Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover merch & print on demand. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Print on demand routed through thirty print sites
Print and sell a book with no minimum order
Dreamship | Lulu | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $22 | Free |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
| Covers | Merch & Print on Demand |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Print on demand routed through thirty print sites
Dreamship connects a shop to more than thirty printing locations and picks between them, which is what decides whether an order posted from a customer's own country arrives in a week or a month. The free plan covers product creation, the marketplace integrations and two connected stores. Paying buys a discount on every unit rather than a feature, so the subscription pays for itself at a volume the merchant can calculate. Item costs are quoted per product and are not on this page.
Our note
Work out your monthly unit count before upgrading, because the discount is the whole product and below roughly a hundred items a month it will not cover the subscription. Ask for the item costs before committing either way, since those are what actually decide whether print on demand works for your price point.
Print and sell a book with no minimum order
Lulu prints one copy at a time and will drop-ship it under your own branding, so a creator can sell a workbook from their own site without holding stock or handing Amazon the customer. An API connects it to Shopify or a custom checkout. Print costs come out of your margin, and a colour interior turns a cheap book into an expensive one.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Self-Publishing, Merch & Print on Demand |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
|---|
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
|---|
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
|---|
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
|---|
Our note
Choose Lulu over Amazon KDP when you want to sell direct and keep the buyer's email address, and KDP when you want to be found by people already shopping for books. Plenty of creators do both with the same file.
Only on this side