Honest comparison

Printer's Friend vs spreadsheets

The default system in most shops. Here's how we stack up.

Stay on spreadsheets while you are under roughly 20 orders a month. Past that, the re-keying and the chased approvals cost more than software does.

A spreadsheet is the cheapest print shop system and the most expensive one. It cannot email a customer, cannot hold an approval, cannot show the floor what to print next, and cannot tell you which jobs lost money. Every hour it saves in software cost, it takes back in re-keying.

On pricing

We publish our own pricing on the pricing page, in your currency. We do not quote spreadsheets's numbers here, because we have not verified them recently and a stale figure is worse than none .

What Printer's Friend includes

One monthly price and no add-on fees. Where something needs a higher plan, the card says which.

Quoting and pricing per decoration method

Screen, DTG, DTF, embroidery, sublimation and transfers each price on their own model, with garment cost, setup, quantity breaks and margin visible on the quote line.

On every plan

Production board, floor board and operator screens

A kanban for the office that updates every fifteen seconds, a full-screen wallboard for the shop, and per-station screens filtered to the stages that station cares about. Barcode scan advances a job.

On every plan

Labour time tracking on every job

Staff clock on and off at a floor station against an order number. Hours cost at each person's labour rate, so reports show margin after labour, not just gross margin.

On every plan

Sales commission tracking

Assign a rep to an order and their rate is frozen onto it. Commission is earned on dispatch, on the ex-tax value, and totals per rep sit in Reports.

On every plan

Customer portal, artwork approvals and reorders

Customers sign in under your branding to approve artwork, track the production stage, pay invoices and reorder past jobs. Unlimited portal users, no per-seat charge.

On every plan

Team stores, campaign pages and social sharing

Team stores at your workspace address, group-buy campaign pages and an in-store kiosk, all included. Every storefront page carries its own social card and share buttons so a link unfurls with the product picture.

On every plan

Inventory, purchase orders and supplier receiving

SKU-level stock with a movement ledger, reorder points, suggested purchase orders, PO emailing to the supplier, receiving and cycle counts. Any supplier's range imports from CSV.

On every plan

Open API and signed webhooks

A REST API for customers, orders and inventory, and signed outbound webhooks on order stage changes, so any tool you already run stays in step.

On Premium and above

When spreadsheets is the better choice

Spreadsheets genuinely win if you do a handful of large repeat jobs a month for two customers you speak to daily.

Start free

14 day trial. Card collected at signup, not charged until the trial ends. Cancel anytime.

Already on spreadsheets?

Paste your customer list into our import template and load your garment range from CSV. Most shops are done in under an hour; importing past orders is planned. We do it for free in your first onboarding session.

Start free Talk to our team first

Printer's Friend vs spreadsheets: questions

At what point is a spreadsheet costing me money?
The usual signals are: you have re-typed the same customer address more than once this week, you have chased an artwork approval by text, or you cannot answer "which jobs are due Friday" without opening two files.
Can I keep using my spreadsheet alongside?
Nothing stops you: customer activity exports as CSV from any customer record, and the API on Premium and above reads everything else. Most shops stop within a fortnight.

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