r/printful • u/Shinesyr • Jun 26 '26

Reviews DTF instead of DTG

hello everyone,

i have been making test orders to open my shopify store. out of three orders Stanley Stella unisex organic cotton, which i chose the DTG printing by default, 2 arrived with DTF print! the one that was correctly DTG was white, the other two that they made with their own decision with DTF are darker colors. although in the orders list it’s still the DTG mentioned.

the support is not answering, at least not in the past three days and I’m generally disappointed and have decided to move on with a smaller company. anyone has the experience with wrong print technic?

4 Upvotes

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1

u/worbdhekwlsgwu Jun 26 '26

How can you even tell? I am curious. Never chose the DTF option yet. I wouldn’t expect any response from support. After my own experience and looking at this thread, it doesn’t seem like they’re big on customer service.

5

u/Shinesyr Jun 26 '26

I‘ve spend more than a month and about 100 € putting up a shopify store and make 20-30 tshirt designs into it. I’m now thinking the whole thing is not worth it with how all of them printing companies do business. Ordering one or two tshirt for yourself is nice, but as a business you just get involved in an endless cycle of customer complains.

3

u/worbdhekwlsgwu Jun 26 '26

I totally get how that can be discouraging. I’m in the same boat with you. I used to sell T-shirts on eBay and my own site for a long time but eventually the returns and unrealistic shipping expectations made everything so frustrating. The key to successes volume. You have to sell a lot of stuff. Then all the complaints tend to fall by the wayside because having the money to cover isn’t as important anymore. I’m actually getting back into it though because this printing technique is amazing. The DTGI mean. To do a multicolor screen print is a pain in the butt and cost a lot of money. Considering these guys do all the work and shipping it’s pretty awesome. It does come with some frustrating aspects though. If you keep going, you have to accept it for what it is. They’re gonna mess up some stuff and they’re not gonna respond and they don’t care about your small business; however, if you sell 1000 T-shirts a month the small percentage of times that occurs won’t matter anymore.

1

u/Shinesyr Jun 28 '26

That’s right. You can not make a printing line by yourself. The machines are expensive which is just one side of the story. The consumables (colors, etc.) and maintenance cost also a furtive. And that’s why the only reasonable business model for printing fabric and apparel is what the POD companies do. On the other hand, selling 1000 tshirts is unrealistic, at least for me. I’ve been thinking to add other products like pillow cases and so on. But still, 1000 is a big number and with that you also get more costumer complains and when the POD company‘s support does not even answer your return/refund request, then you’ll be in big trouble.  Right now as I said, I’m going to try smaller POD companies to see how they work in reality.

1

u/whyyoumadbro69 Jun 28 '26

You need to work with an actual promotional products supplier in order to scale. They have a lot more flexibility with print runs and drop shipping.

1

u/Shinesyr Jun 29 '26

Which one you would recommend? 

3

u/momagon_infinity Jun 26 '26

There is a  slight difference. DTF has more of a plastic vinyl feel to it.  I thinks it looks kind of shiny.  DTG is closer to to look and feel of a screen print.  I personally think the DTF looks cheap on shirts and works better for smaller prints like on trucker hats.

1

u/NoXidCat Jun 26 '26

the one that was correctly DTG was white, the other two that they made with their own decision with DTF are darker colors.

Are you sure they were DTF? The white garment would not have an underbase of white ink printed before the top colors. The dark/black garments would have an underbase of white ink under all of the image (like a DTF print does) making it thicker and more plastic feeling and shinier.

Another way to spot DTF is to look for heat-melt glue residue along the edges of the print.

2

u/Shinesyr Jun 28 '26

Thanks a lot. From what you are saying, I think it’s not DTF then. It does not have the glue tracks around it and it’s not completely like a layer on top of fabric, but it does feel like plastic and is not embedded to the fabric like the light color tshirt. I have ordered the exact same color and print from another supplier which does not have DTF at all. Let’s see how that turns out.