Gelato vs Printify, which is best? There’s no easy answer.

I’ve tested dozens of print on demand platforms, marketplaces, and apps, and both Gelato and Printify generally rank at the top of my “most recommended” list – just for different reasons.

Where Printify really stands out is in its flexibility.

You can work with dozens of different printing partners around the world, choose from hundreds of products (including unique items like coffee you won’t find elsewhere), and connect Printify with a huge range of sales channels.

Alternatively Gelato excels with consistent product quality, fast fulfillment times, and an eco-friendlier approach to production.

Making the right choice really depends on your priorities, and the type of audience you want to reach.

Confused?

Here, I’ll share my first-hand thoughts and insights on both platforms, to help you determine which print on demand partner is right for you.

The Quick Verdict, Pros and Cons

Industry analysts, like “Grandview Research” rank both Gelato and Printify as top companies in the print on demand space. It’s easy to see why. Both offer companies similar tools and resources, easy-to-use platforms, and free plans for beginners.

Printify is a somewhat more scalable choice, thanks to its broader integration options, wider product catalog, and AI-powered design tools.

Gelato is the more sustainable choice, with eco-friendly production options, excellent product quality, and even free shipping for bulk orders.

Here’s a quick rundown of the pros and cons for each.

Printify Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Extensive selection of products, with unique options
• Valuable premium plans for growing merchants
• Full flexibility on which partners to choose from
• More than 10 integration options for sales channels
• Excellent AI-powered design tools
• Free pop-up store creator
• Fantastic global fulfillment options

Cons:

• Product quality and shipping times can vary
• Fewer free tools than Gelato
• Some limitations on customer support

Gelato Pros and Cons

• Excellent global fulfillment network
• Wide range of premium plan options
• Sustainable printing and delivery options
• Branded packaging options
• Excellent design resources and free tools
• Faster turnaround times (particularly in Europe)
• Larger collection of shipping partners

Cons:

• Fewer product options than Printify
• Not as many integrations or sales channels
• No pop-up store generator

Gelato vs Printify: The Core Features

On a broad scale, Gelato and Printify are similar tools. They both give you access to a wide range of customizable products you can sell through various sales channels like ecommerce platforms and marketplaces (though Printify does have a pop-up store generator).

They also both offer global fulfillment, high-value subscription plans, and great design tools.

The main difference is that with Printify, you can choose from a massive selection of printing partners to work with.

Gelato assigns you to a partner automatically, based on where your customers are, to reduce delivery costs, shipping times, and emissions.

Product Options and Customization

It’s hard to compete with Printify in terms of variety. The platform has more product options than any competitor I’ve tried.

In fact, there are more than 1000 items to choose from with Printify, compared to a little over 100 with Gelato.

You even get access to unique products that other companies don’t offer, like supplements, games, or scented candles.

Printify also gives you more diverse tools when it comes to customizing your products.

Both platforms have excellent design tools, with access to tons of free resources like graphics, fonts, and clipart, but Printify has a generative AI tool that can create new images for you from scratch.

This feature is still far from being extremely useful, as it is very hard to promt the AI to create something to match.

I would recommend it only for extremely simple designs. Expect to spend a lot of time before you manage to get something out of it

Since Printify will soon be merging with another of my favorite POD platforms (Printful), there’s a good chance it will soon be able to give companies even more product options and customization tools to work with.

Despite all this, Gelato still sets itself apart in the print on demand space, by focusing exclusively on high-quality sustainable products.

You can create all kinds of high-quality and eco-friendly t-shirts, calendars, wall art and more. Plus, with a Gelato subscription, you can access free Shutterstock images to use in your designs.

Where Gelato really shines, in my opinion, is in its collection of paper and art-based products. Gelato is by far the market leader in this segment, with the widest catalog of wall art options available to ship worldwide.

You can create art in a range of unique formats, from aluminum prints to wood and foam, and the prices are extremely competitive. Plus, for frames, you get high-quality wood.

In terms of other paper products, you can create cards with rare format types (such as foiled and rounded-edge cards), calendars and photobooks, which can be customized by your customers with the “Personalization Studio”, and so much more.

Both companies also give you different printing options to choose from, like print on demand and embroidery.

Plus, both allow you to purchase products in bulk (although Gelato does offer free delivery on higher-value orders).

Product Quality and Profitability

Comparing Printify and Gelato in terms of product quality is a little trickier. On the one hand, Printify offers more printing methods than Gelato, such as all-over-print, sublimation and UV printing, digital printing, and so on.

The company also has a strong reputation for using high-quality machinery, and “vetting” suppliers to ensure consistent product quality.

However, since you’re working with a wide range of printing partners through Printify, there’s a higher chance that the quality of your products could vary depending on your chosen partner.

Gelato seems to be a little more consistent from a quality perspective, based on the reviews I’ve read. Although both platforms have similar ratings on review sites.

For instance, on the Shopify app marketplace, both Gelato and Printify have a score of 4.8. On Trustpilot, Printify and Gelato both have a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.

In terms of profitability, Printify does offer slightly lower base prices on some products, like mugs, and hoodies.

However, Gelato recently reduced the prices for its products catalog-wide by around 40%, so there’s still an excellent opportunity to enjoy high profit margins on this platform.

As I mentioned above, it also has the most competitive pricing around for high-quality paper products like wall art, calendars, cards and photobooks.

Global Fulfillment

Let’s start this section by looking at your fulfillment options. As I mentioned above, both companies support worldwide fulfillment, with global partners located across the globe.

