Gooten vs Printful (Jun 2023) – Which Is Better For POD?

Last Updated: June 8, 2023

Are you having a hard time deciding between Gooten vs Printiful?

Don’t worry – I’ve done a thorough research on these two options to make an in-depth comparison of Gooten vs Printful so that you can easily decide which platform fits your needs best.

There are many factors to consider when making a decision between Gooten vs Printful, but I’ve analyzed 8 most important factors you must consider, and here they are:

• Getting Started
• Print Quality
• Branding
• Order Fulfillment
• Shipping
• Design Maker
• Product Catalog
• Customer Support

By considering these eight factors, you can quickly decide which option is best for you based on your own preferences.

RELATED ARTICLE: Printful vs Printify — Which is Best For POD?

In case, you’re short on time – here’s the short version of this comparison.

Gooten vs Printful: Short Verdict

Gooten is a middleman that outsources your on-demand printing orders to third-party global manufacturers, while Printful is an on-demand printing and warehousing company that offers a diverse product range and manufactures products in its own factories. Overall, Printful is better than Gooten.

How Gooten & Printful Works

Before I start the in-depth comparison of Gooten and Printful, I think it’s essential to point out how they work and what makes them stand out from each other. 

How Gooten Works 

Gooten is a print-on-demand company that works with different print providers around the world. Basically, they work as a middleman between you and the print providers.

Just like most POD platforms, you need to connect your store with Gooten, choose from hundreds of products, customize with your unique designs, publish, and generate orders.

Every time a person places an order, it will go directly to Gooten. 

Next, Gooten will automatically route orders through its network of third-party manufacturers and find the right fit for your order – based on optimal pricing and shipping time. 

Finally, the manufacturer will directly ship the products to your customers. You don’t have to worry about inventory, packaging, warehousing, and so forth. 

How Printful Works

Printful is a print on-demand and fulfillment warehousing company. Just like Gooten, you’ve to choose one of Printful’s products, customize it with your unique designs, and list the products in your store. 

As soon as a customer places an order, your order will get automatically directed to one of Printful’s fulfillment centers. Printful will directly ship the final manufactured product to your customers – all under your branding.

They work very similar to Gooten but different in one major way and that is the fact that Printful does all printing in-house and manufactures products in its own factories.

Moreover, Printful offers warehousing services which Gooten doesn’t. 

Now let’s get into our in-depth comparison.

Which Is Easier To Get Started & Start Selling?

In this section, I am going to compare which one is easier and effortless to get started and start selling.

First of all, let’s start with Gooten.

Gooten is free to get started but it isn’t quick since it requires you to get in touch with them by submitting a form with your name, email, phone number, company name, website URL and answer to some other questions.

Once you submit the form, their sales team will review your submission and provide you with the link to access your account based on your answers and order numbers. This whole process takes a couple of days.

Please note, they only give access to those having an order volume of 100 items or more per month.

In contrast, Printful is quick and extremely easy to get started since it doesn’t have a minimum order requirement and unlike Gooten, you don’t need to worry about 100 orders, submitting a long-form, and account approval.

To get started on Printful, you’ve to create a free account by entering your full name, email, and password or you can sign up with Facebook, Google, and Apple. 

That’s it! As soon as you create your account, you can launch your store and start selling.

Getting Started – The Verdict:

Printful easily wins this round. If you’re just getting into print-on-demand business or already doing it but not getting 100 or more orders per month then Printful is the perfect choice for you.

However, if you’re getting 100 or more orders a month then you should make your decision based on other factors.

Which Has the Better Print Quality?

The print quality of your products must be better than the rest if you want to stand out from the competition.

Let’s compare Gooten and Printful in terms of print quality.

Gooten is a globally distributed production and logistics company that outsources the orders you make to different manufacturers for printing, thus serving as an agent between you and the print house.

