Yan Pritzker photographer, entrepreneur, software engineer, musician, skier

Cafepress vs Zazzle: the good the bad and the ugly

I needed some t-shirts made for my startup Planypus, without having to pay a whole lot up front. Right now the two major alternatives are cafepress or zazzle. We started out with cafepress but their issue is the quality of the merchandise is pretty shitty and the selection is poor, and their website can sometimes be slow. So I decided to check out zazzle. Both companies are way overpriced in a way that makes it hard for the consumer to buy the gear ($20 for a t-shirt?) but zazzle has a large selection of quality stuff (e.g. American Apparel, interesting nonstandard t-shirt styles and so on). Zazzle also has a better t-shirt editor which allows you to easily place the logo where you want, but at the same time it feels hacky and sluggish. Also I couldn’t actually publish any products on zazzle because they’ve been crashing for three days when I submit someting. And it took 3 pages of clicking thru after filling out a feedback form to actually email them. Bad idea, zazzle! You guys need to shape up your customer support asap!

http://americanapparel.net/presscenter/sites.html

Hey Yan, I found your blog. Since you’re in Chicago you will probably get a better deal working with a local screen printer? American Apparel lists some sites that use their shirts. If you’re taking the trouble, get decent ones ;)

I wonder who Threadless.com uses.

Steve

Yes but local printing means we have to pay up front to get a bunch of shirts in bulk. We’re quite bootstrapped so we like not having to pay with cafepress and zazzle. I am still hunting for similar services that have better stuff for cheaper…

Try http://www.CustomInk.com you can order low batch sizes printed either digitally or screen printing. Hundreds of products including AA to choose from. (Full disclosure I work for CustomInk.com).

$21 for a blank shirt!?

On zazzle a basic t-shirt sells for like $20 with a graphic on it. Still the prices are way unacceptable…and zazzle continues to crash in random places. They really have to work out their bugs. At least have an intelligent error trapping mechanism..I’m getting sick of these generic system error occurred!

Hello there,

I found your site while searching for cafepress and zazzle comparison. I am printing out t shirts and other marketing stuff for my startup company too! (my site is http://www.galleriapangea.com) I opened a cafepress store and this had became an alternative way for me to reach potential customers. (I sold 11 shirts featuring our products and logos in January so far)

Anyway through my web research, I found a new site also does in demand printing.
http://www.printfection.com/ they seem to have more products and better printing quality. I need to more research on it.

Hey, just wondering… how dependable are these internet stores? I’m new to this whole opening up the shops and wondering if these sites are reputable enough to give them personal information like social security and stuff?

Custom ink left a bad taste in my mouth I use usatees for my T shirt printing try um

is better u stop to buy stuff there they make the people work in the holy days they take more that 9 month 4 hire the people every product is a really bad quality i worked there and i know and finally when they hired u they find the way for let u go and about costumer support lol they dont have one lol i dont know if they get one but when i was there i never see no one lol also they make people use the chemicals it out protection pregnats ladys they only care production numbers and money one day oshea was there n they falsified documents and give to everybody to sing that paper like we a ready recive a training for use chemicals everybody was really secare for lost they jobs now im working in a better place