Spreadconnect: Print on Demand

Review of SPOD/Spread Connect App on Shopify:

The transition from SPOD to Spread Connect has been an absolute disaster for my business. When the app updated, every single one of my products was flagged with a notice stating: “The print area has changed for this product. Please check whether your design’s placement is correct.” I checked each design, and everything appeared to be perfectly aligned. Yet, despite nothing needing correction, I was forced to re-upload every design, description, price, and product detail manually. This has been an incredibly tedious and time-consuming process, especially for those of us with larger catalogs.

Adding to the frustration, customer support is nonexistent. I’ve been calling their customer service all day, multiple times, during their stated hours, and no one answers. Relying solely on email to address urgent issues—like needing to cancel or adjust a product—is impractical and frustrating. Clear communication and accessible support are vital for a business-critical app like this, and Spread Connect has completely failed in that regard.

This experience has been nothing short of a nightmare. The lack of consideration for users’ time, the disruption to my store, and the absence of responsive support have made this app unusable. I cannot recommend Spread Connect to anyone looking for a reliable print-on-demand service on Shopify. Stay far away unless you want to risk hours of lost productivity and unresolved issues.

I really want to love this company. I think their fitted t-shirts are great, and overall the app is pretty decent as is, though there is still a lot of room for improvement. My one star is based on the quality of printing. It’s awful. Digital printing can be decent, but all of the samples they’ve sent me have been just terrible. The blacks are nowhere near black, more like a gray. Everything has lines going through it, like a cheap old printer. I heard they spent $10million on new fancy Swiss printers; well, they should get their money back. I’m so bummed out. I’ve ordered at least ten samples so far and I have nothing to show for it but a waste of time and money. I can’t sell these to my customers. They look so cheap. How are they even in business? It’s a shame. I have to find another company who can at the very least print decent quality t-shirts for god’s sake that’s all I ask.

Hugely disappointing! Awful print times, '48 hours?' as advertised, hah! More like 48 days if you're lucky. Terrible customer service. Just a shocking app, don't waste your time folks.

Ordered a sample item to test SPOD nearly a month ago. Wasn't ever fulfilled. "Awaiting production" for a month. Contacted support. No response within the day -- Just cancelled the sample order. Just tried writing support again to let them know. We'll see if they respond. I'm sure they'll respond promptly here since it's a public review. Very disappointing experience though after a couple decent experiences. Glad it was just for me and not a customer. Hopefully they didn't charge yet or it refunds automatically.

App stopped syncing orders from Shopify. Even manually requesting fulfillment does not work anymore. Support asked what browser I was using!! Basically saying it's my fault their app is not working. Then never responded again.

Just started using the app and the interface and pricing seem great. I wanted to order some samples, however, none of my credit or debit cards were accepted. Both VISA and Mastercard are rejected? This doesn't make me feel comfortable about the app or using it for my customers. Contacted customer support and waiting for a response. Anyone else have this issue?

DO NOT USE! The app is very user friendly, but their products are garbage. There is no quality control on their printing and about 30% of my products have huge mistakes in them and my business has taken a huge hit because of it.

2023 UPDATE:
SPOD has gone from bad to worse. Seriously, they will ruin your print on demand business. Use Printify, Printful...any other Shopify partner but SPOD. They have the worst customer service, slow response, and take zero responsibility.

They've recently moved to fulfill from a new facility, causing delays without any way to track shipments or where the order is in the production process. One customer has waited 2+ weeks and all SPOD can tell me, is they may or may not be able to locate this in the production process and may or may not be able to cancel this order. I've also had many fit and quality complaints and it's time to finally remove the very few items I have left being printed by SPOD.

Read all the recent negative reviews - I'm not the only one who feels this way. They started out great, years ago but are simply not worth the higher production cost for poor customer relations and poor often printing quality.
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Good luck getting ANYONE to respond to customer service tickets, issues, questions. There is literally ZERO customer support.

I am so incredibly disappointed. My first sample order was fine, so I ordered a big $300+ order. SPOD never put my contact information on the package, so when FedEx tried to contact them for duties, they never responded, and the package has been in a holding pattern for 6 weeks. I have now paid the duties and the package is just plain lost. I contacted SPOD about this, and they took no responsibility, and I am now out a significant amount of money, with no merch. Another smaller order did arrive, but it is unsellable. Completely washed out and hideous, not even close to my previous sample order in quality. I am just heartbroken and now have no way to recoup the costs.

After about five months of using SPOD, we are still conflicted. We like their catalog and fast production times, which is usually 24 to 48 hours. However, sometimes it can take 4 to 5 days, which is a problem if you want to advertise an item based on expected delivery times. This leads me to my next issue. Their customer service is the worst compared to the other POD companies we use (three of our other POD companies have live chats, which is fantastic). SPOD doesn't have a live chat and can often take 48 to 72 hours to respond. And when they do, they only include their reference number, not ours. This requires us to go into SPOD to try and identify the order they are talking about. This poor customer service is unacceptable and will be one of the reasons we stop using them. When our customers contact us (who are indirectly SPOD customers), we need to be able to get back to them with an answer. Anything more than a few hours doesn't cut it in today's competitive market. When we phone them, we always receive a friendly response but no follow-through. Compared to other POD companies, like Printify and AOP, we are having a higher number of issues with their products. These include: the wrong item being sent (either from our catalog or worse, from another one of their customers), prints printed upside down and crooked, goods delivered broken, and they are constantly going out of stock. For example, they ran out of a particular back-pack in early April. I asked when would they restock it, as I would like to sell it on pre-order. They responded saying it would be restocked at the end of April. When I followed up on 30 April, I was told it would be late May, and this is after I had accepted over $500 in pre-orders based on what SPOD told me (surely they can manage their inventory better, after all if they are out-of-stock we are not selling their goods, which can't help their bottom line). We will likely stop using them once we find the time to migrate our designs to a different POD company. We will definitely miss some of their unique products, but the reputational risk is too high. We definitely won't miss the high number of tickets they help create. [PS. We are not, I imagine a big customer for them with YTD sales of over $47,000. But what they don't get is that if they more reliable, with better customer service, we would send them much more of our business. SPOD represents less than 10% of our sales]