When you use Printful’s warehousing services, you’ll be charged a monthly storage fee. The fee depends on the type of products you store, the space they take up in our warehouses, and the location of the warehouse. This article explains how minimum storage fees work, how to calculate your storage costs, and what taxes or currency conversions may apply.
The fee will be applied for every month during which you have any stock in Printful warehouses, and we’ll charge it on the first day of the following calendar month.
Monthly minimum fee
Each month you store any inventory in a Printful warehouse, you’re billed the following day on the first of the next month. Two minimums apply:
- USD 150 / EUR 150 / GBP 135 / CAD 210 if you store any non‑Printful items (like your own products).
- USD 25 / EUR 22 / GBP 20 / CAD 35 if you only store Print-on-Demand items made by Printful, branding materials (like pack-ins or packaging), or returns.
This means that, no matter how much space your stock takes, the storage fee you’ll need to pay every month won’t be smaller than USD 150 (if you send to our warehouses any non-Printful items, excluding branding items) and USD 25 (if you only stock Printful products, returns, and branding items).
To check if you’ll need to pay more than this minimum fee, you’ll need to sum up the space your inventory takes up in all of our warehouses and multiply it by the monthly storage fee rate.
Monthly storage fee rate
The monthly storage fee rate depends on the warehousing location. For the US warehouse, it’s a fixed price of USD 0.70 per cubic foot.
For all other warehousing locations, the fee is based on the amount of space your stock takes, measured in cubic feet:
- 1–25 cu ft = USD 1.60 / EUR 1.40 / GBP 1.30 / CAD 2.20 per cu ft
- 25–300 cu ft = USD 1.25 / EUR 1.10 / GBP 1.05 / CAD 1.70 per cu ft
- Above 300 cu ft = USD 0.80 / EUR 0.70 / GBP 0.65 / CAD 1.00 per cu ft
Please note that the storage price for the first 25 cubic feet that you use will always stay the same (USD 1.60 per cubic foot), even if you use more space in total.
Example: If you use 26 cubic feet of storage space, you’ll pay USD 1.60 per cubic foot for the first 25 cubic feet, and then pay USD 1.25 for the 1 cubic foot that falls into the second tier.
Example of how storage fees are calculated
Let’s imagine that you used our warehousing services in November and calculate the fee for the whole month. On November 11, you stocked your Printful t-shirts (with cookie design printed on them) and they took up 24 cubic feet of storage space. And then on November 21, preparing for an upcoming campaign, you sent us a shipment of your handmade cookie-shaped earrings, increasing the total used space to 30 cubic feet. Here’s how the calculations will go:
| Calculations: | Explanation: |
|
Storage fee for the time period from November 11 to 20: 24 x 1.60 / 3 = USD 12.80 |
Since you haven’t used the warehousing service for a full month, we’ll only charge you for the days when you used it. From November 11 to 20 you used 24 cubic feet of storage space. Up to 25 cubic feet, the storage fee for the whole month is USD 1.60 per cubic foot. You only used this space for 10 days (which is ⅓ of a month), so we can divide the monthly storage fee by 3 and multiply it by 24—the number of cubic feet that you used. Alternatively, we could divide the monthly storage fee of 1.60 USD by 30 days to get a daily rate and then multiply it by 10 to get the fee due for 10 days of storage. |
|
Storage fee for the time period from November 21 to 30: (25 x 1.60 + 5 x 1.25) / 3 = (40 + 6.25) / 3 = USD 15.42 |
During this time you had 30 cubic feet of storage. This is a period of 10 days (which is ⅓ of a month), so we’ll be able to divide the monthly fee by 3. The first 25 cubic feet have the same price of USD 1.60 per cubic foot, but for the extra 5 cubic feet of storage space, the price decreases to USD 1.25 per cubic foot. |
|
The total storage fee for the month of November: 12.80 + 15.42 = USD 28.22 |
You are due 12.80 USD in storage fees from November 11 to November 20, and another USD 15.42 in storage fees from November 21 to November 30. Your monthly storage fee is the sum of both of these numbers. |
|
The monthly storage fee we’ll charge you for November: USD 150 |
The total storage fee rounded up to be USD 28.22. It’s bigger than the minimum storage fee (USD 25) we apply for stocking your Printful-produced products. But you sent us your custom stock (handmade earrings), so we’ll apply the minimum storage fee of USD 150. |
Key points to keep in mind
- You’ll be charged the monthly minimum storage fee even if you send us the inventory close to the end of a calendar month.
- Even though we calculate your total inventory volume in all our warehouses, you’ll get a separate invoice for each location where your inventory is stored in. This is to comply with local tax regulations and to charge you the correct tax amount.
- Make sure your billing method is up to date and you have sufficient funds in your bank account on the first day of the month when we charge the storage fee. If the transaction is unsuccessful, we’ll suspend your inventory and you won’t be able to sell it. Once you cover the storage fee, please get in touch with us through our contact form or start a chat with us. We’ll then unsuspend your inventory so it becomes sellable again.
Invoice currencies
Storage fees will be charged in your preferred warehouse currency and based on the warehouse location.
-
Warehouse currency
Set your default warehouse currency that you’ll want us to charge your storage fees in. -
Warehouse location
Our warehouses have fixed storage fees in their local currency—USD for the US warehouses, CAD for Canada, GBP for the UK, and EUR for the warehouses in the European Union.
If your default warehouse currency is USD, but you also keep stock in our Europe and Canada warehouses where the local currencies are EUR, GBP, and CAN, we’ll charge you a floating storage fee that’ll depend on the exchange rate. We use the previous month’s average fixed rate and update prices on the first day of the month so they don’t fluctuate every day.
Example: Your default warehouse currency is USD, you have stock in the EU and the US. We charge your storage fees in USD, but since some of your inventory is in the EU, we convert that warehouse storage fee from EUR to USD.
Storage taxes
To follow the local tax regulations, Printful will charge:
- 21%* Value Added Tax (VAT) on your monthly storage fees for the warehouses in Latvia and Spain
- 20% Value Added Tax (VAT) on your monthly storage fees for the warehouse in the UK
- 13%* Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on your monthly storage fees for the warehouse in Ontario, Canada
Dallas, Texas warehouse
For the stock stored in our Dallas, Texas, warehouse, the Business Personal Property Tax (BPP tax) applies. Paying this tax is the responsibility of the owner of the goods, so Printful won’t charge it automatically.
Business Personal Property Tax (BPP tax) applies to the tangible personal property (including inventory) stored for a certain period in Texas. As the owner of goods, you’ll have to assess and report them to the State yearly and pay the applicable tax.
The rate of the BPP tax depends on the location of the inventory. In this case, you should use the BPP tax rate and rules of the city of Coppell, Texas, where our Warehouse is located.
You will be exempted from the BPP tax if:
- The total value of stored items over the whole tax period (a calendar year) is under USD 500
- Specific items have been stocked in the Texas warehouse for under 175 days
If these exemptions don’t apply to you, you’ll have to register as a taxpayer in Texas and file a yearly BPP tax report.
*Tax rates might change depending on the country’s legislation, so always check on the respective (Canada, Spain, Latvia, or the UK) tax online resources.