# Comparing on-line T-shirt Design solutions



## PapaBear

Okay, I have read a bunch of the older Posts on different t-shirt design programs. I was wondering if anyone had any updated information and *rationale *opinions on the software programs listed below. 

There are a few basic ways that it appears these companies offer their products. 

The first set of differentiators is that they host the software and you connect to their website, or second method some offer is that you install the software on your own host.

The second set of differentiators appears to be whether they provide a complete website solution (they become your website) or they offer just the Design Software (and maybe some options for processing the actual order -- not printing, but taking care of the shopping cart, etc.). 

I understand that everyone may have different opinions as to what makes a good application. This is normally based individual's design requirements (e.g. want an entire store, want it hosted, etc.). I would appreciate folks providing their thoughts on how well programs have (or they think might) work for them based upon their requirements. Maybe we can have a *productive* discussion and we can all sort out what is out there that might work for ourselves. 

Here are the major products I am aware, please feel free to add to this list with feedback. 

Online Design Software, Online Lettering Design, Online T-Shirt Design and Online Boat Lettering Design Tool - LiveArt (LiveArt by NewtonIdeas, not sure where located, but it looks like the Ukrain?)
RSK Tech - Get your own Online T-shirt Designer and E-Commerce Software Solution (RSK NetShirt by RSKTech located in U.K. and U.S.A.)
- HarboArts & Webwear - (HarboArts by Harbo located in Denmark)
Wilcom DecoNetwork.com | Sell Custom Products - Online Store & Affiliates (PikiWare from Wilcom DecoNetwork.com located in Australia with U.K. and U.S.A. offices)
Online Custom T-Shirt Design Software Application Tool, T Shirt Design Tool, Product Designing Application, Customize Product Design for Online Website or Web Store. (No-Refresh from NoRefresh located in India with offices in U.S.A.)
Melco Embroidery Machine - Embroidery Machine Equipment - Commercial Embroidery Software (Live Designer by Melco Industries located in the U.S.A.)
wePrint Design Studio | (wePrint Design Studio -- not sure where located).

Thanks to everyone in advance for your feedback and helping me (and probably many others) determine the best product to meet our needs.


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## EddieM

How much is the HarboArts one i could not find a price.??


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## Do-more

EddieM said:


> How much is the HarboArts one i could not find a price.??


Check out this post about HarboArts first! I made an enquiry with them about purchasing their software on Dec. 15th. and got a reply on Jan. 4th.! They did apologise for the slow reply and said the office had been closed for 2 weeks for holidays, but if they are that slow replying to a potential customer than I have to think that they are probably not good at after-sales support either.

BTW their T-shirt design tool costs €920 (about US$1350).


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## Do-more

PapaBear In the absence of any feedback from those actually using any of these design tools I shall give you my 2 cents as I am looking for a design tool at the moment and have made enquires with many of the tools you have listed. (I should say that I am looking for a custom solution as I want to add extra borders to my designs so my focus may be a little different from yours)

LiveArt are based in Kiev, Ukraine. Unlike, for example, all of companies I have contacted in India, these guys have very good english language skills considering it is not their mother tongue. They appear to be a quite large organisation and have come across as very professional in all my dealings with them so far.

HarboArts I have mentioned in the previous post.

NoRefresh as mentioned, I have reservations about their English language skills, if you look at their site there are many errors, also they could only output at a max. resolution of 300dpi and for my special requirements I want 720dpi.

There is a big thread on wePrint design studio which doesn't inspire confidence. http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ecommerce-site-design/t86497.html

You could also have a look at http://www.shirttools.com/


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## edua

STAY AWAY FROM THSI GUYS! wePrint Design Studio | I regret having purchased this application. Its been over a month and i still havent heard back from them


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## Arnold

edua said:


> STAY AWAY FROM THSI GUYS! wePrint Design Studio | I regret having purchased this application. Its been over a month and i still havent heard back from them


Hello,

Is that we print design studio running on your vinylshirts.com, create your own t-shirts Screen printing services in toronto site? It looks okay what problems do you have with it?

Arnold


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## dragonknight

Yes, could you specify what kind of problem do you have?


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## edua

Yes it is , and i honestly regret it, The software is not too stable at this point and the support is HORRIBLE, but i guess that is waht you get for the price you pay, So if you are willing to put up with than then that is your choice. I will be changing this application to a more stable one soon.


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## Prograf

I'm having the same problem with wePrint Design Studio. I've emailed 3 times over a week and a half and cannot get a reply. I purchased the software, they sent it to me several weeks ago but I have an installation question. They don't seem to have a phone number, I've sent 2 emails to the support department and 1 to Mark, who emailed me the software to download originally. Anyone else have other contact info for them? I've seen Mark's posts on here so...HEY MARK, ARE YOU LISTENING?


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## Prograf

Did you do your own installation of the software or did wePrint install it for you?


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## edua

I install the whole thing my self, I will be takign this tool off my site soon , I really really regret getting it , but i guess that whant you get whne you go cheap,


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## Tshirtlunatic

Hi every one
I have had a teeshirt designer from china build me a site. It is not online yet but I paid for the code design. It is in need of some input from tee-shirt experts. Can any of you guys take a look at it and give me imput of what it needs. I plan to get it up and running, get the bugs out of it.
www.teeshirtlunatics.com/new. Linda


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## greenslider

There are already so many companies out there that offer self-designed t-shirts to customers and also various software for people who want to start with designing/printing. I have already designed t-shirts online and tested some companies, for me the most important factor is the price, quality is okay for most of all.


