Printful Review : Is Legit or Scam? 2024

This Printful review examines the site to know if they actaully provide quality as promised or not. Customers complaints and feedback also evaluated while wrting this post.

Printful is legit. There are lots of good and positive things about Printful. This review examines the website and shows you why it is legitimate.

Printful is one of the brands of the Draugiem Group who advertise as turning ideas into companies that create solutions in particular fields. That’ll mean that Printful is one company creating solutions. Their name (Printful) is revealing of what solutions they create and in what field – Printful provides product printing and drop shipping services.

Printful advertises as providing “easy print-on-demand drop shipping and fulfillment warehouse services”. The big question is whether that is just a marketing blurb or whether this POD supplier actually provides easy services. Does Printful provide the product range, print quality, customer support, and other services that’ll make them the go-to destination for persons wanting to sell custom products? In the first place, is Printful legit?

This Printful review will also examine Printful to provide the information that’ll help you answer these questions and more.

Printful review at a glance

• Founded in 2013, and is part of the Draugiem Group
• Provide POD (Print on Demand) order drop shipping service
• Integrates with a host of e-commerce platforms (such as Shopify, Woo commerce, etc) including marketplaces (such as Amazon and ebay) as well as website and apps
• Can be used for individual buying and to fulfill orders placed in stores
• Products offered include clothing, accessories (hats, bags, phone cases and socks) and home & living items
• Offers a range of custom branding options
• Has four fulfillment centers located in North America (Los Angeles, Charlotte, Tijuana) and Europe (Riga)
• Ships worldwide, and shipping is relatively fast
• Accept returns for only defective (misprinted items), while returns for wrong sizes or buyer’s remorse will be at sellers expense
• Claims for defective (misprinted) items are accepted if submitted within 4 weeks of receipt of item
• Customer support is available via email (support@printful.com) and telephone (+1 (818) 351-7181)

What is Printful?

Printful is one of 12 brands of the tech Company – Draugiem Group – which works to bring together ideas, knowledge and the latest technologies to create solutions in particular fields. The idea that has turned into Printful was birthed in 2013; and it is to create solutions in the product printing and drop shipping business field. Product printing allows you to sell fancy unique products that you customize yourself by putting your custom design or artwork on any of the products offered by the company.  Drop shipping service allows you to fulfill orders in your store without having to even see, touch, or store any inventory.

In the “About Us” page of their website, Printful explains that their name simply combines “Print” and “Ful”, where Print means “Print Product” and Ful means “Fulfillment Service”.

Printful – Roots of the name

With that explanation, it’s clear that the two essential parts of the company’s service is print products and fulfillment. Thus, Printful is a POD (Print-on-demand) order fulfillment service. In fact, Printful does one more than fulfilling POD orders, they also drop ship.

Printful stands as one of the better names in the POD order fulfilment business that’ll both print and drop ship. At the time of writing, they were over 1,150,000 sellers using already using Printful to sell customize clothing, accessories, and home & living items in different e-commerce platforms and marketplaces.

Is Printful legit?

Printful is legit. It is not a scam comapny. And they have been online for some time now without problem. It’s no longer news that there are many scam artists in cyberspace with the one objective of ripping people off. As a result, netizens want to find out if a platform is legit before using it especially where they’ll be required to send in their hard earned money. Thus, the words “legit” and “scam” have been carelessly thrown about in cyberspace, with some reviewers attaching “legit” to any platform they are satisfied with and attaching “scam” to any platform they are not satisfied with.

Thus, one of the big questions to be answered in this review is whether Printful is legit or a scam. However, instead of subjecting throwing legit or scam as some would do, we’ll give you information that’ll help you come to your own conclusion.

One of the first things to look out for in establishing a platform’s legitimacy is legality. Printful ticks the box in this regard because it is a fully incorporated company (Printful Inc), which is one of 12 brands of the super tech company – Draugiem Group. In the least this means that Printful is 100% legal.  Suffice it to say that scam stores do not seek legal recognition by way of company registration.

