If you’re looking for a platform that will help you launch a new print on demand business, there are literally dozens of options to choose from. Printful, Bonfire and Spreadshirt are just three choices you can consider – but how do they stack up against each other?
I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to use all of these platforms in the past. Right off the bat, I can tell you that Printful is my favorite option all-round. It offers the most omnichannel selling options, the best design tools, and unbeatable product quality.
Spreadshirt, however, is a good option for beginners, thanks to its pre-built marketplace – making it easier to find potential customers. Plus, Bonfire makes it really simple to create your own merch store, fundraise, and sell on YouTube.
Here’s my complete (and objective) comparison of all three platforms, designed to help you make the right decision for your business.
The Quick Verdict, Pros and Cons
If you’re pressed for time, here’s what you need to know:
- Printful is the best print on demand platform overall. It offers a huge range of products, delivers consistent quality, and gives you the option to sell through various channels. It even has some of the best design tools out there, and a quick store creator for US merchants.
- Spreadshirt is a good option for smaller sellers looking for easy creation tools, branded products, and a wide range of unique items. It’s also great if you want to start selling products immediately on a marketplace, without having to rely on an ecommerce platform.
- Bonfire might be a great pick if you’re looking for a versatile POD solution that’s also a fundraising platform. It’s great for peer-to-peer funding, nonprofit fundraising, and selling custom products on YouTube (or through a basic merch store).
Printful vs Bonfire vs Spreadshirt: The Pros and Cons
Printful Pros and Cons
Pros
- Huge range of products and customization options.
- Dozens of sales channel integrations (and a quick store builder)
- Global fulfillment and delivery support.
- Useful add-on services for beginners.
- High-value premium plans.
- Consistent product quality
Cons
- Limited customer support
Bonfire Pros and Cons
Pros
- Unique custom design options and design templates
- Excellent fundraising options for non-profits and individuals
- Instant integration with YouTube Merch store
- Free and simple storefront builder
- Fantastic customer support
- Premium-quality products
Cons
- Limited integrations with sales channels.
Spreadshirt Pros and Cons
Pros
- Excellent selection of products and customization types.
- Integrated marketplace for rapid access to buyers.
- T-shirt designer tool allows users to customize their own products.
- SPOD app for ecommerce integrations.
- Worldwide fulfillment
Cons
- Limited integration options.
Printful vs Bonfire vs Spreadshirt: The Core Features
On a broad scale, Printful, Bonfire, and Spreadshirt might seem pretty similar. They all give companies and creators the tools they need to design and sell print-on-demand products, for instance. However, they’re very different platforms.
Printful is a tool that connects with other sales channels (although there is a Quick Store creator for US merchants), allowing you to sell custom products across various platforms.
It’s best-known for its excellent product quality, and scalability.
Spreadshirt is a platform that allows creators to design custom products, and list them on an existing marketplace.
Although you can integrate Spreadshirt with some other sales channels through SPOD, it’s main focus is giving you instant access to an existing audience.
Bonfire allows you to create a simple merch store, or sell products through YouTube merch (similar to Fourthwall).
It primarily gives individuals, nonprofits, and artists an easy way to raise funds by selling high-quality products with minimal upfront costs.
Let’s take a look at the key features, side by side.
Product Options and Customization
Overall, Printful gives creators the best range of products to choose from, and the most customization options.
There are more than 368 products to choose from on the platform, including various unique options like eco-friendly garments, and shoes.
You also get a wide range of customization options, like DTF, DTG, embroidery, and all-over print.
Spreadshirt offers a similar range of products, although most of the items you can customize belong to the apparel and accessories niches.
However, there are also some unique items available too, like lunch boxes or cuddly toys. Like Printful, it offers embroidery, DTF, and DTG printing options.
Bonfire has potentially the smallest range of products. You can still create all the standard POD items like hats, shirts, and tote bags, but there aren’t a lot of “unique” options.
There also doesn’t seem to be any options for embroidery or all-over print. On the plus side, Bonfire does allow users to request custom designs from a team of graphic design experts.
When it comes to actually customizing your products (using the design tools), all three platforms give you access to a convenient design tool, templates, and a handful of assets you can use.
However, Printful definitely has the better design experience over all.
There are a lot more free resources to access on Printful, like clipart and unique fonts. Plus, you can adjust your designs in a more granular way.
You’ll even be able to use AI to upscale images and boost your product quality, and a fantastic mockup generator, which can create lifestyle images for your store. So, from a product and design perspective, Printful wins hands-down.
Product Quality and Profitability
Assessing product variety and design options should really just be the tip of the iceberg when you’re looking for the perfect POD platform.
The next thing worth considering is the quality of the products you’re going to get (and how much of a profit you can make from them).
Based on the reviews I’ve read, and my insights into the design processes used by all three platforms, Printful and Bonfire definitely have a better reputation than Spreadshirt for product quality.
Printful is known worldwide for delivering consistent high-quality products, with excellent print clarity, and state-of-the-art materials.
They source materials and products from leading manufacturers, and use the world’s best printing machinery and tools. They also conduct strict quality checks on every item before shipping them to customers.
Bonfire might have fewer products to offer, but they always seem to deliver from a quality perspective. Customers say apparel products are soft, comfortable, and made from high-quality materials, and the prints are usually crisp and clear.
This probably has something to do with Bonfire’s approach to manually reviewing and optimizing design files before printing products.
Spreadshirt definitely doesn’t have a bad reputation for print quality – but it’s not the best either.
Based on the reviews I’ve read, print quality can definitely vary, depending on your file quality and other factors. Plus, the materials used by the platform aren’t always premium.
On the plus side, Spreadshirt and Printful’s base product costs are often a little cheaper than Bonfire’s.
