Most software comparisons are feature grids, and feature grids are the least useful way to choose. Every product in this category has quoting, orders and invoicing. The differences are in whether they express your work, and you can only find that out by trying to do your work in them.
Evaluate in this order
1. Can it price your decoration methods properly?
The quote is the foundation. If it is wrong or awkward, everyone works around the system and you have bought a very expensive address book.
Specifically:
- Screen print: per-colour, per-position, with setup separate from the run. See how to price screen printing.
- DTG: per garment, split by light and dark, by coverage. See pricing DTG.
- Embroidery: per thousand stitches per position. See pricing embroidery.
- DTF: by sheet area with utilisation. See gang sheet costing.
- Quantity breaks, per-customer price lists, and minimums.
If a method has to be entered as a free-text line item with a manual price, it is not supported, whatever the website says.
2. Does it hold artwork approvals with provenance?
Which version, approved by whom, when. This is the difference between a reprint discussion and a reprint argument. See handling a reprint request.
3. Can the floor see what to do next without asking?
A board the shop can look at, on a screen, that is a byproduct of the work rather than a thing someone updates. If keeping it accurate is a job, it will be inaccurate by the second week.
4. Can you get your data out?
Customers, orders, invoices, artwork, as CSV and files, whenever you want, without asking. This is your exit route, and asking about it also tells you a lot about the vendor.
The questions that actually discriminate
| Question | What a weak answer looks like |
|---|---|
| Can I quote a two-colour print on darks with an underbase? | "You can add a line item for that" |
| Where is the approval timestamp stored? | "The customer replies to the email" |
| Can the packer see only their stage? | "Everyone sees the same list" |
| What is the total monthly cost with the portal and the designer? | Add-ons that were not in the headline price |
| Can I export everything today? | Hesitation, or a support ticket |
| How long until I can quote a real job? | Measured in weeks |
| What happens on the busiest day of the year? | No answer about performance or support hours |
Do the three-job test
Take your three most common jobs and quote each one, end to end, in every candidate. Time it. Count the workarounds. This takes an afternoon and tells you more than a month of demos, because demos are run on the vendor's example data by someone who uses the product daily.
Cost the whole thing
License plus add-ons plus per-user fees plus onboarding plus the hours you will spend on setup. A cheaper subscription with a paid portal, a paid designer and a paid onboarding is often the more expensive option. Quote-only pricing is itself information: it usually means the price depends on what they think you will pay.
Then read the comparisons
Add two criteria most buyers miss
The evaluation order above covers pricing, approvals, the floor and data. Two more separate the systems that make you money from the ones that merely organise you.
Does it capture labour? Materials are the easy half of a job's cost. If the system cannot tell you the hours a job consumed, every margin figure it produces is an upper bound and every efficiency decision you make from it is a guess. Ask specifically: can staff clock on to a job, at their own rate, and does that cost appear against the job and in reporting?
Does it handle the commercial side of selling? If anyone in your shop sells on commission, ask how the system calculates it. The answers that work are the ones tied to something real: the ex-tax value of dispatched orders, at a rate fixed when the rep was assigned. Anything looser becomes a monthly spreadsheet argument.
The demo questions that produce useful answers
Ask for these on a live screen, not in a slide:
| Ask this | You are testing |
|---|---|
| Quote my three most common jobs, now | Whether pricing fits your methods |
| Show me the operator's screen at the press | Whether the floor is a real surface |
| Show me a job's true cost after it ran | Whether labour is captured |
| Show me the approval record for a job | Version and timestamp discipline |
| Export everything to CSV while I watch | Whether your data is yours |
| Show me what a customer sees | Portal quality, branding, clarity |
| What is the total cost at my size, with add-ons | Whether the price is the price |
A vendor who can do all seven in one call is a serious candidate. Any that cannot do the first is not, whatever else the demo shows.
Cost the alternatives on the same basis
Compare total annual cost, not headline monthly price: subscription, per-user charges, add-on modules, onboarding or license fees, payment processing differences, and the hours your team will spend on setup. Then compare against the hours you currently lose. A system that costs £3,000 a year and removes six hours a week of admin is not a cost, it is a wage you stop paying.
Our own comparison pages carry the date we last checked each competitor's published pricing, and each one says plainly where the other product is the better choice. Treat any vendor comparison, including ours, as a starting point and check their current figures yourself.
Score it, do not feel it
Write the criteria down before the first demo, weight them, and score each candidate immediately after the call while it is fresh. Demos are designed to be persuasive, and a scoring sheet is the only defence against choosing the product with the best presenter. Include one criterion that has nothing to do with features: how quickly did they answer the awkward question, and did they answer it or move on?
We publish comparisons against every alternative with the date we last checked their published pricing, and each one says plainly when the other product is the better choice. If you are coming from a spreadsheet, the real cost of staying manual is the more relevant read, and switching without losing history covers the migration.