Whether it’s a monogrammed mug or a personalized phone case, custom items can make for incredibly thoughtful and meaningful gifts. And if you run an online store, giving your customers the ability to create custom items straight from your website adds a unique element to your product catalog that can set your store apart from the competition.
If that sounds like a cool idea but you’re not sure where to start, Customily can help.
Built right into major ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Etsy, Customily allows your customers to design and purchase custom items straight from your online store. And with some of the top Print-on-Demand (POD) partners integrated into its software, fulfillment is easy, too. The best part? Your customers get the customization they crave without any extra work from you.
Customily: The Good and the Bad
Customily makes it easy for your customers to create custom products. Its design software is top notch, and with major ecommerce and POD partners, you can set up a workflow that works for you. While its free trial is somewhat limited and it’s difficult to integrate into more complicated tech stacks, Customily is a great tool for adding customization to your store.
What Customily Is Good At
Easy to Create and Sell Custom Products: With Customily, adding a custom design studio to your online store is a breeze. Its user-friendly drag and drop design editor empowers your customers to create one-of-a-kind designs in minutes.
Through the intuitive interface, shoppers can fully customize products by adding text, changing fonts, modifying colors, importing graphics, and more. We loved how easy it was to personalize t-shirts by simply typing in words or names. The editor makes it a cinch to style text just the way you want with options to adjust size, alignment, letter spacing, color, and more.
Beyond just text, your customers have full creative freedom. They can spice up designs with high-quality clipart, upload their own images, or even map a meaningful location. By using Customily’s smart background remover, any image can be made ready for print in seconds. Fun filters provide another way to personalize, turning photos into cartoons or adding a stylish overlay in a click.
Customily takes customization further by supporting unique textures and treatments like glitter, gold foil, and embroidery. And a live 3D preview allows customers to visualize the end result before purchase.
When your customer’s design is complete, it can be exported for production in various file types. Then your production team simply prints and ships. Extensive print integrations with major ecommerce platforms connect the design tool directly to your store.
Automatic Fulfillment with POD Partners: With just a few clicks, your custom designs can be automatically sent to top POD partners for printing, handling, and shipping directly to your customers.
Some of the major POD services that Customily connects with include Printful, Printify, Gelato, Shine On, CustomCat, Gearment, Casestry, and Catalyst.
As soon as an order is placed, the chosen POD partner receives the personalized design file and takes care of the rest. The partner will then print the design onto the selected product and ship it out, taking the stress of fulfilling orders off your shoulders.
If you’re looking for other integration options, Customily also allows you to export orders to CSV to work with additional POD partners outside their integrated list. And utilizing its API gives even more opportunity for custom connections and automation.
Integrations with Major Ecommerce Platforms: Whether you sell through Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), Etsy, or Walmart, Customily integrates in just a few clicks.
Once integrated, your customers can access Customily’s design editor right on your site to customize products in just minutes. The integration allows orders to flow directly into your store checkout when designs are complete.
From your store’s viewpoint, everything is automated in the background by Customily. It handles the complex work of rendering previews, setting up products, facilitating design creation, and more.
Free Clipart Library: Customily offers thousands of free, high-quality illustrations covering every occasion and interest you can imagine. We loved exploring fun collections around major themes like holidays, seasons, LGBT pride, pets, and more. It’s easy to make your designs pop with relevant and personalized clipart.
Beyond static images, Customily takes customization up a notch by making its clipart adjustable. Characters come with interchangeable components so you can tweak bodies, facial features, skin tones, hair, poses, and outfits. Mix and match to design people that match you and your life.
The same goes for pets. With over 70 breeds of dogs, cats, and more to pick from, you can insert your furry friend into designs. Adjust colors, sizes, poses, and accessories to capture your pet’s personality.
We had a blast using the customizable clipart to insert ourselves and our pets into custom phone cases, shirts, mugs, and other products for a personal touch. The library is jam-packed with images tailor-made for unique personalization.
Live Chat Support: During testing, we were impressed by how quick and easy it was to get help. With just a click, we opened a chat window and were immediately connected to a friendly, knowledgeable agent.
The support team tackled any problems or confusion we had in real-time. Whether it was troubleshooting design workflow questions, solving integration snags, or understanding billing, agents walked us through solutions step-by-step.
With live chat built directly into Customily’s interface, help is always at your fingertips. We found the convenience and effectiveness of Customily’s chat support invaluable.
Great Resources: Customily offers exceptional resources to set users up for success when creating and selling custom designed products. Its comprehensive knowledge base empowers retailers to get started easily.
In the Help Center, you’ll find articles covering topics from customization capabilities to integration specifics to production partnerships.
To supplement informative articles, Customily produces step-by-step video tutorials. Walkthroughs showcase how to leverage Customily features on diverse ecommerce platforms and with various POD partners. Following along with the videos made the setup process smooth and simple.
