In the past decade, many brands, retailers, e-commerce marketers, and manufacturers have found that there’s a mass of challenges to satisfy customers’ demands because the customers are seeking access to the latest trends. They’re losing interest in the same design/products as others, especially the young consumer’s groups, they’re not willing to wait on a store stocking, they want something unique, they want it now, and they want to see how it looks in advance before buying! If you’re not providing something special or totally the same as others, you’re falling behind.

What Is print on demand

Print On Demand (POD), is a kind of printing technology and business process in which products are not printed until the manufacturers receive new orders, then processing the prints of single or small quantities. For retailers/e-commerce marketers, print on demand is now widely used as collaborating with a printing supplier/manufacturer to use their or their customers’ designs to customize printable products, like shoes, apparel, wall arts, and gifts like quartz/automatic watches.

This promising business model is much easier for marketers to start up their own print on demand brands with the least cost, even 0 cost. You don’t need to pay for products or any additional cost in advance, once your customers purchase orders on the print on demand products in your store, you can pay for fulfillment then, no need for any investing or up-front for stocking or warehouse.

Meanwhile, professional print on demand companies handle all the processes after your sale, from printing, assembling, to global shipping. All you need to do is just upload designs to customize products, then publish for sale, easily get profits within several clicks. Therefore, choosing the best print on demand manufacturers & suppliers is one of the most important steps to start up a POD brand.

Top 5 best print on demand companies (2023)

Since surging customers want customization, more print-on-demand manufacturers (like JetPrint Fulfillment, Printify, Printful) are giving it to them!

Here we found the top 5 print on demand services & sites which are free to use, and offering great products and global fulfillment:

1. Printful

2. Printify

3. JetPrint

4. SPOD

5. Teelaunch

All these print on demand companies here support the integration with Shopify(some have also support WooCommerce as well), allowing you to build your branded E-commerce stores to sell your own custom products wherever your audience spends their time.

1. Printful

Printful(1) is a one-stop-shop dropshipping service for businesses of any size, launched in 2013, one of the most popular print on demand companies in Shopify, offering a wide range of products to customize and features to help you get started that range from mockup generators to services like logo design. Not only printing, but you can also choose embroidery, cut and sew, and sublimation printing on the products. No monthly fee. Recommended for beginners and experienced entrepreneurs who want a flexible, well-rounded solution to start on that can scale with them.

Highlights:

· No hassle of stocks, printing, and production-related issues

· Entrepreneurs can concentrate only on creating products and selling them

· High-quality products and drop shipping.

2. Printify

Printify(2), an 80-person startup, is reimagining print-on-demand (POD) business, such that E-commerce business owners no longer have to create customized products to sell on other platforms. It makes it possible for e-commerce businesses to sell products on their own sites and not go through other online marketplaces. With Printify, online businesses have a sure-fire way to sell their artisan creations but have Printify and third party manufacturers do all of the work, i.e., printing, shipping, and more.

Founded in 2015, Printify, which continues to raise seed funding to date, now operates as a B2B marketplace, connecting E-commerce stores and manufacturers. You can have the access to a large network of printing partners distributed around the world. This means you have a larger variety of products to choose from, and also be able to select your printer based on the country you want to sell in for faster and more cost-effective shipping.

Printify has 3 pricing plans below:

3. JetPrint

Launched in 2017, Running their own manufacturers & collaborated with delivery companies with over 8-year production experience. JetPrint focuses mainly on watches with the ability to print your own designs on the watch face from the beginning. It offers many different watch types, colors, and straps to customize the final product. You can design your own watches to sell on-demand. Once designed your product, JetPrint will automatically generate a collection of product photos that show off your watches from several angles.

In 2021, JetPrint launched its huge version updates. With the large expansion of the catalog such as over 60 styles of Print On Demand shoes, Clothing products, Home Decor Products, and over 400+ new products/variants with own Factory located in China. With the new advanced 3D custom products generation system, JetPrint has improved the customized product display better and more actual. New Model&Wearing Display Effects has been supported, which are much better for uploading to social media & using for advertisement! Operating in their All-over Re-designed user interface inside out, customers will be easier to operate and process in a more efficient way to upload designs, choose variants and publish custom products to their store for sale & promotion.