Printful, on the other hand, is a print-on-demand drop shipping and fulfillment warehouse platform, manufactures the products itself. Whenever someone places an order for the products you added to your online store, they start the manufacturing right off the bat.

And all of it is done by a team of in-house experts as Printful keeps a team of professional in-house designers, photographers, and videographers. 

Moreover, the manufactured products of Printful undergo a 3-step quality check before they ship them out. 

1. The automated software checks the quality of graphics before printing. 
2. The fulfillment specialists conduct a check on quality while orders print. 
3. There is a final quality check after the printing and curing process. 

The finished product is then shipped to the customer under your brand’s name, this means that Printful has control over quality, while Gooten doesn’t. 

Other than that, Printful invested heavily in printing equipment, roughly $50.3 million to use advanced tech for manufacturing high-quality and striking products for you. 

Their newest technology, the Kornit Avalanche Poly Pro printer, gives them a competitive edge as it gives excellent DTG print results on 100% polyester.

In contrast, Gooten invested nothing in printing equipment because they don’t manufacture the products rather outsource your orders to a network of different printing manufacturers which means they rely on the print quality of manufacturers.

Another downside is that Gooten matches your product to a manufacturer of their choice, and you’re not allowed to choose your manufacturing house on your own.  Again, this may lead to inconsistency when it comes to print quality and design. 

Overall, Printful is the unparalleled leader on the market when it comes to print quality because they have control over quality and invested a lot in printing equipment to manufacture high-quality products. 

However, this doesn’t mean that Gooten’s print quality is bad but it can’t compete with Printful’s print quality.

As per my research and user’s ratings, the print quality of Gooten’s products keeps fluctuating between good to average because the product orders are being sent to different manufacturers for printing.

Print Quality – The Verdict:

Clearly, the winner of the print quality battle is Printful. Gooten’s print quality cannot be relied upon to the same extent as Printful since the orders are outsourced.

Printful always delivers excellent quality print as they have the most advanced tech and undergo a final quality check.

Which Is Better For Branding?

Before we discuss which platforms offer more custom branding options, it’s important to know whether they support white-labeling or not.

So yes, both the POD platforms allow you to sell white-label products which means that Gooten or Printful names won’t be mentioned on packages, slips, or products and you can sell products under your own custom branding.

Now in terms of branding options, both offer custom-designed labels for different products. While Gooten offers only custom-designed neck label options, Printful offers a handful of other branding options. 

Gooten offers only a neck label option at $2 per label. You can easily create unlimited neck labels and also categorize them under various categories. The neck label should be a 5 inch (W) x 1 inch (H) image.

Printful, on the other hand, offers a wide range of custom branding options and services. It allows you to select from a range of printed or embroidered options that you can design based on the area you want to place them in. 

For example, inside label, outside label, short-sleeve print, long-sleeve print, pack-ins, packaging slips, custom packaging, and so on.

The pricing of Printful’s branding services also varies depending on where you want to add your own custom branding: 

• Inside-outside label or short-sleeve print cost $2.49
• Embroidered logos will cost you $2.95
• Branding on long-sleeve will cost approximately $5.95
• Adding additional placement on Hats costs $2.95
• The packaging slips with your branding are free of cost
• Custom packaging costs $0.50 per package used for an order

All the labels designed on Printful are elegant and subtle, yet hard to miss.

If you want, Printful can also insert attractive offers with your branding elements while packaging. 

You can insert elements like: 

• Flyers and coupons 
• Business cards 
• Branded stickers 
• Postcards 
• Hand-written thank you cards

Aside from that, Printful allows you to customize your products with branded packaging slips and pack-ins, so you can showcase your brand with customized packaging inserts. 

If you want your logo on your packaging slips, make sure your logo is black or white and write a customized message for your customers and Printful will add it to the outside of  most of your packages.

Watch this video to see what I just said:

You can learn more about Printful’s branding services here.