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## taglessthreads

Hi All ! 

We have use OSS designer and would not advise using them. 

We have used RSK Tech and would not advise using them. 

norefresh seems to be one of the better ones out there- but we would rather not deal with CC processing on our own server so we did some more research and luckily at the ISS Show we found a winner ! 

It is software built by screen printers for screen printers. We are going to switch over to them and are very excited !


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## PapaBear

Wow, it has been a LONG time since I posted this thread -- a year ago. For those that might be interested in what happened to us in the last year. After the IIS Long Beach (in Jan 2010) we decided to try Melco's LiveDesigner product. We worked with them for over two months and while their sales/tech folks were very nice and tried to get us what we wanted, it just did not cut it. The application was really not designed for Traditional Screen Printing; which is our forte. It was really designed for Embroidery (since from Melco made since) and DTG. We worked with them for quite a while to help them understand traditional screen printing needs, but in the end we needed to move on to something else. They may have made a lot of changes in the last 10 months, so don't want to knock them as I am not familiar with their current offering.

We then talked a lot with RSK Tech even Skyping with senior developers in Scotland, but decided it would not do what we needed.

Then we traded a bunch of e-mails with NoFresh. But in the end, at least in their e-mail communication, we had a lot of English translation issues and I was never sure if they understood our requirement. I didn't really want to risk our funds or future capability on a situation like this. I liked how their on-line designer worked, but there was a lot that could go wrong if we weren't able to communicate effectively, especially long distance.

At the same time we were in talks with NoFresh we were in talks with a developer in the Ukraine. We spent over a month going back-and-forth talking about requirements, getting reference, etc. and finally decided in April to have this development team build our on-line designer. Out of all the packages we found we liked their Designer the best. It is flash-based and has a very smooth operation to it. 

We have spent the last 10 months in development and loading the package. We believe we will be going live with the on-line designer either next week or the week after. We have traded a LOT of e-mails and I talk regularly with the owner of the company on Skype (they are 10 hours ahead of us).

Now while we think this is going to be an utterly fantastic product, I warn you that it takes a LOT to get it to where you want it. 

First off some of the really nice things are that it is in Flash, and while you can see most of the stuff on an iPhone (iPhone doesn't support Flash), it is a very flexible and fast program. 

The ENTIRE program resides on our own website - we don't have to pay some monthly fee as a subscription to someone else. Great thing is we own it, so no matter what happens, we don't have to worry about someone raising the subscription rate or the service provider going out of business.

Because we own the software it is extremely customized to our requirements including a link into our FastManager so we can download jobs from the designer into FastManager -- this way we can manage both our on-line designer and brick-and-mortar jobs on one consolidated job board. And since our FastManager is linked to QuickBooks, this gives us an easy way to get the invoice info for the on-line designer into QuickBooks. Otherwise I think it would be a nightmare to track jobs from two different sources and have to get invoice info out of the on-line designer into QuickBooks.

Now some of the bad stuff. We own it. So if something needs to be updated, there isn't some subscription service provider that does it as part of their subscription. But the developers in the Ukraine are reasonably priced plus we do some of the simple work ourselves. But this is part of the trade-off of having a highly customized product. We don't own the code, but if we ever decide to have our own in-house developers, we can buy the code from the Ukraine developer.

It is NOT cheap. They have a product that sells for $497, but you really can't do much of anything with it. The next highest product sells for about $2,300. This is okay to maybe get started, but did not meet our needs. Their highest one runs about $3,500 -- BUT that is really the beginning. It gives you a usable product, with your logo on it and some nice capabilities, but I think most people would want to do a bunch of customization -- otherwise you might just as well go with one of the subscription services. Since we started the project we have created over 50 Task to make changes to the website. This has cost us over an additional $4,500 for a total of around $8K. And we already have another dozen or so Tasks scheduled to start after we go live in a week or two for another couple of grand. BUT, like I said before, this is a totally customized package that probably wouldn't fit into another shop's way of doing business. The pricing matches how we price items in FastManager, it has a built in Quick Quote capability, and a lot of other features that others may or may not find valuable. 

Besides the cost, probably the biggest issue was that a lot of things are flash and the Developer does not provide Products (designable apparel), Fonts, or any artwork to go into your ClipArt Gallery. And because of the way the Product is designed these all have to be Flash files (.SWF format). So you would have to pay the Developer to convert files to Flash format or do it yourself. We primarily used PhotoShop and sometimes CorelDraw, and since it was just too expensive for us to pay to have all this converted, we bought Illustrator and the Developer explained to us how to do the conversions -- though even then it took a lot of trial & error. We took our own pictures of the different apparel, had it vectorized, and then converted in Illustrator to .SWF format (actually more than just hit convert, you have to do some stuff to the vector files first). Then we converted a bunch of font types. Lastly, we didn't really have any vector clipart, so we bought a package of like 20,000 images and have so far converted about 600 images to .SWF format (again more than just hit a convert button). The biggest problem we have is finding some really basic vector clipart -- like stars and stuff like that. A lot of the clipart we have is flames and stuff like that. SOOOOO if someone knows where we can get some just plain old basic images (that we would be allowed to use on our website), PLEASE let us know.

