Maximize your profit with Printful’s in-house fulfillment
Product prices
The lower the cost, the higher your profit margins. You can set more competitive prices for your customers, attracting a larger audience.
Shipping costs
With an in-house partner, you’ll save on multi-item shipments and get reliable and transparent pricing for every shipping method.
Print quality
Fulfillment quality excels when all products are produced by the same team, using the same equipment, and with the same quality control.
Sales channels
Having easy access to other ecommerce platforms opens the door to the vast audience of each online marketplace like Etsy or Amazon.
Succeed with a true long-term partner
Consistent and reliable quality control
Identical 3-step quality testing across our global in-house facilities
Transparent pricing and support
Honest communication, set prices, and no revenue-based fees
457 customizable products
Diverse range of premium products and customization techniques
Businesses that trust Printful
Start selling the same products as world-class brands
Comparing both print-on-demand platforms
What is Printful?
Printful is an on-demand production and fulfillment company that lets you sell custom products on your own online store without having to deal with equipment, shipping, or inventory management.
Printful owns the entire production process. This allows for rigorous quality control and consistent printing tech, resulting in a 0.24% reshipment rate.
Printful is free to use—you pay the product fulfillment and shipping cost, set your retail price, sell on a platform like your Etsy shop, and keep the profit.
What is Redbubble?
Redbubble is a printing supplier and ecommerce platform that lets you design and sell custom products. Instead of integrating with other online marketplaces, Redbubble acts as a marketplace itself, where sellers bring in potential customers from their audience.
Selling on the platform comes with revenue-based fees—while you set your own prices, a chunk of the profit margin goes to the marketplace. Redbubble handles the print outsourcing and their platform, while you pay for the product and shipping.
While Redbubble is seen as a marketplace with its own products, it doesn’t own facilities or print designs. When your customer makes an order, it's outsourced to another printing company assigned by Redbubble.
What’s the main difference?
The main differences between the two on-demand solutions are their printing network and sales channels.
Printful has in-house production facilities, while Redbubble outsources to external partners. When it comes to selling the printed products, Printful integrates with various platforms, and Redbubble works as a self-contained online marketplace.
Make the switch to Printful
Apply for product transfer assistance, and we’ll do the rest
Choose a reliable print-on-demand partner with a bulletproof track record.
Go all in with Printful and get:
- Unmatched quality for your brand in all markets
- Easier order management and consistent shipping costs
- Better customer experience for multi-item orders
- Streamlined branding options and product packaging
Printful in numbers
457
products to customize
1M+
items fulfilled each month
22
integration partners
121M
items trusted to deliver
Frequently asked questions
Yes, Printful’s product pricing is lower because it’s consistent across all fulfillment facilities. Since Redbubble connects users to a range of print providers, the company has to account for price differences and make the average price higher.
While the Redbubble print-on-demand model enables local production in certain markets, their pricing is specific for each region and sometimes country. Since the print providers used for each order are assigned automatically by Redbubble, you can’t select a provider based on their product prices.
Considering how Redbubble works as both a printing company and an online marketplace, sellers must also pay monthly fees to maintain the Redbubble website as their primary sales channel. This cost can be higher or lower than signing up to use an external marketplace in combination with Printful, but that choice is up to you.
In the Printful vs. Redbubble comparison, the right answer depends on your needs. Are you looking to create a stable business or a hands-off storefront? With Redbubble, you can avoid the need for a separate marketplace, but that comes with higher fees, fewer design options, and less control over your profit. You might also be making sacrifices when it comes to quality and customer experience because all Redbubble products are outsourced to third-party suppliers that vary in product and communication quality.
All Printful products are fulfilled by in-house professionals or a handful of trusted partners. This means you get reliable quality, predictable fulfillment costs, 24/7 customer support, and consistent branding options like packing slips and tracking pages for all your orders. If these factors are important to you, you’ll likely be better off spending a little extra time by creating an Etsy store and using Printful as your supplier.
