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In this post, I’m going to show you how to access Printful’s free plan — and explain exactly what you can do with it before paying a monthly subscription fee.
Printful is one of the best-known print-on-demand services available — and you can start using it completely free of charge. Its free plan comes with no monthly subscription fee and gives you access to all the core tools you need to create custom products and sell them online.
Signing up takes just a couple of minutes, and once you’ve created your account, you can start designing products, connect Printful to an existing ecommerce store or create a Printful Quick Store (more on which below!).
In this guide, I’ll show you how to access the Printful free plan and take you through the key features it includes. I’ll also explain the costs that can arise when you start selling products, and look at Printful’s optional ‘Growth’ plan — including how to try it free for 14 days.
How to access the Printful free plan
To get started, go to the Printful website using this link and click the ‘Get started’ button.
You’ll then be asked to create a Printful account. You can do this using your Google or Apple account, or sign up with an email address instead.
Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be taken to your Printful dashboard. Here, you can start creating products and choose how you want to sell them.
You can then add your products to your chosen sales channel and start selling.
What do you get with the Printful free plan?
Printful’s free plan gives you access to a surprisingly comprehensive set of features. These include:
- 545 customizable products — covering clothing, accessories, homeware and a wide range of other product types.
- A wide range of printing techniques — including direct-to-garment (DTG), direct-to-film (DTF), all-over printing, embroidery, sublimation and UV printing.
- Unlimited ecommerce store connections — you can connect Printful to as many external ecommerce stores as you like. More than 20 ecommerce platforms and marketplaces are supported, including Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace and Amazon.
- Up to 10 Printful Quick Stores — these let you sell Printful products without having to set up a store on a separate ecommerce platform.
- Printful’s Design Maker — a built-in tool for creating designs and applying them to products.
- Printful’s Mockup Generator — this lets you create product images showing how your designs will look on finished items.
- 20% off sample orders — useful for checking the quality of products and your printed designs before selling them to customers.
- 30% off your first order — giving you an additional saving when you first start using the service.
- 24/7 customer support — available to users of the free plan.
So, there’s a lot you can do with Printful without paying a monthly subscription fee — but using the platform isn’t entirely cost-free. Let’s take a look at the charges you’ll need to factor in.
Is Printful really free?
While there’s no monthly subscription fee for using Printful’s free plan, you will of course have to pay Printful whenever it fulfills an order for you.
The main costs you’ll need to factor in are:
- Product costs — you’ll pay a base price for each product you sell, with prices varying by product type, size and other options.
- Printing costs — a basic print area is typically included in the product price, but additional print areas and certain printing techniques can increase your costs.
- Shipping costs — Printful charges you to ship orders to your customers, with rates varying by product and destination.
- Optional extras — additional charges can apply if you use services such as custom branding, branded packaging or warehousing.
There can also be costs associated with where you sell your Printful products. If you connect Printful to an ecommerce platform like Shopify, Wix or Squarespace, for example, you’ll typically need to pay for a subscription to that platform separately.
Shopify print on demand — video guide and tutorial
Related resources: Shopify trial | Printful review
However, this isn’t essential: Printful’s free plan includes up to 10 Quick Stores, which give you a way to sell online without paying for a separate ecommerce platform.
So, while Printful isn’t completely cost-free, you can set up your account, create products and get your store ready for business without paying Printful a recurring subscription fee.
For a detailed breakdown of all the costs involved, check out our full guide to Printful pricing.
What is Printful Growth?
If your Printful sales start to increase, you may be able to reduce your costs by upgrading to Printful Growth.
This optional plan costs $24.99 per month and gives you everything included in the free plan, along with a range of additional discounts and benefits. These include:
- up to 33% off custom premium products
- 9% off product branding
- 25% off sample orders
- free digitization on sample orders
- exclusive limited-time deals
- large front printing on selected products.
Now, you don’t need a Growth plan to sell with Printful — you can still create products, connect stores and fulfill orders on the free plan. The Growth plan’s main attraction is the lower costs it can provide as your order volumes increase.
And you don’t have to commit to it immediately: Printful offers a 14-day free trial of Growth, giving you a chance to try its additional benefits before paying the monthly fee.
There’s also a way to get Growth without paying for it at all — which I’ll explain next.
How to get Printful Growth for free
Interestingly, you don’t necessarily have to pay for the Growth plan to get access to it.
You can stay on Printful’s free plan and build up your sales as normal. If you generate $12,000 or more in Printful sales over a 12-month period, Printful will then give you Growth membership free for one year.