So, as you can see, it can be done. We were like a lot of folks who wanted to do it with the least investment. We kept checking out packages that made claims that for under $1,000 you could get this or that. And when that didn't pan out we checked out a little bit more expensive packages and even tried the subscription services that would still have cost us around $3K or more. But finally we bit the bullet and decided to invest in our current product. However, even with that we had set ourselves a limit of about $5K, maybe $6K on the outside, but as we started our development we find more-and-more opportunities opening up for the product and are now over $8K. And no, we don't have a lot of cash sitting around. We have had to scrape to get these funds together, but believe (really, really hope) that it will not only be a new resource for existing clients, but will bring us new clients and pay for itself in no time.

Now some of other things I didn't mention. We upgraded our website server to a Virtual Dedicated Server with GoDaddy to handle the load and give us the control & flexibility from a development perspective (we needed to install .Net and some other functions). And once we get this on-line designer up we will need to do a lot of advertising (more money).

Sorry to go on so long, but I wanted to share our experiences as we really started the whole process something like 18 months ago starting to look at different options, trying different packages, and a lot of research before we even started the actual development project.

I hope that this is helpful to someone out there. If you are interested in checking out our on-line designer once it goes live, let me know and I will send you a link. Again, even if you decided to go with this developer you would probably end up with a slightly different product as much of what you will see is based upon custom tasks that we came up with after developing requirements, specific to our operation, with the developer.

Again, if someone knows where we can get some basic images, that we would be allowed to use on our site, please let me know.


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## taglessthreads

Thanks for sharing , Peter ! I hope you found your solution - it is so odd that there are not too many solid designers ! I think the problem is that the people building them are not screen printers ; they are programmers. 

Do you happen to know of a software that is a form our clients can fill out that will generate into a Mock Up ? I posted a thread but thought that through your research you may have found something ! 

Thanks !


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## PapaBear

Can you explain the requirement a little better?


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## taglessthreads

Sure. 

We provide Mock Ups to each of our clients that order Screen Printing through quote and invoice ( we also have an online designer option ). Right now, I am copying and pasting their information that they fill out into our "Upload Form" and placing it into a photoshop document Mock Up. 

My employees time would saved if the form my clients filled out ( specs via check mark and uploading their image ) was generated into a mock up - so all I had to do was confirm they are requesting what they paid for, place the image in the correct spot, and send it. 

Does that help ?


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## PapaBear

No I don't, unfortunately. We also provide Proofs (Mockups) to all of our brick-and-mortar clients. We also do that in PhotoShop. We don't however put all the client info on the Proof, though it is something we should probably do. Let me know if you find something ;0)

It looks like we are near neighbors, though interesting we have never stumbled across each other. Luckily SoCal is big enough for a lot of Printers ) It is those LA guys we need to keep an eye on! 

Your site is very extensive and has a lot of great features. We do all our own website development, what about you? The on-line designer, as I mentioned, is something we are having developed overseas.


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## taglessthreads

I will definitely keep you posted ! With our new designer, we will have a PO Feature that people can still order through quote and invoice, but I do not know how it will be effective until we have it up and running. 

I will let you know if we find anything - we may have our own integrated. 

Thanks for the compliments on the site - we do it ourselves, but we are actually currently having it redone by a local design company. We have been wanting to change it and make it more cohesive and easier to navigate so finally decided we did not have time and should let someone else take a look ! 

I am glad to hear you are doing well - there were a lot of printers here in SD that have closed down in the last year - I am not complaining though !


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## PapaBear

Haha, I am not complaining either. I don't wish a failed business on anyone, but it does make it easier on the rest of us to expand without impacting others. I am not big on getting business from someone else, but if there is a void, then that is up for grabs. Do you guys have a particular niche that you focus on? I mean we all work with all sorts of clients, but generally there is a main focus for each Printer.

We just re-did our website recently as our last site we felt was too cluttered. We are going for a much more simplistic design then previously. So far it has worked well for us.


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## taglessthreads

I was trying to look for your business name so I could check out your site - but failed in locating it ! If you do not want to post it maybe you can send it to me in a message ! 

Yes, it's all in our name. We are the first company ever to have a tag design option on our online designer. We also like to let our clients know that we are not just an order taker. We are a full service printer that can take a clients premature idea and make it into high quality garments while still maintaining their respected budget. 

That's exactly our outlook on our site now. We are trying to gain the business of more local corporate clients and we are hoping a more simplified site will help. 

I hope it helps us like it did you !


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## Printwizard

I like Kurtz idea of the tag designer. So far we like the look of inksofts by revolver. The videos are amazing, although there are some stumbles which don't work so well for more diverse operations, but it is a big package for the money.b wing a big package it does need a bit of modification and have emailed them for availability or customization cost.


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## Rodney

@PapaBear thanks for the update. Just to clarify...with the solution you found, was it norefresh or was it something custom from the programmer in the Ukraine?


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## southlandgraphic

Tagless, I would love to know who you went with? We were with OSS, Deco, Melco, and have recently checked out inksoft. Inksoft still has issues for us, especially the uploading of art.

Papa, did you go with liveart? they are from Ukraine.


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## Riderz Ready

southlandgraphic said:


> Tagless, I would love to know who you went with? We were with OSS, Deco, Melco, and have recently checked out inksoft. Inksoft still has issues for us, especially the uploading of art.
> 
> Papa, did you go with liveart? they are from Ukraine.


Can you provide more details on the issue of uploading art with Inksoft as we are looking at it currently. Is the issue you uploading your specific designs or cutomers uploading their artwork? The one thing I saw missing is the ability for customers who do upload their art to be warned if it is of low quality. Most people think they can upload a low res jpeg and have it print ok.