Beyond its own extensive content, Customily has also fostered a strong community. Within its global Facebook group, members share best practices and offer guidance to fellow users.
Customily’s Potential Drawbacks
Free Trial Only Available for Shopify and Etsy: We were disappointed to find no self-service trial options for other major platforms like WooCommerce or Adobe Commerce (Magento). To preview Customily on these channels, you must book a live demo with a sales rep rather than freely testing it out.
While the nine-day free trials are great for assessing Customily with Shopify and Etsy stores, retailers on other platforms face more hurdles. You’ll need to purchase a paid plan upfront before syncing Customily to platforms like WooCommerce. And the live demos provide more limited exposure than actually piloting it yourself.
No Integrations With Workflow Automation Tools: A key limitation we noticed with Customily is the lack of integrations with workflow automation tools like Zapier.
While Customily connects with major ecommerce platforms, there is no ability to build hooks into other business systems. For retailers with more complex tech stacks, this can restrict automation capabilities. The only way to pass data between Customily and external programs is manual exporting/importing. Integrating order information into accounting software or syncing designs with a CRM requires tedious manual work.
For simple businesses, Customily’s out-of-the-box integrations probably suffice. But ecommerce stores relying on sophisticated workflows for scalability may find the inability to deeply integrate Customily restricting.
No Virtual Try-On Option: While Customily lets you preview your design mapped onto a product, there’s no way for customers to see that item realistically modeled on themselves.
Without a virtual dressing room experience, customers are essentially designing blindly. This could lead to disappointed customers and higher return rates.
Customily Plans and Pricing
Customily has different pricing structures depending on the ecommerce platform you’re using. Shopify and Etsy are incredibly straightforward, with a set monthly price and a declining transaction fee structure. WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), Walmart, and other platforms have different pricing for just design or design and production. Plus there are a few optional add-ons for niche business needs.
Shopify and Etsy
Customily keeps pricing simple and predictable for Shopify and Etsy stores with just two components—a flat monthly fee plus scalable transaction fees.
The monthly cost is an affordable $49 no matter how many stores you have on those platforms. This fee covers unlimited stores for full design capabilities across your brand.
On top of that, you’ll pay a small per order transaction fee:
- $1 per order for your first 100 orders
- $0.50 per order for orders 101-1000
- $0.25 per order for orders 1001-10,000
- $0.10 per order beyond 10,000
This declining tiered structure makes large volumes extremely cost-effective. As your business scales, your incremental fee per order drops lower and lower.
WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), and Walmart
For WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), and Walmart stores, Customily offers tiered pricing:
- Preview—$8 per product per month (12 product minimum) for just the custom design studio.
- Preview + Production—$16 per product per month (12 product minimum) for the custom design studio plus integration with print partners for fulfillment.
- Unlimited Preview—$300 per month for unlimited products for just design capabilities.
- Unlimited Preview + Production—$500 per month for unlimited products with production integrations.
Both Preview tiers include 10GB data transfer and 5GB storage. All packages come with in-app support.
The Unlimited plans add priority assistance and an hour of personalized onboarding. This premium tier is ideal for large catalogs.
We like the flexibility to choose between design-only Preview and production-enabled Preview + Production features. And you can scale up to Unlimited as your product catalog grows.
With tiered pricing matched to capabilities, retailers on these platforms can selectively access the Customily features that best suit their business needs and budget. You pay only for the functionality you require.
Other Platforms
For platforms beyond Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, and Walmart, Customily uses simplified two-tier pricing:
- Preview—$275 per month billed annually for only the design studio capabilities.
- Preview + Production—$458 per month billed annually for the design studio plus integration with print partners for production and fulfillment.
Both plans include ample data transfer and storage limits:
- Preview has 75GB data transfer and 40GB storage.
- Preview + Production includes 100GB data transfer and 50GB storage
The annual contracts provide discounted rates compared to monthly billing. For niche ecommerce platforms, these two packages streamline integrating customization with or without integrated manufacturing.
Optional Add-Ons
In addition to the core packages, Customily offers optional paid add-ons to enhance capabilities for specialized needs:
- Hebrew & Arabic Lettering—For retailers wanting to offer text customization in these languages.
- API Access—For building custom integrations between Customily and other software.
- Phone Support & Training—To get personalized coaching and troubleshooting over the phone.
To get pricing for any of these add-ons, you can contact Customily’s sales team for a custom quote based on your needs.
Final Thoughts
With Customily, you can offer a vast array of custom products in your online store with minimal effort on your part. Customers create and purchase their personalized designs straight from your website, and Customily’s POD partners can fulfill them. This is as close to a perfectly automated system as you can get in the ecommerce world.
With all the tools and resources it provides to help you get started, Customily is a game changer for online store owners looking to add a cool and unique element to their product catalogs.
