Abby B. Unsure which print on demand website you should join? Deciding between Gooten vs Printful? Here are 11 things to know!
In this article, I’ll be explaining the 11 main things you should know about Gooten and Printful. I’ve also included a summary and addressed a few common questions to help you make the decision on which site is best for your online business.
*This post may contain affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission (at no cost to you) if you sign up for a program or make a purchase using my link!
Gooten Vs Printful: 11 Things To Know
1. Product catalog
Both Gooten and Printful have a great selection of products and quite wide-ranging. While the two are comparable, I can’t help but to point out that Printful has a lot more choices for each product category. If Gooten has one or two item, Printful has at least three more to offer.
As an example, there are at least 12 men sweatshirts you can sell with Printful compared to Gooten’s total sweatshirts of just five (both men and women). Apparel products on Gooten are mostly unisex while Printful’s are much more catered to different genders and body shapes. If you’re not into answering every question your customer might have about cuttings, selling unisex clothing is a safer choice.
Some products that you can’t find on Printful are – calendars, acrylic boards and giclee art prints. Wise decision to use Gooten if you’re looking to specialize in wall art or art prints!
| Catalog | Gooten | Printful |
| Products | Long Sleeve Shirts Sweatshirts Hoodies Tank tops Legwear T-shirts Accessories Mugs & drinkware Outdoor living Kitchen Blankets Bed & bath Canvases Décor Office & stationery Prints & posters Phone cases Tech accessories Travel accessories Pet products Baby products Baby bed & cozies Baby accessories Holiday products | Shirts Bottom Dresses Robes Sportswear Jackets Hoodies Hats Baby bibs Leggings Baby bodysuits Swimwear Kids clothing Bags Hair accessories Face masks Keychains Footwear Jewelry Tech accessories Wall art Home décor Drinkware Stationary Aprons Fabrics Towels Pet products Eco-friendly |
Winner: Printful – just because there are a lot more products you can sell, though it does not necessarily mean it’s better for your biz.
2. Product pricing
It’s tough to compare prices between fulfillments as products aren’t always exactly the same. There’s also a lot of products for you to compare to get a good overall conclusion. Printful is known to have more expensive products in general, though some might argue that it might not always be the case.
Hence, I usually check out prices of common items e.g. mugs like the one down below. While Printful sells 11oz white mugs at a cost price of $7.75 (full bleed print), Gooten sells theirs at only $4.99 (wrap border print) or $5.99 (full bleed print).
We can also see from comparing v-neck t-shirts on both sites. Gooten’s short sleeved v-necks start from $10.90 but Printful’s basic unisex v-neck starts from $16.75. Products may not be equal but that’s a huge difference especially in e-commerce!
Winner: Gooten – common products are cheaper than Printful!
3. Shipping charges
Another key deciding factor for customers to purchase your products are shipping charges to their location. Shipping fees differ for every fulfillment site and varies depending on product type as well as its size.
To make things easier, I’ve decided to compare the shipping charges on 11oz mugs – the same kind I’ve talked about above. Printful charges a shipping fee of $6.49 for 11oz mugs to the USA, while Gooten only charges $4.49. For every additional mug included in the same package, customers will need to add an additional $3.50 for Printful and $1.99 for Gooten.
You may want to compare the delivery experience and average shipping times but the prices above are for US Standard shipping. To investigate further, shipping fees for a 15oz mug are the same between Gooten and Printful at $6.99. However, you would need to add $4.00 for every additional mug with Printful instead of just $1.99 with Gooten.
Regardless if your customers love buying a single mug or multiple mugs in one order, Gooten’s shipping charges is much more affordable. If they’re buying three mugs in one shot, they’ll only have to pay shipping fee of $8.47 with Gooten instead of $13.49 with Printful.
| Number of items | Gooten ($) | Printful ($) |
| First item | 4.49 | 6.49 |
| Second item | 1.99 | 3.50 |
Winner: Gooten – shipping charges are cheaper even when buying few units in one single shipment.
4. Discounts on samples
High-quality fulfillment websites are not afraid at giving discounts for users to purchase samples. They believe in their printing quality and wouldn’t mind a little loss for an even greater return.
Both Gooten and Printful provides incentives for customers to order samples so if you’re a seller on any of these two platforms, you should totally make use of the benefit!
While Printful gives every user 20% off sample orders on a monthly basis (read more here), Gooten rewards sellers with sample credit based on sales achieved. Sellers will need to order items as per normal and later request for refund (based on available credit) via submitting a ticket to their support. Might be tedious but hey why not!
