Top 11 Best Print on Demand Embroidery Companies

Embroidered products feel premium. Stitched logos on hats, hoodies, and tote bags carry a weight that printed designs can't match. That's why so many creators want them in their store.

The catch? Embroidery machines are pricey, and holding inventory is a headache. Print on demand embroidery solves both problems. A partner handles the stitching and shipping, so you only pay when a customer orders.

The tricky part is picking the right one. Product range, stitch quality, pricing, and turnaround times vary a lot between companies. Some are great for hats. Others shine with apparel or bags.

This guide walks you through 11 of the best options. You'll get a clear look at what each one offers, so you can find the fit that works for your store.

Key Takeaways

What Is Print on Demand Embroidery and How Does It Work?

What Is Print on Demand Embroidery

Print on demand embroidery lets someone else stitch your designs onto products, one order at a time. You don't buy blanks in bulk. You don't own a machine. A partner takes care of the actual sewing, and you only pay when a customer buys. Think of it as outsourcing the messy part so you can focus on designs and sales.

How Does It Work?

Here's the basic flow. You upload your artwork to the partner's site and pick which products to sell—caps, hoodies, tote bags, and so on. Behind the scenes, they turn your design into a stitch file, which is basically instructions telling the machine where to put every thread.

Then you list the products in your store. When someone places an order, it goes straight to your partner. They stitch, inspect, pack, and ship it out with your branding on the label. You pocket the difference between what the customer paid and what the partner charged. That's it.

Best 11 Companies for Embroidery on Demand Services

1. PrintKK

PrintKK's embroidery is currently focused on cosmetic bags, with stitching applied to a set area of the pouch. It slots naturally into beauty, self-care, or gift-focused stores.

No minimums, and setup plus digitizing happen on the platform. Shopify and Etsy integrations keep listings simple.

Embroidered Makeup Bag-PrintKK

2. Apliiq

Apliiq is the go-to for premium streetwear finishes. Chest embroidery, sewn-on patches, custom woven labels—the kind of details that make a hoodie feel boutique instead of off an assembly line.

• Finish quality lands closer to fashion-brand work than typical POD output.
• Higher pricing and slower turnaround, so it's not the pick for stores competing on price or fast shipping.

3. Merchize

Merchize is based in Vietnam and puts embroidery on hats, jackets, and canvas bags. The print catalog is huge too, so embroidery and printed apparel can live under one roof.

• Prices sit below most US fulfillers, which helps margins when ad spend is heavy.
• Shipping to Western customers takes longer, so delivery times need to be flagged on product pages.

4. The Print Bar

The Print Bar is Australian and covers embroidery on polos, caps, and workwear. Local production is the main draw if your buyers are in the region.

• Orders reach Australian and Kiwi customers in days, and the team helps prep logo files for stitching.
• Shipping outside Australia and New Zealand loses the speed advantage quickly.

5. Inkthreadable

Inkthreadable ships from the UK and takes ethical sourcing seriously—not just as marketing. Embroidery is available on beanies, polos, and organic cotton tees.

• Digitizing is a one-time fee per design, so the same logo can spread across products without paying setup again.
• Catalog leans smaller than the big platforms, and UK shipping outside Europe costs more.

6. Gelato

Gelato runs a global production network, sending each order to the country closest to your customer. For embroidery, that shortens delivery and cuts shipping costs across borders.

• Great fit for stores selling into multiple countries without routing everything through one warehouse.
• Embroidery catalog sticks to apparel basics—tees, hoodies, caps. No specialty pieces.

7. Aesthetic BK

Aesthetic BK is a small Brooklyn studio, and it shows in the work. Detailed embroidery on hats, crewnecks, and jackets, with a hands-on approach the bigger platforms can't match.

• Finish quality suits small drops and capsule collections where every piece should feel intentional.
• Capacity is limited, so it doesn't scale for high-volume stores.

8. Gooten

Gooten uses a partner network that routes embroidery orders to whichever facility has capacity. The catalog covers caps, tote bags, and apparel.