Another check of legitimacy is order fulfillment. Suffice it to say that scam stores do not fulfill orders, as their modus operandi is to collect payments and go dark. However, Printful has been fulfilling POD orders since 2013; with their website reporting over 6.26 million orders have been fulfilled to date. That Printful has been operating for over five years is another testament to their legitimacy. It shows that the platform fulfill orders, because a scam platform that does not fulfill orders are generally short lived; they’ll be called out in no time, and with such exposure they’ll close shop and disappear.

Another check of legitimacy is physical presence. It should be said that the scam stores are usually only virtual with no physical trace – there’s usually no fulfillment center, and no merchandise. However, Printful has a robust physical presence with four fulfillment centers (California (US), North Carolina (US), Riga (Latvia), and Tijuana (Mexico)).

Another check of legitimacy is whether fulfilled orders are functional or fit for purpose. This is important to many because it doesn’t matter if a company is legal or if it fulfill orders, if what is delivered amount to being useless. The quality of delivered items is the crux of this check. Suffice it to say that there is evidence that Printful have invested heavily in printing equipment (over $17 million), which should translate to good print quality; also, online reviews name Printful as one go-to destination for quality POD orders fulfillment service. Thus, it’s safe to say that Printful delivers functional (fit for purpose) items.

That said, with Printful being 100% legal, having a robust physical presence, and having a track record of fulfilling orders with functional items, there’s really no doubt that the platform is legit.

Is Printful safe?

You go for a legit store because you don’t want to be ripped off. However, if the store, though legit, is not safe, it will leave you exposed to other cyber fraudsters. Thus, the ideal e-commerce platform should be both legit and safe. Safety in this respect is effectively safeguarding users’ information (which includes personal data and credit card details) and preventing its leakage to unauthorized third parties.

In their privacy policy, Printful says that they are fully committed to protect users’ sensitive data and to use it only in accordance with legal obligations. Thus, there should be no worries that your sensitive data will be shared with parties not relevant in the provision of essential service (except it is to conform to legal requirement). In terms of data security, Printful talks of using reasonable organizational, technical, and administrative measures to protect customers’ data.

We like the details of the security measures employed (such as encryption protocol etc). Though, these details are not given, that Printful has not suffered a security breach is a sign of the relative solidity of the measures. Thus, it’s safe to say that Printful is safe.

How it Works

Being a Print on Demand service means Printful allow you to sell custom products (albeit only products they offer in their product catalog). Printful will allow you to create a unique item by putting your custom design on any of the products in their catalog. They’ll generate mock-ups (what the custom item will look like) which you can publish to your store and use for your advert campaigns. When a customer to you store places an order of the item, the fulfillment service of Printful swings into action.

As a fulfillment service; orders you get at your ecommerce store are automatically imported to the system of Printful, and they’ll proceed to produce the custom item. Because Printful also drop ships, after producing the custom item, they’ll ship it directly to the customer.

Features

Ease of Use

It’s a no-brainer that you’ll want easy processes. You don’t want to have the headaches when connecting your store to a POD fulfillment platform or when using the fulfillment service to fulfill orders of custom items placed in your store. Thus, the ideal should feature ease of use both during set-up and afterwards.

One of the first considerations in this respect is the range of e-commerce platforms that the POD fulfillment app integrates with. It’ll be disappointing if you have an established store in a particular e-commerce platform only to find that the POD fulfillment service you’re thinking of using does not integrate with the e-commerce platform. Thus, you’ll want a fulfillment service that integrates with a range of platforms, so that the platform you use will more likely be covered.

In this respect, Printful does excellently well. Printful integrate with all the major e-commerce such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Weebly, SquareSpace, BigCommerce, Ship Station, Ecwid, Gumroad, Big Cartel, and Presta Shop. Printful also integrates with marketplaces such as Etsy, Storenvy, Amazon, Ebay, and Inktale. You can also integrate Printful with your website or apps.

