Printful vs Gelato: The Complete Comparison Guide

Printful vs Gelato: Which should you choose?

Both companies are well-known for their commitment to quality, their ease of use, and their exceptional customization options. It’s a tough choice, but after experimenting with both platforms and companies myself, I’ve created this comparison guide to help you decide.

Here, I’ll walk you through everything from product options and quality, to features and pricing, to give you the complete insights you need to make an intelligent choice for your print on demand company. Let’s dive in.

Printful vs Gelato: Key Takeaways

• Gelato and Printful both offer sustainable products, but Gelato takes additional steps to consistently reduce its carbon footprint, make it appealing to eco-conscious brands.
• Printful offers a much wider range of products to choose from, as well as additional customization options, such as all-over print for more items.
• Both companies offer access to products in the USA, as well as express shipping options, and quick fulfillment, to boost customer experiences.
• Printful’s design tools are a little more advanced, with AI features to help optimize your files, as well as various free and premium asset options.
• Both companies offer free and premium plans with access to extra benefits and discounts for paying subscribers.
• Although both companies integrate with a wide selection of sales channels, Printful gives you far more selling options to choose from.
• Both companies offer branding options, such as custom labels and packaging inserts.

When to Use Printful

I’d recommend using Printful if you want:

• Access to hundreds of unique products and customization options
• To sell through a huge selection of different channels.
• Exceptional product quality and low return rates.
• Excellent design tools with built-in artificial intelligence.
• Additional services (such as design support).

When to Use Gelato

I’d suggest considering Gelato if you want:

• A strong commitment to sustainability and eco-friendly production.
• Excellent customer service and support.
• Simple and straightforward design tools.
• High-quality products (though there are fewer options).
• Access to various premium plans.

Printful vs Gelato: The Pros and Cons

Printful and Gelato are two of my favorite print-on-demand companies, but they do have distinct pros and cons to consider. Here’s what you should keep in mind when making your choice.

Printful Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Hundreds of high-quality, customizable products
• Excellent customization options, including all-over print
• Impressive design tools with plenty of free assets
• Additional services, such as design support
• Integrations with a wide range of sales channels
• Fast and efficient global fulfillment

Cons:

• Expensive base products and shipping
• Shipping times can vary depending on location

Gelato Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Excellent production network in 32 countries
• Valuable premium plans for top vendors
• Great sustainability and eco-friendly production
• Easy-to-use design tools
• Fast delivery times for most products

Cons:

• Fewer product options
• Limited integrations compared to Printful
• Less advanced tools for design

Printful vs Gelato: The Core Features

Gelato and Printful are very similar on the surface. They both offer global fulfillment, produce products with their own in-house teams, and offer a range of products to choose from.

Both tools can also integrate with a range of sales channels (though Printful offers more options).

Printful Core Features

Printful is my go-to choice for print on demand companies in search of exceptional quality, excellent design tools, and the flexibility to scale their business across multiple channels. Some of the core features of the platform include:

• Expansive product catalog: Printful offers hundreds of products to choose from, ranging from apparel, to home and living products. It even offers unique eco-friendly and premium products. Plus, you can customize products with DTG, DTF, all-over-print, and embroidery.
• Design tools: Printful’s design tools are excellent, featuring AI image scaling capabilities, access to unique resources you can use to enhance your designs, and a convenient drag-and-drop interface. You can even create amazing lifestyle mockups.
• Global fulfillment: Like Gelato, Printful delivers products to regions all around the globe. There’s even the option to access express delivery in some regions, although you will pay a little extra. Printful also automatically estimates delivery times for you.
• Merch share: Printful’s unique merch-share service allows companies, teams, and other groups to create and purchase custom items with shared graphics and assets, making it easy to create stress-free group orders.
• Sales channels: Printful integrates with more platforms than virtually any other POD vendor, including marketplaces like Etsy, ecommerce platforms like Shopify, social media channels like TikTok shop, and there’s a custom API.
• Branding: Printful gives vendors plenty of ways to add custom branding to their products, with inside and outside neck labels, customizable packaging, inserts, and various other solutions, although there may be extra fees.

Gelato Core Features

Gelato is one of the most trustworthy and eco-conscious print on demand companies in the world, offering fulfillment in 32 countries worldwide. Though its product selection is smaller than Printful’s it still offers an exceptional range, and great quality. Key features include:

• Excellent product catalog: Though Gelato doesn’t offer as many products as Printful, they do have a great range, and commit to delivering excellent quality with cutting-edge technology, and sustainably sourced materials.
• Design studio: The personalization studio offered by Gelato makes it simple to create compelling products, and experiment with designs. You also get access to a handful of different fonts and free images you can use for inspiration.
• Sales channels: Gelato integrates with a range of sales channels, including Shopify, Squarespace, BigCommerce, Etsy, and Wix. The company also has an API, so you can create your own automated workflows.
• Global fulfillment: With Gelato, you can expect fast, local production and delivery in 32 countries. Not only do products reach your customers quickly, but most are produced locally, which helps to reduce carbon emissions.
• Branding: As well as offering a range of customization options, from sublimation to embroidery, Gelato also allows you to brand your products with custom labels, and packaging inserts, though there are fewer options than you’ll get from Printful.
• Gelato Connect: Gelato Connect is Gelato’s state-of-the-art solution to help print providers connect with customers all over the world. This allows it to appeal to not just print-on-demand companies, but manufacturers too.

