How it works in short
Print on demand means you sell products with your designs, and Printify prints and ships each one when it is ordered. The app is the connector between Printify and your store:
- Your Printify products come into your store, with colors as swatches, sizes as buttons and a photo for every variant. Products you publish or change in Printify later follow by themselves.
- Every paid order is sent to Printify. Only the Printify products of the order are sent, so you can sell your own products next to them.
- The order status and the tracking number come back to the order in your store, so your customers can follow it.
- At checkout, your customers see the shipping rates Printify calculates for their address.
1. Create an API shop in Printify
The app works with a Printify shop of the type "API". If you don't have one yet, in Printify go to Manage stores > Add new store > API (custom integration). Then publish your products to that shop: only products published to an API shop sync with your store.
2. Connect Printify
Open the app and go to Account & sync. Press Connect Printify, log in to Printify in the window that opens and allow the app. That's all the connection needs: no keys to copy.
Under Automatic sync, tick the shops to keep in sync and press Save. Products you publish in Printify then come into your store, and order updates and tracking numbers come back. A shop that is not an API shop is marked "not an API shop - can't sync".
3. Import your products
The Products tab lists your Printify products, each marked In your store, Not in your store or Locked in Printify. The filters at the top show one group at a time, and the search finds a product by name.
In the Import panel on the right:
- Products I pick imports the products you tick; All products imports everything (with more than one shop, you choose From these shops).
- Update products already in your store: on, their designs, Printify's photos, prices, texts and options are updated. Off, products that are already there are skipped.
- Show new products to shoppers: off, they are imported switched off, so you can check them first.
- Put them in categories (optional): pick the categories for the imported products.
Press Import. The import runs on our server, so you can close the app while it works. Some data comes in bulk, so give it up to 10 minutes before checking pictures and variants.
A product stuck in "Publishing" in Printify shows as Locked in Printify. Press Unblock next to it: Printify then shows it as "Publishing error", and you can edit and publish it again.
4. Decide when Printify prints an order
As soon as an order is paid, the app sends it to Printify. Orders paid later, like a bank transfer or cash on delivery, are sent when you mark them as paid.
A sent order arrives "On hold" in your Printify shop and goes to production by your Order submission setting in Printify: by default 24 hours after it arrives (so you can still change or cancel it), after 1 hour, at a set time each day, or only when you click "Submit order" yourself (Manual). The app links the setting: Open Order submission in Printify. Orders with personalizable products always wait for you to submit them.
5. Follow your orders
The Orders tab shows your recent orders with Printify products and the state of each one: Shipped with the tracking number, Sent to Printify, Waiting for payment, Not sent or Has an issue.
If an order shows "Not sent", we email you the reason Printify gave, for example a product or address problem. Fix it, then press Send now next to the order. Orders older than 14 days are not sent from here. "Has an issue" means Printify put the order on hold: open it in your Printify account to fix it.
6. Shipping rates at checkout
Your customers see the shipping rates Printify calculates for their cart and address: Standard, Express and Priority when Printify offers them. When the cart has your own products too, the Printify rate covers only the Printify products, so set up your usual shipping for the rest.
7. Check that everything works
The Overview tab opens with a Health check: is your Printify account connected, is automatic sync set up, and do paid orders reach Printify. Anything that is not right comes with the fix. Press Check again after you change something.
Common setups
A new print on demand store
Connect Printify, choose All products, keep Show new products to shoppers on and put them in a category such as "Apparel". New designs you publish later come in by themselves.
Check every product before it goes live
Turn Show new products to shoppers off. Products come in switched off, you look over the photos and texts, then switch them on in your store.
Approve every order yourself
Set Printify's Order submission to Manual. Paid orders still go to Printify by themselves, but nothing is printed until you press "Submit order" there.
Your own products plus a merch line
Import only the Printify products you pick into a "Merch" category. Orders with both kinds of products send only the Printify ones to Printify; you ship the rest yourself.
Questions
I changed a product in Printify but it didn't change in my store.
Only published products sync: publish it again in Printify. If it still doesn't come in, look at the Health check under Overview and save Automatic sync once more.
Do my own photos stay when a product is updated?
Yes. Printify's images are only replaced if they changed in Printify; photos you uploaded yourself stay, and a product you hid in your store stays hidden. Prices come from Printify, so change them there.
Can I change the SKU of an imported product?
No. The SKU tells the app which Printify product and variant it is; changing it stops orders and updates for that product.
Do my customers get the tracking number?
Yes, the tracking number comes back to the order in your store when Printify ships it.
