If you're an Etsy seller, you have a folder full of designs. Whether they are digital downloads, illustrations you put on handmade items, or just creative ideas, those designs are your biggest asset.
But many sellers hit a wall. You can only create so many handmade goods, and you can only sell so many digital files before you start wondering, "What's next?" How do you grow your income without doubling your workload?
This is where print-on-demand (POD), comes in.
It’s a business model where you partner with a production company to put your designs on physical products like t-shirts, mugs, posters, and tote bags. When a customer buys one from your Etsy shop, your POD partner company prints it, packs it, and ships it for you.
You don't buy any inventory, you don't manage any stock, and you don't make a trip to the post office. It's a low-risk way to add a whole new product line to your shop. But choosing the right partner is critical.
In this article, we will look at one of my favourite print-on-demand provider and how it can help Etsy sellers scale and diversify in this economy.
Let's get started.
Comparing POD Providers for Etsy Sellers
When you start looking into POD, you'll hear three big names: Printify, Printful, and Gelato. They all can connect and integrate to Etsy, but they work in very different ways. Let's break it down.
Printify (The Open Marketplace)
- What it is: Printify is like a giant marketplace. It connects you to a huge network of independent print shops all over the world.
- Pro: You get a massive selection of products and can often find very low prices because the printers are competing with each other directly on Printify.
- Con: The quality can be a lottery. One printer might make a beautiful, vibrant t-shirt, while another might send your customer a faded, blurry print. The responsibility is on you to order samples and vet each printer, which can be slow and expensive if you're not familiar with POD.
Printful (The In-House Producer)
- What it is: Printful owns and operates its own factories. They control the entire process from printing to shipping.
- Pro: The quality is excellent and very consistent. You know what you're getting every single time, which is great for building a brand.
- Con: You pay for that quality. Printful's base prices for products are generally the highest on the market. On a competitive marketplace like Etsy, those high costs can make it very difficult to price your products well and still make a profit. Often times, the base price of Printful products are already higher than what sellers are selling on Etsy.
Gelato (The Curated Global Network)
- What it is: Gelato takes a middle approach that combines the best of both worlds. They don't own the factories, but they have a carefully selected, managed network of print partners who must meet strict standards for quality and reliability.
- Pro: You get the balance of consistent, high-quality products without the premium price tag. It's professional quality at a more competitive cost, which allows you to be more competitive on Etsy.
The Deciding Factor for Etsy: Global Shipping
Here’s where Gelato really pulls ahead. Etsy is a global marketplace, and shipping can make or break a sale. Gelato has over 140 production hubs in 32 countries. This hyper-local approach means orders are produced closer to your customer, resulting in faster shipping, lower shipping costs, and a smaller carbon footprint. For your Etsy shop, this means happier customers, better reviews, and a real competitive advantage.
For Etsy sellers looking for that sweet spot of quality, price, and global reach, I recommend Gelato to get your shop started.
5 Gelato+ Features to Scale Your Etsy Shop
You can get started with Gelato for free, which is perfect for connecting your shop and testing a few designs.
But when you're ready to treat your POD products as a serious part of your business, you need professional tools. This is where the Gelato+ subscription comes in. There are a few features that make Gelato+ a worthy investment for Etsy sellers.
Here’s a closer look at what you actually get:
1. Up to 25% Product Discounts
This is the most straightforward benefit. With Gelato+, you pay less for every single product you sell. This discount on the base cost goes directly into your pocket as higher profit. We'll do a simple profit and cost breakdown later in this guide.
2. Magic Mockups
Your Etsy photos are everything. Gelato+ has a mockup product photo creation tool called Magic Mockups. It lets you upload one design and instantly see it on hundreds of different products and in different scenes.
3. Instant Collections
Coming up with new product ideas and creating all the listings takes a huge amount of time. Instant Collections is a powerful AI tool designed to solve this problem.
Instead of creating products one by one, you give the AI a direction, like "boho floral patterns for mugs" or "retro gaming art for t-shirts". It then generates an entire collection of related designs for you. But it doesn't stop there. The AI also writes the unique Etsy titles, descriptions, and tags for each product. And then you can revise the details from that point to make them truly yours.
4. Price Navigator
How much should you charge? It's a question every seller struggles with. The Price Navigator tool helps you visualise your costs, shipping, and potential profit at different price points. It takes part of the guesswork out of pricing so you can be sure you're actually making money on every sale.
5. Creative Vault
Sometimes you have a great idea for a product but don't have the perfect graphic. Or maybe you want to use photographs in your designs but are worried about copyright issues.
Creative Vault is Gelato+'s built-in library of thousands of professional, print-ready images, illustrations, and designs that you can use on your products.
The best part? Every single image comes with a full commercial license for print-on-demand. You can use them on your products without worrying about copyright strikes, paying extra fees, or crediting an artist. It’s all included and gives you complete peace of mind.
Is Gelato+ Worth The Subscription Fee?
So, is the subscription worth the cost? Let's talk numbers.
The Gelato+ subscription is $19.99/month when you pay annually. Let's see how quickly the discounts cover that cost.
Let's use a Bella + Canvas 3001 t-shirt as an example, which is one of the most popular POD products on Etsy.
- A standard price for this shirt from Gelato might be around $13.00.
- With the Gelato+ discount (let's use 25%), your price becomes $9.75.
That means you save an extra $3.25 on every single shirt you sell.
Now for the simple math: $19.99 (monthly cost) ÷ $3.25 (extra profit per shirt) = 6.15 sales.
So if you sell just 7 t-shirts a month, the subscription is paid for by the discounts alone.
And you get the incredible time-saving tools and resources like Magic Mockups and the Creative Vault for free.
Try 14 Days of Gelato+ For Free
Expanding your Etsy shop with a Print-on-Demand product line is one of the lowest-risk and lowest-cost ways to grow your Etsy business.
While several platforms exist, Gelato+'s unique combination of consistent quality, global shipping network, and a powerful suite of professional tools gives you the best path from a solo creator to the owner of a growing brand.
Click here to start a 14-day free trial of Gelato+ and explore the entire toolkit for yourself.
