Most of us don’t actually plan on paying for premium POD plans like Gelato+. The free plans are usually generous enough, packing in everything you need to get up and running.

But eventually, things start to speed up, and the extra discounts and benefits that come with a monthly plan start to look a lot more inviting.

Gelato+, in my opinion is one of the most impressive premium POD subscription plans out there, if you need it. It’s not necessary for everyone, but if you’re scaling, it makes a difference.

Products cost less, setup time shrinks, and your brand starts to look like you actually planned it that way.

If you’re still debating whether to upgrade, here’s my take on what makes Gelato+ stand out.

What Is Gelato?

Gelato is easily one of my favorite print on demand platforms. It’s a printing network and software rolled into one.

Instead of sending every order to a single warehouse overseas, Gelato connects you to local printers in over thirty countries.

Your customer in London gets their shirt printed in the UK. Someone in New York? It ships from the States.

That setup changes everything. Orders arrive faster, shipping costs drop, and you stop apologizing for late deliveries stuck in customs.

The benefits of Gelato go beyond that too.

It integrates with all the stores sellers already use, offer access to a bunch of handy tools for creating mockups and setting prices, and even gives you exceptional print quality every time (particularly for art prints).

Gelato+ simply takes everything that makes Gelato great to the next level.

Gelato+ Plans Explained (2025 Overview)

When you first land on Gelato’s pricing page, it’s surprisingly simple. Three options, designed to serve different types of seller:

• Free Plan: This one’s for testing the waters. You can connect your store, design products, and sell worldwide without paying anything upfront. It’s surprisingly open for a free plan with full access to integrations with Shopify, Etsy, and even their API if you’re technical enough to play with it. If you’re still figuring out what to sell or how often customers actually buy, this is where you start.
• Gelato+: This is the middle ground: $23.99 per month, or $19.99 if you pay annually. It unlocks the real perks: bulk uploads, better mockups, branded packaging, and product discounts that go as high as 35% on some items. It’s meant for the moment you stop experimenting and start scaling. You’re still small enough to run things solo, but you want your store to look (and feel) like a real brand.
• Platinum Plan: This one’s for sellers moving serious volume. There’s no public price tag because it depends on your size and region, but it’s basically a concierge service for large storefronts or agencies. You get custom discounts, a dedicated account manager, and help automating everything from pricing to fulfillment.

What Makes Gelato+ Different

Obviously, the eye-catcher in the Gelato+ plans for most sellers is the discount you get on products. But there’s a lot to love about the subscription overall. When you upgrade, you get:

Time-Saving Tools

There are a lot of these, and I’m not just talking about the Gelato App that lets you handle work on the go. Velocity Switch is one of those tools you don’t think you’ll need until you do.

It moves your existing Shopify or Etsy listings straight into Gelato without you manually rebuilding each one. What used to take hours turns into a single import.

Then there’s Instant Collections, which lets you roll out an entire product line across multiple storefronts in one shot. It’s like cloning your store’s brain.

Finally, mockups get an upgrade. You don’t just get premium mockups, you get “Magic Mockups”. You upload a design, and, within seconds, you get polished, studio-looking product shots.

No Photoshop, no hunting for stock scenes that half-fit. It’s quick, clean, and feels professional.

Profit Optimization

This is the part that pays for the subscription. The Price Navigator tool gives you region-based pricing suggestions.

It looks simple on the surface, but it quietly saves you from undercharging in one market and overpricing in another.

Then come the product discounts, up to 35% off if you’re on the annual plan. To put that in real numbers:

• Base price for a wall calendar: $6.54 (on Free)
• $4.90 with Gelato+
• $4.25 with Gelato+ Annual

If you sell 100 units, you save roughly $160 each month after the subscription cost. Hit 500 sales, and you’re keeping over $1,100 a year.

Even something that simple, like a calendar, ends up paying back the plan once your store hits steady volume.

Creative & Branding Edge

This is where Gelato+ helps your brand feel unique. The Personalization Studio is perfect if you sell gifts or customizable items.

It fills in names, colors, and messages automatically, so you don’t spend your life editing templates.

Then there’s the Creative Vault, which is basically an enormous library with more than 100 million licensed images and 800 pre-sized mockup templates.

Everything’s ready to use, no resizing or searching through stock sites.

If you want to make orders feel premium, Branded Packaging starts at around $0.49 per item.

Add a thank-you card or a label with your logo and suddenly your packages don’t look like they came from a random print shop. They look intentional.

Operations & Support

The real win here is simplicity. You can manage unlimited stores and users under one account, something that sounds minor until you start selling across multiple platforms.

Gelato integrates cleanly with Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, and Order Desk, and if you’re tech-savvy, you can plug straight into their API. Support’s solid too. I’ve messaged them at odd hours and still got a real response.

They also added a community forum recently, which is a nice touch, it’s mostly sellers swapping ideas and sharing what works in their niches.

Inside the Gelato+ Platinum Plan

Most sellers won’t need the Platinum plan at first, Gelato+ handles the heavy lifting for small and mid-size stores just fine.

But once you’re managing more than one brand, or you’ve got teams working across markets, Platinum starts to make sense.