Yes, Printful seamlessly connects to Etsy, among 23 other store integrations like Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, and many other options that are well suited for the needs of creators and entrepreneurs alike.
One metric that can be used to compare Printful vs. Redbubble is their ease of use, especially when you factor in the process of selling your products. While signing up with a marketplace like Etsy can seem daunting at first, their user-friendly interface and educational resources make things highly accessible even for beginners. Printful also has a vast library of customer information created specifically for you, depending on the platform or marketplace you choose.
While using platforms like Etsy comes with additional expenses, they’re usually lower than the monthly fees most sellers must pay for using Redbubble.
Both Redbubble and Printful are on-demand service providers, but Printful owns and controls the entire production process, while Redbubble connects sellers to printing partners and manages its own self-contained marketplace.
As a result, Printful doesn’t need new fulfillment centers when adding new products or categories. Since the quality of the physical products is evaluated and controlled in-house, Printful creates a consistent customer experience no matter where your buyers are. When partnering with Printful to sell your designs online, you can pick from a list of store integrations like Etsy, Amazon, Shopify, etc. Each platform has its own fees and benefits, and you can sell on as many as you’d like.
Redbubble acts as a middleman between printing partners and the customer, but it stands out with its simplified upfront setup process by providing an existing sales channel. To use the Redbubble marketplace, you must pay a monthly revenue-based fee, eating into your profits. Outsourcing the production to other suppliers means there’s little consistency in print quality and costs.
Yes, the Redbubble catalog includes less than 80 products, while Printful’s product catalog has 457 products.
Printful also has more customization options than Redbubble. While both companies fulfill t-shirts, Printful’s option will be available for techniques like embroidery, not just direct-to-garment (DTG) printing. You can even combine embroidery and DTG techniques for some items.
No, you don’t have to pay for using Printful. As a print-on-demand partner, Printful charges you for the cost of the products and fulfillment once an order is placed, but the leftover profit is completely yours to keep.
If you want extra perks like lower product prices or branding discounts, you can become a Printful Growth member for $24.99 per month. It’s completely optional, and member perks are fixed, so you can rely on the lowered pricing for as long as you want to keep your membership.
If your sales exceed $12K in a year, you automatically get a full year of the Printful Growth membership for free. And if your sales reach $60K in a year, you get upgraded to a Printful Business membership, which comes with even lower prices and many other benefits.
Yes, if you fall into the Redbubble Standard tier like most accounts. You’ll be charged a flat fee based on your monthly earnings as long as you make any sales. Your earnings are calculated at the end of the pay period, from which you then pay fees.
The fees are progressive, so the more you earn, the higher your flat fee will be. For example, if you sold two $15 t-shirts at a retail price of $20 each, you’ve earned $10. Based on the Redbubble fee table, your monthly fee will then be $5.80, leaving you with $4.20 in profit that month.
Yes, including free ones like packing slips and order tracking, as well as paid features like product labels and custom packaging. This is especially important for creators and artists since your fans value the connection they have with your brand.
Printful’s branding tools are split into product branding that can be added at the design stage and additional branding that appears elsewhere in the customer journey. Product branding elements can be added to printed and embroidered apparel in a variety of placements.
All Printful products come in white-label packaging by default, but you can create and arrange for custom packaging or pack-ins for a premium customer experience. If that’s too difficult, you can put a custom message on your packing slips, and add branding to your order tracking page, both free of charge.
Yes, you can use Printful for free—create a Printful account with no signup or subscription fees. From there, customize products and sell them without any hidden costs. Start with t-shirts and build your successful business from there!
Want added benefits like product discounts and personalized product transfer assistance from your current print-on-demand service provider? Try out Printful’s membership for 14 days FOR FREE.
Absolutely! By teaming up with Printful, you get high-quality products printed with one partner, by one team, under one roof.
Use Printful’s tools for your own online store
