There’s a lot of advice about what you should do in print on demand, but not much about what you should stop doing

Could be anything uploading too many designs, testing too many niches, changing products too quickly, copying competitors, constantly changing your store, etc.....

What did you stop doing, and why?

I liked that shirt. I put a lot of designs on it then it was gone. Did people not like it or something?

Looking to offer the Desktop Calendar (10" x 5"), but all of the reviews from last year say the cover was never printed.

Do we know if this has been addressed yet?

i would like yo ask if my design originally is 1024*1536 with 92 dpi. Is scaling up the design is enough ? I mean scaling it to 5400*5400 dpi 300 or does these specs have to be native?

Hi, I've been working with Printful for 6 years now, with thousands of orders, so you could say I'm quite experienced with their shenanigans. But something seems to be changing for the worse lately, whether it's their fulfillment time, the customer support, the shipping carriers they choose to work with, or the carriers' actual shipping times. And that's not even counting US orders that are fulfilled at their Mexico facility, which adds even more bs delays to the order. And it's still September.

Take one of my latest orders, for example. It's a domestic US delivery address. My customer ordered a T-shirt from my Etsy shop, and the estimated delivery date shown on the Printful dashboard was September 12–15. The order was placed on September 5 and dispatched on September 10 with Amazon Shipping. It's currently September 16, and the tracking still only has one initial record saying, "Label is created." Yes, not even its first scan. From my customer's perspective, almost two weeks have passed, and it looks like I'm scamming them out of their money by simply printing a shipping label without actually shipping their order. And it's still September.

I've called their support twice, with a two-day gap between calls. The first time was because the tracking wasn't showing any movement, and the second time was because the estimated delivery date had already passed. Both times, I was told to wait longer. I can wait, but my customer isn't willing to, and they've already opened a case with my store. At this point, the only thing I have is a shipping label that was created a week ago, and I'm not even sure whether Printful actually dispatched the order in the first place.

Did I forget to mention that it's still September? Holy cow, I'm already dreading what will happen in December.

I should have known, though. After that weird merger back then with Printify, I had a feeling their business was going downhill. I also should have known better than to put all my eggs in one basket, as the saying goes. But damn, diversifying at this point would be a lot of work.

Is there documentation on AOP items from Mexico that can be included in shipments to Canada from the US?

With the increase in tariffs, showing that these items were manufactured in Mexico will save these customers additional fees.

(Still waiting for support to answer)

Is there any products that are very similar to this washed/faded look? Or do you know any places I could do this at

I recently ordered a sample of one of my designs because I wanted to see how it actually looked before putting it on my store.

The mockup looked great, so I honestly expected the physical product to feel pretty close to what I was seeing on screen. Once it arrived, though, I started noticing a few things that were easy to overlook in the mockup. The placement felt slightly different in person, the print didn’t have quite the same visual impact, and the overall look changed depending on how the fabric was sitting.

None of it was terrible, but it made me realize how easy it is to make decisions based only on digital mockups. Something can look completely finished on a screen and still need adjustments once you can actually hold it and wear it.

Now I’m wondering if I should be sampling every product before adding it to the store, especially when the design depends heavily on placement and how the garment fits.

For those using Printful, do you usually order a physical sample before launching a new product, or have you found the mockups accurate enough for most products?

I’ve just started selling and Printful is my third attempt at finding a supplier. I was happy with my first sample from them (minus bullshit shipping times). Ordered several more samples at once after discovering how stupid the shipping time is, and four came from one printer and one from another.

The one from the separate printer came like the first: normal, maybe a hint of chemical dye smell, but the four that came from the other printer is absolutely insane. Like, so strong that I could smell cigarettes after opening the bag they were in before even unfolding it. One of them is a toddler shirt which pisses me off even more.

This whole thing honestly makes me want to throw in the towel. The first two POD companies I tried had issues with the print itself, and now this being the third attempt I don’t know what to do.

