Printforia are a US based print provider on the Printify platform.Is Printforia’s
print quality good enough for your business? This video will help you make that decision!
First let’s compare the mockups to the shirts I received. I have to say that these are definitely
the most accurate shirts I’ve received. They look pretty much exactly like the mockups,
the size and the placement is exactly how they appear in mockups.
The prints look pretty central and straight, measuring from the top
both shirts are about 5-6 cm from the neck. Measuring from the sides
and they’re both about 3cm from both sides meaning that the print is perfectly central.
The print size they use is 4500 × 5100 px, which is definitely
on the large side. Perfect if you want to fill most of the shirt with your designs.
the first thing that jumps out a me is that the print on the white shirt is already pretty faded.
The prints on white shirts have a tendency to fade a little after the first wash, I’ll be doing a
quick wash test at the end of the video, so it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. Other
than that it does seem pretty detailed, although it’s not super sharp. For example the text on the
camera is not readable at all, comparing it to the print from Awkward for example, you can see
a clear difference. While faded, the colors do look okay. Not bad, but not great either.
Looking at the same print on the black shirt, and this is a completely different story. The
print looks great. The white here is solid and not patchy, like we usually see. This version
looks sharper, the text on the camera is almost readable here. The colors also look better here,
more saturated and this print doesn't suffer from any fading.
Moving onto the dark print and the issues here are pretty much the same.
On the white shirt the print is pretty faded and with it being a dark photo,
alot of the detail has been lost and the blacks are more of a dark grey than a black.
The print on the black shirt however look great . This has printed very nicely,
the colors are a little muted, but overall this has printed good and I
can’t see any issues here. Pretty happy with this.
The print on the white shirt is definitely less sharp than the black.
looking at the print alignment icons you can very clearly see this, this section
here has completely blurred together. But saying that, the text is completely fine,
even right down to the smallest text size it’s still readable. Even the thinest lines here
have printed well, some sections are blurry while other are perfectly fine. Its a little odd.
The black shirt is almost a complete opposite, everything is sharp and nothing has printed
blurry. The only issue I can see here, and its only a small one, is that in some sections of
the print the underbase is visible . Not a big deal, but worth mentioning.
We’ve already established that the print on the white shirt is a little faded and
this goes for the colors too. While a little faded they do still look pretty
accurate to the design file. Its just that the black is not a deep black and
instead its a dark grey. Definitely not the most vibrant print I’ve seen, but its fine.
The colors on the black shirt are definitely more vibrant, and generally just look better.
Maybe that’s just a result of the underbase being applied first. Either way I definitely
prefer the print on the black shirt. If we compare the balloon photos to each other,
you can really see the difference in vibrancy. Looking at the different shades of white,
they have all just come through looking white. With the true white looking the brightest.
Moving on to how the prints look and feel, starting with the white shirt. I literally
can’t feel the print at all, it just feels like fabric and looks completely matt in all lighting
which is exactly what we expect with the white shirt. Looking at the black shirt, the print
is considerably heaver and thicker feeling, but the print here is also matt. Sometimes
the prints on the black shirts are shiny, which I really don’t like, it looks cheap in my opinion.
Now that we know the quality of their prints, what about their production time?
Not so amazing unfortunately.
This is another shirt that printify have sent me, so I don’t have the exact figures,
Printify will only supply me with the tracking information.
The order was placed on May 13 and the shipping label was created on May 18,
however my order didn’t actually ship until June 2nd. So that is a massive production time
of 14 business days! With a production time this long, that would instantly rule Printforia out
for me. I’m hoping that this isn’t normal and that maybe the shirts in my order were
out of stock or something. Either way, 14 business day production is just too long.
My order finally arrived on June 9, so from ordering to me receiving the shirts took a
massive 19 business days, or 27 days including weekends. Which in my opinion is just too long,
not many customers would be happy with that kind of wait. Of course for US orders the shipping
time will be a little less, but the issue here is their production time not the shipping time.
I won’t go into this in too much depth. But the shirts are $8.68 each. So if we were to sell a
shirt to a US customer, with free shipping, for $25 we would be looking at around $11 profit.
Not taking into account marketplace fees and taxes of course. Printforia
are one of the cheapest providers for the Bella canvas 3001 shirt.
So the shirts have now been washed on a 30c degree cycle,
inside out as I normally do. Both shirts have come out looking exactly as they went in,
which is exactly what we want. I can’t really tell if the white shirt has faded anymore,
if it has it’s very minor. Which is good since the print was pretty faded anyway.
A too lazy didn’t watch conclusion for Printforia would be that their
14 business day production time is far too long, the print on the white shirt,
while not terrible is a little faded and blurry in places. While the print on the black shirt
is very good and is comparable to Awkward Styles, who I currently think offers the best all around
print quality. With Printforia being slightly cheaper. I would love to be able to recommend
Printforia, but that production time is an instant put off for me and wouldn’t
recommend using them currently. Unless the production time I experienced was a one off
due to stock issues or something like that. It’s a shame because I do really like the print quality,
especially on the black shirt, it’s definitely one of my favorites so far.
So now that you know the print quality of Printforia why not check out this video
for Awkward Styles.