Printful and Teespring are popular names in the POD world.
However, despite similarities, they have distinctive features and uses that may be a deciding factor in which one to choose.
Which platform is better for product design? Which one offers more product types? Which one is better for selling via social media?
Interested to find out? Read on to learn more about Printful vs. Teespring’s battle of features and find the answers.
Let’s dive in!
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Printful vs. Teespring: A Quick Comparison
Let’s quickly check Printful and Teespring’s highlights. We’ll compare these 2 POD players primarily in the areas where they differ.
Printful: Overview
Printful is a print-on-demand and fulfillment service that allows you to create, print, and sell custom merchandise.
When you sell a product through an online store or marketplace, Printful automatically receives the order, prints it, packages it, and ships it directly to your customer.
Key Features:
✨ Product Catalog
Printful offers a wide variety of customizable products, including:
- Apparel with Men, Women, Kids and Youth’s Clothing, and Hats.
- Accessories spanning Bags, Patches, Pins, Hair and Sports accessories, Footwear, Facemasks, and Tech accessories such as phone cases and mouse pads.
- Home and Living, consisting of Wall Art, Home Decor with subcategories, Drinkware and Coasters, Aprons, Stationery, Pet Products, etc.
- Collections that include themed and seasonal products.
- Brands that enable you to create branded merchandise like Adidas, AS Colour, Atlantis, BagBase, Beechfield Hats, Bella + Canvas, etc.
Pritntful’s product range is broader and more versatile than Teespring’s. Another striking difference is the product information section.
Printful provides product information, such as the manufacturer of the base product or product sourcing.
Also, you can find additional manufacturers’ background information for most products under the ‘Source tab.’
✨ Design and Customization
Both Printful and Teespring are beginner-friendly and intuitive platforms, but Printful offers more customization options due to its built-in design tool.
Thus, you can:
- Choose the printing technique, color, and size.
- Upload your files in JPG or PNG format or from Dropbox.
- Add customization elements like Clipart, text, layers, and fill.
- Apply Quick Designs spanning Seasons and Events, Motivation, and other categories.
- Use Premium Images with ready-to-use designs from Getty, such as stock images, vector graphics, and patterns.
They aren’t free, and each individual placement of a Premium Image costs an additional $1. Moreover, you can use designs containing Premium Images with Printful products but can’t download them as print files.
Text Customization
Printful offers robust text customization options. Besides different fonts, you can change colors and position.
Furthermore, you can apply outlining, curving, and shadowing effects.
Mockup Creation
Printful’s Mockup Generator offers various mockup styles, such as lifestyle shots, flat lays, and model images.
It also offers pre-made mockups primarily for the Apparel product category.
✨ Integrations
Printful excels in integrating with various eCommerce platforms and marketplaces, allowing for greater flexibility.
Thus, it integrates with Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Ecwid, BigCommerce, etc.
There is limited direct integration regarding social media platforms — It requires an eCommerce setup first.
✨Sample Ordering
Both platforms offer sample ordering. Printful offers a 20 % discount to test your product before selling it.
You can’t order more than 3 products per sample order monthly.
However, the number of products per sample increases as your sales progress.
✨ Shipping
Printful offers a variety of shipping options with fulfillment centers located globally, which can lead to faster shipping times depending on your customer’s location.
Another perk is that you can see real-time carrier rates from shipping companies on your product listing.
Regarding shipping times, the US takes 2-8 days, whereas other regions take 3-30 days.
Pricing
Printful doesn’t charge monthly or membership fees — You only pay for the products your customers order.
Nonetheless, you’ll have to pay extra fees for customized labels and branding options, storage fees, etc.
Printful: Pros & Cons
🟢 No set-up or monthly fees.
🟢 User-friendly.
🟢 Has a wider product range.
🔴 Doesn’t provide you with a standalone online store.
🔴 You can’t sell directly on social media platforms.
🔴 You can’t choose a production facility.
Teespring: Overview
Teespring, or Spring, is a POD platform that allows you to design, sell, and monetize custom products.
It focuses on social media marketing by enabling you to sell directly through your social media profiles, making Teespring popular with influencers.
Key Features:
✨ Product Catalog
Like a majority of POD suppliers, Spring also offers popular categories, such as:
- Apparel with Men, Women, Kids, and Youth’s Clothing,
- Home and Decor, including Holiday Decor, Wall Art, Drinkware, Pillows, Blankets, Bath, and Puzzles.
- Hats,
- Accessories, spanning Bags, Face Coverings, Footwear, Pets, Jewelry, Socks, Stickers & Stationery, Sports & Outdoor
- Collections based on themes, seasons, and trends.
You can also create AS Color branded merchandise.
However, the number of products is smaller compared to Printful. On the other hand, Teespring offers a Digital category that Printful lacks.
Thus, you can create digital eBooks, eCards, wallpapers, art prints, etc.
✨ Design and Customization
Teespring is user-friendly regarding design, but it offers basic customization options. You can upload an image with a maximum size of 50MB and add text.
