Connect Printify and Etsy – An easy 4 step guide to setup and testing

Would you like to connect Printify and Etsy? This tutorial walks you through how to connect your Printify account with your Etsy store and how to publish products from Printify* directly to your new Etsy shop**. It forms part of a wider series of articles on integration between print on demand (‘POD’) platforms with third party platforms such as WooCommerce, and Etsy.

About this Print-on-Demand Platform Integration Series

The Print-on-Demand Integration series takes you all the way from signing up to your chosen print on demand (‘POD’) providers, creating your first product inside your POD account, establishing a connection between your POD provider and third party connection (WooCommerce, Etsy etc), publishing your product and making necessary changes to settings. There are a range of print-on-demand providers who support integration with WooCommerce and Etsy. This particular series of articles shows you how to integrate your WooCommerce website or Etsy with the print on demand platform Printify*.

Prerequisites for this tutorial

To integrate Printify with Etsy, this tutorial requires that you have set up:

1. a Printify* account; and
2. an Etsy shop** account.

If you haven’t already set these two accounts up, there are links below for Etsy** and Printify*; in particular if you sign up via the Etsy shop link, you will get 40 free shop listings for Etsy:

Once your Etsy shop** is connected to Printify, you will be able to create and publish products directly from Printify to your Etsy shop. You will also be able to manage your orders and inventory from Printify.

Tips: what to do if your Etsy Shop Account is suspended (for no discernible reason)

Tip 1: Etsy can wrongly suspend your shop account – even before you have started using it, or at some time with no basis that you can discern. Speculating, it may be based on misclassifications in Etsy’s anomaly/fraud detection procedures. If this happens to you, put in an online appeal on the decision via the Etsy platform – you will see a link to appeal the decision if Etsy decide to suspend you.

Tip 2: With regard to Etsy appeals: in theory, after your appeal, you should receive an email with a reply from Etsy (ideally reinstating your account). Keep checking every day after you have appealed to see if Etsy have reinstated you shop account – just try logging into your shop account, and if it appears to work as normal again, then Etsy have lifted the suspension. It is possible that Etsy have reinstated it but not emailed you to inform you.

1. Creating your new store on Printify

Having created a new Printify* account, when you first view your dashboard, you will not have any store connections added yet. You will see instead a default (Printify) Store name on the top right of the dashboard, called ‘My new store’ – see Figure 1 below. You can add a completely new store or edit an existing store (like your existing default ‘My new store’) on the Printify* site.

1.1 Ways to create a new store name on Printify

In this section, are three different methods (Methods 1-3) are shown to find the ‘add store’ settings. Later, when you may have multiple Stores set up in Printify, you will be able to toggle between several stores you have set up, and edit them as necessary via Method 1 and Method 2.

Method 1: From the Main Dashboard page – Edit ‘My new store’ or Add a new Store

Once logged into your Printify* account, you see the main Dashboard page for a new account (Figure 1). Since you have not created a Store yet, Printify has already created a placeholder Store called ‘My new store’.

You can either modify the name of the default Store called ‘My new store’ or add another completely new store. Click on ‘My new store’ and you will see a drop down menu to choose to modify the To add a new store from that main login page, choose ‘Add new store’ in the top right of that dashboard page, to the left of the round green account icon (see Figure 1).

Method 2: From the Main Dashboard page – Edit the ‘My Stores’ List via the green Account icon

You can go to the ‘My Stores’ list as in Figure 2 by clicking on the green account icon (depicting a green head and shoulders) on the top right of the main Printify* Dashboard page and in the drop down list, and choose ‘My Stores’

Method 3: From a draft Product page

If you have already made a product within Printify* but have no Store yet, you will be prompted at the bottom of the product options to create a new store, as in Figure 3

1.2 Name Your New Store (within Printify)

You can call your new Printify Store whatever name you like, but we recommended that you call it something which enables you to differentiate it from your other stores on your Printify account e.g. ‘MyStoreEtsy‘ identifies a Printify* connection you will make to your particular Etsy store – use your actual store name so it is meaningful to you, but also to any customers receiving your order as it will appear on the shipping label:.

Save the Printify* store name in Figure 4, by pressing the green ‘Save’ button, ‘MyStoreEtsy’ (or your equivalent new store name) will appear on the top right of your Printify App, as shown in Figure 5.

If you look at ‘My Stores’ within the Printify dashboard, you will see that this new example Printify store ‘MyStoreEtsy‘ is still an unconnected store (Figure 6). To get to ‘My Stores’, click on the green login icon (head) in the top right corners, and choose ‘My Stores from the list:

Note from Figure 6 that the new Store ‘MyStoreEtsy’ is listed as an ‘Unconnected store’. In the next section, we will be connecting that store to your Etsy shop.

2. Connect Printify and Etsy Store

There are two parts to this: first requesting the connection with your Etsy Store from the Printify* side, then the second part is logging in to accept the connection from the Etsy side.

