Sell custom merchandise through Printful

Sell customized products using a print on demand drop shipping service.

Last updated December 19, 2024

Connect your store to Printful to sell custom printed, embroidered, and engraved products anywhere in the world. This is a great option if you sell photographs or digital art and want to streamline production, or if you already create visual content and want a new revenue stream selling custom merchandise like tote bags or t-shirts.

This integration combines Squarespace’s powerful design and commerce tools with Printful’s order fulfillment capabilities. Printful is a print-on-demand service, which means they print, pack, and ship orders for you, and you pay the cost of production only when you make a sale, lowering the overhead costs of running your business.

Accessing this feature

Selling custom merchandise through Printful is available on Business and Commerce plans.

Tip

For tips to increase your revenue, visit Increasing your store's sales.

Step 1 - Connect to Printful

To connect your Squarespace site to Printful:

  1. Open the Custom merch panel.
  2. Click Connect.
  3. If you don’t already have a store page, a prompt will appear to create one. Enter a store name, and set the page’s visibility in your main navigation. Click Create store.
  4. In the tab that opens, click Allow and follow the prompts to connect or create a Printful account.

After connecting your Printful account, you’ll be taken to Printful where you can browse their product catalog and create custom merchandise.

Step 2 - Add products in Printful

Printful offers hundreds of customizable products. To add a product:

  1. In Printful, or in the Custom merch panel in Squarespace, click Add product.
  2. Select a product from Printful’s catalog.
  3. Customize the product and add pricing details. If you have a site logo, it will display automatically in mockups, but you can upload other images and add text.
  4. Submit the product to your store to sync it automatically with your Squarespace store.

For detailed steps on creating Printful products, visit Printful’s documentation.

Pricing and payments

Printful helps you price your products so that you achieve the profit margins you want. When customers buy your products through Squarespace, they pay the listed price, and Printful charges you for the cost of the materials, printing, and shipping. If you charge more than it costs to create and ship your products, you keep the balance.

Step 3 - Connect a payment processor in Squarespace

If you haven’t already, connect Squarespace Payments or a third-party payment processor like Stripe or PayPal to your store so that you can accept payments from your customers through Squarespace. To connect a payment processor from the Custom merch panel, click Set up beside Finish store setup to start selling products.

Step 4 - Add a billing method in Printful

Add a billing method in Printful so Printful can charge you the shipping and fulfillment costs for your orders. You need to do this to start fulfilling orders through Printful. To add a billing method from your Printful account:

  1. In Printful, hover over the credit card icon in the left panel, then click Billing methods
  2. Click Add a billing method and follow the prompts.

For more help, visit Printful's documentation.

Step 5 - Set up sales tax rates in Squarespace

You can create tax rules in Squarespace to charge sales tax at checkout based on a customer’s location. If you sell in the United States, you can set up automatic tax rates. If you sell outside the United States, you can manually create tax rates in the areas where you do business.

To learn more about when to charge tax on your Printful orders, visit Printful's documentation.

Submit resale certificates in Printful (optional)

Printful is required to collect sales tax from you on most orders shipping to the United States. You may be able to reduce your sales tax costs by submitting a resale certificate, which lets you buy products for resale without paying sales tax on them.

You'll need a sales tax permit to get a resale certificate and become exempt from Printful's sales tax charge in specific states. To learn more about resale certificates and how to submit them, visit Printful’s documentation.

Step 6 - Create shipping options in Squarespace

All Printful products have their own shipping rates. These rates are fixed and calculated based on the average shipping cost for each product and the shipping destination. When customers place an order through your store, you'll charge your customer the product and shipping price you set in your Squarespace site, then Printful charges you for the product and shipping to fulfill your customer’s order.

Choosing the right shipping option

As of September 19, 2022, when you add products in Printful, flat-rate shipping options are created automatically for you in Squarespace if you:

  • Have no other shipping options set up
  • Sell products in one of these supported currencies: AUD, CAD, EUR, GBP or USD

These automatically created shipping options are suggested amounts to cover Printful’s shipping costs. We recommend reviewing these options to ensure they work for your store. If not, you can review Printful's shipping rates for your product, choose a strategy that suits your marketing plans, and edit your shipping rates at any time in the Shipping panel.

​​By default, Printful products can ship anywhere in the world. As a general rule, the farther the customer's shipping address is from Printful's nearest distribution center, the higher the shipping costs are. To limit where you ship, edit your shipping options to create shipping zones in Squarespace.

For advice on which shipping options to offer based on the products you sell, visit Choosing the right shipping options.