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## Printwizard

Re Inksoft. Our operation is mainly wholesale to onsellers and larger runs and wide and varied substrate, plus we import all promo items from China. The upload editor is one bug, but there are many others. We emailed and havent had response as to what may or may not be reviewed, updated, or worked on in the future, and even weather they can be bought as an extra module, or software upgrade bought outright by ourselves. Our issues in main with inksoft is the inability for us to mix between offerings according to vinyl transfer, digital transfer, DTG, heat applications, between substrate and quantity of substrate. Inksoft can not work a costing mix of branding alternatives whcih may suit certain products or the run volume. If someone has a design in the editor we would brand differently on a shirt to a cap to a pen, and differently if the run was 10, compared to it being 100. Likewise it advertises editing other products and signage and we sell millions of pens, however there is only one printing price shedule and the price we charge varies between tampographic on a pen, screening a shirt, and digital on a footpath blade and base so it needs to accomodate multiple schedules, even like A6 for crest/pocket prints, A4 and A3 versions for front and backs. Also the editor does not work rotations past back and front of a shirt or product, where as we print sleeves, or multiple panels on umbrellas, or multiple panels for dye sublimated shirts. All up we would look to load nearly 25,000 items across all styles and colourway options. The shipping is all in pounds, and not international Kg and volumetric options, or staggered regional options for localised delivery, and tax is US/Canada. I feel that initially Inksoft is more written around the DTG type operations and orders under a dozen items as it is more customer friendly for this type of retail model, however there are so many gutsy features and this is such a big website that it should be more than this in many ways, especially as they have not followed the model of Cafepress, Zazzle, CustomInk or Blue Cotton but instead have written code as a tool for screenprinters in general, and as such needs a bit more feature and generalisation to make it more mainstream for its users. Likewise we would like two sites, one retail margin and content may differ slightly, including brand name etc so as not to peeve our onseller customers. And second a wholesale version. In that we would prefer a login of account that we could set the margin rates - so a small design company may pay more than a promo company or large saatchi and saatchi account, and a customer who is polite, gives better lead times and pays fast may get a better rate than the *****y rush-rush customer who is slow with his accounts, Likewise we need to pay certain commissions back to the business unit or sales person looking after certain wholesale accounts. Inksoft is apparently working on an embroidery function and that will be usefull with caps etc too. interesting how effective it may guesstimate stitch counts, Especially on polar fleece or towels where backing stitches may be required - this too may need several rate charts so that you could select embroidery chart to match the garment/item. We would like to also have select a timeline for delivery, and be able to set perametres and surcharge margin for rushed 12 /24 / 48 or 72 hour delivery type functions, or set a longer lead for indented items like 21 days for all lanyards from China. Being able to show a reverse side, but not edit it, like the content and use instructions on the back of temporary tattoos. Ability to price more than style and colour where some wholesalers charge high premiums for oversize 3X, 4X, 5X, 6X, 7X etc. - If these are given different styles it is harder to select and use on the editor rather than one style, and face it, the population are getting wider...! I like the feature on customink "get sponsored to lower your shirt cost" - add our logo to a sleeve and take a dollar a shirt off.. we all need self promotion.
I also dislike the price less discount function. Our european, asian, pacific businesses do not work retail cost backwards, instead we work base costs plus cost of order process, plus divided out overhead, plus margin, costing a job upwards. The higher the volume we get lower unit costs and margin, but in a spreadsheet you will see a better trend to profit lines rather than flat less discount. For smaller operators in a garage it may be no big thing, but when you turnover millions every week the difference can be disastrous in a competitive market with low margins. Inksoft discounts universally and does not allow discount on substrate only / branding only / substrate & branding.
There appears little corporate focus to Inksoft, yet every commercial shop does corporate work, so upload and sharing of corporate brand standards seems a little important. Likewise the uploaded shared / rented / bought artwork would be fairer used on a royalty per shirt basis rather than anuual fee weather used or not. Would be good with pantone chart as well as DTG online, and more "About us" or factory tour, useful links, info pages available, and an unbranded tutorial link on youtube how to work the editor.
Like the previous comment on art quality, I think its swing and miss with conversion to a direct sale, andbut the feature is there to accept, where there needs to be a re-proof / re-spec / add art charges or comments and send back for acceptance-purchase-sale to the designer.
These are some of our mandatory requirements. We also have a wish list of things suited more to our shops rather than industry in general and see those options we may pay more for perhaps.
Dont get me wrong, its an amazing program and potentially the best I have seen and this type of CMS designer website is the future, and when the kinks are ironed out it will seperate the men from the boys, unless everybody has the same one. I do think inksoft need to work backwards a bit from a broader branding solution / customer type perspective as it is too focused on small run designs like its retail competitors offer. They are offering software for printers and not 5 shirt orders. So they need to see what printers need to sell and work on how to accomodate that in a broader way.
Anyway, must stop typing and go manage some factories.


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## hmmTasty

Hey, im kinda new... lol was wondering what you use this kinda software for? cant you just use illustrator ? is that a dumb question maybe i miss read... im new so please don't flame me out  xx


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## Printwizard

It's a website for screen printers to sell their products and services, possibly the most important investment you will ever make. What ink, shirt, carousel, automatic brand, electric or gas dryer, equipment and consumables is all academic unless you have distribution: the means to gain revenue from sales to sufficiently cover all the assets and outgoings of a business. Without sales you will not survive, or grow. A website is a key element in a sales and marketing aspect of your business. these options are the easiest ways to get the best setup at the lowest entry cost. If you have sales you can buy all the other stuff which you cannot use if you do not have the sales. Websites are cheaper than a sales rep and these have a lot of function for the customer to do their own designs and prep them ready to order with type of shirt, colours, size quantities etc.