You can read more on how to use Gooten’s sample credit here.
Winner: Printful – making use of the 20% discount is very straightforward and does not require you to submit any forms etc. – also it’s refreshed every month!
5. Customer service
Having an online ecommerce business might be the dream for most, but many don’t know the hurdles of managing one. It can be a little more complicated if you don’t handle product inventory yourself – just like print on demand!
Aside from backend issues, you’ll also have to face impatient customers (most are nice & understanding, trust me) and answer to their queries. For these reasons, things are much easier if you’re working with a fulfillment that provides great customer service on their end – after all, you’ll only get your answers from them.
Gooten has a help center you can browse for articles and in case you can’t find a good answer, you can submit a support request by filling up a form. Though I’m not a fan of forms, it’s one way to have your issues written in detail – and get the right help.
Printful on the other hand, has a live chat feature on user’s dashboard and if they’re not online – you can write an email instead (less structured than a form). Alternatively, sellers can browse Printful’s help center for FAQs and connect via social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. I personally find Printful’s help center to be more complete compared to Gooten’s.
Winner: Printful – more cohesive FAQ help center and a live chat feature for immediate replies!
6. Eco-friendly products
If you’re a millennial like me, you might place great emphasis on selling products that are sustainable and eco-friendly. This might mean working with products that are made of recycled items or selling only organic merchandise.
Good news for you, there are plenty of eco-friendly merchandise you can sell with Printful. This includes clothing, headwear, bags, innerwear and even accessories. Although it might be a little more expensive, Printful has a whole line of eco-friendly products you can customized with your own designs.
While this might be the case for Printful, there are little to no eco-friendly products on Gooten – or at least it’s not highlighted the way Printful does it. The only thing I’ve found that has eco listed in its name is their Unisex Eco-Fleece Crew Neck Sweatshirt. The product is 12.5% made using mixture of recycled materials and organic cotton.
Some sustainable print on demand products would decompose naturally and can be recycled!
Winner: Printful – wider choice of eco-friendly print on demand products!
7. Integrations available
One of the main ways to decide if a fulfillment is suitable for your business (both short-term and long-term) is to see if it has a good list of integration options. Your online market or audience is based off the integration you chose and determines the direction of your business. Of course, you have the option to connect platforms via API but that’s not for most of us.
Printful offers a lot more integrations compared to Gooten, including syncing to ecommerce marketplaces and social media. They have one of the longest list even against popular sites like Printify.
Although Gooten does not stand a chance against Printful, they fulfill the basic integrations we would expect including Shopify and Etsy. If you’re okay with using just these two, Gooten is great enough for you!
| Gooten | Printful |
| BigCommerce Shopify WooCommerce Etsy API | Shopify WooCommerce Etsy Wix Squarespace Magento BigCommerce Ecwid Weebly Prestashop Shipstation Big Cartel Gumroad Shift4Shop Launch Cart Webflow Square Nuvemshop BASE Amazon eBay Storenvy TikTok API |
Winner: Printful – wide range of ecommerce store integrations to explore including social media sales.
8. Online resources
Starting an online print on demand business is not the most common thing in the society (or world) and it can be difficult in the early stages. Using a fulfillment site that has plenty of online resources makes it more manageable.
As a business owner who’s continuously learning myself, I find that there’s a lot more information available online for Printful compared to Gooten. This includes YouTube videos, blog posts, Facebook groups and forum topics.
Printful also has its own tailored resources to offer including four print on demand courses with 4-5 modules each and more than 20 bite-sized Printful lessons. This makes it an ideal fulfillment site for beginners with zero background and intermediates looking to advance.
Aside from their up-to-date blog posts and design guides, Gooten does not have a similar system for users to learn from.
Winner: Printful – own full-fledged POD course and lessons, you can easily find information online with YouTube!
9. Signing up for an account
I may or may not have made you read through the first eight key things to know – only to find out that it’s not easy to get into Gooten. It only means I’m trying my best to not discourage you!
Unlike most POD fulfillment sites, Gooten requires you to fill up a form where you’ll need to put in some info of your print on demand experience and if you already have an ecommerce store set up. Depending on the answers that you’ve given, you’ll then receive an email notifying you on your next steps.
If you’re a complete beginner with no store or website, they will turn you down. Not every site is operating at a large scale and takes in every seller there is. Exclusivity is a niche of its own!
That said, Printful is easy to sign up to and is free to join as well. You don’t need any experience to start selling with Printful and you can set up your store later once you’re ready.
Winner: Undecided – both are great for their intended target markets.
