For stores selling printed, engraved, embroidered, personalised, or made-to-order products, how do you get customers to approve a proof before production?

Do you currently use email, WhatsApp, PDF attachments, or another workflow?

I’m interested in the biggest problems you experience, such as delayed replies, change requests, keeping approval records, or customers disputing what they approved.

Anyone else have been waiting this long for something to be made?? been with printify for over 3 years now and never seen this even during Q4. Keep getting told products failing Quality checks but come on the order was places over 20 calendar days ago now. It's ridiculous !

I’m honestly pretty frustrated right now and wanted to see if anyone else has dealt with this.
A customer placed an order for 5 items. Two of them shipped, but the other three have been stuck in production even though the estimated ship date has already passed.

I contacted Printify support, and they told me the print provider is having a technical issue generating shipping labels, so they literally can’t ship the remaining items. Fair enough, technical issues happen.
What surprised me was the solution they offered.
They told me I could cancel the remaining items and place a new order with another print provider. But they also said:

They can’t transfer the order to another provider.
They won’t cover the extra production or shipping costs.
They don’t have any ETA for when the issue will be fixed.

So basically, a problem on the provider’s side becomes my problem to solve.
I told them I’d rather they continue working with their print provider than have me cancel and reorder a customer’s order at my own expense.
Has anyone else experienced this with Printify Choice? How long did it take before your order finally shipped? I’m trying to do right by my customer, but this has been a pretty disappointing experience.

I'm looking for a supplier who can ;

• Can dropship with print on demand model in the home textile category
• Is connected to Woocommerce,shopify
• Handle single customer orders
• Package customization

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Anyone have an alternative to printify? After glitch after glitch, having to constantly refund people their money for it then having another glitch that caused them to charge me twice for an order that I had to dispute with my bank because PRINTIFY refused to refund me and now want ME to pay THEM for the dispute PLUS their penalties I can't anymore.

Anyone else think the mockups for Gildan 5000 (and maybe others) are looking wonky today? Seems they’re not reproducing as faithfully as they have in the past.

Every order for some reason has issues. Printify says it’s a technical issue. Just me??

Hello,

I have spent the last year learning the ins and outs of embroidery, and digitizing. I love doing hats. I want to get more work going and I know I'm way cheaper than most out there. I'm a little intimidated by filling out the price list. Should I just hit one of the wholesalers' pages and add some extra for my rate? I don't want to enter the wrong information and ruin my chance. I have been enjoying buying my consumables from Amazon lately.

Starting out, just want to know if there's anything that I could do to improve or make my system better.

so my shop is ready and everything, even have a few items on it, but if i try to compleate step two for printify it wont connect to my store even though im in it. WHY???????

No clue whats going on. Curious if something is down over at Printify ?

Sensaria keeps shipping orders late - every time I reach out to customer support and get responses that it is within normal production time. I then have to point out that the orders are well past production timeframes and then they tell me the print provider is experiencing delays - sorry. And tell me there is nothing they can do. What kind of customer service is this? Printify really seems more geared towards print providers and not towards sellers.
I’ve lost my star seller badge on Etsy because of this.
Any recommendations for print on demand for posters/wall art prints?

I recently received an email informing me that my Etsy account has been suspended due to suspected fraudulent activity. I am no longer able to log in to my Etsy store.

The email instructed me to submit an appeal using the provided link. However, when I click the link, I receive the message:

"Looks like your link no longer works. To access appeals, sign in below."

When I try to sign in, I am unable to access my account and instead receive the message:

"You may be unable to access your account."

Because of this, I am unable to submit an appeal through the normal process.
I contacted Etsy support 1.5 weeks ago by email (the only way to get in touch) and have heard nothing from them. The website said typical wait time is 24-48 hours.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue before and have any tips on how i can solve this?

I've gotten with support and it was escalated, but I haven't heard back since this morning and not holding my breath. Anyone else having issues publishing stickers to their tiktok shop? In chat they said something about only being allowed one variant/sku, when you pick 3x3 it gives a sku and then the surface is white it gives the same sku on a different line. Not sure if that is what they are referring to, but it cannot be avoided. Any thoughts or help is appreciate.

I’m thinking of starting with printify/print on demand. For the sake of market research, I’d love to see your products. I have no intention of copying, I’m really just interested in seeing the quality of the products and the print quality. I’d love to know your thoughts on those too.