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## PapaBear

It was the Ukraine developer.



Rodney said:


> @PapaBear thanks for the update. Just to clarify...with the solution you found, was it norefresh or was it something custom from the programmer in the Ukraine?


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## PapaBear

Yes, but again, be aware that it will take a lot of work on your part to get a real high end product or you will have to pay a lot -- as is we did a certain amount of the work and did all the conversion of all the Products, Artwork, Fonts to Flash (.SWF) ourselves and it is still going to run us around $10K.



southlandgraphic said:


> Tagless, I would love to know who you went with? We were with OSS, Deco, Melco, and have recently checked out inksoft. Inksoft still has issues for us, especially the uploading of art.
> 
> Papa, did you go with liveart? they are from Ukraine.


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## PapaBear

We are going live with our website today. If interested you can check it out at BreakOut TStudio You can also reach it as a link from our main website BreakOut Creative Company ~ Everything Custom! 

Like many of us, we have done a lot of diversification over the last 5 years. Screen Printing was what we started with in a garage and have moved twice and grown our service offering to embroidery, banners/signs, promotional products, and off-set printing. My business partner is a graphic artist so we are doing a lot more of that and I have over 30 years in business management along with experienc teaching business courses at a local college, so we also offer Branding (though we are just now expanding that to include things like helping people with mission/vision statements, core values, brand/business name, logo, colors/fonts, etc.). However, screen printing is our core business. 

Overall. like was said earlier by someone in this post, an on-line designer may not be the most expensive investment you make (though it is quite a deep investment) it is probably one of the most important you can make.


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## PapaBear

Igor, it looks pretty good. Does the application reside on your servers or do you install on the clients server. With what I got, it is on my servers and I own it outright. The main thing I guess is the level of customization. We have spent a lot of time and money customizing every aspect of what we ended up with and integrated with all aspects of the business (e.g. FastManager, etc.). I saw that for additional funding you would do a lot of customization also. 

Lastly, I am just relaying my experiences, but I don't think they allow you to advertise in this section of the forums, so you might want to check on that.


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## taglessthreads

southlandgraphic said:


> Tagless, I would love to know who you went with? We were with OSS, Deco, Melco, and have recently checked out inksoft. Inksoft still has issues for us, especially the uploading of art.
> 
> Papa, did you go with liveart? they are from Ukraine.


It is not up yet - they are working out some stuff for us so we can utilize it the best way possible. When we have it up , I will share !


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## nolantmc

Hello can you tell me who you are trying. we are intrested. thanks


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## nolantmc

Hello guys thanks for all the information. If anyone has time. Would you mind looking at my site. www.xgtees.com. i am looking to find a site that is quicker . I just think it takes to long to pull up. I also think it is a little more difficult than others to use. I would love any advise anyone had to give to me.


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## taglessthreads

I will definitely take a look ! Keep you posted !


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## PapaBear

Maybe I am doing something wrong. I checked out the catalog and then went into the Designer and I could not bring up any Products to design on????



nolantmc said:


> Hello guys thanks for all the information. If anyone has time. Would you mind looking at my site. www.xgtees.com. i am looking to find a site that is quicker . I just think it takes to long to pull up. I also think it is a little more difficult than others to use. I would love any advise anyone had to give to me.


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## taglessthreads

It worked for me - but that is the problem with OSS - glitch after glitch. We had a lot of customers call us and say that the designer wasn't working. We lost a ton of business.


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## hmmTasty

CraftShirt this looks very interesting, whats the pricing?


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## madco

Hi,
My company is based on dye-sublimation print and we are printing some shirts but
we are focused mostly on tiles, mugs, labels, badges, small signs.

We are trying to achieve web automation for order processing / W2P with online designer software. 

*We are considering Home page | Web-to-print demo 
If someone has any experiance with this w2p software, please post it.*


Also my search for online designer yielded some interesting resullts in this field and I want to share with you...here are Links (random list):

Web To Print and Online Printing Solutions - B2CPrint
Offshore software development company,web application development,outsourcing services, IT solutions provider
Software Solutions by Lucid Dream Software, Inc
ecommerce print system | web based design | print templates | web to print software | web to print solution
- Web to Print Software for Print on Demand. Over 15,000 templates.
Web to Print, Web 2 Print Software, Digital Storefront, Web to Print Store, Websites for Printers
Print Firm Software | Home | Web-To-Print Software and Solutions for Printers


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## PapaBear

I have not had personal experience with it, but when I did my search a year ago I was told by a number of people to steer wide of Web-2-print.


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## hmmTasty

Wow thats expensive  but looks nice


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## southlandgraphic

I looked at the links for Craftshirt. This seems to be another "DTG" solution. Although impressively built, I could not find a place that allowed me to input how much it cost for adding each color of ink to print on each side. This does allow the ability to charge for name, which is nice for personalization. 

Perhaps I overlooked something though. Care to give us a extensive tour of the admin panel?