Branding – The Verdict:

Printful is a way better choice than Gooten when it comes to selling products under your brand. It offers a wide range of branding services including flexible label-making options and pricing, while Gooten offers only neck label branding.

Which Has the Better Order Fulfillment Time?

Before I compare the order fulfillment time of both Gooten and Printful, it’s important to keep in mind that order fulfillment is the process of receiving, manufacturing or processing, and delivering the order to the customer.

Also, note that fulfillment time for either of the POD platforms doesn’t include shipping – it’s just the time required to manufacture your custom-ordered product. 

Although rest assured, I’m going to talk about shipping time in detail in the upcoming section. 

Gooten Order Fulfillment

Once your customer places an order, Gooten takes at least 2 hours to review it before proceeding further. After that, it automatically gets routed to the vendor for production. 

The production or the order fulfillment time for Gooten ranges somewhere between 0-6 business days. However, if the production gets delayed due to certain issues, then it can take a maximum of up to 9 business days. 

However, you can track your product in real-time as soon as the vendor prints a shipping label. You can also view the pre-production order status of your entire fulfillment process. 

Unlike Printful, you don’t get a lot of information and methods for order fulfillment since all of it is done through third-party manufacturers and vendors.

Printful Order Fulfillment

Printful handles every aspect of your order fulfillment in-house. They fulfill all the orders placed by your customers and ship directly under your brand’s name.

The order fulfillment time of Printful is:

• 2-7 business days for apparel products (t-shirts, leggings, dresses, etc.) 
• 2-5 business days for non-apparel products (posters, mugs, phone cases, etc.)

Here’s a quick breakdown of fulfillment time required for different products and locations: 

Additionally, Printful allows two types of order fulfillment processes, print-on-demand drop shipping and warehousing & fulfillment service. 

The warehousing & fulfillment services let you stock up your raw materials to achieve fast order fulfillment ultimately. Another advantage you get with Printful is that it has fulfillment centers in various parts of the world, including Toronto, Spain, etc. 

The best part is, the warehouse facilities of Printful may even end up successfully achieving order fulfillment and shipping on the day of order placement. 

However, this service is limited to a handful of locations and countries: 

Besides, Printful helps you track your order fulfillment process in detail and even has several sub-categories to help you determine the exact order status.

For more in-depth information, you may want to head to this video by Printful: 

Order Fulfillment – The Verdict: 

Both of the POD platforms take similar business days roughly to complete your order fulfillment process. That said, Gooten being an outsourcing company, has limited order fulfillment options as opposed to Printful.

Moreover, Printful gives a clear idea about the order status and also offers warehouse facilities. Thus, in terms of order fulfillment, Printful is the winner.

Shipping

In this section, I am going to compare both Gooten and Printful in terms of: 

• Shipping & delivery time and methods
• Shipping rates
• Shipping availability

Shipping & Delivery

Note that the shipping time is when the company ships your order and the delivery time is when you actually receive it.

With that being said, let’s compare both platforms’ shipping and delivery times, starting with Gooten first.

Gooten has different shipping times based on the shipping method you choose and your customer’s location.

Depending on the shipping method you choose, the total cost of the product will vary.

Don’t worry – Gooten let’s you choose the shipping method, show you the shipping time, methods, prices, and fulfillment time during checkout.

Now coming to Printful’s shipping and delivery time.

Printful shipping time also depends on the delivery destination but if you use their warehousing order fulfillment service then your products will be shipped out to your customers on the same day.

Unlike Gooten, you can’t select a shipping method in most cases.

They are partnered with global carriers like FedEx, DHL, dpd, USPS, and Latvijas Pasts, and most of the time, the default shipping method is only available during checkout.

Despite the fact that shipping times vary depending on the location of the customer, I did a calculation comparing its shipping time for dozens of countries, and here’s what I found:

• The average shipping time was  3-9 business days  for the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and all the European countries and regions.
• For the rest of the world, the shipping time was  10-20 business days  on average.

