Bonfire vs. Teespring Compared – Which Is Better?

When you are looking to start a new business to make some extra money, you need to find something that won’t take up too much of your time. This is where platforms like Teespring and Bonfire come in.

But how do these two platforms compare, and which one is the best for you?

Bonfire is easy to use and allows you to upload your own designs to create custom products, but they are slow on shipping, and they can restrict your sales. Teespring is easy to use, offers fast delivery, no sales restrictions, and easy marketing of your products, maximizing your profits.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of these two online print-on-demand platforms? How do these two platforms work, and how do they compare? Which platform is better for small business start-ups? Let’s find out!

Comparing Bonfire Vs. Teespring

Print-on-demand sites are a good option when you are looking to start another business venture, and you want to find something relatively easy to do that won’t take up too much of your time.

These sites make it simple and easy for anyone to start their own business and build a good brand and create a good source of passive income that can help them and their families achieve their goals.

To make sure your business thrives, you need to use the best print on demand site for your needs. Two available sites are Bonfire and Teespring. It can be difficult to determine which one will suit you best, so let’s go through everything you should know about these two sites and what they offer to make the best decision for you.

Information And History Of Bonfire

Bonfire is a lovely platform founded in 2012, and it’s a great resource for anyone who wants to design, sell, and buy custom-made products. Bonfire didn’t first start as a platform for small business owners, though.

This platform was first an online t-shirt fundraising solution meant for communities to raise money for whatever they needed. Different groups and non-profit organizations used the platform to raise money for their various causes.

However, over time, Bonfire expanded its services to include anyone who wants to print and sell their own products to create a small business. You can now buy, brand, and sell mugs, hats, t-shirts, tote bags, and more through the Bonfire platform.

Information And History Of Teespring

Teespring is a top-quality social commerce platform that helps people create and sell their custom products online. Teespring was founded in 2011 and has been used as a platform for people to start their own businesses from the very beginning.

Teespring makes all your custom products on demand, allowing people to start their businesses with zero upfront costs, thereby eliminating the usual risks associated with starting a custom product business.

Teespring offers you a whole host of different tools integrated into your account once you sign up with them. This platform also offers businesses customer support to help ensure your business is performing well.

How Do These Two Companies Work?

So, these two online platforms seem to be quite similar on the surface level, as they offer almost the same service and support to you as a small business owner, and they were founded at similar times. Where these two platforms begin to differ is in how they work.

Let’s look at how these two companies work and where they differ in this aspect, as this could be where you start deciding which one of these platforms will suit you better in your business venture.

How Bonfire Works

Bonfire offers an easy-to-use platform where you can create your own designs and place them on whatever products you want to sell. You can easily create your designs on a different platform or program and upload your design to the system on Bonfire.

You can select which product you want the design to be printed on. When you create an order on Bonfire and reach the maximum order count, which is about five orders, Bonfire will begin processing your orders.

Bonfire will take the order, print it on the chosen products, and ship them to your customers when they are ready. Bonfire will then send the profits made on the orders to your account on their platform.

With Bonfire, you can set your own pricing on the products you sell, but the platform will take a percentage of the total amount per product. For example, you can put a price on your t-shirt design, say $20, and Bonfire will take a $10 cut from this to print the design and ship it to your customer.

When you create your account with Bonfire, there will be a time limit between 7 and 21 days where people can place their orders of your designs. When this time limit has been reached, Bonfire will only then begin processing the orders that have been made and printing the designs.

This can be irritating for some people as you will have to wait until the time limit is up before your customers can receive their products and you receive your payment.

How Teespring Works

Teespring works differently from Bonfire, as Teespring was made for an eCommerce business and not for fundraising.

Setting up a Teespring account is fairly easy and won’t take long to complete. Creating your designs on the platform is straightforward, and they offer you a good amount of support through this process to ensure you get exactly what you want.

Once the design is complete, you can then set a price for the design and the profit you want to make per sale of the design. The rest is easy for you when this process is done, as Teespring will take over and ensure that the orders that come through are processed, printed, and shipped to the customer.

Teespring will help you market your products to customers, and they will offer customer service on your behalf. This makes the whole process seamless and simple for you.

Teespring does take a cut of the sale you make, but this cost is included in the base cost of the product you choose, so there are no hidden or unexpected costs. Teespring has many tools available to you on their platform to help ensure you reach your sales goals.

Pricing Of Bonfire Vs. Teespring

Now that you know and understand what you can expect from each platform and what they can offer you when you use their services, you might wonder how much it will cost you to get yourself set up on these platforms.

