Custom T-Shirts

Zazzle

Think all custom t-shirt websites are created equal? Guess again. Some have a lot more to offer than the average on-demand custom printing. There are a few sites that can even make you money. Zazzle.com is one of them, and we knew we had to include them in our custom t-shirt website reviews.Wondering what makes Zazzle so special? Here’s the scoop…

What’s New?

• Featured Collections Including the Disney Ink Shop
• 2008 Election Center
• Customized Shoes Also Available

Our Favorite Feature:

The thing we liked best about Zazzle really had nothing to do with shirts – it was actually the shoes that won us over. Sure, Zazzle has a huge selection of shirts to customize, but you can also get customized Keds. That’s not something you see everyday!

The Zazzle.com Experience:

The Zazzle.com website definitely had a friendly look and feel to it. We saw familiar faces like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Darth Vader and Yoda. It kind of made us feel at home in a grammar school sort of way.

The site itself is half shopping/half design. You can make your own t-shirts, but you can also shop the designs of others who have used the site to do the same. We found quite a few interesting products being offered there.

If you do want to make your own customized t-shirt, simply click on the “Create Your Own” link to get started. In addition to shirts you can design shoes, bags, hats and more. Just pick out the item you want to design to get started.

Once you decide which t-shirt you want to design you’ll be taken to the customization page. Here you can either upload your own design or you can enter and format text right on the webpage. Then, when you’re happy with the way the design looks, either order your item or post it for sale. It was really easy and we didn’t run into a single glitch during this process.

When selling your customized designs you do have to sign up for a Zazzle account, but it’s free and takes less than a minute to do. Once you sign up you can decide how much to sell your designs for and how much profit you make. You can also customize the layout of your store.

Overall we felt Zazzle was one of the more attractive and user-friendly custom t-shirt websites out there. It’s definitely worth a look.

Zazzle.com Features:

• Design your own t-shirts, shoes, gifts and other products.
• Participate in the Zazzle community.
• Monthly contests.
• Zazzle blogs.

Zazzle.com Customer Service:

The Star Reviews team took a sampling of prices on identical products from all of the custom t-shirt websites we visited. This table outlines the results of our research:

Zazzle.com offers a comprehensive help section as well as email and phone support. The online information was really quite thorough and would address most of the questions you’d run into using the site. If, however, the online information does not address your issue you can always email or phone the company.

When we sent an email to Zazzle’s support department we received a response within 4 hours. Phone support was just as impressive with no hold time and a friendly rep on the other end of the line. Zazzle definitely “dazzled” us with a great customer service team.

Upside:

Great customer service, flexible design options, user-friendly website.

Downside:

Product pricing is a bit on the high side.

CafePress

Have something you want to say? A catch phrase you’re known for? Why not put it on a shirt? Thanks to the Internet, customized t-shirts are no longer just for the rich and famous. Anyone can design them (and sell them), as long as you know where to go. The Star Reviews team decided to compare custom t-shirt websites to find out which ones offered the most for the least. CafePress.com was one of the first sites we looked into. Wondering what the buzz is all about? Here’s the scoop…

What’s New?

• Sell Your Designs
• Shop Election 2008 Gear
• Read the New Cafe Press Blog

Our Favorite Feature:

We really liked the Cafe Press blog. From entertaining You Tube videos to political updates, this site’s blog covers it all.

The CafePress.com Experience:

The first thing we noticed when hitting CafePress.com was that the site definitely has a political undertone at the moment. While Cafe Press doesn’t exactly pick sides, they have definitely put an emphasis on the 2008 election with polls, political t-shirt designs and more.

Creating a custom t-shirt on the Cafe Press website was actually very easy. We simply clicked the t-shirt link under the “Create Your Own Stuff” category and were taken to a page with a variety of shirt styles to choose from.