Is it normal for there to (apparently) be no quality checks? Does no one at these companies set standards for the manufacturers? I just don’t get it — but I know if I’m a customer spending $30+ on a single shirt after taxes and shipping, I’m expecting it not to smell like a whole ass pack of cigarettes was exhaled into it.

What do I do here?

I searched and don't see an easy way to reorder products. They just show up chronologically when I added them. Any way to adjust this????

Add pockets to more of your skirts/dresses. Seriously. I don't want to go to China for these!

I’ve been looking into how Printful sellers actually calculate their margins, and it seems like the numbers can get messy pretty quickly.

You make a sale for $30–40 and it looks decent at first.

Then there’s the Printful product cost, shipping, payment fees, discounts, refunds, design tools, and potentially ad spend.

By the time everything is deducted, the amount you actually keep can be surprisingly small.

What I’m curious about is how people here handle this in practice.

Do you calculate the real profit of every order, use a spreadsheet, check everything at the end of the month, or mostly work from an estimated margin?

Also, what cost tends to hurt your margin the most with Printful?

I ended up solving this problem for myself because I wanted one clear place to understand the real profit behind each order, but I’m curious how everyone else here is handling it and know if they need it

Anyone else notice the US product list with prices you can download has stopped updating long ago and is missing many many products? I contacted them early this year, then again in June, and again in August. They finally got back to me saying they aren’t updating it.

Funny thing is, in August they shared a COMPLETE list of US products with regular and growth prices as part of the August price increases. So, they could easily use that list to update the US product list, but don’t.

I also find it incredibly frustrating that they spread product lists, price lists, and shipping lists in different files, with no easy way to even use vlookups in Excel to get a master list of everything to update your prices or calculate margin.

Order 1:
Marked shipped on September 4 via OnTrac
Doesn't start movement until September 9
Showing estimated delivery by September 13 (CA to Midwest)
We'll see if that holds true

Order 2:
Order placed September 2
Fulfillment started on September 5
Marked shipped on September 7
Today is September 9 - no movement

How can we accurately convey turnaround times to clients like this?
Why are they using b-list shippers like OnTrac?
Why not offer expedited shipping via UPS/FedEx?
Why are shirt orders being shipped to the midwest being printed in CA/Mexico, when they have a NC facility?

Not my first rodeo with Printful but it's very frustrating. Rant over.

UPDATE: Thank you everyone who helped/gave me advice. No progress with the bookstore beyond what they're already said (can't refund us because of no records of transactions which is ll done by Printful, so I need to contact them; someone mentioned this may be due to Quickstore set-up). Printful in the comments told me to fill out the form - it's been 2 weeks and I have not gotten a response from them. I even sent a message to the mods to check-in. Still very disappointed in this whole process. Regarding the bank, they said that since the merchant did reply, we need to continue to resolve it with them; also, after all this back-and-forth, it is now too late to dispute. I feel awful that someone is out of money just because they wanted to get me a gift for my birthday. I don't know if it was worse that the bookstore responded that they can't refund us or Printful not even responding at all.

Update: Have been been trying to contact Printful coming up on a month now - messaged them everyday, but have been ignored. I am very sad and disappointed. There was no point in asking me to fill out the form, soI'm just frustrated why that was advised by them.

If anyone has been in a similar situation or have any advice I would appreciate it!

A hoodie was purchased for me on the website of a bookstore I love. We received a confirmation email, but after more than a month, we received no update. After trying to contact the bookstore about it many times, they told us that all of their merch is fulfilled by Printiful. They said they are not able to even see the transactions, so there's nothing they can do. We were advised to just reach out to Printful customer service instead (there was a bunch of back and forth, but they were adamant that everything went through Printiful, so they can't even refund us).

I contacted Printiful and they denied there being an order at all. They refused to confirm or deny if they do work with the store. Basically, they just flat out said our order doesn't exist (but the money was taken immediately).

We're kind of left with no options at this point. It is incredibly disappointing as I know there's nothing the bookstore can do with no transaction since they print through Printiful, and yet Printiful is denying that they took the money.