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## PapaBear

I don't know about the CraftShirt solution, but nearly every product we found was really designed for DTG or Embroidery. Both of these are global in nature where you are generally concerned with the size of the print or embroidery regardless of colors. The nuances of traditional screen printing are extremely diverse and complex. How to apply markups to apparel/products especially dealing with different colors and sizes (e.g. 2XL cost more than S - XL) without having to put a price on every color/size. Even most of the programs that provided embroidery or DTG don't deal with this correctly. Or how to account for number of colors in a print job and the fact that you have fronts, backs, sleeves, hoods, etc. And these are just a couple of the aspects in trying to figure out the cost of a print job. Not to mention actually getting the artwork from the client in a way that makes it easy to take it from their design directly to print (most of our clients provide their own artwork). Then not sure what sort of program you use for tracking jobs, invoices, etc., but we use FastManager and we did not want to have to keep track of jobs that came in via the Online Designer vs jobs that came in via brick-and-mortar so we had to integrate our Online Designer with FastManager so every job is tracking in one place (it also helps that there is an integrator tool between FastManager and QuickBooks so now even our jobs coming in via the Online Designer are easily incorporated in QuickBooks via Online Designer to FastManager to Quickbooks -- don't have to worry about entering that data separately -- it is all about being more productive without doing more work -- more with less . 

This is why we spent over $12K to develop our own customized product. It really comes down to what you are looking for. We didn't want to settle for a one-size fits all solution as we felt it would cause us more work in the long run than we would save by having the program - we wanted something that seamlessly integrated with all the rest of our systems. Probably overkill, but we were concerned about making clients jump through hoops to try and make the designer work for them or for us having to settle for things like the online pricing not matching brick-and-mortar pricing. We, like pretty much every Printer, have quirks and unique things about their operation we have developed over time. I have a MSIS degree and was a Chief Scientist for a Fortune 500 company and can tell you that the best solution is to have an application that fits your operations rather than you having to change your operations to fit your application. It took a lot of time (and money) and educating our Developer in the intricacies of traditional screen printing, but the end product we think is truly a product that can handle not only Embroidery, DTG, and Promotional Products, but also Traditional Screen Printing -- and is part of our overall operations rather than something that happens to work in addition to our normal operations. We haven't had the product up and running that long, but can already see that it will be beneficial to our business. We are still making modifications and adding features, but hope to continue to improve the product and, subsequently, our business.


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## Nuggets36

We just purchased the crafshirt software for our new site. We are in the midst of Instaling it to our site. We did a lot of research and found this software to be the best out there. So Far Igor has been great. I will keep you all updated on how the instalation goes along with the final product.
jim


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## PapaBear

I hope it works for you. Interested to hear your comments. There isn't a lot of good stuff out there, hopefully this will be one of the winners.


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## madco

By my understanding, major 2 groups of those software w2p (web 2 print) solutions are based either on Flash or on Javascript (Ajax). What would be (dis)advantage of Flash, in this case?


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## hmmTasty

Flash is hard to SEO, also if you dont have a flash player installed it wont show up... e.g the i pad is not flash compatible... I would avoid Flash for sure  
Hope this helps


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## PapaBear

Our Designer is Flash. The catalog and quick quote is NOT so no problem, but the designer itself is Flash. The biggest issues with this is that it doesn't run on iPad or iPhone (but does work fine on a Mac). The other issue is that the location images (the apparel images that clients would put their design on), fonts, and clipart gallery need to be Flash SWF files. This is somewhat daunting. But the benefits are that the program is REALLY fast when the client is decorating. Decorate the apparel with a design or text and rotate, stretch, or whatever and it flies. Even though there are certain pain in using Flash, we settled on it for performance reasons. It blew away many of the other products we evaluated. And it doesn't really require "Refreshing" all the time, it just moves from task to task without the client noticing any transition. So I would say that there are Pros & Cons to both. Just depends upon your priorities.


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## moody

Hello Nuggets36 ... I am considering to purchase craftshirt.com designer , I hope you don't mind share your experience so far ...

Thank You in Advance


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## MusicMogul410

Does anyone have any information on a Live Designer sort of software that is for shops that uses heat applied film and full color photo shirts. Thanks for you help


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## MSH035

edua said:


> STAY AWAY FROM THSI GUYS! wePrint Design Studio | I regret having purchased this application. Its been over a month and i still havent heard back from them


 
Cool t-shirt designs simple, unique and modern....


www.mysticscenthills.com
Find Your Uniqueness


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## jimprinter

I have been looking for an online designer as well. The main thing I want is to purchase it, so there are no monthly fees, and no percentages to pay later. I had been looking at weprintdesign studio, but after your comments, it seems unlikely that I would consider them. If you find something acceptable to you, could you post it for myself and others? Thanks!




edua said:


> Yes it is , and i honestly regret it, The software is not too stable at this point and the support is HORRIBLE, but i guess that is waht you get for the price you pay, So if you are willing to put up with than then that is your choice. I will be changing this application to a more stable one soon.


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## jimprinter

Nuggets36 said:


> We just purchased the crafshirt software for our new site. We are in the midst of Instaling it to our site. We did a lot of research and found this software to be the best out there. So Far Igor has been great. I will keep you all updated on how the instalation goes along with the final product.
> jim


I am ready to buy an online designer as soon as I feel I have found the right one also. I could not get the demo on the craftshirt website to work properly. Do you know of a website that is currently running this online designer so I can see it in operation? 

Also I would appreciate it if we might be able to speak on the phone as I have several questions. My phone # is 757 723-4445, and email is jim[USER=52566]@tb[/USER]odypromotions.com

Thanks!