A classic Unisex tee on Bonfire will cost you around $17.02, while a similar option from Printful costs about $14.10 (if you don’t want embroidery and aren’t using a membership plan.
On Spreadshirt, you can expect to pay around $16.99.
With all that in mind, I think Printful offers the best value for money if you’re looking for profitability, with the perfect ratio of quality to cost.
Fulfillment and Sales Channels
As mentioned above, how you’ll actually sell products you create with Printful, Spreadshirt, and Bonfire, differs drastically.
Bonfire gives users the option to create a very basic “merch store”, where they can sell products without having to worry about running a full ecommerce platform.
You don’t get many customization options for this store, but you can add a logo, custom descriptions, and unique colors into the mix.
Alternatively, you can launch a “limited time campaign” on Bonfire, or sell products directly through the YouTube merch store.
There aren’t any options for integrating the platform with other social media channels, marketplaces, or ecommerce platforms, however.
Spreadshirt primarily encourages users to sell through its “pre-built” marketplace. You basically get a storefront on the marketplace where you can showcase all of the products you have available to customers who already shop on the Spreadshirt website.
That’s handy if you want immediate access to an existing audience, but there are limitations to how much you can build a memorable brand.
There’s also the option to connect Spreadshirt to certain ecommerce platforms, like Shopify, through the “SpreadConnect” app – but the automation options are pretty limited.
By far, Printful gives you the most sales channels to choose from. Although there’s no marketplace option, you can create a “quick store”, similar to the merch store available from Bonfire (but with fewer customization options) to sell your products online for free.
However, this is only available to US merchants for the time being.
Fortunately, you can also connect Printful to a huge variety of ecommerce platforms, like Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace, social media channels, and marketplaces like Ebay and Amazon.
Ease of Use and Customer Support
Honestly, I’ve yet to come across a print on demand solution that isn’t “beginner friendly”. The whole point of the print on demand business model is that it’s supposed to make it easier to sell online.
Still, if I had to rank Printful, Bonfire, and Spreadshirt in terms of “ease of use”, Spreadshirt would probably come on top.
That’s basically just because you don’t have to do as much to get started with Spreadshirt as you would with Bonfire or Printful.
All you need to do is choose an account, implement your designs, and list products on the marketplace.
Even customizing your “showroom” doesn’t take much effort, because you can’t add a lot of unique elements or components into the mix.
Bonfire gives you slightly more customization options for your merch store, but not many – so it’s still a very straightforward platform.
I do think the design tools are a little less intuitive on this platform however, so I’d place Bonfire behind both Spreadshirt and Printful in terms of usability.
Printful is still incredibly easy to use, but it takes a little more work to get everything set up initially. Creating a Quick Store only takes a few seconds, but if you want to integrate Printful with other sales channels, this can take a little more work.
On the plus side, you do plenty of guidance to walk you through the process – including a handy onboarding checklist.
However, since Printful has more features to explore, and more advanced design tools, you could argue it has a slightly higher learning curve than Spreadshirt or Printful.
I’d say once you get used to the platform, however, it becomes one of the most intuitive POD solutions around.
The Customer Support and Reviews
Based on the customer reviews I’ve read on channels like TrustPilot, Bonfire actually has the best reputation of all three channels.
It has a score of 4.8, compared to 4.7 for Printful, and 4.4 for Spreadshirt. This has a lot to do with Bonfire’s approach to customer support.
Bonfire, Printful, and Spreadshirt all offer access to great self-help resources, like guides, FAQs, videos, and tutorials.
However, Spreadshirt only offers direct customer support through email. Printful gives customers support through live chat and email, on a 24/7 basis, but there’s no phone option.
Alternatively, Bonfire offers live chat, email, and phone contact options.
Although the company doesn’t promise 24/7 support, it has an excellent reputation for responding to queries quickly and efficiently, with useful, valuable guidance.
Printful vs Bonfire vs Spreadshirt: Plans and Pricing
Finally, let’s take a look at the pricing. The pricing for base products and shipping can vary across all three of these platforms.
All three platforms allow users to sign up and get started for free too. You don’t need to pay any monthly subscription fees with Bonfire, Printful, or Spreadshirt.
All you have to pay for is the base cost of the products you’re going to sell – and shipping, if you don’t want to pass that cost to your customers.
All three platforms do offer extra services, like design support, which can incur extra fees. However, Printful is the only option that gives customers the option to upgrade to a premium plan.
The “Growth plan”, which costs $24.99 per month (or is available for free if you’re earning $12k per year in revenue), gives you a lot of benefits for your money.
You get fixed discounts on various products, a range of additional branding options, and access to things like priority support, and unlimited stores per account.
Although you don’t necessarily need to upgrade to this plan if you don’t want to – it’s excellent value for money.
I’d definitely recommend considering it as your business starts to scale.
Printful vs Bonfire vs Spreadshirt: The Verdict
So, which platform is best? It’s probably obvious from this review that Printful is my number one pick all around.
It easily outperforms Bonfire and Spreadshirt in terms of scalability, product options, product quality, integrations, and design tools.
Plus, it’s brilliant from a profitability perspective too – particularly now that the base product prices are a lot lower.
Still, Bonfire and Spreadshirt have their values. Bonfire is a great option if you’re looking for excellent customer support, great quality products, and fantastic fundraising options.
Spreadshirt might not have the best reputation or customer support options, but it does give you a lot of products to choose from, and it makes it easy to get started with its integrated marketplace.
Still, if you’re looking for the best print on demand platform for scalability and growth, stick with Printful.
Of course, you can always choose to use all three platforms – after all, all of them allow you to get started for free- so you can put them head to head for yourself (if you don’t trust my opinion).