Integrating with a wealth of platforms is an obvious advantage, but because each platform has its own features, it can become difficult to know what platform to go with. Printful helps in this regard by providing an e-commerce comparison chart that will help you decide which platform works best for you. The platforms are compared using elements such as: whether live shipping rates are provided, price, whether a personal server is required, whether products are automatically pushed to store, how fast orders placed in your store are imported from to Printful, whether shipping status update are provided, whether “out of stock” notice are displayed, and ease of installation.

After determining that Printful integrates with your e-commerce platform, connecting it to your store is a breeze.  Also, filling your store with items from Printful is also easy. The simple steps are as follows:

• Get a custom design – For this you can create your own design, or get a design from any of the stock website. But endeavor not to take a copyrighted design so as not to have copyright trolls on your neck.
• Pick a product to customize – For this, you’ll go to Printful product catalog, and choose a product from the selection on offer. You’ll see the detail product description (as well as Printful’s price, where the item is stocked, and shipping times, etc). If you’re okay with these details, you can click the very visible “Start designing” button on the page.
• In the “Edit Model” page that opens, you can customize the product by uploading your custom design and/ or adding text (for text based designs) or clip arts. You’ll also see option to customize the back of the shirt, right sleeve and left sleeve. After adding your design, you can click continue.
• You’ll see a mock-up of the custom item, which allows you to see how the custom item looks. You’ll also see pages where you can set your selling price. After that, you can place the order for the custom item (if you are an individual buyer), or publish/ save the item to your store (if you are a seller).

Buying and Selling Service

Unlike some POD services that can only be used by sellers, Printful can also be used by individual buyers. You know that online stores using Printful to fulfill orders of custom items will set a selling price higher than Printful’s asking prices in order to make a profit.

As an individual buyer, it’s good that you can use Printful directly to buy custom items, as that will be cheaper than buying from a third party store. Apart from getting items cheaper, you’ll also be able to use your own custom designs. When buying from a seller using a POD fulfillment service, you’ll only be getting fancy items that the seller has customized. But when buying directly, you’ll have the opportunity to use your own custom designs. The only drawback to buying directly is that you’ll have to go through the process of customizing the product yourself.  But as describe in the last section, that’s also fairly easy.

Custom branding options

Do you want to have just a store or a brand? It can be just a store when products drop shipped to your customers have logos and branding of the product manufacturer and the print service, but nothing of your store. However, it can be more than a store when products drop shipped have your brand all over it. With Printful Custom branding options, you can own your own brand, and your store can really become “your own”. This is because Printful is a white-label drop shipper, who will print and ship everything under your brand with custom labels, pack-ins, and other branding options; so your customers will not have a clue that it isn’t you doing everything.

Some of the branding options are:

• Branding Stickers: You can upload a black and white design with your logo, and Printful will stick it to the outside of most of the packages that will be shipped to your customers. Interestingly, this service is free.  
• Inside Shirt Label: There are a number of shirts with tear-away labels; if the custom item is from one of these shirts, Printful can remove the manufacturer’s label, and print your custom label directly on the shirt. Thus, the item becomes completely under your brand. This service cost an extra $2.49 per shirt
• Outside Shirt Label: If the manufacturer’s label cannot be removed from the shirt you’re customizing; Printful gives you the option of printing your brand on the outside of the shirt. That makes your brand even more visible, as it will be noticed by people whenever and wherever the garment is worn. This service also cost an extra $2.49 per shirt
• Return Address: Printful will also put your company name in the return packet, but the return address listed will be Printful’s. That way, you maintain your brand all the way; if the customer chooses to return the order, it will be appear as if the return package will be received by your company, while it is actually Printful that’ll receive it.
• Pack-Ins: You may choose to personalize the order that will be drop shopped for you by adding branded pack-ins (such as flyers, business cards or stickers). For this service, you’ll have to mail Printful the pack-ins, and they’ll add them to every order they fulfill for you. Pack-ins will cost you $0.75 per order and $0.85 per day for storage (bill once a month).