Gelato has a slightly larger range of production partners (140+ compared to Printify’s 90+).

Gelato also has 60+ logistics partners in 32 countries, whereas Printify has 110+ printing locations distributed across around 12 countries.

Overall, Printify does give you slightly faster shipping at times in the US. Most products reach customers within 2-8 days in the States, compared to Gelato’s average delivery time of 4-8 days.

However, in the EU (4-6 days), and other regions (3-14 days), Gelato delivers products a lot faster than Printify. Some deliveries take up to 30 days with Printify.

Integrations and Sales Tools

If Gelato beats Printify in terms of global fulfillment options and speed, Printify crushes Gelato in terms of integrations and sales channels.

Gelato integrates directly with some of the biggest ecommerce platforms and marketplaces, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace, and Etsy.

Printify has 10+ direct integration options to choose from (compared to Gelato’s 6), including options for unique channels like PrestaShop, Walmart, and Ebay.

Printify also allows users to create a free pop-up store if they don’t want to deal with the headaches of managing an entire ecommerce platform.

The pop-up store isn’t particularly robust, and doesn’t give you a lot of branding options, but I still think it’s a great tool for beginners.

On the plus side, Gelato does give users a slightly broader range of sales tools, like a price navigator to help with boosting profit margins, a range of built-in analytics tools, and a personalization studio which allows customers to add their own designs to products on your site.

The Personalization Studio is particularly impressive, as it allows companies to add “personalization” into the shopping experience.

Customers can preview custom products, like calendars, add their own images and special dates, and make sure they’ree happy with everything before completing a purchase.

Not only does this feature help to boost customer satisfaction and conversion rates, but it also means that sellers don’t have to update designs manually.

This significantly reduces the risk of making mistakes and having to send proofs to the end customer.

You also get a handy mobile app with Gelato, so you can keep track of all your sales on the move, and update designs wherever you are.

Both companies give you great mockup generators, design tools, and integrations with platforms like Shutterstock to access graphics.

However, Printify does have it’s fantastic AI design tool, as mentioned above, which is ideal for creating unique images.

Gelato vs Printify: Ease of Use and Customer Support

The reality is most print on demand platforms are designed to be user-friendly. The great thing about the print on demand business model is that it’s intended to be accessible to anyone – giving every creator the chance to monetize their designs and scale online.

Both Printify and Gelato are very easy to use. It takes seconds to create an account with both tools, and there’s plenty of in-platform content to guide you through processes like integrating your POD platform with your preferred sales channels.

Printify’s dashboard is slightly more user-friendly in my opinion, and since you don’t get features like the “price navigator” from Gelato, there aren’t as many tools to learn how to use.

However, I think Gelato walks customers through the steps of setting up their business more effectively.

You also don’t get tools like the “pop-up” store generator on Gelato, which could mean you spend a little less time getting started, depending on the features you want to take advantage of.

From a customer support perspective, both Gelato and Printify are quite similar. They both have 24/7 support options, and strive to provide companies with helpful resources, like videos, guides, FAQs, tutorials, and more. Both tools also support live chat, and email, but no phone support.

Still, I think Gelato wins in terms of overall customer service. The company responds to queries usually within an average of 8 hours, whereas Printify responses can take up to 24 hours.

Additionally, Printify only offers direct support in English, while Gelato offers more than 10 language options. Gelato also has the “Gelato Academy” where you can get hands-on training from experts.

That being said, Printify’s everyday self-help resources are a little more in-depth, with more screenshots, and visual guides.

Gelato vs Printify: Plans and Pricing

Like most of the top print on demand providers, Printify and Gelato both give users the option to start creating products and selling them with no monthly subscription prices.

Notably, though, if you do choose the free plan on either platform, you’ll still need to account for the base costs of purchasing and customizing your products, and extra fees, like costs for marketing and ecommerce platforms.

Printify’s free plan is slightly more generous, allowing users to set up five stores per account, compared to two from Gelato.

Printify’s free plan also includes access to all of its features, while Gelato requires customers to upgrade for live shipping rates, and additional branding options.

If you want to tap into exclusive benefits, you can upgrade to a premium plan with both companies.

Printify offers a premium plan for $29 per month, which gives you a 20% discount on all products, and more order management tools with Printify Connect.

You can also choose an enterprise plan, with additional discounts and more support.

Gelato’s paid plans start at $24 per month for Gelato+, with 20% off products, various branding options, and premium mockups.

The Gold plan, for $119 per month includes 30% off branding options, 25% off products, and unique pricing tools.

Finally, the Platinum (enterprise) plan with custom pricing gives you unique discounts, a customer success manager, implementation support, and direct access to premium community events.

Overall, Printify’s free plan beats that offered by Gelato, but I do think Gelato’s premium plans offer a little more value for money, and more scalability.

Gelato vs Printify: The Verdict

Ultimately, Gelato and Printify are both excellent print on demand solutions, but they stand out in different ways.

The right choice for you all depends on your priority. Printify gives you more product variety, customization options, advanced design tools, and integrations.

Thanks to its merger with Printful, Printify could become an even more powerful choice for companies in the years ahead, particularly those who want to grow and scale fast.

Gelato, on the other hand, will be the best option for companies that are focused on sustainability.

It’s also easily the better option if you’re looking for the best collection of paper and art-based products, and the best pricing on those items.

Plus, Gelato offers faster shipping times (particularly outside of the US), and more tools to help you increase sales (like the Personalization Studio).

Of course, since you can sign up with both platforms for free, there’s nothing stopping you from putting both options to the test, before you make your decision.