Leaving Printavo: switch to what?

I ran Lamb Screen Printing on Printavo for years. This summer I moved 6,454 orders out of it, cancelled the account, and put the shop on a system I built myself. So I am not selling any of the software below, and I am not going to tell you which one to buy.

What I can do is the homework. Before I decided to build I looked hard at this market, and for this page I read the pricing page, the terms and the help center for the four systems a Printavo shop actually considers, and put what they say side by side. Every vendor fact on this page comes from the vendor’s own website, checked on the date shown below. I have read their docs. I have not run a shop on any of them, and I say so where it matters.

The last part of the page is the part I would keep: the eight questions I would ask any shop system before signing, each one learned the hard way on the way out of Printavo.

Prices last checked: September 12, 2026

The four systems, and the one you are leaving

Every number in the table is from the vendor’s own pricing page, help center or terms on the date shown above it, except the one line about what happened to my own account. Where a vendor’s pricing page and its help center disagree on something that matters, I say so; where an older help article carries an older price, the pricing page wins. “Not stated” means I could not find it on their site, which is itself an answer.

Printavo: what you are leaving, and what you were actually paying

Printavo is the system most of us started on, and its pitch has not changed: simple. Quoting, invoicing, approvals, a calendar, a customer link, a mobile app. It is owned by Inktavo, which also owns InkSoft and merged with OrderMyGear in late 2025.

The pricing page today says Lite $109 a month, Standard $244, and for Premium, contact us. None of those is what I paid, and the gap is the point. My shop was on an older Premium plan at $249 a month. In 2022 Printavo retired its legacy plans and moved every legacy customer onto its current plans; mine landed on the current Premium tier at $399 that August. In April 2024 Inktavo raised that to $449, and in June 2025 to $469. Same shop, no plan change asked for, nearly double in three years. When I cancelled in August 2026 the bill was $469 a month, and Premium no longer has a public price at all.

What Printavo does well is still real: it is easy to learn, the customer link works, and the matrices and mockup creator cover most shops. What I hit: the API is Premium only, allows 10 requests every 5 seconds, and by the vendor’s own words has no webhooks. The reports my bookkeeper needs live only in the web interface. There is no inventory module, and production tracking was thin enough that my team ran a separate board beside it and synced the two. Two of Printavo’s own pages disagree about your data after you cancel: the terms say you have no further access and they may delete it, the help center says five days of access and never deleted. What I measured: the API stopped answering about fifteen minutes after my cancellation went through, while the browser stayed open for the five days.

This is the one I ran a shop on, so it gets the sharpest read. The four below get their own documents’ word, and mine that I read them.

YoPrint

YoPrint is a cloud shop system from a two-founder company in Delaware, one of the founders a former DTG shop owner, and it says 500+ shops trust it. Two plans: Basic at $69 a month with one user, Pro at $149 with five, an extra user $10 or $12 a month, and about 13 percent off if you pay annually. Fourteen-day trial with no card, and no contract.

Who it fits: a small shop that wants Printavo’s shape without the per-user climb, and wants to keep its own payment processor. Basic includes unlimited pricing matrices (pricing groups are capped per plan, and the cap is not published), the customer portal, the production calendar and barcodes. Purchase orders, inventory, live vendor stock, QuickBooks, and the reports-and-data-export feature are Pro.

How your data gets out: exports are CSV per report, and the vendor’s own words are that it exports only what is on the screen, with a Download Center for bulk pulls. The API exists but is an invite-only beta for Pro accounts. After cancelling you keep access to the end of the billing cycle. No export window is stated, and the terms allow deleting your account data without notice if a card is declined, so keep the card current until the export is done.

What stood out in the docs: the portal is a real one, with approve or reject per piece of artwork and messages per order, rule-based pricing on Pro, and no transaction fee from YoPrint on top of your processor. What to check: the same pricing page says a 14-day trial in the header and 15 days in the FAQ, and the reports export is Pro, not Basic.

I tore its portal down from screenshots and read its docs. I have not run a shop on it.

