products on behalf of merchants—even if they aren’t Printful products!

Printful has a sophisticated network of shipping, fulfillment, and logistics solutions that they hire out to merchants who need access to these resources. With this service, you can store your products in their warehouses and they’ll fulfill your orders and ship your products as your orders come in. Your products will ship directly to your customers (they won’t be shipped to you first) and they’ll also be shipped with your own brand packaging so you won’t lose out on your brand experience.

Currently, Printful’s warehousing and fulfillment services operate out of a selection of their globally-dispersed warehouse network, including:

Charlotte, North Carolina

Los Angeles, California

Toronto, Ontario

Riga, Latvia

Barcelona, Spain

This is an ideal option for ecommerce merchants who don’t want to handle shipping and fulfillment themselves or don’t have the resources to operate a shipping warehouse, or even don’t have the expertise to create an efficient and cost-effective global shipping strategy.

If this sounds like a service you need, learn more about Printful’s warehousing and fulfillment services for ecommerce stores here.

BRANDING SERVICES

Printful Branding Services

Beyond offering great dropshipping products and a fulfillment service, Printful also offers design and branding services to help take businesses to the next level.

Usually, one of the biggest problems when dropshipping is that your branding becomes compromised. Since dropshippers send orders to many different customers on behalf of many different brands, they can’t create a unique branding experience for every package so they typically ship everything in plain packaging. This means that small but important touches like branded packing inserts and branded receipts aren’t used, which causes brands to lose out on important touchpoints.

Printful recognized this hardship and offers a few branding options to make it more personable between brands and customers.

Opt to use one of Printful’s branded pack-in options, like:

Flyers and coupons

Business cards

Branded stickers

Postcards

Handwritten thank-you cards

And, you can even make use of Printful’s white-label services to make each product more on brand. Printful’s white label services include:

Branded inner labels

Branded outer labels

Branded embroidered labels

Branded packing slips

A customizable return address

These options help to maintain brand consistency between your website and the products your customers receive so you can continue to build on the experience. To learn more about the branding services Printful offers, check out this page.

DESIGN SERVICES

Printful Design Services

Printful’s experienced team can also help you with the design requirements you might need to get your ecommerce store off the ground.

Not only can they help you prepare print files for Printful products, but they can also help you with any other design needs like redesigning logos, creating sublimation print files, color-matching print files, making minor adjustments to print files, creating new graphics, creating custom artwork and more.

Plus, you can even get Printful to provide product photography services and video production services for your business as well.

This is an ideal service for the ecommerce merchant who has an idea of what designs they want to print on their products but aren’t sure how to bring it to life, or the store owner who wants to outsource the artwork creation process so they can free up some time to handle other aspects of building their business.

With Printful’s dedicated design team, you’re in good hands. They can take the reins on your designs so you can focus on doing the things you do best. If this is a service you might require, check out Printful’s Design Services page here for more information.

Note: If you want to create great designs for your dropshipping products without working with Printful’s design team, check out Printful’s integration with stock photo magnate, Getty Images. You can choose from 80 million of Getty’s images to print on your products which makes designing cool products so much easier. Learn more about Printful’s Getty integration here.

ECOMMERCE STORE SETUP SERVICES

Printful Store Set Up Services

Want to start an ecommerce store and sell Printful products but don’t have the time or tech skills to get it up and running. Yep, Printful can do that for you too.

They’ve got plenty of experience starting and running ecommerce stores, so they can get one set up for you while you sit back and relax. They’ll build your store from scratch, connect it to Printful, and add all the finishing touches you want.

Printful sets up Shopify and WooCommerce stores for merchants so if you’re interested in their services, learn more here.

ECOMMERCE PLATFORM INTEGRATIONS

Printful Ecommerce Integrations

Printful integrates with the most commonly used ecommerce platforms, and installation for most of these platforms is easy and fast.

Integrating Printful with your ecommerce store means that you don’t have to manually handle each customer’s order and submit them to Printful yourself. When you integrate Printful with your ecommerce platform, every time your customers place an order it automatically gets sent to Printful so you don’t have to handle it at all. This means that orders get sent to Printful immediately and there’s no chance of losing the order or making a mistake on the order details throughout the transition.

This is great news if you want to run an automated dropshipping store that you don’t need to be hands-on with at all times.

Printful integrations are available with these ecommerce platforms:

• Shopify
• BigCommerce
• WooCommerce
• Squarespace
• Wix
• Amazon
• Etsy
• eBay
• Wish
• Square
• Magento
• Big Cartel
• Storenvy
• Gumroad
• Webflow
• Prestashop
• Ecwid
• Weebly

Or, you can connect your store to Printful via an API integration.

For more information about the platforms Printful integrates with and for comparisons of each one, check out Printful’s Ecommerce Drop Shipping Integrations page.