Here’s what it adds on top of the standard plan:

• Dedicated account manager: A real person you can email or call when something breaks or you need a custom setup. You’re not stuck waiting in chat queues.
• Custom discounts: Better rates than the public 35%, based on volume. It’s all negotiated, which makes it feel more like a business partnership than a subscription.
• Quarterly growth reviews: These are performance check-ins where Gelato’s team shares data on your fulfillment times, returns, and regional sales.
• API and integration support: For brands with custom-built stores, Platinum helps automate everything: order flow, packaging, and multi-region pricing.
• Priority support line: Faster responses when you need them, which becomes invaluable during peak seasons.
• Early access: Beta features, exclusive rewards, and a small network of high-volume sellers testing new tools before they’re public.

It’s not cheap, and it’s not listed publicly (you’ll have to request a quote), but it’s made for teams that treat print-on-demand as a full-time business, not a side hustle.

If you’re shipping 100+ orders a month or managing stores across multiple countries, Platinum gives you back the control you start to lose when your business scales faster than your systems.

Gelato+: Who Each Plan Is Best For

If you’re still in the early stages, testing products, chasing your first few sales, the Free plan is plenty. You can build listings, link Shopify or Etsy, and get a feel for how everything connects.

You’ll learn which designs move, which ones flop, and how long shipping really takes. There’s no pressure, no subscription clock ticking in the background.

But once things pick up, you’ll feel the friction. Uploading a batch of products starts taking hours, and you’ll catch yourself fixing mockups instead of marketing.

That’s the moment Gelato+ starts to make sense. It’s like adding a few reliable systems in the background that keep the chaos under control.

Now, Platinum is different. That’s for sellers who already feel like project managers. You’re dealing with multiple storefronts, international customers, or maybe a small team.

You need someone on the Gelato side who can actually step in when something breaks. The discounts help, but it’s really about not losing time to problems you can’t fix yourself.

Here’s how I usually think about it:

• If you’re learning: stay Free.
• If you’re scaling: move to Plus.
• If you’re running a full operation: talk to Gelato about Platinum.

How to Manage or Cancel Your Subscription

To check your current plan, log into your Gelato account and look up to the top right, click your initials, then choose “Subscriptions.”

That’s where everything lives. From there, you can switch between plans, update your billing details, or cancel entirely.

If you just need to change your card, there’s a Payment Methods section inside that same menu. You can add or replace your payment info without canceling the plan.

Now, if you want to cancel, it’s straightforward:

• Go to your Subscriptions page.
• Click Cancel Subscription.
• Confirm when it asks.

Your plan stays active until the end of your billing cycle, so you don’t lose access instantly.

One thing to keep in mind, if you cancel or downgrade and then come back later, your old payment method might block the renewal. Just remove and re-add your card before resubscribing and it’ll go through fine.

The nice part? Even if you drop back down to the Free plan, your products, integrations, and history stay put. Nothing disappears.

Gelato+ vs Printify Premium vs Printful Growth

When you start comparing premium print-on-demand plans, they all look similar, until you actually run stores on them.

That’s when you start noticing the cracks: one platform charges extra for mockups, another ships slower, another looks great on paper but melts under scale.

Feature	Gelato+	Printify Premium	Printful Growth
Monthly Cost	$23.99 (or $19.99/month annual)	$29/month	$24.99/month
Average Product Discounts	Up to 35%, based on plan	Up to 20%	Up to 30%
AI & Automation Tools	Magic Mockups, Price Navigator, Velocity Switch	Printify Connect (limited automation)	Basic personalization + store sync
Mockup Options	800+ high-quality mockup scenes	Standard images	Standard templates
Branding Options	Custom inserts, labels, packaging	Limited	Expanded branding, large print zones
Fulfillment Network	140+ partners in 32+ countries	80+ partners across 15+ regions	Owned facilities in 10 countries
Migration Support	Automated via Velocity Switch	Manual product setup	Manual import
Customer Support	24/7 live chat and email	Business-hour email	24/7 live chat
Best For	Sellers scaling globally who want automation and consistency	Product testers or sellers chasing niche suppliers	Designers who prioritize print quality and branding polish

The Verdict on Gelato+

If you ask me, Gelato+ is well worth it, when you start to scale.

If you’re still finding your first buyers, you’ll be fine on the Free plan. It gives you everything you need to learn without pressure. But once you start getting consistent sales, Gelato+ is excellent.

The plan doesn’t make your designs better or fix your ad strategy. What it does is remove the small, daily friction that eats your time, the product uploads, the mockups, the re-pricing across regions.

Add in the discounts, and it starts paying for itself fast.

What Works

• The discounts are great. When you’re moving volume, 25–35% off adds up quickly. Even a simple product like a wall calendar drops from $6.54 to $4.25 on the annual plan. That’s hundreds saved each month.
• The automation feels natural. Velocity Switch, Instant Collections, and Price Navigator remove boring work without getting in your way.
• Mockups look professional. You can launch collections without ever touching Photoshop thanks to their new AI-powered magic mockup tool .
• Global production actually works. Local printers in 30+ countries mean fewer delays and fewer “where’s my order?” emails.
• Support isn’t robotic. I’ve had late-night chat responses that were actually useful — rare in this space.

What Still Needs Work

• The upfront cost stings if you’re new. Paying $20–$24 a month feels steep if your sales are still small.
• Some AI tools are still rough around the edges. They get better every few months, but expect the occasional quirk.
• Free shipping promos aren’t consistent. They come and go depending on region and season.
• You need volume to see value. Under 20 orders a month? Stay Free for now.

If your store is picking up speed, Gelato+ pays for itself faster than you think.
It doesn’t make you more creative, it just clears space so you can focus on what actually drives growth.

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