Shopify app comparison · refreshed

Printful vs Gelato

Two Shopify apps in the dropshipping category, compared on the dimensions merchants actually weigh: ratings, review momentum, pricing, customer-support sentiment, bugs, and what reviewers uniquely call out. Built from 4,118 live Shopify App Store reviews.

Printful Latvia AS

Printful: Print on Demand

Create and sell custom products with print-on-demand dropshipping

Rating
4.70
Reviews
3,285
Δ reviews · 44d
+87
Δ rating · 44d
-0.10
Pricing
From $24/mo
Built for Shopify
No

Gelato

Gelato: Print on Demand

Print on demand for your ecommerce business

Rating
4.80
Reviews
833
Δ reviews · 44d
+6
Δ rating · 44d
+0.00
Pricing
From $29/mo
Built for Shopify
No

Scorecard

The decision, by the numbers.

Each row reads directly from the live App Store listing and the observed review-stats history. No editorialising on top.

DimensionPrintfulGelatoEdge
Rating4.704.80Gelato +0.10
Reviews3,285833Printful 3.9×
Δ reviews · 44d+87+6Printful +81
App Store launch20132020Printful +7y
Paid plan from$24/mo$29/moPrintful cheaper
Built for ShopifyNoNotied

Trajectory

Momentum and risk profile.

Review momentum

Reviews gained since first observed snapshot · past 44d

020406080May 28Jul 11
Printful+87
Gelato+6

Star distribution

Share of reviews at each star tier — wider 1- and 2-star bands read as a fatter tail of negative experiences.

Printful

3,285 reviews

84.1%6.1%2.7%2.2%4.8%

Gelato

833 reviews

89.6%3.5%1.1%1.3%4.6%
5★4★3★2★1★

Feature footprint

How similar are these apps, really?

Every capability tag both apps list on the Shopify App Store, mapped into shared ground and side-specific edges. Same taxonomy on both sides — Shopify’s own.

Printful only

14

Shared

23

Gelato only

21

52% of the larger app’s capability tags are shared with the other. Meaningful overlap with distinct edges.

Capabilities by Shopify category

38 · 44 total

Sourcing locations

Dropshipping

7
25

Products

Print on demand (POD)

14
10

Product customization

Print on demand (POD)

5
5

Products you can sell

Dropshipping

6
2

Shipping options

Print on demand (POD)

6
2
PrintfulGelato

Printful only

14

  • Bags and luggage
  • Home and garden
  • Baby products
  • Sports products
  • Pet products
  • Latvia
  • Pack-ins
  • All-over-print
  • Blankets
  • Shoes
  • Bulk shipping
  • Custom shipping
  • Eco shipping
  • Order tracking

Shared

23

  • Clothing and accessories
  • Australia
  • Canada
  • Japan
  • Mexico
  • Spain
  • United States
  • Private labels
  • Custom packaging
  • Design tools
  • Mockup generator
  • Bags
  • Apparel
  • Embroidery
  • Hats
  • Drinkware
  • Holiday gifts
  • Home decor
  • Wall art
  • Eco-friendly
  • Organic
  • White label
  • Global fulfillment

Gelato only

21

  • Arts and crafts
  • Brazil
  • Chile
  • China
  • Denmark
  • France
  • Germany
  • India
  • Italy
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Singapore
  • South Africa
  • Sweden
  • Türkiye
  • United Arab Emirates
  • United Kingdom
  • Personalization

Side-by-side by axis

What merchants actually say.

Semantic search across the review corpus, bucketed by sentiment, with the strongest positive and negative quotes per side.

customer support

Printful

34 mentions

68% positive · avg rating 3.74

Good customer service. Had an issue with one of my products but they handled it in a timely and professional manner.
3D Physique · 4★ ·
A Live customer support option NEEDS to be available. It’s pretty frustrating having to deal with chat or email.
The Unleashed Collection · 2★ · 2022-08-02

Gelato

20 mentions

90% positive · avg rating 4.55

Gelato has been great! Customer support is excellent and the quality of the products is very good! They have 24/7 live chat and they always want to help. On top of this they have a customer success manager for you. Thank you Laura and team! Vicente and Mariana
Just Lyne · 5★ · 2022-03-21
WORST APP & TERRIBLE SUPPORT! Dissatisfied with this gelato app due to several recurring issues that have severely impacted our operations and tarnished our customer relationships. Notably, a critical system error prevented customers from adding items to their cart, which significantly affected our sales. The support team incorrectly blamed our theme when the fault was clearly on their end. Additionally, unresolved saving errors continue to hinder our business operations. We also faced a shipping and printing error, resulting in unnecessary charges due to stock unavailability. The lack of accountability and resolution from the support team is unacceptable.
The GROOMI · 1★ · 2024-05-12

pricing

Printful

0 mentions

0% positive · avg rating

No standout quotes yet — corpus is still warming.

Gelato

0 mentions

0% positive · avg rating

No standout quotes yet — corpus is still warming.

ease of use

Printful

100 mentions

99% positive · avg rating 4.91

Ease of use makes for quick setup and Customer Support is amongst the best around – always so helpful, patient and consistently a great attitude. sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Rio & Rio Athletics · 4★ ·

Gelato

100 mentions

100% positive · avg rating 4.97

sehr gut und einfach zu bedienen und alles ist easy zu managen
Middle Alley 2 · 5★ · 2026-02-06

onboarding

Printful

2 mentions

100% positive · avg rating 5.00

The integration is seamless - everything is up and running instantly. We had no roadblock in the integration process even though we are noobs at this
Monkeyuser · 5★ · 2019-08-06

Gelato

0 mentions

0% positive · avg rating

No standout quotes yet — corpus is still warming.

bugs

Printful

4 mentions

75% positive · avg rating 4.50

coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool
Dogecore · 5★ · 2017-10-15

Gelato

2 mentions

100% positive · avg rating 4.50

No standout quotes yet — corpus is still warming.

performance

Printful

8 mentions

100% positive · avg rating 5.00

No standout quotes yet — corpus is still warming.

Gelato

9 mentions

100% positive · avg rating 5.00

No standout quotes yet — corpus is still warming.

What each is known for

Themes reviewers raise.

The topics that surface most across reviews — the shared backbone and what each app is uniquely known for.

Printful

  • customer-support128
  • product-quality71
  • ease-of-use58
  • pricing50
  • bug25
  • performance21
  • onboarding16
  • shipping14

Uniquely ease-of-use · bug · onboarding · shipping · missing-features · reliability

Gelato

  • customer-support3
  • product-quality2
  • pricing1
  • communication1
  • product-issues1
  • bugs1
  • api-issues1
  • performance1

Uniquely communication · product-issues · bugs · api-issues · misleading-claims · technical-issues

Shared themes

customer-supportproduct-qualitypricingperformance

Same Shopify categories

DropshippingPrint on demand (POD)

Methodology

Where the numbers come from.

Ratings, review counts, pricing, and the “Built for Shopify” flag come from the live Shopify App Store listing — refreshed daily. Trend deltas compare the snapshot from 365 days ago against today. Sentiment counts and quotes are derived from semantic search across the live review corpus, bucketed by rating sign — every quote on this page is a real review, not a paraphrase. Snapshot generated .

Watch the next stack change as it happens.

Ongoing.AI tracks every Shopify brand’s app stack daily. Find the merchants running Printful or Gelato, and the moment they switch.