Teesom

Teesom is business management software for apparel decorators, from the people who built FastManager, owned since 2022 by Abaco Business Investments in Florida. Its model is unusual. It is free if you do 20 orders or less a month (US only), with one user, 15 price lists and everything else included. Above that, paid tiers are set only by user count: 1 user $77 a month, 2 users $111, 5 users $178, 10 users $293, up to 30 users at $718, about 15 percent less on annual billing. There is no trial because there is no need for one, and no card to sign up.

Who it fits: a start-up, or a shop that wants every feature at every size and wants to pay only for seats. Vendor integrations are live for stock and pricing (S&S, SanMar, alphabroder and others), inventory is multi-warehouse, there are five payment processors to choose from, and the customer portal shows quotes, orders, invoices, artwork and cards on file.

How your data gets out: every report exports to CSV, and there is a QuickBooks Online or Desktop export. Cancel a paid plan and you drop to the free tier with everything intact; deleting the whole database is by request. No customer-facing API is stated. The caveat that matters for a Printavo shop: Teesom says it cannot import your order history or invoices from Printavo. Customers can come across through QuickBooks.

Read, not run.

shopVOX

shopVOX is shop management for sign, print and apparel shops, owned by Fullsteam in Alabama, and says 2,000 shops in 26 countries use it. Two editions: Express at $109 a month plus $29 per user, and PRO at $249 plus $49 per user with an onboarding package from $499. The base price includes one user. Express has a 14-day trial with no card; PRO starts with a live demo.

Who it fits: a growing shop that wants the deep end. Step boards, a machine scheduler, install boards, custom workflows and a CRM are PRO. Express has one workflow and a basic job board. Much of the depth is add-ons with their own prices: inventory at $299 a month plus $999 setup, e-commerce at $199 a month for up to 100 orders plus $299 setup, webhooks at $250 a month.

How your data gets out: the API is PRO only, and the help desk says it does not support API questions. Customer and report exports exist; I could not find a full order export described. Its master agreement, updated March 2026, gives you 30 days of access to your data after termination, after which they may delete it. The same agreement says twelve-month terms that renew unless you give 90 days notice, with a charge for leaving early. Both help centers say there is no contract. Ask which applies to you before you sign, and get the answer in writing.

Payments: Stripe, Square, or shopVOX Pay, its own processor, with a card surcharge option capped at 4 percent.

By its own title it is built for sign and print shops as well as apparel, so ask a screen printer who uses it. Read, not run.

DecoNetwork

DecoNetwork is print shop software plus online stores, from an Australian company with a Georgia office, and its sales model is a demo rather than a trial. Three plans: Standard at $239 a month with three staff accounts and one online store; Premium at $339 with five staff and up to 500 stores, including fundraiser and team stores; Enterprise at $439 with 25 staff, unlimited stores and the API. An extra staff account is $10 a month. Month to month with no refunds and a 14-day grace period after signing up. Every plan card carries a one-time license line with no amount shown, so ask.

Who it fits: a shop whose business is stores, teams and fundraisers as much as walk-in quoting. Production tracking and inventory are on every plan.

How your data gets out: the API is Enterprise only. Orders and customers export to CSV. Read this next part twice. The license says that on termination they delete your orders and customer details, and the help center says you lose access the day you cancel and your data is removed within 90 days. Export before you send the cancellation, not after. Payments run through DecoPay on Stripe, which requires a new Stripe account rather than one you already have; other gateways can be switched on separately and carry transaction fees.

Read, not run.

Also out there

ShopWorks (OnSite) has been at it since the 1990s, runs in the cloud or on your own server, and does not publish prices; you ask for a demo. The Print Life is one plan at $49 a month with unlimited users and a 30-day trial that needs a card, built by a working screen printer. InkIQ is the AI-first newcomer; as of this check it publishes no prices and quotes every plan on a call. InkSoft is not an alternative to Printavo. By its own title it is an e-commerce platform for branded merchandise, at $314 or $419 a month, and it is Printavo’s sibling under Inktavo. The “family bundle” you may be offered is the two together.

Eight questions I would ask any of them

I looked hard at this market before deciding to build, and I chose none of these, so I cannot end this page with a pick. What I can end with is the list I wish I had started with. Each question comes from something that happened to my shop on the way out of Printavo.

