Honest comparison

Printer's Friend vs Shopify

Ecommerce storefront. Here's how we stack up.

Keep Shopify if you sell a fixed catalogue of stock designs. Add Printer's Friend if you also do custom decoration work with artwork, approvals and production stages.

Shopify sells products. It does not run a decoration shop: no screens, no pretreat, no approvals, no press schedule. Shops that try to force it end up with a stack of apps and still key orders into a spreadsheet. Printer's Friend runs the shop and gives you branded stores and campaign pages for the selling part.

On pricing

We publish our own pricing on the pricing page, in your currency. We do not quote Shopify's numbers here, because we have not verified them recently and a stale figure is worse than none .

What Printer's Friend includes

One monthly price and no add-on fees. Where something needs a higher plan, the card says which.

Quoting and pricing per decoration method

Screen, DTG, DTF, embroidery, sublimation and transfers each price on their own model, with garment cost, setup, quantity breaks and margin visible on the quote line.

On every plan

Production board, floor board and operator screens

A kanban for the office that updates every fifteen seconds, a full-screen wallboard for the shop, and per-station screens filtered to the stages that station cares about. Barcode scan advances a job.

On every plan

Labour time tracking on every job

Staff clock on and off at a floor station against an order number. Hours cost at each person's labour rate, so reports show margin after labour, not just gross margin.

On every plan

Sales commission tracking

Assign a rep to an order and their rate is frozen onto it. Commission is earned on dispatch, on the ex-tax value, and totals per rep sit in Reports.

On every plan

Customer portal, artwork approvals and reorders

Customers sign in under your branding to approve artwork, track the production stage, pay invoices and reorder past jobs. Unlimited portal users, no per-seat charge.

On every plan

Team stores, campaign pages and social sharing

Team stores at your workspace address, group-buy campaign pages and an in-store kiosk, all included. Every storefront page carries its own social card and share buttons so a link unfurls with the product picture.

On every plan

Inventory, purchase orders and supplier receiving

SKU-level stock with a movement ledger, reorder points, suggested purchase orders, PO emailing to the supplier, receiving and cycle counts. Any supplier's range imports from CSV.

On every plan

Open API and signed webhooks

A REST API for customers, orders and inventory, and signed outbound webhooks on order stage changes, so any tool you already run stays in step.

On Premium and above

When Shopify is the better choice

Shopify is the better fit if you are primarily a retail brand selling finished goods and decoration is only your own production.

Start free

14 day trial. Card collected at signup, not charged until the trial ends. Cancel anytime.

Already on Shopify?

Run both: keep the Shopify storefront and use Printer's Friend for custom work, or move your product catalogue in by CSV. We do it for free in your first onboarding session.

Start free Talk to our team first

Printer's Friend vs Shopify: questions

Can I use Printer's Friend alongside Shopify?
Yes. Many shops keep Shopify for stock designs and use Printer's Friend for custom and contract decoration work.

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