Products

Product Range

An important thing to consider when choosing a POD fulfillment service is the range of products in their product catalog. Simply put, this determines the range of products you can sell in your store. That is, if you want to sell fancy shoes in your store, you’ll want to make sure that shoes are offered for customizing in the product catalog of the PD fulfillment service.

In this regard, the products you’ll find offered by Printful are categorized as follows:

• Clothing

Women’s Clothing – Shirts (T-Shirts, All-over Shirts, Tank Tops, Crop Tops, Embroidered Shirts, 3/4 Sleeve Shirts, Long Sleeve Shirts), Hoodies, Sweatshirts, Leggings, Skirts, Dresses, Swimwear, Sports Bra, Bodysuits Shorts, Jackets

Men’s Clothing – Shirts (T-Shirts, Polo Shirts, All-over Shirts, 3/4 Sleeve Shirts, Long Sleeve Shirts, Embroidered Shirts), Tank Tops, Crop Tops, Hoodies, Sweatshirts, Shorts, and Jackets

Kids’ Clothing – Shirts (T-Shirts, All-over Shirts), Tank Tops, Leggings, Baby Bodysuits, Baby Bibs, and Swimwear

• Hats

Trucker Hats, Snapbacks, Dad Hat/ Baseball caps, 5-panel Hats, Mesh Hats, Beanies, Bucket Hats, and Visors

• Accessories

Phone Cases (iPhone Cases, Samsung Cases), Bags (Tote Bags, Drawstring Bags, Backpacks), and Socks

• Home and Living

Embroidered Aprons, Coffee Mugs, Throw Pillows, Pillow Cases, Wall Art, Posters, Beach Towels, Framed Posters, Bean Bags, and Canvas Prints

That said, you’ll find that Printful is somewhat wanting in the range of products offered. For example, you cannot use the service to fulfill orders of fancy shoes or fancy jewelry.

However, one good thing about POD orders is that you can build your store around one product of the fulfillment services. For example, I can build a store offering only fancy hats; and getting different unique caps will simply be a matter of using different custom artworks or inspirational quotes to customize a particular plain Snapback.

Product Quality

When it comes to POD products, quality checks should include both quality of print, and the quality of the product printed on. It won’t make sense that the prints come out dull, or that the prints wash off after using the product briefly. It also does will not make sense that the print is of good quality but on materials that will sag or lose form only after a few wears.

For print quality, it should be said that Printful has invested over $17 million in printing equipments because of a commitment to produce excellent prints. We agree that the commitment or the heavy investments do not necessarily translate to actually producing quality prints, but that appears to be the case with Printful. You’ll find that Printful has very good reviews in the various e-commerce platforms as well as in many independent review platforms. Printful stands out as one POD company that does its stuff really well, and produces top quality printing. You’ll also find that the products in Printful are quality items from some good brands.

However, the quality of printing is heavily influenced by the quality of the image you upload, as well as the material on which the print will be done. Thus, while customizing your item, you might find that you have to work on your image for it to meet printable quality.

While it’s safe to say that the Printful ticks the box in terms of quality of customized items, you can order a sample product, so that you’ll see firsthand the quality of the final product. That way, you can be assured of the quality of all items that you publish to your store. What is more, you do not need to fret about costs. Printful gives a 20% discount for all sample products plus free shipping to select locations. (Sample orders fulfilled in the American fulfillment centers ships free to Canada, the US, and US territories; while sample orders fulfilled in the European fulfillment center ships free to all locations in Europe).

The one problem is that persons not resident in Europe, Canada or the US (and US territories) will have to pay for shipping of sample orders. Another bump on this road is that the sample orders are limited to one per month. Thus, you will be unable to test out products on a regular basis.

Pricing

Service Price

If you’ll be using a fulfillment platform to fulfill orders placed in your store, you’ll want to make sure that the cost of using the service is not too high. Where service costs are involved, free apps are very appealing.