2.1 Connect Printify with the Etsy Shop from the Printify* side

When you press ‘Connect’ (rectangular ‘Connect’ green button shown in Figure 6, above) it gives you a range of connection options. These connection options are shown in Figure 5, including Etsy. Press either Etsy connection button as labelled in Figure 7:

Clicking an Etsy** button in Figure 7 takes you to Figure 8 below, which is the sign in page for Etsy:

Once you have logged in to Etsy through a login like Figure 8 above, to complete the Printify Store connection to your Etsy shop (note, you need to have set up an account for your Etsy shop** beforehand), you will be asked to grant Printify access to your Etsy account.

2.2 Checking the Printify connection with Etsy

When you log back into Printify* again, it will be apparent that your Etsy Store is now connected to Printify, as the Etsy shop name you have created, together with the URL it is connected to will now appear on the right hand side of the Printify* dashboard, just to the left of your green account icon – Figure 9.

This is labelled below in Figure 9 – the Printify Store Name is ‘MyStoreEtsy’. The connection URL of the Etsy shop is of the general form www.etsy.com/shop/yourshopname

2.3 Multiple Connections are possible from one Printify account to Etsy and other sites

Note that you can create and connect up to five Printify Stores this way within a free Printify* account. You can have more Store connections on an account with Printify Premium, but you do not need to sign up to Printify Premium for the purposes of this tutorial, nor is premium necessary to get started with Printify* Print on Demand.

In the example in Figure 10 below, there are three Store connections, i.e. (1) the main ‘yourstore.com‘ website with WooCommerce, (2) a WooCommerce on a test site and (3) an Etsy store. Each of these three stores have their own URL. You can switch between these stores by pressing on the relevant store in the list shown in Figure 10.

2.4 You cannot connect two separate Printify accounts with the same Etsy Store

Although – as described in section 2.3 – you can create multiple Printify Stores (within one Printify account) and connect

If you attempt to attach multiple Printify Stores to a single Etsy Store in this way, you will get an error message (I tried it, so you don’t have to). In the example below, another Printify Store was already connected to the Etsy Store, and I attempted to connect ‘MyStoreEtsy’ to it as well and got the following error in Figure 11:

3. Make a product in Printify*

Once you connect Printify with Etsy via the steps above, the best way to test the Printify-Etsy integration is to publish a product from Printify* and check that it appears in your Etsy store**.

3.1 Choose a Product within the Printify platform

You can choose a new product to put your design on by a) browsing by product type e.g. ‘Men’s Clothing’, or b) selecting by print provider on the Printify platform (click ‘See print providers’), as in Figure 12:

Once you have chosen a product, you can start arranging a design on it, as described in the next section.

3.2 Press ‘Start designing’ for a Printify* Product

Once you choose a product (in the example in Figure 12, a t-shirt), press the green rectangular ‘Start designing’ button

Pressing ‘Start designing’ will take you to a product design page shown in Figure 14. Figure 14 illustrates designing that product by placing and resizing images on the product.

This tutorial is not intended cover the product design process in any great detail, we just want to show you a completed design to illustrate the process of saving the product and publishing it from Printify* into your Etsy store.

3.3 Save the Product you have designed

Once you press ‘Save Product’, shown in Figure 14, you get to a product page with various sections: Mockups, Descriptions and Pricing, shown by Figure 15 – Figure 18:

3.3.1 Mockups section on the Product Page

3.3.2 Description section on the Product page

3.3.3 Pricing section on the Product page

Your draft Printify* product will of course show some variability from the screenshots Figure 15 – Figure 18 depending on the product, colors and sizes you have chosen. Note that the prices in Figures 17 and 18 are in USD. The pricing and currency settings are discussed in the next section, if you need to work in a currency other than USD.

4. Publish the product from Printify* to your Etsy store**

This section covers currency and pricing, and other publishing settings when you are publishing from Printify to Etsy.

4.1 Pricing & Currency Settings on Printify and Etsy (and their interactions)

If you are outside the US and, as such, you may would like at least one of your Etsy or Printify account to be denominated in something other than US dollars, this section covers how to deal with Printify currency settings (for both Printify catalog currency, and briefly explaining Printify billing currency.) The section also explains the slightly surprising interactions between the currency and pricing settings on Printify and Etsy. This section 4.1 is primarily for sellers who are not based in the USA.

We start with the Etsy currency settings, as these in turn determine how best to set your currency settings in Printify.

4.1.1 Shop currency settings in Etsy

If you use the same currency for your shop listings and the bank account you have set up for Etsy, you can avoid Etsy’s 2.5% currency conversion fee.

If you sell to customers outside the country where your business is established, it may be better to have an international bank account for your eCommerce billing, however. For example, if you are based in the UK or in the European Union (within the Eurozone) but most of your customers are in the USA, you may wish to set up a Wise business account*** (affiliate link) or similar multi-currency account, and set currency in Etsy to US dollars.

Irrespective of which currency you list in on Etsy as a seller, buyers will see the price in the currency of their choice. For example, assuming that buyers match their currency choice to their country of residence, if you list in GBP (£), UK buyers will see GBP, US buyers will see USD ($), French buyers will see Euro (€) ^[1] https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/How-to-sell-on-US-market-from-UK/td-p/131685876

Note that your chosen currency settings in Etsy will determine how you approach your catalog currency and set your product prices in Printify for publication to your Etsy store.