• The API is developer-friendly—handy for custom storefronts or automating listings at scale.
• Quality can shift depending on which partner picks up your order, so sampling is a must before scaling.

9. CustomCat

CustomCat is US-based and quick—usually two to three business days on production. Embroidery covers hats, beanies, polos, and jackets, with sharp pricing on caps.

• Fast turnaround holds up when quick shipping is part of the customer pitch.
• The dashboard feels stuck a decade ago compared to newer platforms.

10. Printful

Printful handles embroidery on caps, beanies, polos, and jackets, backed by one of the more polished platforms in POD. The mockup generator and store integrations save real time.

• Output stays consistent as volume climbs, which is where the value shows up long-term.
• Pricing sits on the higher end, so margins can feel tight on cheaper items.

11. Printify

Printify runs a marketplace, connecting sellers with different print providers offering embroidery. That gives real flexibility on price, location, and product mix.

• Options across providers let you pick on price, location, or product needs.
• Quality varies between providers, so sampling from a few before committing is standard practice.

Embroidery vs. Printing: Which Is Right for Your Business?

Stuck between the two? Walk through these five checks and see where your store actually fits.

1. Your Product Lineup

Your product list shapes the answer more than anything. Embroidery lives on structured pieces—hats, polos, jackets, canvas bags. Printing stretches wider: tees, hoodies, mugs, phone cases, posters. Tight apparel brand? Embroidery works. Wide product mix? Printing gives you more to play with.

2. Your Color Needs

Embroidery pulls from fixed thread palettes, so matching exact brand colors often isn't possible, and gradients don't translate at all. One or two solid colors work fine. Detailed art or shades that need to match your brand exactly? Printing is the only real call.

3. Your Design Placement

Embroidery is locked into standard spots—left chest, sleeve, cap front, back panel. Printing lets you place designs anywhere, including all-over prints. Clean logo on the chest? Embroidery nails it. Big graphic across the back or a wrap-around pattern? Go with printing.

4. Your Design Size

Embroidery has a small working area, usually a few inches wide. Push past it and stitch counts climb, driving up cost fast. Printing doesn't care—small, large, or full-panel prints cost about the same. Small clean logos suit embroidery. Bigger designs breathe better in print.

5. Your Order Commitment

Some embroidery partners set minimum order quantities, which is rough when you're testing ideas. Most POD printing has no minimums—list a design, wait for one order, pay only when it sells. Just starting? Printing keeps risk low. Steady sales already? Embroidery minimums stop mattering.

Best 8 Products for Custom Embroidery

Not every product plays nice with a needle. These eight consistently earn their embroidery, based on how the stitches sit, how buyers price them in their heads, and how often they come back for more.

1. Dad Hats and Baseball Caps

The classic. Front panel, eye-level, small enough to force you into a clean design. Anything over 3 inches wide won't fit, and cramming in fine text just blurs the whole thing. Structured caps with foam fronts are the only ones that can pull off 3D puff, where the thread rides on top of a raised foam pad. Soft, unstructured dad hats want flat stitching and something calmer.

2. Beanies

A beanie is basically cold-weather branding real estate. Put the artwork on the cuff so it stays flat when folded up. The one thing that ruins a beanie logo is loose knit. Chunky yarn leaves gaps between stitches, and thin lines end up looking chewed. Go with a tight-knit rib and a bold shape or wordmark.

3. Polo Shirts

Left chest, small logo. That's the format every buyer already recognizes from corporate uniforms and country clubs. It works so well that a printed polo looks cheap next to a stitched one, which gives you room to charge a premium without much explaining.

4. Hoodies and Sweatshirts

Fleece is thick, forgiving, and holds thread cleanly, so hoodies give you the most placement options: chest, sleeve, upper back, anywhere but the hood itself. Stitching the hood creates a rough patch that scratches the wearer's neck all day. Cotton-heavy blends (80% and up) sit still under the needle. Thin poly tends to stretch, which pulls the artwork out of shape.