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## Printwizard

jimprinter said:


> I am ready to buy an online designer as soon as I feel I have found the right one also. I could not get the demo on the craftshirt website to work properly. Do you know of a website that is currently running this online designer so I can see it in operation?
> 
> Also I would appreciate it if we might be able to speak on the phone as I have several questions. My phone # is 757 723-4445, and email is jim[USER=52566]@tb[/USER]odypromotions.com
> 
> Thanks!


hi Jim,
Before you buy craft**** check out Inksoft -available from Ryonet. It is the commercial high tech industrial tool, not the lightweight hobby version that you will outgrow and customers get put off by. You get what you pay for, and then some....


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## drdeath19134

Printwizard said:


> hi Jim,
> Before you buy craft**** check out Inksoft -available from Ryonet. It is the commercial high tech industrial tool, not the lightweight hobby version that you will outgrow and customers get put off by. You get what you pay for, and then some....


Monthly fees and not hosted on his server


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## Printwizard

drdeath19134 said:


> Monthly fees and not hosted on his server


Which shouldn't be a problem if it's ten times better and could sell ten times the amount because of speed and features and ease equals sales conversion. Depends weather your goal is to be small comfortable crafty and hick, or large commercial procession and highly profitable.


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## drdeath19134

Printwizard said:


> Which shouldn't be a problem if it's ten times better and could sell ten times the amount because of speed and features and ease equals sales conversion. Depends weather your goal is to be small comfortable crafty and hick, or large commercial procession and highly profitable.


True but the startup cost plus monthly cost might be more then he can afford at the time most screen printers without a large startup base of customers it might not be as cost effective. Also why not allow a customer host his/her own.?


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## CraftShirt

Printwizard said:


> Which shouldn't be a problem if it's ten times better and could sell ten times the amount because of speed and features and ease equals sales conversion. Depends weather your goal is to be small comfortable crafty and hick, or large commercial procession and highly profitable.



We also have a type of license that is hosted on our server with monthly subscription fee, but customers uses it in order to try the software only and then usually switch to Owned license which is hosted on their servers.


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## drdeath19134

CraftShirt said:


> We also have a type of license that is hosted on our server with monthly subscription fee, but customers uses it in order to try the software only and then usually switch to Owned license which is hosted on their servers.


Really what software is this?


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## CraftShirt

drdeath19134 said:


> Really what software is this?


CraftShirt online t-shirt designer (T-Shirt Designer by CraftShirt :: Home).


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## jimprinter

Printwizard said:


> hi Jim,
> Before you buy craft**** check out Inksoft -available from Ryonet. It is the commercial high tech industrial tool, not the lightweight hobby version that you will outgrow and customers get put off by. You get what you pay for, and then some....


I appreciate the post, and went to inksoft's website as you suggested. Inksoft charges $999.00, then $149.00, or $299.00 per month after that. Do you think it's worth paying the monthly fees? I don't! Am I missing something?


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## drdeath19134

That's my point if u have a bodek and Rhodes account u get Free designer. Pay a few hundred have page developed ad web designer no monthly fees.


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## jimprinter

CraftShirt said:


> CraftShirt online t-shirt designer (T-Shirt Designer by CraftShirt :: Home).


 Hi Igor:
I went to your site, and when I click on the demo tab it goes to the page then locks up my computer. I tried twice, ad it did the same thing both times. Any suggestions?


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## Riderz Ready

jimprinter said:


> I appreciate the post, and went to inksoft's website as you suggested. Inksoft charges $999.00, then $149.00, or $299.00 per month after that. Do you think it's worth paying the monthly fees? I don't! Am I missing something?


What amazes me is everyone is focused on how much something cost versus how much revenue it can generate. The reason you have to pay a monthly fee is threefold - 1. You could not afford to buy it. 2. On-going Support 3. On-going enhancements.


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## drdeath19134

What it can make not will make. They should either sell or just charge monthly, but both?


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## redherring917

Hi. Sorry if this is mentioned somewhere in the thread already... it's a good thread but a long one, so I may have missed it.

Can anyone offer any insight into the integration of pre-made, editable design "templates" into one of these online design tools? That seems like a pretty important feature to me. Is there a tool that can import or convert existing templates like these from SVG / AI format? 

Thanks.


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## brenden

Hi Redherring,

In terms of template editing you can try out ther CorelDRAW template editing capabilities of DecoNetwork at DecoNetwork Demo Store - Home.

Select a template such as DecoNetwork Demo Store and you will see how first you can preview it on a garment and secondly edit the CorelDRAW templates you uploaded to your site live on your website.


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## brenden

Hi again,

On the topic of flash based designers there is an interesting article by Aral Balkan about the future of flash. 



> Adobe has signalled that Flash is no longer a valid technology for creating web applications that run on all devices. Since there really isn't a separate mobile web, Adobe's announcement will result in developers not using Flash for the web at all.


Is Flash dead? | Opinion | .net magazine


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## redherring917

Thanks Brenden.

I was wondering though specifically if anyone could comment on the ability to integrate SVG / AI pre-made, editable design "templates" into one of these customizable online design tools listed by PapaBear at the beginning of this thread, namely:

Online Design Software, Online Lettering Design, Online T-Shirt Design and Online Boat Lettering Design Tool - LiveArt (LiveArt by NewtonIdeas, not sure where located, but it looks like the Ukrain?)

RSK Tech - Get your own Online T-shirt Designer and E-Commerce Software Solution (RSK NetShirt by RSKTech located in U.K. and U.S.A.)

- HarboArts & Webwear - (HarboArts by Harbo located in Denmark)

Online Custom T-Shirt Design Software Application Tool, T Shirt Design Tool, Product Designing Application, Customize Product Design for Online Website or Web Store. (No-Refresh from NoRefresh located in India with offices in U.S.A.)

