How do I offer personalization for integrations without official support?

Offering personalization in your store is a great way to attract more customers and create unique shopping experiences. While Etsy and Shopify have official support for personalized orders with Printful, other integrations can still support personalization, you just need to take a few extra steps.

For Etsy and Shopify, personalized orders are always imported as drafts for manual confirmation, even if regular orders are automatically processed according to your store preferences. For other platforms like WooCommerce, Wix, or Squarespace, follow these steps to manage personalized orders.

Step 1: Enable your customers to submit personalized requests in your listings

Personalization must be set up on your store platform, not in Printful. Here are some ways to collect customer personalization details:

• Use built-in features on your platform to allow personalization during checkout or on product pages.
• Use third-party apps or plugins, like Customily for WooCommerce, to add personalization fields.
• Add instructions in the product description. You can ask customers to:
  • Leave a note during checkout (if supported)
  • Email the order number along with personalization details
  • Use any other method that suits your workflow

Step 2: Ensure the orders are not automatically processed on Printful

To allow time for personalization, you need to prevent automatic fulfillment of these orders. Choose one of the following options:

Option A: Disable automatic order processing for your store in Printful

This is ideal if most of your products are personalized. Orders will import as drafts, and you can approve them manually after adjusting the design:

• Go to Printful Dashboard → Settings → Store settings → Orders
• Check "Manually confirm imported orders"
• Click Save

This way, you can review each draft order, update the design as needed, and submit it for fulfillment when the order is ready.

Using this method, you can push the products to your store from Printful with placeholder designs. Editing the designs in draft orders won’t modify the design files or mockups associated with the listing.

For details on how to edit an order before submission, check our article on changing or canceling an already submitted order. The same process applies when working with draft orders.

Option B: Create product listings not synced to Printful and submit orders manually

This is a good choice if only some of your products are personalized. It allows non-personalized products to be fulfilled automatically:

1. Use Product Templates in Printful to create a mockup for your personalized product.
2. List the product manually on your ecommerce platform (don’t publish it from Printful).
3. In Printful Dashboard → Settings → Store settings → Orders, turn off:
   • "Import existing products"
   • "Import unsynced orders"

Personalized orders won’t import to Printful. Instead, monitor your ecommerce platform for new orders with the personalized products, and manually submit them in Printful with the custom design and buyer shipping details. Synced products will still import and fulfill automatically if you’ve enabled this in your store settings.

For guidance on how to place these orders manually, see our article on submitting manual orders.

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