If you sell a mix of print on demand and regular products, you may want to set up fulfillment profiles to apply specific shipping rules and rates to your print on demand products that don't apply to your other products.

Fulfill orders

Orders you receive through Squarespace are sent to Printful automatically for fulfillment. Printful produces, packs, and ships orders for you. You can review orders in the Orders panel in Squarespace, and in Printful. After Printful ships an order, it’s automatically fulfilled in Squarespace. Customers receive the email notifications you set up in Squarespace.

Fulfill orders with a mix of Printful and regular products

When an order contains both Printful and regular products, only one order appears in your Orders panel, and either you or Printful can mark the order as fulfilled.

  • If you mark the order as fulfilled - Customer receives the email notifications you set up in Squarespace for the regular products they purchased. Printful still fulfills and ships out the Printful products the customer ordered, but the customer won't receive notifications about them.
  • If Printful marks the order as fulfilled - Customers receive the email notifications you set up in Squarespace for the Printful products they purchased, but they won't receive notifications about the regular products they purchased.

To ensure customers receive order notifications for their entire order, if you plan on selling a mix of print on demand and regular items in your store, consider setting up a fulfillment profile for your Printful products. To learn more, visit Connecting a print on demand extension.

Edit Printful products

Printful stores these product details:

  • Description
  • The design file (what's printed or embroidered on your products)
  • Pricing
  • Title
  • Variants

If you need to change any of these details, follow these steps to ensure they remain synced between Squarespace and Printful:

  • Title, Description, and Pricing - Edit the details in Squarespace and refresh your store data in Printful.
  • The design file - Edit the details in Printful. The changes will automatically sync to your Squarespace store.
  • Variants - To hide a variant, delete it in Squarespace. It's not possible to add new variants in Printful or Squarespace for print on demand products.

Variants

Printful’s inventory determines the product variants that display in your store. For example, Printful may offer a T-Shirt in three sizes (small, medium, and large), or they may offer it in an extended range (from extra small to extra large). All available variants for the products you add will display in your Squarespace store automatically because Printful can fulfill those orders.

Images

When you add a product in Printful, the automatically-created mockups sync to Squarespace and become your product images. You can delete these images or add your own product photography in Squarespace. Updated images won’t sync back to Printful; customers only see what displays in Squarespace.

Other product details

These details don’t sync between Squarespace and Printful because Printful doesn’t need to store this information to fulfill your orders. You can edit any of these details in Squarespace without affecting your Printful products:

  • Additional info
  • Stock
  • SKU
  • All organization settings
  • All visibility settings
  • All marketing settings
  • All checkout settings

You don’t need to add weight and dimensions in Squarespace because Printful fulfills orders for you.

Deleting a product

To delete a printful product, delete it in Squarespace, then refresh your store data in Printful.

Style your Squarespace store

You can customize the way products display in your Squarespace store and the look and feel of your brand. To learn more, visit Styling store pages. You may also want to customize the checkout experience for your customers. You can collect email subscribers, send abandoned cart emails, enable express checkout, and more.

Returns

When you sell products through Printful, you're in the unique position of being both a merchant and a customer. Your customers buy products from you, and you buy products from Printful to fulfill their orders. As a Printful customer, you're subject to Printful's return policies, which should inform your own store policies. We recommend reviewing their policies carefully before deciding if your store will accept returns, and under what circumstances. If you decide to refund an order, you can follow these steps in Squarespace to do so.

Disconnect Printful

To disconnect Printful from your store:

  1. Follow these steps to disconnect the extension. 
  2. Delete the Printful products from your Squarespace store.

To connect to a different Printful account, ensure you're logged into the correct Printful account, then repeat the steps in this guide.

Move a Printful store between Squarespace sites

It's not possible to move your Printful products from one Squarespace site to another. To move your Printful store between Squarespace sites, we recommend logging into your new Squarespace site and following the connection and product creation steps again. 

Tip

You can save products as templates in Printful so you can add the same products to other ​​stores without going through the product design steps again. To learn more about saving Printful products as templates, visit Printful's documentation.

Get more help

This extension falls outside the scope of our support. Squarespace Customer Support can help you connect or disconnect Printful. For all other questions, including creating print-on-demand products and fulfilling orders, contact Printful support.

Resources

Review these guides in Printful’s help center:

Footer Image
  • Get help from our community

  • Get help from our community on advanced customizations.

  • Hire a Squarespace Expert

  • Stand out online with the help of an experienced designer or developer.

Sell custom merchandise through Printful