HELPFUL TOOLS & RESOURCES

Printful Pro

As we’ve mentioned before, what makes Printful such a valuable service to use is that they’re committed to not only providing great service through their product offering and fulfillment capabilities, but they also go the extra mile to help sellers use Printful to its fullest extent.

The tools and resources Printful provides to help their merchants sell better include:

Printing Tips: They provide plenty of articles that are easily accessible through their homepage to help sellers understand the different printing advantages and disadvantages such as DTG print file transparency, fabric facts, sublimation printing facts, garment printing facts, and information on how to create embroidery files so merchants can get the best possible print on their products.

Mockup Generator: Use their mockup generator to apply your designs digitally to their products to get a sense of what the finished product will look like or to create product images for your ecommerce store.

Printful App: Keep an eye on your store while you’re on the go with Printful’s app.

Printful Pro: Get even more out of Printful with a Printful Pro subscription. Access their background removal tool, 400+ exclusive clipart images, the keyword scout for Etsy, additional premium images at no extra cost, and get embroidery files digitized for free.

Getty Images Integration: Pick from 80 million Getty images to add to your Printful designs. Learn more here.

Profit Calculator: As we’ve mentioned, the dropshipping business model inherently means you’ll be working with slimmer profit margins, so use their profit calculator to determine exactly what your margins will be for each product so you can budget your markup accordingly.

Samples: In order to sample items for yourself or to test out Printful’s products, they provide discounted sample products and shipping prices to sellers.

Checklist: Check out their checklist to help you set up your store with Printful in the quickest and most prepared way possible.

Printful Lessons: Kick your ecommerce store up a notch with the help of Printful Lessons. They have videos covering all types of content including business-building advice, marketing techniques, design and style trend reports, and guides to getting started on Printful.

Blog: Printful’s blog is a valuable resource to go to if you’re interested in learning more about their products, services, integrations, or how to actually build your store the way you want it. They’re experts on their products and services, so if you need any more information about what they do, check out their blog posts.

YouTube Channel: For video walkthroughs and demonstrations, check out their active YouTube channel to learn more about their products, how their products are created, new product or service offerings, and more.

Sustainability & Responsibility: Printful understands the role it plays in the larger conversations of sustainability and responsibility. Check out their sustainability and responsibility efforts here.

Pros & Cons of Printful

While Printful offers many different services, resources, and tools that are valuable to their sellers, there are still some aspects of their services that they are working to improve. Let’s dive into the advantages and disadvantages of using Printful as a dropshipping service provider.

PROS:

USA-based & European-based warehouses, therefore products are easily accessible to major consumer markets

Low-risk business model sincere no upfront purchase of inventory is necessary

High-quality products

High-quality printing capabilities

A large variety of products to choose from

No minimum orders requirements

No monthly fees to use their service (unless opting into Printful Pro)

No import fees on locally available products

Transparent shipping prices

Products ship out products to customers, on average, within 3 days

Customizable branding options

Re-shipments for lost or damaged products

Plenty of online resources for guidance on their products and services

Automate your business with their ecommerce platform integrations

CONS:

At this time, their product selection is composed primarily of apparel, accessories, and homeware goods only

Typically there are slim profit margins for dropshipped goods (this is true for dropshipping as a whole—it’s not exclusive to Printful)

Their branding options are limited (you can’t use your own boxes, poly-mailers, tissue paper, or anything beyond what customizations they offer)

Some products, such as the framed posters or canvases, may not ship everywhere

So, is Printful worth the hype?

Ultimately, Printful offers the best dropshipping service when it comes to apparel, accessories, and homeware printing and distributing. They have a large offering of high-quality products, and they strive to get it right every time. They also work with their sellers to continuously improve the products and services they offer whether that’s getting new types of products in, or adding more selection to what they currently offer.

Their drive to offer high-quality products and services and to constantly improve their products, tools, and resources is why so many sellers choose to work with them and continue to sell with them.

Printful is essentially a full-service ecommerce dropshipping solution, and that’s hard to find anywhere else at the same scale that Printful offers.

Printful Pricing

Printful Pricing

Printful’s pricing varies for each product they offer, so for all the information regarding their product’s pricing, refer to their Products & Pricing page. Printful also does not require any minimum orders or monthly fees (unless you opt into Printful Pro), so you only pay for their products when your customers order them from you.

Printful FAQs

WHAT IS PRINTFUL?

Printful is a dropshipping supplier that offers a large range of high-quality products in the apparel, accessories, and homeware niches. They integrate directly with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce so merchants can source and sell dropshipping products directly to their customers without having to purchase inventory upfront or handle any part of the shipping process. They print merchant’s designs on all of their products so every business owner can sell unique items, and Printful ships all over the world from their globally-dispersed fulfillment warehouses.