To ensure this, let’s place an order from Printful in order to see an estimated delivery time during checkout.

First of all, let’s calculate delivery time when shipping to the United States.

Right now, it’s  June 7  and Printful gives me an estimated delivery time of  June 18-24  so it is roughly 11-16 business days (2-7 days for order fulfillment + 3-9 days for shipping).

Now let’s calculate Printful’s delivery time for the worldwide countries. As an example, I’ll use India as my shipping destination.

So for that exact order, Printful gives me an estimated delivery time of  June 21-30  (2-7 days for fulfillment + 10-20 days for worldwide shipping) so it will take between 14 to 24 days when the worldwide customers will get their products.

You can calculate the shipping time by yourself using Printful’s shipping calculator and then add the fulfillment time for the item to determine the delivery time.

So, which one offers better delivery time?

Based on the comparison of both Gooten and Printful’s delivery times, I came to the conclusion that both platforms offer similar delivery times for the USA when the default standard shipping is applied.

Other than that, Printful offers better delivery time compared to Gooten for all the countries.

Shipping Rates

Just like the shipping time, the shipping rates also depend on several factors.

In both Gooten and Printful, the shipping prices depend on the customer’s location, shipping method, product categories, and quantity of the order.

However, Gooten shipping rates are based on the vendor’s printing location as well since they don’t manufacture the product and outsource the orders to different vendors.

Here’s a list of Gooten flat shipping prices:

You can view the full list of Gooten’s flat shipping rates here.

In contrast, Printful does not rely on vendors and has its own standard shipping rates which are fixed and calculated based on the category and destination of the order.

Let’s take a look at Printful’s shipping rates for each category and country.

It’s not possible for me to compare their shipping rates for each category and country, however, let’s compare the shipping rates of both for the USA and other worldwide countries.

Both offer the exact shipping rate ($3.99) for USA, as you can see:

Gooten’s shipping rate for USA:

Printful’s shipping rate for USA:

However, the shipping costs of both Gooten and Printful for all the other countries range between $3.99 to $6.99.

So overall, if we compare the shipping rates of both platforms, it is more or less the same in most cases.

Shipping Availability

Both platforms ship orders internationally except for a few countries.

Gooten supports worldwide shipping except for some countries. Click the + icon to expand the list.

Printful, on the other hand, has a shorter list of unsupported shipping countries. It ships products worldwide except Cuba, Crimea, Iran, North Korea, and Syria due to legal restrictions and carrier limitations.

Shipping – The Verdict: 

Overall, Printful is the winner when it comes to shipping. Let’s conclude our discussion of shipping:

In terms of shipping and delivery time, Printful has a better delivery time than Gooten for almost all the supported countries. However, both offer almost the same delivery time for customers in the USA.

In terms of shipping rates, it’s a tie because the shipping costs of both are more or less the same.

In terms of shipping availability, Printful outperformed Gooten because it has a shorter list of unsupported shipping countries.

Which One Has Better Design Maker?

Gooten’s design maker is straightforward and easy to navigate, you’ve to just select product options like print area, size, color, and upload your artwork.

Printful’s design maker, on the other hand, has two main purposes:

1. Product Design: Create the design directly on the product and preview it in real time, then submit your design to Printful so they can begin manufacturing your products. 
2. Mockup Generator: You can generate personalized product photos for your online store without ordering samples.

Unlike Printful, Gooten doesn’t have a mockup generator to produce personalized product images for your store.

Not only does Printful have a mockup generator but it has far more designing options and tools such as flipping, cropping, aligning design, background remover, promo maker tool, adding text, quick designs, premium images, cliparts, and more.

Everything is available to you at a click of a button, learn more about Printful’s design maker by watching this video:

Design Maker – The Verdict:

Printful is the clear winner here. Despite the fact that both have easy-to-use design makers, Printful has a better designer than Gooten because of more features and tools to create stunning designs without much hassle, along with a mockup generator.

