Best T-shirt Design Websites to Sell Your Work

What is the best website to sell t-shirt designs? There are pros and cons to every t-shirt design website. We’re comparing 8 popular platforms to help you decide!

Print-on-demand (POD) websites are a popular way to make some passive income. All you need to do is create some cool graphics, register on these t-shirt design websites, and get paid every time someone purchases your design.

Best of all? Every t-shirt designing website will handle the printing and shipping of the t-shirts, so you really have very little to do!

So, what’s the catch? With different product prices and terms, it can be difficult to decide what is the best website to sell t-shirt designs. To help you decide, we’re comparing 12 popular platforms, along with their main pros and cons.

1. Teespring

This platform is very simple to use: you can even use Teespring to make custom designs if you’re not familiar with design tools like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. It’s an excellent choice for newbies since the base costs are fairly affordable.  It’s focused on clothing, and there is quite a range of designs for t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts and tank tops. There are a few other types of designs, like phone cases, mugs, stickers, and prints.

Another great feature of this platform is the Teespring Boosted Network is a collection of marketplaces (like eBay and Amazon) and automated promotional tools that help you sell more.

The main downside is that you have a limited time to sell a design (campaign). You can set the campaign to last 3 - 21 days, and if you don’t sell anything in the selected timeframe, your designs are taken down.

2. Zazzle

If you’re worried about traffic, know that on Zazzle, you’re in pretty good company: huge players like DC Comics and Disney use it to sell their merch. It’s very user-friendly; for example, you don’t need to do a design review for each type of design (the platform automatically adapts the size and format). The specific thing about this website is that customers can make the designs completely custom (for example, change fonts), which can increase the price and your earnings!

There are 3 ways to earn money on Zazzle:

• As a designer /seller (selling your designs)
• As a virtual marketplace (you can sell your products, you don’t need design skills);
• Affiliate program (you get a percentage of sales revenue promoting products).

3. Cafepress

You can sell via their online marketplace or create your online store. The differences are that in a marketplace you get 10% commission from the pre-set selling price, while in a shop you’re in charge of setting the price of your custom products. A marketplace can be a good solution if you know a little bit about SEO (choosing the right keywords is essential when you’re competing in a crowded space).

4. Redbubble

Redbubble has been around since 2006, so if you decide to sell your stuff through them, it’s relatively sure you’ll get some traffic. They operate globally, and their website is available in several languages. There is a vast range of custom products you can sell, including things like stationery and home decor.

However, this also means one drawback: the product base price depends on the delivery address (things like cost of local production, material cost, taxes, etc.). This means that if you’re looking to sell worldwide—or even nationwide, it may be difficult to calculate the cost and your earnings upfront.

5. Merch by Amazon

Unlike the rest of these print-on-demand websites, Merch by Amazon is a more exclusive club. Rather than just signing up, you need to submit an application and be accepted. At first, you will be limited to 25 designs, but once you sell 25 items, you’ll be upgraded to 100. Another great feature of this service is Amazon Best Seller Rank, which can help you determine what designs and styles are popular (e.g., retro or nerd prints).

Finally, when considering setting a sale price, make sure you take into account your upload tier—if you’re entirely new to the platform you might want to consider selling more products at lower prices so that you can slowly get to a higher tier and be able to upload more designs (and earn more revenue).

6. Society6

If it’s t-shirts that you’re interested in, remember that this platform is tailored to selling art prints (it’s the only item you’re free to set your price for). In addition to that, some of the base prices are slightly higher, which could mean a bigger profit for you, but also a less competitive price than some of the other websites.

The biggest drawback is the default markup of 10% which applies to everything except art prints (this means stickers, home decor, t-shirts, hoodies, leggings, etc.)

7. Spreadshirt

Like Zazzle, Spreadshirt is another option that offers the choice between selling over a virtual marketplace and setting up an online shop. Unlike Zazzle, setting up an online shop with Spreadshirt allows you to customize your layout with colors and fonts to match your brand.

Another cool thing is the hit list in their marketplace search feature, which shows some current trendy themes like geek, couples, vintage, vegan, etc.

8. Threadless

The biggest difference with Threadless is that you can’t automatically start selling. Once you submit a design, you need to be upvoted by the community to join this marketplace. This is both a good and bad feature: it’s harder to get in, but then it also filters out some of the competition.

In addition to selling over Threadless Marketplace or setting up your shop with them, this site goes one step further in helping you manage your online shop. You’re free to do everything manually, however, it’s also possible to activate the setting ‘Let Threadless manage my shop’s pricing and promotions’ whereby the platform manages your store in a way to help sales grow.

9. CustomCat

If you’re just looking for a little side income every now and then, CustomCat might not be the best t-shirt design website for you. With somewhat higher prices, profit margins might be lower. However, if you’re hoping to make it into a real thriving business, this t-shirt designing website has one awesome feature.

By paying a monthly subscription, you’ll get 20-40% on your products, which means higher profit margins.

10. Printify

Printify is one of the biggest t-shirt design websites, so you can expect good exposure (although also expect a lot of competition you’ll have to beat!). It also comes with additional perks, such as a high-quality mockup generator, as well as additional services. This includes consultation from marketing experts to help you grow your online POD business. 

The biggest downside is the higher cost of products. You can sign up for a monthly subscription for a discounted price, but it’s only up to 20%, so quite a bit less than CustomCat.

11. Printful

Looking for simple and reliable t-shirt design websites to sell your products? Printful might be the right choice. Although it has a limited offer compared to some of the other platforms, Printful is super easy to use.

You can either create your own store on Printful or connect an existing one.

SPOD

What is the best website to sell custom t-shirts? In case you have a SHopify store, the answer might be SPOD. This POD platform is powered by Shopify and, naturally, the integration between the two is seamless.

SPOD has a strong focus on sustainability and supporting local printers, so some of the production costs might be higher. Then again, this could be a good way to attract a specific clientele!

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Conclusion

As you can see, these t-shirt websites are all quite similar, and there are no guarantees which one will work out best for you. In the end, it’s a combination of strategy, promo efforts, timing (are you tuning into the trends), and, of course, talent.

Haven’t got the basics of graphic design down yet? Don’t worry! You can still make online t-shirt design a great business, but you’ll need some help.

Get started today with our unlimited graphic design service and request as many designs you want for as little as $549 per month! A small investment that will help you sell truly unique custom tees (all the creative rights are yours) to blow your competition out of the park!

‍Pick your pricing plan and get started risk-free for 14 days!