About the pricing, JetPrint is 100% free without any monthly fee or additional costs. It used to support free global shipping with an average arrival time of 14–20 business days, and express delivery within 5-9 business days. With the updates of the new version and New prices System – It offers Lower costs, more reasonable shipping fees for different countries. Listing the different first&additional shipping fees for different countries, helping you set a more reasonable sale price for most of your customers, or set different shipping rates to the customer groups in different countries.

What’s better now, JetPrint officially supports the integration to WooCommerce now! Marketers will be able to directly customize and publish their custom branded products from JetPrint to both their Shopify & WooCommerce stores in 1 storefront, saving much time and faster to expanding custom products/brands at multiple E-commerce platforms at the same time!

4. SPOD

SPOD(4) is a print-on-demand site owned by Spreadshirt, based in the USA and Europe, offers rapid production in 48 hours, offers a wide range of products, and a fully-fledged customization tool, which you can use to customize with their own images, or over 50k free designs offered by SPOD. It also offers a 20% discount on sample orders. SPOD supports Digital direct, Sublimation printing, digital transfer, special flex, depending on the products you choose.

Also, their competitive pricing offers a high-profit margin. They offer the lowest product and shipping prices, with printed shirts starting at $6.39 and domestic shipping from $3.57. Recommended for people new to print on demand who are looking for speedy fulfillment, simplified shipping, and competitive prices.

5. Teelaunch

Started Since 2015, Teelaunch(5) is a solid and versatile print on demand partner, not only providing a wide range of products for customization, like T-shirts, Canvas sets, mugs, backpacks, running shoes, and over 120 more, but also offering a product personalization tool that lets customers add their name or upload their own photo to a product. It also automatically generates high-quality professional product mockups, including lifestyle photos for some items.

What stands out the most is the quality of the mockups it generates for you, it offers you high-quality product images to use in marketing, and lifestyle photos for some of its items. Recommended for: Anyone looking for an all-around solution for creating quality products. Teelaunch makes it easy to source high-quality items at competitive prices.

5 points to consider when choosing a print on demand website

1. Quality products

Your customers to be dissatisfied when they receive your product? Customers will be concerned about the quality of the products they purchase. Do a sample test with your favorite print-on-demand supplier before ordering a product. A responsible merchant must purchase a sample to inspect the fabric quality and printing effect. Customers who need to provide samples receive a 10% discount from JetPrint.

2. Integrations with other platforms

E-commerce sellers are increasingly developing multi-channel stores. You should consider whether the print on demand service provider you select supports the popular e-commerce platform.

• Shopify
• Woocommerce
• Etsy

3. Price

For the stores owners and people who want to set up personalized clothing stores, the first question/issue they mainly care about is the cost of the POD Services. Each print-on-demand site has its own set of prices. As a small-business owner, you must carefully select POD services because your price determines your profit.

4. Product quantity

The number of products can indicate whether a print-on-demand company has a strong product supply chain, which is why the company should highlight the number of products. Printify, for example, offers more than 750 products that cover every aspect of life. He placed his product quantity on the front page so that customers could easily find it.

5. Shipping times

When selecting a print-on-demand company, it is critical to consider average shipping times. Customers should ideally receive their products within a week of placing their order. However, most companies’ production and shipping times are insufficient to ensure that customers receive their orders within a week. Most print-on-demand companies provide a reference time of 7-15 days, which is a reasonable range. Printful currently has relatively short shipping times.

Marketing is what ultimately determines the success of your business. If you’re planning or focusing on the Print On Demand markets, Print on demand services offer an accessible source of inventory for new entrepreneurs or for anyone who just wants to test an idea before they invest in it. It gives you a low-risk way to try your hand at selling custom products. If one of your ideas pans out and you start to generate a meaningful number of sales, you can always graduate from using a print-on-demand site to help hold your own inventory or continue to use these services while finding new ways to grow traffics & customers. That’s what we’d like to emphasize, you need to find a reliable print on demand service to partner with to ensure your products look and feel the way you want and are reliably shipped to your customers! 

JetPrint offers a variety of services, you can learn more about them by visiting the Print on Demand page.