This is my honest review of the CustomCat POD fulfilment app and company. I’ve used CustomCat for over 2 years so I think this review will help those of you who are new to Shopify and Print On Demand (POD) to decide which fulfilment company is right for you.
Who is CustomCat?
CustomCat is a print on demand fulfilment company is located Corktown, Detroit’s oldest neighbourhood and occupies a seven-acre city-block facility. They employ over 590 people and have fulfilled over 20 million products. They promise to inventory, produce & ship within a 2-3 business day on average.
I’ve used CustomCat to print and fulfil over 200 orders from my Shopify store so far. I also use 2 other POD suppliers to have the best range of products to maximise the number of orders I get. But I have fulfilled the most orders with CC.
Let’s cut to the chase here are the pros and cons of CustomCat in no particular order:
Pros
- Out of peak times (aka end of November & December), orders are normally fulfilled and shipped out within 2-5 days.
- They have automatic address checking so if the address is not correct they will automatically send you an email and place the order on hold to give you a chance to amend it before it is sent out to an address that does not exist (and then gets returned).
- Huge selection of products, if not the biggest definitely in the top 2.
- Never had the wrong product sent out to a customer in over 2 years of working with them.
- Never had a customer email to complain about the print quality of items sent out to them by CC.
- Even if an order is delayed being sent out at Black Friday/Christmas I’ve only ever had it be delayed by a few days.
Cons
- Used to be the cheapest Shopify POD supplier. This is no longer the case.
- Ridiculous shipping prices for some products compared to other POD suppliers.
- Bad at communicating delays to customers. They kind of just leave you in the dark sometimes, usually at peak times.
- Customer service reps can be snarky at times (I presume this is probably the same person on multiple occasions I’ve corresponded with in the past so don’t hold this against the entire company).
Conclusion
CustomCat has a huge selection of products which will give you a great chance of making some good POD sales. They have a good quality assurance process to make sure the correct orders are sent out to customers and are good quality. However, the high shipping prices can put some people off as it will definitely eat into profit margins (e.g $7.99 to ship a hoodie domestically in the US). So take this into account when making a decision whether to use them or not.