4.1.2 Changing Printify’s Catalog Currency setting

By default, the Printify catalog is set as US dollars, but the available catalog currencies that this catalog currency can be changed to are additionally CAD (Canadian Dollars), GBP (British pounds). There’s no Euro or Australian currency option at the time of writing. In Figure 19, the Printify catalog currency has been changed from the default USD to GBP to illustrate how you would go about making changes if you are a UK seller, even selling internationally.

If you change from USD to another currency supported by Printify, the prices on Printify products appear with the GBP value underneath the USD value for production cost (Figure 20):

4.1.3 How price values get translated from Printify to Etsy on publication of a product to Etsy

If you change the catalog currency for your Store into a currency other than USD e.g. GBP as in Figure [ ], that currency – in this case GBP – appears within the Production cost listing for that item. The retail price (which you can alter by editing the price – top left of Figure 20) remains in USD. Note the additional information in Figure 20: “Sales channel receives only USD numeric price values no matter what currency is displayed in the table below.” ^[2] https://help.printify.com/hc/en-us/articles/4483625794577-In-which-currency-can-I-sell-my-products-

4.1.3.1 Numerical price values get transferred to Etsy

Tip 3: Setting the prices in US dollars in Printify, will translate to the same numerical values in the currency you have set for your Etsy Shop

Example 1: When you publish the product from Printify from Figure 20 to your Etsy store, and your Etsy store is set to GBP, the price which is transferred across to Etsy, is the retail price. In Figure 20, this is 30.95. Therefore the amount that Etsy will translate this amount to is £30.95. In other words, you are ignoring the fact that the 30.95 is denominated as USD in Printify.

Example 2: setting a retail price of US$25 in Printify will be transferred as a price of € 25 if your business is in the Eurozone and you have set your Etsy shop currency to € (Euro).

4.1.3.2 Price values transferred from Printify to Etsy are VAT or sales tax exclusive

The numerical prices being transferred from Printify to Etsy are translated, ignoring the relative values of different currency denominations. However, the final price displayed by Etsy, depends on the sales tax where the buyer is viewing the product. This is tip 4:

Tip 4: When you publish a product to your Etsy Store, the numerical values which you set in Printify and therefore get transferred into Etsy, are VAT or sales tax exclusive.

Example 3 : using the product from Figure 20 where the retail price is US$30.95, translates to a price (net of VAT) of £30.95. The standard VAT rate in the UK is 20%, and this additional 20% of £30.95 (£6.19) will be shown to and charged to UK buyers. The total price for the product in the UK will therefore be £37.14.

Example 4 : setting a product retail price of US$25 in Printify will be transferred as €25 if your Etsy store is set to Euros. If you have a buyer in France where the standard VAT rate in France is also 20%, they will be charged a total of €30 for the product.

4.1.4 Printify’s Billing Currency setting

The Billing Currency setting in Printify is the currency that will be used to charge you for your Printify orders; this includes your orders on Printify when a customer on your Etsy shop ordered your product on Etsy. Like the catalog currency, you can choose from USD, CAD and GBP. If you choose a currency that is different from your bank account currency, your bank may charge you a foreign transaction fee.

To change your Billing Currency setting, Go to your Printify account icon (green icon, top right). Click “Payments”, and choose “Billing Currency”. Select the currency you want to use, amongst USD, CAD, GBP. Click on “Save”. Your new Billing Currency setting will be applied in respect of all future orders. ^[3] https://help.printify.com/hc/en-us/articles/12203640151953-How-can-I-change-the-currency-on-Printify-

4.2 Publishing product from Printify to your Etsy store** – Settings

The draft product (a t-shirt) in Printify shown in Section 3.2.3 is ready to be published from Printify* to WooCommerce. The publishing settings and options are displayed further down on the same page as the draft product settings shown in Figure 15 – Figure 18.

This next section takes you through the publishing options you have, and how they will be displayed in WooCommerce both at the backend and front end of the WooCommerce website.

4.2.1 Publishing from Printify to Etsy Store – Hiding in Store

Tip 5: We suggest you choose ‘hide in store’ when you initially choose to publish a product from Printify to your Etsy Store. When you publish but hide in store, this publishes the product as a draft in your Etsy store – you are not charged for an Etsy listing until the product is actually published as a live listing in Etsy.

You can then make changes to your draft listing within Etsy to make sure that you are happy with it, and then press ‘Publish’ within Etsy to make your listing live. The further changes which you might wish to make within Etsy to your product before publishing the Etsy listing aren’t covered in this tutorial, but will be covered in a future one.

5. Conclusions

This tutorial has walked you through how to connect Etsy and Printify, and explains the process of publishing your Printify product to your Etsy Store – with a focus on the settings in Printify. A future article will separately cover the changes you may wish to make to your Etsy listing published from Printify before you finally publish the listing to your Etsy Store.