Men's Pullover Hoodie-PrintKK

5. Tote Bags

Canvas might be the friendliest fabric embroidery has ever met. Stiff, flat, thick enough to soak up dense stitching without puckering. Unlike a cap, you also get room to breathe. A small logo on one side and a longer line or inside joke on the other is a simple way to lift perceived value without touching your production cost.

6. Denim and Canvas Jackets

This is where embroidery earns its keep. Jackets already carry a higher price, so the added cost barely stings, and the back panel gives you a canvas big enough for real artwork. Denim and heavy canvas can take a large, dense pattern without warping. A stitched back turns a plain jacket into something people actually post about — a statement piece.

7. Aprons

Quietly one of the best gift niches you'll find. Coffee shops, home bakers, barbers, and hobbyists all buy them, and personalization is basically expected. A name paired with a role, like "Sam / Head Chef of Nothing," outsells generic designs by a wide margin. The heavyweight cotton twill most aprons use stitches cleanly and keeps text readable across a kitchen.

8. Embroidered Patches

The smartest long-game product on the list. Digitize once, then stitch that same patch onto hats, jackets, bags, aprons, and beanies without redoing anything. You can also sell them as standalones for buyers who want to iron them onto their own clothes. Patches aren't really a product. They're an asset that pays you back across your whole catalog.

Read More:

• Embroidery vs Screen Printing vs Printing: Which Is Best for You?
• How to Make Custom Embroidery Designs: A Complete Beginner's Guide

Start Your Embroidery Business With PrintKK

Ready to actually try this? Here's how PrintKK fits in without making things complicated.

Design in the browser.

Upload your logo, sketch, or text into the PrintKK design tool and drag it into place. If the file looks rough or low-res, the built-in AI image tool can clean it up, remove the background, or generate a sharper version before you commit to stitching.

Try the cosmetic bags.

Most sellers chase hats and hoodies, but PrintKK's embroidered cosmetic bags are a quiet standout. The flat panel keeps stitching crisp, quality holds up, and prices stay low. They also double as wedding favors and small brand gifts — a niche most embroidery stores overlook.

Double Layer CrossBody Bag Chest Bag-PrintKK

Mix embroidery with printing.

PrintKK isn't a single-product shop. T-shirts, hoodies, tote bags, aprons, and more sit in the same catalog, so you can sell a stitched cap next to a printed tee without switching platforms. One dashboard, one shipping timeline, one supplier to deal with.

Order one or order a hundred.

Testing an idea? Order a single piece and check it in person before posting anywhere. Running a company giveaway? Place a bulk order for logo apparel and hand them out at your event. No minimum order blocks you from doing either.

Skip the inventory risk.

Nothing gets made until someone buys. That means no stacks of unsold hoodies, no cash tied up in stock that won't move. Your real startup cost is a domain, a store subscription, and a few samples to photograph — a low entry point that keeps testing new designs cheap.

Expert Tips

Print on demand embroidery gives you a real shot at selling premium apparel without holding stock or spending big upfront. The eleven companies above each do something well. Some win on price, some on product range, some on quality. Your job is to match one to your goals, your budget, and the kind of buyer you want to reach.

Start small. Order samples. Test a few designs before you scale. The right partner makes the whole process feel easy, and PrintKK is a solid place to begin.

FAQs

Can I order just one embroidered product?

Yes. Almost every embroidery POD company skips the minimum order rule. Grab a single piece to see the stitching in person, hand it off as a gift, or shoot photos for your store listing.

How long does production and shipping take?

Figure on 3 to 7 business days to stitch, since nothing gets made until you order it. Shipping tacks on another 3 to 10 days, depending on the buyer's location and the carrier your supplier picks.

Is embroidery in high demand?

More than ever. Shoppers keep gravitating toward apparel that feels built to last, especially caps, polos, and giftable pieces. That shift has turned embroidery from a nice-to-have into something people actively look for.

Is embroidery a good side hustle?

It's one of the easier ones to ease into. No inventory sitting around, low starting costs, and decent margins per stitched piece. Pick a niche you actually care about, test a few designs, and grow when you're ready.