Nonetheless, it allows you to select up to 5 background colors for your products.
It also allows you to design with Adobe Express if you have a subscription. If not, you can get a 15% discount through Teespring.
Although Adobe integration provides more customization, you can’t customize your Adobe design within Teespring’s dashboard.
Text Customization
Teespring allows text customization but it’s more limited compared to Printful. You can:
- Change fonts.
- Change colors.
- Do formatting and choose bold, italic, or underline, and
- Position your text.
While working on your design, you also get information about the print quality so you can tweak it.
During the creation process, you can set your pricing, estimate a potential profit, and choose how to showcase your design.
Mockup Creation
Teespring has fewer mockup options than Printful, but it allows you to add up to 15 products with the same design and launch them collectively as a ‘Listing.’
However, you won’t be able to edit the additional products in terms of text positioning and layers.
✨ Integrations
Another area where Printful and Teespring differ significantly is integrations.
While Printful focuses on eCommerce marketplaces and platforms, Teespring focuses on selling your products through social media platforms and online fan communities.
It integrates with YouTube, Linktree, Twitch, TikTok, Discord, and Beacons.
It also has a Store Drop integration that allows you to embed your store anywhere that supports HTML and to display and sell your products directly on your website via a customizable widget.
In addition, Teespring offers a standalone eCommerce website builder that you can customize in terms of layout, add social profile links, and connect an existing domain or purchase a new one.
If you connect an existing domain, you’ll pay $11.99 yearly.
Teespring also provides analytics tools and allows you to monitor profits, sales channels, listings, and orders.
✨Sample Ordering
You can order samples with Teespring, but you don’t get any discounts. Instead, you pay the standard price.
✨ Shipping
When it comes to shipping costs, both Printful and Teespring have approximately the same prices.
Some products are more expensive with Printful and vice versa.
Regarding shipping times, Printful may be on the faster side due to a more extensive partnership network.
With Teespring, the approximate delivery time is between 9-12 days. However, you can ship some products via the ‘Rush shipping’ service.
As a result, you can expect a 4-5 day delivery in the US and a 3-4 day one for the EU. However, your customers will have to pay extra for this service.
Pricing
Teespring has no subscription plan, and setting up your account is free.
However, there are additional fees, such as connecting or purchasing custom domains, creating landing pages, etc.
Teespring: Pros & Cons
🟢 You can sell directly on social media platforms.
🟢 Offers digital products.
🟢 Provides a standalone online store.
🔴 Doesn’t provide product information, such as the manufacturer of the base product or product sourcing.
🔴 Has less customization options.
🔴 Relies on external apps for more advanced design and mockup options.
Printful vs. Teespring: The Final Verdict
Printful and Teespring share many similarities as POD suppliers. However, their distinctive uses make one a better choice than the other.
If you focus on social media channels and don’t mind doing more advanced product designs and mockups outside the POD platform, then Teespring may be a better fit.
On the other hand, the need for more robust customization and integrations with eCommerce platforms and marketplaces will make Printful a much better option.
Despite their impressive qualities, both platforms focus more on other aspects than mockup creation, an essential part of a POD business.
However, there is a tool that can nudge you into the POD world and enable you to create and fully customize your product mockups.
Enter, Dynamic Mockups!
How Can Dynamic Mockups Boost Your POD?
Dynamic Mockups allows you to create, customize, and personalize mockups in bulk. This way, it streamlines otherwise time and money-consuming tasks.
What sets us apart from similar mockup generators are the high customization and personalization possibilities.
With our tool, you can:
🔥 Create custom scenes and backgrounds behind your products by entering a text prompt.
Our AI mockup generator will take it from there, enabling you to switch backgrounds without changing your original designs.
As a result, you can test different designs until you find the best one for your brand and audience.
🔥 Do bulk mockup creation by uploading multiple designs and color combinations, allowing you to create 100 mockups in only 10 seconds.
🔥 Customize your designs to create personalized and realistic mockups by uploading and customizing your Photoshop templates within our platform.
🔥 Leverage integrations with Etsy and WooCommerce, and the one with Shopify coming soon.
We also offer integrations with WordPress, Make, and Zapier for extended functionality.
🔥 Tweak your designs with our robust editing tools that enable you to:
- Do color changes via the color picker and integrated Printful and Printify color options.
- Position and reposition your designs and adjust layers for a perfect fit.
- Create more realistic mockups with Photoshop blending modes.
🔥 Browse our ever-growing Free Mockup Template Library and choose from:
Since there’s always something exciting cooking in our Dynamic Mockups kitchen, we have a special treat for you.
Our iFrame embeddable mockup editor feature is about to see daylight soon, allowing you to control the creation process and the printing quality.
Thus, it will enable your customers to design their products directly on your site without relying on 3rd parties.
Ready to try Dynamic Mockups?
Start with Dynamic Mockups for free and supercharge your POD for a great head start.
Start creating for Free!
Showcase your E-commerce products like big brands, without costing a fortune
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