Gooten: Print on Demand

April 9, 2023

Of all the POD companies I have worked with and received samples from, Gooten is the most difficult to work with. The specs required are difficult to work with (making repeating patterns wasn't possible), making uploading images for a sample very trying. Then, once I finally got the files approved for printing, there was an issue with billing - which I was not notified about whatsoever. Consequently, I had an order sitting in "billing" for well over a week. Rather than a quick resolution, even that issue (a simple address update) had to wait in their system for another 12 hours before approval. At last the order shipped and the colors of the blanket were muted, the blanket thin, and it was shipped in a polymailer that arrived ripped. Perhaps other products might be better in quality, but after the initial order and the difficulties in getting it made, I am less motivated to try other products from Gooten.

Jan. 14, 2022

I have been using Gooten for a year. The quality of the products is great, and it integrates well on whole. However they do NOT do well when it comes to addressing valid and fairly significant issues, such as needed original shipping information passed from their manufacturer to the original carrier, then on to USPS, so that I have what I need to file a claim with the carrier for losses when packages are lost. Gooten's response? "Not our problem - explain what to expect to your customer." When I mentioned that their system had no way to note a VAT paid by a UK customer via Etsy custom order, so that the customer wasn't billed for VAT twice, I was told they hadn't heard any complaints yet from their manufacturers, so there was no issue to address. I'm sure customers billed for VAT twice and anyone ordering via Etsy would disagree. The list goes on. Plus, CS is only available via email and can take days. Slowly but surely their refusal to address major problems and deficiencies in their system are outweighing the quality of their product.

Dec. 23, 2020

Really easy and nice to add and create products with the tool but as a Canadian merchant with most of my customers being Canadian residents, this isn't a great app. The pricing isn't intuitive at all. I ended up losing money on a few orders because of this. Printful does a better job .

Oct. 21, 2020

I was using Gooten when I first started. I decided to remove them from my store because it was getting too costly troublesome whenever I was dealing with shipping and setting up the back-end rates. Advanced Shipping Rules helped, but I was cornered into paying a real premium for something that comes with Shopify already. Printful and other suppliers have their API connected to Shopify, so the shipping already gets calculated when customers place the orders. Simple! And that is how Gooten should work. Until they get with the times, I will be using other suppliers. UPDATE: After one year since Shopify updated its backend to allow automated rates, Gooten still has not taken advantage of this feature. If I choose to use them, I will have to spend upwards of $60 per month to use Advanced Shipping Rules.

April 27, 2020

Their mug printing and the size of prints they can do on garments is really nice. The biggest problem is their customer service. It takes forever to get a response and if you don’t respond within 12hrs of their response your ticket gets closed. This wouldn’t be a big deal if it happened once or twice but it happens every time. There was one particular issue that really made me rethink their platform, was when I had a T-shirt up for sale. I had a customer buy it but noticed nothing happened on the order for a few days. I emailed 3 times before getting a response. After finally getting a response almost a week and half later, they took an additional week just to tell me the item was discontinued and i would have to make a new item to replace the discontinued item. When asked why no one told me that products where being discontinued I got a “we don’t know” reply. Anyways If you just want to make mugs then use them. If not be willing to deal with a lot of issues

Dec. 20, 2019

The spectrum of products are nice. I was disappointed with the colors in a throw blanket being very muted from the design files submitted. The color format and file type was submitted correctly. More importantly, the problem solving is completely subpar. Though the customer service is friendly, there is no phone number, and no live chat. The only communication is through email which is not effective. After having issues with an order, it took days to resolve, and we're still unhappy with the "solution" presented. It would be a lot better if there was a way to communicate with a representative and they had a more responsive support system rather than be forced to write and wait. That is important.

Oct. 8, 2019

It takes forever for shipping. The items say 3-4 days and that's not the weekends. Its taken my item 7 days to ship. When I contact customer service I am told they ship out 3-5 days. The product is cool but they need to work on speeding up shipping. If you are selling on Amazon you will be scolded for this late shipping, if you only put 3 days as your process time.

March 17, 2019

Gooten was the first POD that I've signed up with. I did a sample order to see how long it will take to process the order, to get the order, and the quality of the product and I must say that I wasn't the happiest with it. Process time was a little long, receiving it was long, and finally when the order did come in the mail the product sucked! The image on the shirt was not centered correctly and it was crooked! Not to mention the packaging was a a little boring. I personally will never use Gooten again, but if you don't mind the quality of your product being poor, then go for it!

June 19, 2018

Not user friendly, SO HARD TO USE compared to other POD apps, customer service is slow,

May 25, 2018

The app overall is great! What I strongly didn't like about it was that it left the "Gooten" option under the product's fulfillment section, despite uninstalling the app. It always makes me feel cautious when a Shopify App is unable to fully remove their coding from your website.