Read more:

• Printify vs Gelato
• Printify vs Teelaunch

Ease of Use: Which Platform is Simpler?

Like most print on demand companies, Gelato and Printful are both committed to giving users a straightforward experience. Signing up for an account on both platforms only takes a couple of minutes, and you can start creating custom products straight away.

Gelato’s design tools are fantastic, with lots of realistic lifestyle mockup options, easy-to-use components for adding visual appeal to your site, and more. You can even customize product picture backgrounds to ensure they align with your brand on your website.

Even integrating Gelato with your existing store only takes a couple of clicks for the most part, which makes it easy to automate order processing and fulfillment.

Printful offers a very similar design experience, although you do have a little more freedom to experiment with additional assets and editing tools. I also appreciate the addition of the AI upscaler, which helps to enhance any low-quality images in an instant.

Printful also makes it easy to create and manage sample orders, track purchasing information in your dashboard, and access additional services and support whenever you need it. The overall dashboard is a little more advanced than what you get from Gelato, which might be ideal for growing companies.

Plus, like Gelato, Printful can easily integrate with a wide range of platforms, and even gives you the option to use “Merchshare” to make group ordering even easier.

Customer Support and Service

Both Printful and Gelato have a decent reputation for delivering exceptional customer support, although Gelato has earned slightly higher reviews for its approach to quickly addressing customer queries. Both companies do promise 24/7 service, however, although response times vary.

I think Printful has a slightly more advanced selection of self-help resources to choose from, which you can access from within your dashboard. Both companies offer “premium” support options to customers on their paid, or membership plans.

Both Printful and Gelato provide live chat and email support, although you may struggle to reach the teams via phone, and even social media at times.

Printful vs Gelato Product Variety and Quality

Ultimately, Printful does give you a lot more product options to choose from than Gelato, though Gelato still has a good range.

Printful also benefits from a wider range of customization options, with more solutions for custom branding, as well as options like all-over-print for various products.

Printful’s commitment to print quality is excellent. The company sources luxury, high-quality materials, and uses state-of-the-art equipment to ensure every print is crisp and clear. It even has a 99% satisfaction rate, and has earned countless five-star reviews.

Gelato also has an excellent reputation for delivering consistently great quality, particularly when it comes to eco-friendly and sustainable items.

They also use strict quality assurance measures to minimize risks. However, there are fewer product options to choose from.

Additionally, though Gelato offers options like embroidery, you can’t use this option on every product, and you won’t find any all-over-print solutions.

Both companies do offer “US-based” options too, which means you should expect to deliver products to customers relatively quickly, if you’re based in America.

Printful vs Gelato: Plans and Pricing

Both Printful and Gelato allow companies to start their POD journey for free, with access to all the tools they need, including endless customizable products and design studios. The free plans both come with worldwide fulfillment, integrations, and customer support.

With Printful, you can upgrade to a “membership” plan if you want to access additional benefits. The only plan you can choose to pay for is the “Growth” plan, which is free if you earn $12k in revenue per year, or $24.99 per month.

This plan comes with up to 20% off DTG products, 30% off other products, 7% off branding, unlimited stores, product transfer support and more.

The second plan, “Business” is only available if you make $60k per year. It includes up to 22% off DTG products, 9% off branding, 33% off other products, larger front prints for certain products, priority support, and free digitization for embroider.

Gelato offers three paid plans to choose from, including:

• Gelato+: $24 per month: Up to 10% off products, premium mockups and design tools, millions of stock graphics, and fonts, branded labels, packaging inserts, and product expansion tools for growth.
• Gold: $119 per month: All the features of Gelato+, and up to 15% off products, 30% off branding tools, smart pricing for shipping, and advanced price optimization.
• Platinum: Custom pricing: The features of Gold, plus custom discounts, dedicated implementation services and customer support, and a consulting team.

Printful vs Gelato: The Verdict

Printful is definitely the better option overall if you’re looking for product variety, a wide range of customization options, advanced design tools, and more integrations.

However, Gelato does have an excellent reputation for quality, customer service, and sustainability.

Printful is a little more expensive than Gelato in terms of core product prices and shipping, although Gelato’s premium plans are costly, making it harder to scale on the platform.

More comparisons:

• Printful vs Printify
• Printful vs Printed Mint