Fortunately, Printful is one such free app. There are no subscription fees or any other hidden charges. Amongst POD drop shippers, there are many apps that charge monthly subscription fees. One problem with such subscription-based apps is that, if you do not make sales (especially in the early days of your store), you’ll find yourself “paying rent” to the fulfillment company despite them having not fulfilled any order.

There are other fulfillment apps which charge service fees, but offer a free plan that can be used free of charge. The one problem is that such free plans usually come with restrictions (such as number of items that you can list in your shop, and number of orders that can be fulfilled in a month). Where your shop excels, you’ll find it stifled by those restrictions; and you’ll have to subscribe to the paid plans, where every higher priced plan have more features.

That said, being a totally free app, you can install Printful and use the full range of its features free of charge. Printful will only make money when you make a sale (a customer places and pays for an order in your store, and you pay Printful their asking price for the product).

Product Pricing

Product pricing is an important consideration when choosing to use a POD company. When buying for yourself, you’ll not want to pay what you perceive as unreasonable. When using the company to fulfill POD orders in your store, there’s even more reason to want reasonable product prices; you’ll want enough room to set your selling price and still make significant profit.

In this regard, Printful does not come out as one of the cheapest POD fulfillment services; instead they’ll fall in the top half of the pile.

For example, at the time of writing this review; in the men category: Shirts (T-Shirts, Tank Tops, etc) ranged from $8.95 to $33.95; Hoodies and Sweatshirts ranged from $17.75 to $39.95; Jackets were priced between $33.45 and $35.50; and Shorts went for $28.03. In the women category, Shirts (T-shirts, Polo Shirt, Racer back Tank Top, Bodysuit etc) ranged from $8.95 to $33.95, Hoodies and Sweatshirts ranged from $17.75 to $34.95, Leggings and Short ranged from $17.50 to $34.95, Dresses ranged from $32.95 to $35.95, Swimwear ranged from $15.95 to $29.95, Sports Bra went for $28.95, and Jackets went for $35.50.

In the Kids’ clothing category; Shirts ranged from $11.95 to $16, Swimwear ranged from $21.95 to $24.95, Leggings went for $19.95, Baby bodysuits ranged from $12.75 to $13.95, and Baby Bibs went for $10.95. In the hat category; Beanies cost around $14.00, Visors went for $16.95, Bucket caps went for $17.50, Snapbacks ranged from $13.95 to $15, Trucker caps went for $13.95, while baseball cap ranged from $15.95 to $17.50.

In the accessories category: phone cases went for $10.95; Tote bags ranged from $12 to $24.95; Draw string bags went for $15.95; backpacks went for $35.95; while socks went for $11.95. In the home and living category: Coffee mugs ranged from $7.95 to $9.95; Aprons went for $16.50; Throw pillows ranged between $15.95 and $17.95; Pillow cases went for $13.95 and $15.95; Beach Towels went for $24.95; Posters ranged from $7 to $9; Framed posters ranged from $18.50 to $23; Canvas print went for $29.95; and bean bags ranged from $44.89 to $72.98.

If you’ve seen reviews of other POD fulfillment Companies, you’ll find that these prices of Printful are not the most competitive. They are not by any means the worst (most expensive) prices; but considering that shipping costs are not inclusive, you can get all inclusive cost prices elsewhere.

Profit Potential

If you’ll be using Printful to fulfill orders placed in your store, when considering product pricing, you’ll have an eye on the amount of profit you can make.

As documented in the last section, product pricing in Printful might not be the best; however you can still use Printful to turn a decent profit. For example, in the T-shirts section, you’ll find items of different styles and from different brands costing between $8.95 and $33.95. Most times, the price of these items is more of branding than quality. Thus, instead of drawing items from the top half of the price range, you can pick good quality shirts from the lower half of the price range, customize these and publish them to your store. If you were to pick a $12.95 T-Shirt, you can set your selling price at $19.95 (without shipping), and you’ll be making a profit of $7 per unit sold.

That said, in the product sections of Printful, though some particular items may be priced high, you’ll find some lower-priced version of the particular product, which will give you enough room to set a selling price that is reasonable, and most importantly, that’ll earn you a reasonable profit.