IS PRINTFUL WORTH THE HYPE?

Ultimately, yes. Printful is worth the hype. They do dropshipping so well that it’s hard to find any other dropshipper offering the same services that Printful does as well as Printful does. If you want to create custom designs and print them on dropshipping products, Printful should rank high on your considerations list.

IS PRINTFUL EASY TO USE?

Overall, yes, Printful is easy to use. There may be a bit of a learning curve to figure out if you’ve never created design files before, but Printful is used to working with brand new entrepreneurs so their customer support team is always ready to help. Plus, if you’re really lost you can check out Printful’s Help Center to find your answers, or reach out directly to the Printful team to get clarification.

WHY IS PRINTFUL BETTER THAN OTHER DROPSHIPPERS?

Printful is one of the best dropshippers on the market because they make dropshipping easy for merchants. They offer a wide range of high-quality products, there are no minimum order requirements, they ship worldwide, they have fulfillment centers in many different countries, and they really listen to merchants and keep expanding their services to make them even better.

HOW MUCH DOES PRINTFUL COST?

Printful is free to use—you just have to purchase from Printful once one of your customers purchases a product from you. There are no monthly fees (unless you opt into Printful Pro, but you don’t have to) and there are no minimum order requirements.

WHERE DOES PRINTFUL SHIP FROM?

Printful ships from their warehouses located in Charlotte, North Carolina, Los Angeles, California, Dallas, Texas, Toronto, Ontario, Tijuana, Mexico, Riga, Latvia, Barcelona, Spain, Birmingham, United Kingdom, São Paulo, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Amakusa, Japan, Melbourne, Australia, Brisbane, Australia.

HOW MUCH DOES PRINTFUL CHARGE FOR SHIPPING?

How much Printful charges for shipping depends on where they’re shipping from, where they’re shipping to, and which product(s) is being shipped. You can find Printful’s shipping information here and their very helpful article The Beginner’s Guide to Ecommerce Shipping Pricing here.

HOW MUCH IS PRINTFUL PER MONTH?

Printful is free to use and they don’t charge a monthly fee for their regular services. Printful only charges you if you order a product from them. Printful Pro is an option for merchants who want to access more features, and it costs $49/month or $539/year.

With Printful Pro you can:

Customize 250+ products

Integrate with 15+ ecommerce platforms

Create product templates

Create designs in the Design Maker

Download mockups and print files

Use 700 clipart images

Use the background removal tool

400+ exclusive clipart images

Promo Maker

Keyword Scout for Etsy

Use Premium Images at no extra cost

Get embroidery files digitized for free

IS PRINTFUL LEGIT?

Yes, Printful is legitimate. Printful has been around since 2013 and they’ve grown massively since then, and they’ve continued to expand their services and product offerings. We’ve personally used Printful to start businesses like the t-shirt business we mentioned in our How to Start a T-Shirt Business post and it’s one of the main dropshipping suppliers we always suggest to new entrepreneurs because it’s so easy to use and they offer so many products.

IS PRINTFUL WORTH IT?

If you want to start a dropshipping business, Printful is definitely worth checking out. They offer a lot of great products and their product range is constantly expanding, plus they offer great printing and fulfillment services so they’re a great dropshipping supplier to work with.

DOES PRINTFUL SHIP WORLDWIDE?

Yes, Printful ships worldwide, however, there are a few countries that Printful doesn’t ship to, including Cuba, Iran, Crimea, Syria, and North Korea.

Some products may not be available in all regions and some products may not ship to all regions, but for the most part, everything is accessible worldwide. If a product is not available or doesn’t ship worldwide for any reason, Printful will make it clear on their website.

HOW DOES PRINTFUL WORK?

Printful works like a dropshipping supplier. The full explanation of how Printful works can be found here.

DOES PRINTFUL SHIP FOR YOU?

Yes, Printful ships for you. They’re a dropshipping supplier, so once they have your customer’s order they pick, pack, and ship the order straight to your customer but they make it look like you sent it.

IS PRINTFUL GOOD QUALITY?

One of the best things about Printful is that their products are high-quality. Many dropshipping suppliers get a bad reputation for having low-quality products, but not Printful. Their products and printing are high-quality so they’re worth what merchants and customers pay for.

DOES PRINTFUL AUTOMATICALLY SHIP ORDERS?

When Printful is integrated into your ecommerce platform (like Shopify or BigCommerce—see Printful’s full list of ecommerce integration partners here) your customer’s orders will automatically be transferred to Printful and they’ll automatically print, package, and ship the order directly to your customer. You don’t have to do anything on your end—it’s completely automated!

Visit Printful now and start your dropshipping business