Melco Embroidery Machine - Embroidery Machine Equipment - Commercial Embroidery Software (Live Designer by Melco Industries located in the U.S.A.)

[FONT=&quot]I have yet to find a vendor of an online design solution that would provide conversion of existing AI or SVG templates.
[/FONT]
Thanks.


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## erichedvat

does anyone know how to get a free design tool to implement into your website? like a tshirt design tool?

jonlauren.com
Eric Hedvat


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## drdeath19134

erichedvat said:


> does anyone know how to get a free design tool to implement into your website? like a tshirt design tool?
> 
> jonlauren.com
> Eric Hedvat


 There is one being built now released date 1,1,12


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## brenden

Hi Redherrimg,

Certainly DecoNetwork supports Pre-made templates that you can upload as .CDR, .AI, .EPS or other formats as the graphics engine that powers DecoNetwork is CorelDRAW.

You can watch a recorded webinar on the vector template editing capabilities of DecoNetwork at Webinar Pre Vector - Brenden Prazner. 

If you have any Q's let me know!

Cheers.


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## drdeath19134

brenden said:


> Hi Redherrimg,
> 
> Certainly DecoNetwork supports Pre-made templates that you can upload as .CDR, .AI, .EPS or other formats as the graphics engine that powers DecoNetwork is CorelDRAW.
> 
> You can watch a recorded webinar on the vector template editing capabilities of DecoNetwork at Webinar Pre Vector - Brenden Prazner.
> 
> If you have any Q's let me know!
> 
> Cheers.


 your video gets critical error?


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## brenden

Hi there,

I'm not getting that error and certainly we get lots of view per day. What browser are you using? Try FireFox or Chrome.

It's actually a Vimeo video.


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## Zippy Doodah

btw, ..has anyone had any experience with Shirtools? I know most of you in this thread are silkscreeners and Shirtools is probably too simple for what you need. But I'm looking for something that will, simply work with giving the online customer a way to upload photos, graphics or just add lettering to an item. And with that in mind I believe the easier it is for the customer to use ..the better. Also does anyone have a link to a website with a Bodek and Rhodes design tool?


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## drdeath19134

Zippy Doodah said:


> btw, ..has anyone had any experience with Shirtools? I know most of you in this thread are silkscreeners and Shirtools is probably too simple for what you need. But I'm looking for something that will, simply work with giving the online customer a way to upload photos, graphics or just add lettering to an item. And with that in mind I believe the easier it is for the customer to use ..the better. Also does anyone have a link to a website with a Bodek and Rhodes design tool?


If you are a borek and Rhodes customer they provide it free. Advanced artist is releasing one for free in January 2012 why not just Waite I am


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## Zippy Doodah

drdeath19134 said:


> If you are a borek and Rhodes customer they provide it free. Advanced artist is releasing one for free in January 2012 why not just Waite I am


 Yes, thanks. I am curious about the AA designer tool that I keep hearing about. But, I'm not going to do anything untill after the Long Beach ISS show. I hear there are going to be a lot of new things. Really looking forward to it.


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## weck

buyer beware with Craftshirt
I paid over 1,600. and 7 weeks later have nothing, Igor either ignores my e mails or responds with some delay, once they even mixed me up with another sucker. I blame it on myself for bering stupid and not doing my due diligence
I believe they are either incompetent or down right dishonest, either way I am out hard earned money.


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## SIT

I have the same opinion as Weck ... Don't spend your money with Craftshirt ... you'll get nowhere ...

Here is a more detailed post about it: craftshirt


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## kisakihaze

I'd like to hear some testimonials now from PapaBear since its been over a year since he started using liveart.
I am a midst putting a presentation together for the owner of the print company I work for in order to get him to bite on to liveart so we can use it for our online ventures that have yet to take off. Has it been profitable for you despite the amount of money you have invested in it? Were you able to add shirts from your own suppliers to use in the shirt builder?


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## kisakihaze

*bump*
Anyone alive?


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## tshirt decorator

We are using new Craftshirt product (Craftshirt online T-shirt personalization tool). It works fine and pretty flexible. We did some custom development under our specific needs and run shop pretty successful now.


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## David09

Any recomended software ?


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## tshirt decorator

It depends what you are looking for. 
Maybe it will be usefull Best T-Shirt Design Software / Tool Providers: List of 10 Companies


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## Monster Press

Wow, Papabear thanks for the breakdown. It has been a while since this post , who are you using nowadays? 

thanks in advance, Tk


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## taylorjjardine11

I would love to see the final product!

shoot me an email @ [email protected]

Taylor


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## brenden

A quick note of caution: Looks like the CraftShirt website is infected with malware and Google is blocking it.












I've tried to reach them on Twitter but their account doesn't seem active.


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## Revan

Did you do your own installation of the software or did wePrint install it for you?


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## devbackham079

*There are many t shirt design software available in market. But still there are some are useful in a great way in front of their functionality and pricing*

1. Fancy Product Designer | WooCommerce WordPress
2. Custom Product Designer by SetuBridge
3. Woocommerce Products Designer – Online Product Customizer for Shirts, Cards, Lettering & Decals
4. WooCommerce Custom T-Shirt Designer
5. WooCommerce Multistep Form & Product Designer
6. Woocommerce Online Products Designer
7. Woocommerce Product Designer
8. Product Designer
9. MyStyle Custom Product Designer
10. Zakeke Interactive Product Designer for WooCommerce


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