Once we choose the style of the shirt we wanted to create we were asked to upload an image. This means you have to have an image to upload to your shirt – you can’t just hope to type in some text and customize the way it looks. If you’re not computer savvy and you just want to type some fancy text to appear on a shirt, Cafe Press might not be the option for you.

If, on the other hand, you want detailed customized designs, Cafe Press might be perfect. Because you upload the image files, you get complete control over how your design appears and how detailed and intricate it can be.

After we uploaded our design we were able to preview it on the shirt and then simply placed it in our shopping cart to be ordered. It couldn’t have been easier.

We were could also sell the designs we created on CafePress.com by clicking the “Sell Stuff” link. We were able to sign up for a free online shop that let us sell the products we customized. With the site’s print-on-demand services we wouldn’t have to keep inventory and the site handles all of the billing, shipping and customer service. If you’d like to cash in on your creativity, this might be just the opportunity you’ve been looking for.

CafePress.com Features:

• Design your own t-shirts, gifts and other products.
• Order items for yourself or set up shop and sell them online
• CafePress.com blog.
• Political polls.

CafePress.com Customer Service:

Cafe Press offers customer support via a helpful online FAQ, email support and toll-free phone. Both phone and email support were very helpful and efficient. We received a same-day answer to the question we emailed and phone support picked up our call with no hold time at all. The person we spoke with was more than helpful and clearly explained the company’s policies and how the ordering process worked. It was definitely a pleasant experience.

Upside:

Sell the designs you create, competitive pricing, great customer support.

Downside:

You have to upload a design you’ve already created – there is no text entry or online design service offered.

UberPrints

Don’t settle for ordinary when it comes to your corporate image or your attitude. With UberPrints.com you can shoot beyond ordinary and into the uber cool.

This custom t–shirt design service makes it easy for you to create custom designs with your corporate logo, team mascot image or personal statement. To top it off, they can send you your custom screen printed order in less than two weeks (or faster with rush orders). Digital print orders are shipped within 1-2 business days. Shipping is $4.15 for most regular orders.

UberPrints.com is the only online designer we have found that offers screen printing, digital printing and embroidery services all through their online designer. Similar services offer embroidery, but require that you contact the company directly. With UberPrint’s online designer, you can place images and text anywhere on the shirt and choose from a variety of garments in various styles and colors.

Print Type Options:

UberPrints.com offers screen printing and digital printing. They can fulfill large orders or small individual orders. This is the only online site we reviewed that offers embroidery online without requiring you to contact the company directly. Screen prints and embroidery have a minimum order requirement of 12 garments. However, there is no minimum on digital prints.

Design Features:

They have a powerful design tool that allows you to import images or use their clip art. You can place the images anywhere on the shirt. Although there is not a pocket placement selection, there is a pocket outline for you to place your image. Additionally, you can add multiple images to your shirt which you can flip and rotate with UberPrints’s design tools.

Text can be manipulated by size, color, font and alignment. Additionally, you can change the curvature, spacing and rotation of your text.

UberPrints.com supports all major file types. All vector images should be flattened and all non vector images should be uploaded using the largest resolution available. All images are suggested to be above 300 dpi.

You can save and print your designs, as well as place notes on your creation as additional instructions for the printers.

Apparel Options:

UberPrints has a huge selection of apparel, which includes t–shirts, tank tops, sweaters, polo shirts, button-downs and more. Additionally, most shirts include a selection of colors. However, unlike most print services, UberPrints specializes in clothing and does not do printing for additional items like mouse pads, office material, buttons and so forth.

Help/Support:

We have mixed feelings about UberPrint’s support. They include telephone and email contact as well as a fairly comprehensive FAQ. However, our first email was never answered, but our second was responded to in about two hours with a lengthy response answering our questions. The only difference between these two emails is by the time we sent the second we had registered with the service.

Summary:

UberPrints.com provides a powerful, yet easy to use online designer that takes the guesswork out of designing and places all the creativity in your hands. Through this service you can design one or dozens of shirts for yourself or your favorite group of people.