Shipping

Shipping is an important consideration when choosing an e-commerce platform, especially a POD order drop shipper. You’ll want to consider the destinations that the POD Company ships to, how long their delivery takes, and how much it cost.

Shipping Destinations

When operating a store, you’ll want as many customers as possible. For that, the more locations your drop shipper is able to serve the greater the pool that your customers can come from; this is because customers will only buy from shops that ship to where they are resident. Thus, you’ll want a fulfillment Company that ships to worldwide locations.

Printful does very well in this respect because they ship to different locations around the world.

Shipping Cost

Shipping costs adds up to the purchase cost of any item when determining the total expenditure on an item. Thus, when the shipping costs are high, an item though priced relatively low, may become expensive to acquire. As a result, whether you are using a POD fulfillment service to buy for yourself or to fulfill POD orders placed in your store, you’ll want to consider their shipping costs.

Where costs are involved, zero costs win it all the time. Thus, free shipping will be very appealing. Unfortunately, Printful does not offer free shipping. This should not be a turn off, as there’s really any POD service that offers free shipping. The best you’ll find is shipping cost being included in the cost of items. However, Printful does not do this either; their product prices are exclusive of shipping cost, and you’ll have to pay for shipping. Printful offers both flat rates and live rates.

If you choose the live rate, your shipping cost will be calculated based on certain factors such as where the order will be fulfilled, where it’s shipping to, and the selected shipping method. If you opt for the Live Rates, the different shipping options that are available are Express shipping, Standard Shipping, Economy Shipping. When shipping to the US, there’s also the choice of Overnight Shipping. 

For the flat rates, you’ll be paying a fixed amount for shipping as long as the order doesn’t exceed size or weight limits. It will appear that for the flat rate, Printful uses Standard shipping. The flat rates for some of the products in the catalog of Printful are as follows:

• T-Shirts, Totes and Bags, All-over shirts, All-over leggings, Dresses, Skirts, Swimwear, Aprons, and Sports Bra

First Item: $5.00 (shipping to the US), $8.00 (shipping to Canada), $10.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $4.00 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

Each additional item: +$0.75 (shipping to the US), +$1.00 (shipping to Canada), +$1.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $0.75 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

• Hoodies and Sweatshirts

First Item: $8.00 (shipping to the US), $10.00 (shipping to Canada), $11.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $7.00 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

Each additional item: +$2.00 (shipping to the US), +$2.00 (shipping to Canada), +$2.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $2.25 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

• Caps

Snapbacks, Baseball caps, Visors etc

First Item: $5.75 (shipping to the US), $8.00 (shipping to Canada), $15.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $5.75 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

Each additional item: +$0.60 (shipping to the US), +$2.00 (shipping to Canada), +$2.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $0.60 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

Beanies and Bucket Caps

First Item: $2.95 (shipping to the US), $7.00 (shipping to Canada), $10.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $4.50 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

Each additional item: +$0.50 (shipping to the US), +$1.00 (shipping to Canada), +$2.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $0.35 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

• Socks and Phone Cases

First Item: $3.50 (shipping to the US), $10.00 (shipping to Canada), $12.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $4.45 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

Each additional item: +$0.75 (shipping to the US), +$1.00 (shipping to Canada), +$1.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $0.45 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

• Mugs

First Item: $6.95 (shipping to the US), $10.95 (shipping to Canada), $16.95 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $6.45 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

Each additional item: +$5.00 (shipping to the US), +$7.00 (shipping to Canada), +$8.00 (shipping international from US fulfillment center), and $2.95 (shipping internationally from Europe fulfillment center)

For those who like choice, it’s a good thing to find that Printful offers both flat rates and live rates. With flat rates, you may find yourself disadvantaged (cost-wise) if where your order is shipping to is not too far from the fulfillment center, or advantaged if your order is shipping to a distant location. But having live rates available, you can choose the most cost effective option for your order.