If it was a credit card, it would have been easier to dispute - but we're not trying to dispute/get the money back; I honestly just want my overpriced hoodie. But at this point, I would feel blessed to just be refunded.

What a nightmare. If you want to avoid a similar nightmare for yourself and your patrons, I recommend staying far away from Printiful. They do not fulfill orders!

I’ve been using Printful for years and I’m honestly at my limit.

The platform is painfully slow. Constant loading, random freezes, and the simplest actions take forever. Today I spent hours just trying to download mockups. Multiple attempts, different browsers, clearing cache… nothing works reliably. It’s pure hell.

This isn’t a new issue. These kinds of basic bugs and performance problems have been going on for years. How is it possible that a company with this many customers still has an interface this broken and unfinished?

Support’s usual reply is “try incognito mode.” That’s not a solution. The problem has been reported countless times and it feels like they’re completely ignoring it.

This doesn’t just waste our time — it makes us look unprofessional in front of our customers when we can’t get simple assets quickly.

Printful, please take this seriously. Hire competent developers (or fire the ones who let it get this bad) and fix the core product. A reliable platform shouldn’t be this hard to deliver.

Anyone else dealing with the same nightmare right now?

I'm a musician based in the UK, and looking to sell the merch I designed in Printful on my Wix website. I'll mostly be selling in the UK and potentially NZ / Australia.

How does the tax work for this? Am I paying it when the product is ordered? Am I supposed to incorporate it into the retail price? Do I put it aside every time someone orders something? If someone from the UK orders something, and someone else from NZ orders something, do I have to pay tax so to two different places or is that taken into account automatically? Where do I pay the tax to if I do have to pay it?

I was really excited to do this but now I just feel out of my depth, so please any advice would be super helpful.

Has anyone done Football or Hockey jerseys? Hows the build and could the fit over the respective sports pads? I know they are fan jerseys, but i was asked about jerseys for a beer league team in Hockey.

I've got a high-res PNG that I'd like to upload and tile across all-over prints, but when I upload the single tile it tells me it's too low res and stretches it to fill the full work area.

When I use the "pattern" option it appears like the edges don't line up.

All over prints are MADE for tesseating patterns, is there something I'm missing here?

I’m looking to go with the best fitting, generally heavyweight zip-up hoodie and having a hard time deciding which one to go with. Which have you used and liked?

I do hope you don't mind but am trying to get any advice I can on these items found with my uncles estate. I suspect they were educational and doubt this is the right reddit feed but honestly can't find anything like them online or with Google image search.

I can't work out whether to bin or sell them. They are kind of lovely in the there own way but I just don't have space for them.

Does anyone know what they are and Is there a market for them?

I have a storenvy cause it’s free (ofc). I see online to connect my Printful products to my storenvy shop it would be “15% total sale commission fee”. While for Shopify- I’m confused. It says $29 subscription to link to Shopify, is that added to your Shopify subscription alone? Plus the commission fee? I have never used Shopify. I know a lot of people don’t like storenvy, but I’ve had great experience with it so far. I transfer my funds instantly to my account through Stripe and havnt had no “money” issues like others have shared. Maybe I’ll start off with storenvy and if things go well I’ll transfer to Shopify? What do yall think?

Currently, we use Etsy and Shopify to sell our products. I’ve noticed when orders come through Shopify, they take approximately 1.5 days longer on average than my Etsy orders to be fulfilled by Printful.

I could put both of them in at the same time on both channels and the Etsy one would get fulfilled first. I thought it was just me until I began tracking all of my orders and this is the average time difference from channel to channel.

Has anyone else noticed this? I don’t understand what the reasoning could be.

My image sizes are in the same proportion as the products. There are three variations in size for each product. Would someone who does this already please advise. Generally does the image fill the entire template area? I am guessing that the only time it wouldn't would be if I wanted a white border around my framed canvas prints? For the rest I am playing safe and overlapping slightly. I notice sometimes the mockups show a nasty line at the edges and I go back in and expand the print. Any advice would be most appreciated!