This is where these two platforms differ again, which can drive your decision on which one you will pick for your business. Let’s go through the setup costs with each of these platforms, so you can decide which one might be worth it for you.

The General Price Of Bonfire

With Bonfire, it is free to register, but you will be expected to pay a base cost when you set up your first design. Bonfire also has donation fees and shipping fees that you will be expected to pay. The shipping and donation fees can come from each sale you make, so you don’t need to pay these upfront, but they will cost you some profit.

You need to keep in mind that the shipping fees will vary depending on if your products need to be shipped domestically or internationally, and they can become quite expensive.

So, you will need to keep this in mind when deciding on a price for your products. Generally, the shipping fees will range between $3.99 to about $9.99, but they can be more.

The General Price Of Teespring

Teespring is very different in costs compared to Bonfire, and this is why more and more people are using Teespring over Bonfire. Teespring is a free-to-use platform with no start up fees involved.

You only need to create an account with them and begin designing your custom products. With Teespring, they will place their costs into the base cost of the product you are selling, and you then keep all the profits from the products.

Teespring will take the “running costs” that they need from the price of your custom product. Teespring will ensure that the production, printing, and shipping costs are a part of this overall price.

However, the shipping costs that they will take from the overall price will vary depending on Holiday seasons, so this could impact the profits you make, but only slightly.  

Comparing Pros And Cons Of Each Company

So, Bonfire and Teespring look very similar on the surface, but once you begin to dive deeper, you will see that they are very different platforms with varying options for small business owners.

In this section, we will consolidate all the information about these two platforms in an easy-to-read and compare way, so you can see the benefits and drawbacks of each platform.

This will help you decide which platform would be better for your needs and easier for you to use with your small business venture.

Pros And Cons Of Bonfire

First, let’s look at the drawbacks and benefits of the platform Bonfire offers to you as a small business.

The Bonfire platform’s benefits are that the platform itself is easy to use and does not take an IT degree to operate. It is free to register with Bonfire, and creating your own designs and uploading them to the system is an easy process.

With Bonfire, there is no upfront fee that you are expected to pay to join the platform. This platform offers guaranteed quality production material, meaning that you can rest easy knowing your customers receive quality end products.

Bonfire offers you access to a team of graphic designers if you need them to help you create the perfect design for your products.

The drawback of using Bonfire is that they take a substantial percentage of the price you set for your products, which can drive up the cost of your product to customers if you want to ensure you make a set profit.

With the Bonfire platform, you will not have access to an eCommerce platform, which can make the marketing and sales of your designs more challenging for you.

Bonfire is not the platform you should use if you need fast production and delivery as they will only begin production of your products after a certain period, which is not always up to you. Bonfire also restricts the number of products you can sell at any given time.  

Pros And Cons Of Teespring

Now, let’s compare the benefits and drawbacks of Bonfire with what you can expect from Teespring. We will start with the benefits. Firstly, Teespring is also easy to set up and use, just like Bonfire, so they are similar in this regard. Both companies also have quality production materials guaranteed.

Teespring offers you access to marketing to help you sell as much as possible, where Bonfire does not. Teespring also has customer support that can help your customers on your behalf, but with Bonfire, you are the customer support.

Teespring doesn’t restrict your sales, and you can sell many different products with your design on them at one time, where Bonfire does not allow this. With Teespring, if you are struggling to make sales and market your products, you have access to their boosted network to help increase your sales.

Bonfire has no such network to help you. Teespring offers a fast and reliable delivery service to ensure your customers receive their products in a timely fashion. With Teespring, their working costs are already worked into the base costs of each item, so they don’t touch your profit margins.

The only drawback to Teespring that might affect you is their limited integration capacity, but this is nothing major compared to everything else they offer you.

Which Is Better – Bonfire Or Teespring?

Now that we have covered everything you need to know about these two online print-on-demand platforms, you should have a clearer sense of which one will suit your needs best. However, if you are still on the fence, then here is our recommendation.

Teespring is the better one for people who want to start their own small businesses out of these two options. Teespring is easy to use and offers you more support than Bonfire in marketing and selling your custom products.

Bonfire is great to use if you are raising funds for different organizations, as that is what the platform was created to do from the beginning, but it’s not made with small business start-ups in mind.

Conclusion

Bonfire and Teespring look very similar when you see them from the surface level. They seem like they are platforms that do the same thing and offer the same services to people.

However, when you look at them in more detail, you can see that they were made to do very different things, and they are very different platforms, and the one you need to use depends on what you would like from your business. Good luck with your new business venture!