Shipping Times

No one will want to wait too long after placing an order to receive the package. Thus, whether you’ll be using the POD Company to fulfill your individual order, or to fulfill orders placed by customers in your store, you’ll want a fulfillment service that will deliver as quickly as possible.

Two times affect delivery – production time, and shipping time. For the former, after an order is received by the POD company, it goes into production to print your custom design on the product; and for the latter, after production of the custom item, it is dispatched to the carrier, and moved from the fulfillment center of the POD company to where the buyer will receive delivery of it. You’ll want both production time and shipping time to be quick.

Printful does relatively fine on both counts. For production, the company takes about 2 – 7 business days to produce apparel products (t-shirts, dresses, shorts, etc.) and 2 – 5 business days for non-apparel products (posters, mugs, etc.). If you’ve checked reviews of POD companies, you’ll find that this is basically about how much time other POD services take to produce similar products.

Shipping times in Printful (that is, how long it’ll take to move items from their fulfillment center to the shipping address) depends on whether flat rates or live rate is being used. Where “live rates” is chosen, there are three shipping options with delivery times as follows:

• Shipping to the US: Overnight (1 business day), Express (1 – 3 business days), Standard (3 – 5 business days), Economy (5 – 8 business days)
• Shipping to international locations: Express, (1 – 3 business days), Standard (3 – 5 business days), Economy (5 – 10 business days), and No rush (10 – 20 business days)

Where flat rate is chose, there’s no choice of delivery option, but it will appear that Standard Shipping is used because most of such deliveries is done in 5 business days.

If you’ve seen reviews of other POD fulfillment services, you’ll find that the shipping times of Printful are some of the best out there. This is because Printful is able to be closer to customers no matter where the customers may be resident. They achieve this by operating four different fulfillment centers “located on both sides of the big pond” – North Carolina, California, Mexico and Latvia.

Returns

It will be ignorant to discuss online purchases without touching on returns. This is because there are many reasons why customers will want to return an item an item purchased online to its retailer. These reasons include: receiving delivery of a faulty/ poorly made/ wrong item, receiving an item that does not fit (for sized products such as clothing), or simply changing your mind about the order (buyer’s remorse). Whatever, the case for the returns, rather than being stuck with an unwanted item, customers will want retailers that’ll allow them to return unwanted item and get a replacement or a refund. Thus, when considering POD fulfillment services, their return policy is an important consideration.

Thankfully, Printful accept returns. However, since Printful is a fulfiller of customized items, you’ll expect that their return policy will be stricter than companies that fulfill regular (non-POD) orders. First, by default, the return address on all orders is set to the Printful facility. You can actually opt to have your address as the return address, but if you do, you’ll be liable for all return shipment you receive.

Eligible Returns

Printful will only be responsible for returns of items when the error necessitating the return is their fault. This will include items that are misprinted, damaged, or defective. In that case, all expense will be handled by Printful.

Printful strongly advices that you should advice your customers to contact you before returning any item using the return address. This is because they do not accept any item returned to them because of buyer’s remorse or even size dispute. If your customer returns an item because the size ordered does not fit, it will be handled at your expense. That is, Printful will ship the returned item to you (free of charge), and you’ll have to place a new order (with the updated size) for the customer. Note that you’ll have to foot all bills (both cost of the new item and cost of shipping it to the customer).

That said, it’s best to advise your customers to carefully select sizes, and that returns for sizing disputes will not be accepted. Except of course, you’ll be ready to grant such returns and foot the bills. This is one area where Printful needs to stand up; this is because you’ll find POD fulfillment services that grant sizing satisfaction Guarantees (a one-time product exchanges when a wrong size is ordered).

Where items are returned to Printful by the courier because of insufficient or incorrect shipping address, all reshipment cost will be borne by you (the seller) after an updated address have been provided by you. Where you are not ready to bear such reshipment cost, you should make it clear in your store that “where the courier returns orders due to insufficient or incorrect shipping address, the customers will be responsible for the cost of reshipping the orders to the updated address”.

