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The post The Best Websites for Custom Sweatshirts for Team Events appeared first on Penny Pinchin' Mom.
I coach field hockey and I love it. I played in high school and now I coach my girls. When the weather turns though, fingers start to get numb and teeth start to chatter. So I went looking for custom sweatshirts for our teams. I wanted warm, comfortable options that I could reorder year after year with just small updates, like player names or season dates. After testing and comparing a range of options, these are the best websites for custom sweatshirts… websites that stood out when it came to quality, consistency, and ease of reordering.
At a Glance
I tried to get samples from several companies to compare and here’s what I learned:
- BlueCotton is best for overall quality, faster turnaround, better control, lower prices, immediate issue resolution (if you need it), and more consistent results for those who order each year.
- Broken Arrow is great for free, easy designs, choices categorized by “no minimum” purchases or different thicknesses, and good value if you are ordering over 35 items.
- Custom Ink is good for custom designs and rush shipping with a fee, with a lot of name brands for sweatshirt quality and durability.
- StickerMule is best if you already have a design and want to print lots of colors/images at no extra fee.
- Jiffy is best for no minimum orders, as long as you supply your own design, plus they have a wide selection of sweatshirts.
Let’s look at each in more detail.
1. BlueCotton
BlueCotton is my top pick for several reasons. For starters, they are one of the only companies out there that has sport-wick leased hoodies. If you are looking for the best custom sweatshirts for sports, you’re not only going to get great material options, but you’ll also find top brand names, including UnderArmor, Carhartt, Nike, and The North Face.
Of all the sites I looked at, BlueCotton has the most robust design tool. You can certainly bring your own design if you already have something, but if you aren’t sure where to begin and you just know that you want to create a custom sweatshirt for your Wednesday night bowling league, you can choose from a variety of images, text options, other design flourishes, or use the AI generator to create something brand new. It’s easy to use, uncomplicated and simple.
BlueCotton offers 100% in-house production (no middlemen). The same cannot be said for a lot of their competitors (looking at you, Custom Ink). Located in Kentucky, BlueCotton handles everything in one location, from printing to quality checks to packaging, shipping, and customer service. This means that you not only get faster turnaround and better control over your product design but you have more consistent results as well.
BlueCotton is also a good fit if speed is important to you or you’re looking for rush options. They are an industry leader when it comes to rush delivery, with a standard 10-day production time but options for a 5-day, 3-day, or one day “super rush” option. In fact, 25% of their customers choose these rush services because they trust that speed and delivery.
I really appreciate companies that offer reliable customer service, especially when something goes wrong, but I absolutely hate companies that focus more on fixing a problem instead of preventing it in the first place. That’s another reason why BlueCotton is my top pick; they have a nine-point inspection process before anything gets shipped out that looks at your art design, reviews the color and ink accuracy, the print placement, the garment, and the packaging. And on the off chance that something goes wrong, they have some of the best customer service I’ve ever experienced out of any industry.
Design Support:
Lots of support with AI design tools in their easy-to-use-interface
Minimum:
Six order minimum
Rush Costs:
Most products are delivered eight business days after your order, but there are expedited options including rush, super rush, and shirts in a day (though shirts in a day is only available in limited cities)
Price:
Discounts for 12 or more, with a single color starting at around $28 each
Colors:
Limited, based on sweatshirt material
Materials:
Varied, including NuBlend, cotton, heavy blend, 50/50, tri-blend, re-fleece, fleece, sport wick
Name Brands:
Adidas, Bella+Canvas, Carhartt, Comfort Colors, Eddie Bauer, Gildan, Independent Trading Co, Next Level Apparel, Nike, The North Face, Under Armour
2. Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow impressed me, though not quite as much as BlueCotton. I liked the simplicity of their website and how honest the information was about pricing and shipping. It made it very easy to find the right products specifically categorized by things like sweatshirts with a no minimum requirement versus sweatshirts that had a minimum order requirement, as well as subcategories for lightweight, medium weight, and heavyweight.
These categories made it easy to choose sweatshirts based on the warmth and durability I needed, how many orders I planned to place, and whether I was prioritizing price or quality.
Out of everything Broken Arrow has to offer, I think I like their organizational structure and the way they categorize their sweatshirts most of all.
They do have a limited design tool, but I found the images and the text they offer are pretty basic. There’s not a lot of variety for what I’m designing.
Design Support:
None; must supply your own design
Minimum:
Certain options have no minimums, it will state on each sweatshirt and each category if there is an order minimum
Rush Costs:
Most products delivered eight business days after your order, but certain products can be expedited for an additional cost
Price:
Discounts for 12 or more, with a single color at around $28 each
Colors:
Lots of color options, sometimes over 30 per sweatshirt, based on material
Materials:
Varied, including cross-grain, sport lace hoodies, cotton, French terry, fleece, crossweave, recycled, heavy fleece, organic cotton,
Name Brands:
Bella + Canvas, LAT, Next Level, Adidas, Just Hoodz, Nike, District, Under Armour, Gildan, Hanes, Port & Company, J.America, Champion, Weatherproof, Dri Duck, Sport-Tek, Bayside
3. Custom Ink
Custom Ink is probably best known for their design studio. It offers a lot of flexibility in creating a design from scratch but in my mind, it’s actually kind of complicated and unnecessarily so. When I had to call customer service for something, they actually pointed out that most customers tend to rely on the internal design team because the interface is too complicated for them.
