# Fulfillment Companies - Custom Cat or Printify



## ssprintingco (Dec 21, 2018)

I am looking into setting up an online store to sell individual custom printed and embroidered apparel items, mainly t-shirts, sweatshirts and hats. I am planning on setting up the store with Shopify and am leaning towards using either Custom Cat or Printify for fulfillment.

Has anyone had Custom Cat or Printify handle their order fulfillment before? What did you think of them? Did you have any issues?

Is there another fulfillment company you would suggest I use instead?


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

I'm looking at this myself now, though with manual orders, not via the Shopify integration.

I have the CustomCat samples here already, Printful are on the way (I ordered them later). They do use different printers. Printful uses Kornit (as does Merch by Amazon). CustomCat uses Aeoon. I haven't seen the Printful samples yet, but the CustomCat prints are quite a bit different from my MBA prints.

The CC prints have brighter more opaque white than MBA, so more "pop," which is cool. But the print feels noticeably thicker/heavier, and the edges of white text looks uneven ... looking closely it seems that a bit of white ink ran outside the edge of each letter into the grove/valley of the weave of the shirt, so it makes an effect similar to a jaggy/pixelated edge, but only on solid white elements, like white text.

Kornit pretreatment works differently than everyone else. It is sprayed on shirt right inside the printer and then printed on while still wet. Everyone else sprays pretreatment in a separate machine and then uses a heat press or tunnel dryer to dry it before sending the shirt to the printer. So Aeoon, Brother, Epson, etc seem to be able to get a more solid, bright (but heavier) white. Of course, much depends upon the settings used when printing, so I'll have to wait and see how the Printful prints come out.

As to my user experience ... CC did make mistakes on my test order, but I am a Beta tester for their upcoming manual ordering system, so I wouldn't count that against them.

Gotta love the prices CC has on shirts like Next Level, but I'm not sure what to think of that unevenness on the white text.


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## saunasauna (Jul 16, 2016)

Printify with high quality, good services


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

saunasauna said:


> Printify with high quality, good services


Turns out that CustomCat is actually one of the Printify print providers, MyLocker.


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## livefreelytoday (Apr 19, 2020)

Thanks for sharing.
May I ask if there are any conclusion between the comparison ? Thanks again



NoXid said:


> Turns out that CustomCat is actually one of the Printify print providers, MyLocker.


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

livefreelytoday said:


> Thanks for sharing.
> May I ask if there are any conclusion between the comparison ? Thanks again


I went with Custom Cat.

*In terms of print quality,* they both have their pros and cons due to using different DTG printers. CC prints are sharper when looking at Printful vs CC side-by-side. But for the end customer who is never going to have that side-by-side experience ... I don't think the difference matters much. After all, I've sold thousands of shirts via Merch by Amazon that were printed with Kornit printers, just like Printful's. With CC need to be careful with having the color of the shirt in the actual art; better to make that area 100% transparent (or change it to something a bit different) than let the RIP rip out the color (no ink), as artifacts are introduced due to the way it resizes the underbase away from that edge ... not an issue on some designs, pretty messed up on others. This is where doing a test design made specifically to test a wide range of art/situations pays off.

*On price,* CC wins hands down, both for garments and mugs. Temper that statement with the fact that I will not use a low quality shirt. Besides not being as nice to wear, DTG looks like crap on low quality fabric, fairing far worse than a screen print would on such garments.

Printful's only reasonably priced ringspun-shirt is the Gildan Softstyle 64000. If I used Printful, this is the shirt I would go with, as all the others are either "poop" material or _way_ overpriced. They keep the color selection on these ridiculously low at 4 or 5 (Gildan makes it in dozens of colors) but black is all I want anyway, so no matter. Point being, this is their "loss leader" garment with a great price to get you in the door, but then they count on you wanting more color choices and moving on to a higher priced shirt on which they make gratuitous profits.

By comparison, CC has Next Level 3600 for $1 more than Printful has the G64000. Printful charges over $5 more. And mugs? I have no clue how anyone can pay Printful prices for mugs.

*When things went wrong,* CC replaced items that went missing or were damaged in transit. This seems on par with what others have said about Printful, so no difference there, at least in my experience to date.

**FYI CC is currently closed down due to Corona measures in Michigan.**

I've put my POD Etsy shop on Vacation. I've been toying with the idea of opening it back up in a limited way using Printful, just G64000 shirts, no mugs. But so far I've not been that bored, and Printful now has extended turn around times due to Corona measures, and Gildan shut down its facilities a while back, so ... I might just wait for CC to come back online.


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