Return Window

Eligible returned items are not accepted if the claims are not submitted within an allowed time period. Thus, you’ll want an extended window for this. Thankfully, Printful’s window is wide. All claims for misprinted, damaged or defective items must be submitted within four weeks after receipt of the product.  If the package is lost in transit, claims should be submitted not more than four weeks after the estimated delivery date.

Note that when the courier returns orders to Printful because of incorrect or insufficient address, if the items are not claimed after four weeks of reaching their facility, the items are donated to charity. Thus, you should sound it in your store that your customers should not wait for more than four weeks after the estimated delivery date to report a non-delivery. However, you’ll know all non-deliveries because Printful will send you an automated email notification when they receive a returned shipment.

Customer Support Service

You want a fulfillment service that has answers to any questions that you may have, as well as one that’ll help you to solve the problems that your customers will have with their orders.

Make no mistake, no matter how effective a service runs, there’ll be customers that’ll have certain issues with orders.  Also, the fulfillment service is only helping you with the printing and shipping of the items; you’ll do all the customer service. Thus, when your customers inundate you with support submissions about their orders, you’ll have to turn to the fulfillment service, and you’ll not want them to leave you out to dry.

For the numerous questions that you may have about Printful, there’s an FAQ page that you can turn to for self help. The page covers topics that include: getting started, products, shipping/ packaging and fulfillment, design tips and mock-ups, printing, taxes and billing, returns, and more. You’ll also find a lot of tutorial videos that you can watch to get the answers you want.

If you have to directly contact an agent of the customer support service of Printful, you can choose from a range of channels. Printful operates: an email service, a live chat feature, a telephone service. Apart from these channels you can also follow Printful on the social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, youtube, and LinkedIn) and get product photos, tips and other cool ideas.

For the email service, you can contact Printful using the contact form that can be found in the website, or by sending them an e-mail directly from your e-mail account using the address support@printful.com. They answer all email submissions within hours. However, if you’ll rather have instant feedback, you may use the live chat feature or the telephone service.

At the time of writing this review, the live chat was not available. The phone service was very available, and the number to call is +1 (818) 351-7181. However, the phone service is not available 24/ 7; it is active only between 9:00Am – 5:30PM EST (Monday – Fridays). We like that world-facing services have 24/7 customer support service so that there’ll be no problem of the service being active only in the downtime of some customers. That said, when using Printful, you’ll have to know how to handle your customers who contact you in the weekend or during the downtime of Printful’s customer support service.

Summary

Printful comes out as one of the best POD suppliers in the market which you can use to create and sell custom items in your online store. Printful is totally free, and integrates well with a host of e-commerce platforms. True, you’ll find Printful short of products (such as shoes, jewelry); but if you decide to build your store around any of the products in their catalog, you’ll find that Printful does a good job. They produce top quality prints; they have relatively fast turnaround times with fast production times and shipment times; and they have custom branding options. They do not offer the best product pricing, and their return policy is stricter than some other POD suppliers, but the reasons for using Printful far outweigh any that may make you ruminate.

Pros

• Printful is absolutely free to use; there are no hidden costs
• Printful features seamless integration with a wide range of e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, as well as websites and apps
• There is heavy investment in printing equipment which makes Printful able to produce top quality prints
• There are four fulfillment centers spread out in the globe, which brings Printful closer to customer and able to offer relatively fast  shipping
• Ships worldwide
• Printful is a white-label drop shipper that offers a range of custom branding options that allow you promote your brand
• Offers a generous period to submit claims of damaged/ misprinted/ products (four weeks from receipt of product) or lost shipments (four weeks from estimated delivery date)
• There are multiple channels for reaching the customer support service

Cons:

• Only a limited range of products that can be customized and sold
• Product pricing does not come out among the most competitive in the market
• Returns are not accepted for sizing dispute, not even the one-time size exchanges you’ll find offered by some POD fulfillment services
• Customer support service is not available round the clock (24/ 7)