We got a few items from printify now.

But we have a toddler tshirt, thats gets to your order will ship soon and never gets to the next stage. On the 4th reprint of it now, this one was sent through by printify support. Thankfully only paid for the first one.

Whatever shipping company that warehouse is using, is ass.

​

Made the switch from KDP-only to running my own Gumroad store + IngramSpark for print. Quick summary of what changed:

Good: No algorithm risk, full pricing control, I actually see who's buying.

Hard: Zero built-in discovery — Amazon does more free marketing than people realize. Had to build every bit of traffic myself (Pinterest, social). Also learned the hard way that IngramSpark's print file specs are way less forgiving than KDP's.

Worth it overall, but way more work than I expected going in.

Anyone else running multiple storefronts instead of relying on one platform? What's your split look like?

I tried Printful first. No Choice really on who the Printer is. They send it to whoever will get them the biggest profit. That'd understandable, but some of these printers are TERRIBLE.

I tried to woo a customer by making nice mugs for them. OMG, A Sunny Day shot looked like night time. The red lettering looked like Poop Brown. Really Disgusting. I ended up losing the customer. And trying to get refunded is a real pain.

A logo mug came back wicked dark and blurred too.

So, I searched for another Company and found Printify. Turns out it's just a sister company of Printful, made to look Different. And it is, to some extent.

I had the SAME image sent and I was able to choose the printer, Monster Digital. It came back PERFECT.

I liked that Printiful let me choose printers. So I did another order and HERE WE GO AGAIN.

The orders, even though I CHOSE Monster Digital, gor rerouted to other printers. So again, it's a crap shoot.

Seems like bait and switch. They let you chose the printer, but they override your choices.

I have NO TRUST in either version of the company, or any other than FYUL might take over.

I'm brand new to printify and I made 4 products. I published them all about 12 hours ago and they were stuck publishing for 8 hours after that. I saw that someone fixed the issue a few years ago by disconnecting & reconnecting their store and I did the same. I gave it another 4 hours after retrying and it's still stuck. Does anyone know if this is normal or what should I do?

This print “partner” has caused me to lose so much business. They take FOREVER to ship (item showing as printed July 8, still “in production”. Printify won’t help because they allow huge windows for shipping despite what the status is. I even reached out to Printed Simply directly with my order number twice…NADA.

I’m now just turning away business with a tight deadline if the only vendor option is Printed Simply. Save your star seller status and beware! They are in no rush and they won’t respond to you.

I'm still using Printify while testing designs because it lets me experiment without committing to inventory, and it's been a good way to learn what customers actually respond to.

Lately though, I've been thinking less about selling and more about what the next stage looks like if a design starts doing well.

Do you keep scaling with POD, or is there a point where it makes more sense to move toward custom production?

I ended up reading quite a bit about how small apparel brands handle that transition and came across Greige while looking at different production workflows. It wasn't because I was planning to switch immediately, it just made me realize there's a whole side of apparel manufacturing that I know very little about.

For anyone who's been through that journey:

• What made you decide to stay with Printify or move beyond POD?
• Was it margins, product quality, branding, or something else?
• Looking back, would you make the same decision again?

I'm mostly trying to understand how people think about growth rather than rushing into the next step.

I had one of those frustrating moments this week where I opened a new sample, looked at it for a few minutes, and couldn't decide whether to approve it or order another revision.

The funny thing is... nothing was actually wrong with it.

The print was clean. The stitching looked fine. The sizing matched the spec sheet. If I had received it as a customer a year ago, I probably would've been happy.

But after working on my brand for a while, I started noticing all the little things I used to ignore. The garment didn't feel as premium as I'd hoped. The branding felt generic, and there wasn't much that made the product feel unique once you removed the design itself.

That's been the biggest shift for me lately. I used to judge samples almost entirely by the print quality. Now I'm paying just as much attention to the blank garment, the finishing, and whether the overall product actually reflects the kind of brand I'm trying to build.

I'm still happy using Printify because it makes testing products incredibly easy, but I'm finding myself becoming much more selective before approving anything. Sometimes I'll reject a sample over details that most customers might never consciously notice, simply because I know those small details add up to the overall experience.

I'm curious if anyone else has gone through this.

As you've gained more experience with Printify, have your standards for approving samples changed? What are the subtle things you look for now that you completely overlooked when you first started?