Custom Ink has also let me down in the past because they outsource their printing. This means that I might place an order with Custom Ink, but that order gets fulfilled by a different printing service in a different location around the world each time I order.
Sure, they save the design I have from one year to the next so if I want to order crew sweatshirts for each season, my base design will remain the same and saved in their portal, but the quality and the material that I get will vary, and I don’t like that.
Design Support:
You can supply your own or use their design studio
Minimum:
Some sweatshirts have a six order minimum, but each product will state whether there is a minimum
Rush Costs:
Generally two weeks, but rush options for a fee at 12, 10, 7, or 3 days available (limited to certain brands)
Price:
Discounts if you order hundreds of sweatshirts (price on their website is usually for a 500 minimum order)
Colors:
Dozens of color options for each sweatshirt
Materials:
50/50, cotton, ecosmart blend, fleece, reverse weave, organic French terry,
Name Brands:
Gildan, Nike, Bella + Canvas, Adidas, American Apparel, Champion, Carhartt, Hanes, Cornerstone, District, Marine Layer, Nautica, Holloway, Oakley, Old Navy, Port and Company, The North Face, Sport Tech, Russell Outdoors, Reebok, and dozens more
4. StickerMule
StickerMule is best for anyone who wants to print a lot of color.
Sure, they might be limited in terms of the design support that they have and you don’t get to choose from a lot of different name brand sweatshirts. However, they don’t charge you for the number of colors you use. That’s pretty cool. By comparison, sites like BlueCotton and Custom Ink all charge a marginal increase for each color that you add, both to the front and back of a given sweatshirt. It might only increase the price by 50 cents more per sweatshirt but if you are ordering a lot, that can add up. Especially if you are trying to print a team photo with lots of colors on it.
StickerMule also has surprisingly fast shipping, with all orders shipping in four days at no extra fee. Companies like Custom Ink or Broken Arrow will have incremental increases in shipping costs based on whether you want something in 10 days, 7 days, or 3 days. With StickerMule, you don’t have to worry about any of that. They offer free shipping no matter what, plus no minimum requirements.
Now, as I said, there are limits to what you can print with StickerMule. Namely, they don’t have a design studio so you have to already have your design ready to go when you order. Plus, you are limited in terms of the colors, the materials, and of course the durability of the materials that they offer (they only have one hoodie option and it’s not a name brand).
Design Support:
None; must supply your own design
Minimum:
No minimum
Rush Costs:
Free shipping in four days
Price:
Discounts the more you order
Colors:
Limited, based on sweatshirt material but full color printing at no additional cost
Materials:
50/50 cotton blend
Name Brands:
None; only one type of hoodie available
5. Jiffy
Jiffy has a lot of variety in terms of the sweatshirt/hoodie types that they offer. But while they carry some of the same name brands as the other options on this list, they don’t go so far as to include heavyweight brands for particularly cold areas like Carhartt. They also don’t have a lot of brands like Under Armor that might be more applicable to athletic performance.
Like StickerMule there is no design studio to help you but there’s also no minimum order and no hidden rush fees. When you look at a sweatshirt on Custom Ink’s website it might say that it’s only $23.65 per sweatshirt but then in the fine print you’ll actually notice that price only applies to a minimum of 500 orders. If you are buying for a local bowling league, a community event, or a University sports team, you might only need 30 or 40 shirts, in which case your price is usually double.
I like the transparency that Jiffy offers, even if they don’t offer a lot of design support.
Design Support:
None; must supply your own design
Minimum:
No minimum
Rush Costs:
No hidden rush fees, all delivery within 2 weeks, often sooner, as listed for each product
Price:
Discounts for 25 or more orders
Colors:
Limited, based on sweatshirt material
Materials:
Varied, including sports lace hoodies, ecosmart pullovers, cotton, French terry, fleece
Name Brands:
J America, Hanes, Bella + Canvas, Jerzees, Next Level, Gildan
Summing Up
Overall, BlueCotton is my winner. I have come to them several times and have never seen a decline in quality, since everything is printed in-house and managed right there. When I made a mistake and misspelled a couple of names, they were able to catch it and literally walk to the other end of the building to make sure that everything was corrected.
Broken Arrow had pretty comparable offerings but if I needed support, I was only able to use the website. They couldn’t help me over the phone and that meant there were more opportunities for problems. Otherwise, StickerMule is my favorite site for lots of colors at no extra fees but you have to have a design already; they don’t have a design studio.
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