1. How does my data get out, and on what day?

Printavo’s support told me I would have five days of access after cancelling. That was true of the browser and false of the API: about fifteen minutes after the cancellation went through, every API call answered with an authorization error. The tax and accounting reports had never been in the API at all, so someone on my team pulled every one by hand from the web interface while the account was still live. Ask each vendor which exports exist by API and which only exist by hand, and read their terms for the word “delete”. Then do the export on day one of the trial, open the file, and see what is in it.

2. What is the bill at my headcount, in year three?

My Printavo bill went from $249 to $469 a month over three years with no plan change on my side: a legacy plan retired and migrated, then two increases from the new owner. The sticker price on a pricing page is the bill on the day you sign, at the user count you have that day. Price the system at two, five and ten users with the features you actually need, add the add-ons, and ask what the price was three years ago. Along the way I also found that automations I once had unlimited were capped at 30, with 30 more for $15 a month.

3. Who owns it, and what happened after?

Printavo was merged into Inktavo, and both of the price increases above were signed by Inktavo. In late 2025 Inktavo merged again, with OrderMyGear. None of that is a complaint; it is a pattern. Acquisitions change pricing and roadmaps, and nobody asks about them on a sales call. Ask who owns the company, when it last changed hands, and what the price did afterwards.

4. Whose payment processor, and what leaves with me?

Printavo’s payments run on its own embedded processor, with the rate on a fee schedule rather than the pricing page. For years my team added a card fee of about three percent to invoices by hand and took it off when a customer paid another way. When I left, the saved customer cards did not come with me, and stored cards rarely do. Ask whether you can use your own processor, what the published rate is, and what happens to stored cards if you leave. Three of the four systems above let you bring your own processor; one requires a new account with theirs.

5. Does it run the floor, or only the front desk?

Printavo was solid on the paperwork and thin on the floor, so my team ran a separate production board beside it and kept the two in sync by hand and by script. That is a second system to maintain, and it was the first thing I replaced. Ask what the press operator sees, whether there is real inventory, and whether purchase orders and receiving are in the plan you are pricing or two tiers up.

6. What does my customer see without emailing me?

On Printavo, quoting was manual on my end, and while the approval click lived in the system, the back and forth over artwork versions happened in email threads. The single biggest time saver a shop system can give you is a path from inquiry to priced quote to approval to payment that the customer walks by themselves, with artwork approval by version instead of by reply. Ask to see the customer side, not the admin side. Order status, approvals, payment and reorders, in one link.

7. Does it price the way I price?

I built a pricing tool years before I built a shop system, because I hated filling in matrices by hand. When I exported my Printavo matrices on the way out, they came one file at a time, and five of the thirteen downloads turned out to be byte-identical duplicates. Ask how many matrices you get, what drives a price break, and whether setup and screens are inside the price or bolted on afterwards. Then price one real job from last week in the trial and compare it to what you actually charged.

8. What breaks silently, and who answers?

Customer emails failed silently on my Printavo account: sent on our end, nothing landed, no error anywhere. The API returned a success status on an authorization failure, so a script checking only the status code saw a healthy system. Date sorting on the API returned the same results in both directions, and a sync hit hard rate-limit failures within hours of turning it on. Ask how you find out that a customer email did not send, whether there is a status page, and what the support hours and channel are. Then send yourself a quote from the trial and watch it land.

What I told Printavo when I cancelled

Printavo asked me four questions on the way out. These are three of the paragraphs I sent back, word for word:

Reliability. We had customer emails fail silently (sent on our end, nothing landed, no error surfaced anywhere) and intermittent API instability. At $469 a month, those got expensive to keep absorbing.

Printavo is solid on the paperwork side, but the floor side was thin enough that we ran a separate Kanban board alongside it and synced the two.

Would you use Printavo in the future? For Lamb Screen Printing, no. We’re committed to our own system. I’d still put a newer shop on Printavo over spreadsheets. What would change my answer for a shop like mine isn’t more features, it’s reliability and a genuinely usable API.

Where this leaves you

None of the four systems above is the one I chose. I chose none of them, and built my own for my own floor, which is a story for another day. If you are earlier in the process than that, start with the export. What to pull out of Printavo before you cancel, in order, with the reports the API does not give you, is on the exit checklist. The worksheet below is the eight questions as a scoring sheet, to take into the demos.