March 15, 2018

I really want to love this app. They have so many items that are not available anywhere else. But trying to figure out shipping costs is a total nightmare. Every product and product variation differs by state. There is no list for shipping costs until you input the specific parameters. Making it really hard to try to build shipping costs into your retail prices. Even one you have entered the product, you have to search each state separately for costs. Shipping to canada is way higher than other POD services. For example, a shower curtain with liner is $43.57 then $25.61 shipping to Canada. Making the cost almost $70 USD BEFORE markup. A basic 14x14 throw pillow costs $7.98 - but shipping to Canada is a whopping $25.61!!! Last example: Throw Pillow-Spun Polyester -36x36 costs $52.61 plus $38.15 shipping to Canada is $90.76 USD before markup. With the exchange rate, is about $120 Canadian - FOR ONE PILLOW. I badly want to use Gooten for so many things... but I also do want customers to run screaming from my store when they see some of the pricing. Hopefully in the future this will get a little better. For now, I can find better pricing on etsy. :(

Jan. 30, 2018

Mockups are hard to use, so I gave up on using this one. Maybe I might give it another try if they come up with a more seamless way of generating mockups.

Jan. 3, 2018

I wanted to experiment with Gooten because they had a great range of product which I couldn't find from other suppliers - turns out they don't supply everything under one roof, all they do is act as a middle-man to manufacturers. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but it means that because a single shopping cart will be sourced from multiple locations, cost of shipping nearly doubled the initial cost of my sample cart - I suspect it would be cheaper to go with a more expensive supplier that ships everything from under one roof (plus the security of dealing directly with the manufacturer and not a middle-man, and the satisfaction/ease of everything arriving in one box). Not a realistic solution for anyone trying to source multiple products through them.

Oct. 29, 2017

It was promising with all the catalogue options since other printing apps don't have a large selection like Gooten. PROS: 1. Shipping is prompt. CONS: 1. The baby bib was really poor quality 2. 3 prints came with creases so if it was sent directly to my customer, I would've had a major complaint coming my way. Not sure I can trust for future usage. 3. The app is hard to maneuver. You have to select all the item descriptions before you can see if the image works with the t-shirt. You also can't see what each t-shirt looks like with the right color options on the product catalogue.

Aug. 18, 2017

There are a lot of options, and the turnaround times aren't bad. But the quality? Terrible. I ordered 2 products that I have ordered from other companies and the canvas mini was printed incredibly crooked and the easel back wasn't attached. The accessory pouch I ordered had a poor print and felt super cheap compared to other POD pouches I've ordered. (I paid for these samples, they were not the free ones - I wanted to make sure what I was getting was realistic) Order samples to make sure the quality is what you are expecting.

July 30, 2017

A Nightmare to use. Let's say I want to create a baby onesie with my own print. I want to offer it in multiple sizes and colors. Any other POD app I have used, lets you see the colors available in a way that quickly allows you to decide whether your print works on a certain color. A few check boxes to choose what you want after uploading your design and you're done. With Gooten, you get a text list of all the different combinations of colors and sizes available, making it a nightmare to choose what you're looking for and sometimes impossible to know whether your print will look good on a certain color because you can't see that color until you select it and move to the next screen. The pricing is all over the place with small variations in garment prices as well as shipping prices. So if you choose to price your product the same way, your margins will be different on pretty much every item you sell. If you price them differently, it'll make it almost impossible to manage later if you want to raise or lower prices. Want to offer a tank top? The company offers 6 types but due to color and size variations you have to scroll through 73 (yes!) pages of tank tops to choose the ones you're looking for. You can filter, which is nice, but what good is filtering by name of product if I have no idea what this product looks like. The reason this app gets 2* instead of just 1 is that it looks very promising. They do have A LOT of options and the base prices for some of the products are decent. Sometimes I wish other POD apps had some of the customization options Gooten is offering. I will check it again in a few months and hopefully they'll improve it by then. Until then, I'm sticking with other services.

April 10, 2017

The products looked promising. But I gave up trying to use it, because it is just too slow, and too difficult to use. Too many details needed to be handled manually - using a terrible interface. Would have appreciated it if it was presented in a step-by-step manner. Like 0. Upload a design. 1. Choose a Tee 2. Choose all sizes you want 3. Choose all colors you want 4. Choose underbase 5. Mock up options Or something. Instead I see page after page of words that drive me nuts. That's even before i see the damned mockup. Pity.

Dec. 4, 2018

I'm lowering my rating on this drop shipper, unfortunately. I've grown tired of the poor quality of their products and the mistakes in shipping the wrong product. I've now taken my tea towels off my store because the quality of their product is just awful. I don't know if I'll even continue using their pillow covers at this point. What a shame.

Sept. 16, 2016

Product selection is GREAT, prices are pretty standard (although some products are too high to ever realistically sell for a reasonable profit), but my big gripe is that adding products is a HUGE pain. You need to make custom-sized images for each variant of, say, a piece of wall art, ahead of time and have it cropped perfectly. Their cropping system doesn't really work (you can't resize the image to make it smaller, only move it around or zoom in to make it larger) and it seems to zoom in on the image a little bit by default without letting you zoom back out for some unknown reason. On top of that, searching for SKUs to upload is also a pain and you can't choose a collection while uploading. Overall, I think the potential is here but it's just not executed well enough yet. Maybe once they overhaul their system for adding products I'll give it another shot!