Which Has the Wider Range of Product Catalog?

Gooten has 150+ products in its catalog, while Printful offers you 274+ products that you can customize and order for yourself or sell them online under your own brand.

Both Gooten and Printful offer a wide range of product categories including men’s and women’s apparel, baby products, wall arts, accessories, home and living items.

However, their product categories slightly differ from each other.

Gooten’s product catalog categories include men’s and women’s apparel, home & living, wall art, accessories, pets items, baby products, mugs, and stationery.

In contrast, Printful’s product catalog categories include men’s, women’s, kid’s and youth clothing, hats, accessories, home and living, collections, and brands.

Product Catalog – The Verdict:

Printful outperformed Gooten once again. It offers a wider range of products and categories to choose from than Gooten. 

Which Has Better Customer Support?

Printful offers 360-degree customer support, i.e., you can reach out to them through the mail, chat, or phone support. Their customer support is available 24*7. There’s also a well-constructed help center equipped with several FAQs that serve as a mode of self-service.

Gooten also offers excellent customer support, along with a well-managed knowledge-based system for self-service. You can easily find what you are seeking using its search browser. 

However, it lacks a personalized approach. You can contact their team via mail or by filling up a form on their website, but not over the phone or via the live chat option.

Product Catalog – The Verdict:

Both have a self-approach help center but Printful surpasses Gooten when it comes to customer support options.

Conclusion

This was my in-depth comparison of both the POD giants, Printful vs Gooten. 

While Printful may appear like a winner in certain aspects, Gooten also has its fair share of advantages. In the end, it all comes down to your preferences, budget, shipping cost, the product you want to offer, etc. 

Nonetheless, if you want to know my personal preference, then I prioritize Printful over Gooten. 

Printful has an easier approach along with all the additional features like warehouse facilities, greater product catalog, better print quality, design maker, shipping and delivery, and more. 

But what I like the most about Printful is that they are the sole manufacturers and not just a middleman like Gooten. 

Their products are also produced after several quality checks and are always consistent. 

You should choose Gooten if: 

• You’re getting 100 or more orders per month
• You want to design unique products. 
• Avail competitive prices.

You should choose Printful if:

• You need better print quality
• Want tons of branding options and services
• You need better shipping and delivery facility
• You want more integrations
• You want to avail of the warehouse facility. 
• You need better design maker
• You want to design a wide range of product catalogs. 

Hopefully, this article helps you choose the right option for you.  If you’ve any questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comment section below.

Printful vs Gooten: FAQs

Is Printful the same as Gooten?

Printful and Gooten aren’t exactly the same company. Printful is a print-on-demand and fulfillment company which handles the entire production process – from manufacturing, packaging, printing products, and handing it over to shipping carriers for you.

Whereas, Gooten is a print-on-demand service provider but they don’t own the production process, nor do they manufacture and print products. 

Whenever it receives orders from customers, it sends them over to its network of print providers. Basically, Gooten works as a middleman between you and their print providers.

Can you sell digital products on Printful and Gooten?

Neither Printful nor Gooten allows you to sell digital goods since they are print-on-demand services, not ecommerce platforms that let you host an online store for selling digital products.

When it comes to selling digital products, Sellfy is a powerful yet simple platform to consider.

Besides digital products, it also allows you to sell physical products, print-on-demand items, subscriptions, and freebies from one store. It is easy of use + all-in-one POD platform with a built-in e-commerce component + free plan with 0% transaction fees.

However, it is especially designed for selling digital products. 

In short, Sellfy is best for creators who already have an established audience on their social media or website to sell digital products or a combination of digital, physical, subscriptions, or print-on-demand products.

Can you sell directly from Printful and Gooten?

No, you can’t sell directly through Printful and Gooten since they are print-on-demand service providers rather than ecommerce platforms for selling products. In order to sell, you have to integrate your store with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Bigcommerce, Etsy, etc.