And Printful monitors your sales automatically, so there’s no need to apply for the free membership — once you hit the required threshold, you’ll become eligible for it.
Printful Free vs Printful Growth
So, how do Printful’s two plans compare? Here’s a quick overview of the main differences between them.
| Feature | Printful Free | Printful Growth |
| Monthly fee | $0 | $24.99 |
| Cust+omizable products | 545 | 545 |
| Ecommerce store integrations | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Printful Quick Stores | Up to 10 | Up to 10 |
| Design Maker and Mockup Generator | ✓ | ✓ |
| Product discounts | x | Up to 33% |
| Sample order discount | 20% | 25% |
| Product branding discount | x | 9% |
| Free digitization on sample orders | x | ✓ |
| Exclusive deals | x | ✓ |
| Free Growth option | x | Free for one year after reaching $12K in annual sales |
| Free access | Lifetime free account | 14-day free trial |
For most new Printful users, the free plan is the obvious place to start: it gives you the core functionality needed to create and sell products, and you can always move to Growth later if its discounts make financial sense for your business.
Can I cancel my Printful free account?
There’s no subscription to cancel on Printful’s free plan. If you no longer want your account, you can permanently delete it by going to Settings > My account > Delete account. Account deletion is permanent and your data can’t be recovered afterwards.
Is Printful’s free plan worth it?
Overall, Printful’s free plan is an excellent way to get started with print-on-demand selling.
Unlike many free plans, it doesn’t restrict you to a small selection of products or prevent you from using important selling features. You get access to Printful’s full catalog of 545 customizable products, its main design tools, an unlimited number of ecommerce store connections and up to 10 Quick Stores.
And because there’s no monthly subscription to worry about, you can take your time creating products and testing out the platform without having to make a financial commitment to Printful.
The main thing to remember is that “free” doesn’t mean there are no costs involved in selling: you’ll still need to pay Printful for the products it fulfills and ships on your behalf.
But as far as access to the platform itself is concerned, there’s very little downside to starting with the free plan. And if your sales grow sufficiently, you can either upgrade to Growth to access better discounts — or reach the $12,000 annual sales threshold and get Growth free for a year.
Printful free plan — FAQ
Is Printful really free to use?
Yes. There’s no monthly fee to use Printful’s free plan, and you can create products, connect stores and list items for sale without paying a subscription. What you do pay for is fulfillment: when a customer places an order, you’ll be charged for the product, printing and shipping, along with any optional extras you’ve chosen.
What’s the difference between Printful Free and Printful Growth?
Printful Free has no monthly subscription fee and gives you all the core tools you need to create and sell print-on-demand products. Printful Growth costs $24.99 per month and includes the same core features, but adds extra savings — including up to 33% off products, 9% off product branding and 25% off sample orders. So, Free is generally the best place to start, while Growth can make more sense once you’re selling enough products for its discounts to outweigh the monthly fee.
Do I need a credit card to sign up for Printful?
No. You don’t need to provide credit card details to create a free Printful account and start designing products or setting up your store. You will, however, need to add a payment method when you start placing orders or using paid Printful services, since Printful needs to charge you for the products it produces and fulfills on your behalf.
Does Printful take a percentage of my sales?
No — Printful doesn’t charge a percentage-based transaction fee on your sales. Instead, when an order is placed, you pay Printful for producing and fulfilling the product, plus shipping and any applicable extras. The difference between what your customer pays and your Printful costs forms the basis of your profit. However, your chosen ecommerce platform, marketplace or payment processor may charge transaction or payment-processing fees of its own, so these need to be factored into your margins too.
Can I use Printful without Shopify?
Absolutely. Shopify is a popular choice for selling Printful products, but it’s by no means a requirement. You can connect Printful to other ecommerce platforms and marketplaces — including WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, Etsy and Amazon — or use one of Printful’s own Quick Stores. So it’s perfectly possible to start selling Printful products without having a Shopify subscription at all. That said, Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms used with Printful — and for good reason. It gives you a much more comprehensive set of selling tools than a Printful Quick Store, including sophisticated international selling features, built-in marketing tools and considerably more control over your store’s design and functionality.
Can I sell on Etsy with Printful for free?
Yes. You can connect an Etsy store to Printful without taking out a paid Printful subscription, and Printful can then produce and fulfill products when customers order them through Etsy. But this doesn’t make selling on Etsy itself free. Etsy charges its own listing, transaction and payment-processing fees, and you’ll still have the usual Printful product and fulfillment costs to pay when an order is placed.
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