I've been doing Print on Demand (POD) for about 3 years. I sell 300 plus shirts a month through the Amazon Merch Program as well as selling on other platform sites like Redbubble, Society 6, Etsy, etc. I also run a niche Shopify store selling POD items.

The advent of Print on Demand sites was awesome in the sense it lowers the barrier of entry to starting a novelty tee shirt company or apparel brand. That's also a negative in that it's brought out a ton of competition.

The biggest hurlde I see with the POD business model is the pricing. Understandably since were not stocking any inventory and really doing no work we shouldn't get to keep 100% of the profits. Obviously the companies offering these services are doing most of the work and are going to charge a hefty fee. Something like Printful for example on a Bella Canva tee after the $5 shipping charge comes to essentially an $18 base price.

In my opinion $20 is about as high as I would pay for most tee shirts and at $20 that only leaves you a $2 profit margin. On sites like Etsy which are geared towards artists people are often willing to pay a bit more to support an artist and for something unique but it is a challenge. When it comes to running a Woo Commerce or Shopify store you can also oftentimes charge a bit more as unlike eBay and Amazon potential customers are not seeing other people's products and prices.

While I see people charging upwards of $50 for a shirt, I highly doubt many of them sell much. I think $24.95 with a $2 or $3 shipping leaves a bit more room for profit and is still fairly reasonable.

In terms of Printify vs Printful, Printful definitely has a better UI and interface and I trust their platform and company more. That said Printify is oftentimes cheaper.

One more POD supplier I'll throw out there who I'm not a big fan of for my business, but whom may work for you is CustomCat. CustomCat is famous for their $6 Gildan 200 shirt which is one of the cheapest if not the cheapest POD shirt available. I was not impressed with the quality of the shirt or printing for my brand, however if you're selling more novelty type shirts and the material isn't as important it leaves a lot more room for profit.