10. Custom labelling
Branding plays a huge part for your long term success in print on demand. Building a successful brand may sound like a big unachievable task but you can get started by just prioritizing the small details.
Both Gooten and Printful offers three basic branding services that you can tap into easily (some for free!). This includes adding your own neck labels to apparel products, customizing packing slips and sending branded tracking emails (free of charge).
As your business grows, you can go further with Printful by adding branded flyers, coupons, business cards, stickers and postcards to any shipment. These are usually ordered beforehand and shipped to Printful’s warehouse for them to pack together, or you can ask them to print them out for you. Gooten does not offer the same!
With white label print on demand, customers will not know that your products are printed by a whole other company – they think everything was done on your own. So everything above will look like an A+ effort on your end.
Winner: Printful – offers more branding services for a growing business to consider.
11. Referral or affiliate program
It’s always great to have multiple streams of income – even when it comes to your POD business. Referral or affiliate programs are becoming more popular for print on demand sites wanting to incentivize users to promote the site.
Printful offers both referral and affiliate program on their site. While every user gets an automatic referral link to share upon signing up, you’ll need to fill up a form to join Printful’s affiliate program and have it approved. This makes sense as affiliates are paid in commission (10% of purchase) that can be cashed out, instead of just a referral reward of $5 online credit.
Although Gooten does not have an affiliate program to offer, they do have a referral program anyone can sign up to. You don’t need to have an existing seller account to start referring. The only setback is you only get a $20 Amazon gift card for anyone who successfully signed up for a Gooten seller account.
Winner: Printful – anyone can be rewarded either via credit or cash for promoting the site, be it with a small or large audience.
Gooten vs Printful: Summary of Differences
| Features | Gooten | Printful |
| Free sign up | 🗸 | 🗸 |
| Ecommerce integration | 🗸 | 🗸 |
| Selling at platform store | 🗴 | 🗴 |
| Discounts on samples | 🗸 | 🗸 |
| Eco-friendly products | 🗸 | 🗸 |
| Custom label your products | 🗸 | 🗸 |
| Include business cards and pamphlets in shipments | 🗴 | 🗸 |
| Live chat | 🗴 | 🗸 |
| Educational content | 🗴 | 🗸 |
| Incentives for higher sales | 🗸 | 🗸 |
| Referral program | 🗸 | 🗸 |
| Affiliate program | 🗴 | 🗸 |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Gooten ships from all around the world. It works with multiple printing vendors and practices global fulfillment for faster shipping times. When selecting products to sell, check if Gooten ships it to your intended country or market.
Gooten does not work with Wix. It only integrates with BigCommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Etsy. For other platforms such as Wix, you may want to consider connecting via Gooten’s API.
Gooten vs Printful: How To Choose
Here’s three major things to look at when deciding which print on demand fulfillment you should join:
- Product selection
- More choice of items you can sell in a store, the better
- You don’t always have to sell everything there is but having the option to do so is great
- Extra points if the POD company have up-to-date trendy collections
- Integrations available
- You’re never sure which ecommerce site you’ll be selling on in the future
- Best to go with a POD company that offers a lot of integrations
- You can easily duplicate and sync the same product to another marketplace without any extra work
- Online resources
- Doing business online is not the easiest thing everyone else thinks it is
- You’ll face challenges along the way when you’re making progress
- Best to go with a site where you can easily get help from others and from the site itself!
Selling with multiple fulfillments is not a bad thing either. But not recommended for beginners!
Bottom Line
Here are 11 things you should know when deciding between Gooten and Printful for print on demand:
- Product catalog
- Product pricing
- Shipping charges
- Discounts on samples
- Customer service
- Eco-friendly products
- Integrations available
- Online resources
- Signing up for an account
- Custom labelling
- Referral or affiliate program
Decided which fulfillment to go with? It’s your time to choose a product to sell, check out my product guides!
- Tote bags for print on demand
- Tumblers for print on demand
- Phone cases for print on demand
- Posters for print on demand
- Leggings for print on demand
- Jewelry for print on demand
- Candles for print on demand
- Doormats for print on demand
- Hoodies for print on demand
- Pet products for print on demand
- Socks for print on demand
- Pajamas for print on demand
- Blankets for print on demand
- Baby clothes for print on demand
- Wrapping paper for print on demand
- Puzzles for print on demand
- Stickers for print on demand
- Athletic wear for print on demand
- Hats for print on demand
- Journals for print on demand
- Greeting cards for print on demand
- Mugs for print on demand
Photo by Pixabay
