If you run a print shop, you’ve probably experienced that awkward moment when someone asks for a quote and you hesitate for a second. You know you have a pricing formula somewhere, but the screen printing cost factors are scattered. Is it the spreadsheet for screen printing or the one you built for DTF jobs? Is it the updated version you made last year or the older one you shared with a customer months ago?
And if the customer has a special rate, where exactly did you write that down? Before long you’re digging through folders, emails, or Google Sheets trying to find the right screen printing price calculator while the customer waits. I’ve been there.
When I first started in screen printing, pricing felt more complicated than it needed to be. I found all kinds of pricing spreadsheets online, many of them built for larger operations. They had formulas that included equipment utilization, labor allocation, production efficiency, and variables that didn’t make much sense for a small shop or a side hustle.
At the same time, I knew plenty of shops that went in the opposite direction and used a single flat pricing formula for everything. That approach worked in some situations, but it also meant a complicated 12-piece order might get priced the same way as a simple 200-piece job. Or a corporate customer got the same price as a solo individual with a simple order. Neither approach really solved the problem.
The bigger issue was that pricing information lived everywhere. Screen printing pricing might be in one spreadsheet. DTF pricing might be somewhere else. Embroidery pricing could be in a completely different calculator. Special customer pricing might live inside email threads or old invoices.
Even if your formulas are solid, managing them this way quickly becomes messy. And when your pricing system is scattered across different tools, it’s hard to stay consistent. That’s the problem that led me to build Pricely.
A Simpler Way to Manage Screen Printing Pricing
Pricely is a pricing calculator designed specifically for custom apparel decorators and print shops who have different processes to create products. Instead of relying on multiple spreadsheets or separate calculators for different services, everything lives in one place.
The idea is straightforward. You create pricing profiles that represent how your shop prices different types of work. Each profile is powered by a specific pricing engine that matches the way you prefer to calculate jobs. Right now Pricely supports four different decoration methods, each with its own pricing engines.
Versatile Screen Printing Models
For screen printing, there are several different approaches depending on how you price work. Some shops prefer simple per-piece pricing, while others use more detailed calculations that account for labor, overhead, and quantity breaks. Pricely includes engines like Basic, Flat Rate, Matrix Lite, Contract, Cost Plus, Hourly Rate, and Full Matrix so you can choose the method that best matches how your shop operates.
Digital Transfers
For digital transfers, including Direct to Film (DTF), you can price jobs either by area or with a flat transfer rate. This makes it easy to quote jobs based on print size or standard transfer costs.
Embroidery
For embroidery, the system supports multiple pricing styles including stitch rate pricing, tiered stitch bands, and flat or matrix-based placement pricing. This allows shops to account for stitch count, digitizing fees, cap surcharges, and other embroidery-specific variables with your embroidery supplies.
Laser Engraving
For laser engraving, the system includes pricing engines based on engraving area, flat per-item pricing, or machine time. This makes it possible to price items like tumblers, coasters, and other engraved products using the method that makes the most sense for your workflow.
In total, there are 16 different pricing engines across these decoration methods, so shops aren’t locked into a single way of calculating jobs.
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Pricing Profiles for Real-World Shops
One thing many pricing tools overlook is how shops actually operate day to day. Not every customer gets the same pricing. You might have standard shop pricing, contract printing rates for another brand, or discounted pricing for a long-term customer. You might also use completely different pricing strategies for different services.
Pricely handles this through pricing profiles. Each profile represents a specific pricing setup. You might create one for your standard screen printing rates, another for a specific client that you have agreed to special pricing for, another for embroidery jobs, and another for a wholesale customer. Profiles can be duplicated, reordered, and color coded so they’re easy to recognize when you’re quoting a job. When a customer asks for a quote, you simply select the profile that applies to that situation and enter the job details.
Generating Quotes in Seconds
Once your pricing profiles are set up, quoting jobs becomes quick and consistent. You select a profile, enter details like garment cost, quantity, number of print locations, and ink colors, and Pricely calculates the quote instantly. The result includes the unit price, total order value, and a clear breakdown of where the pricing came from.
This makes it easy to see how much of the quote comes from garment costs, printing, setup fees, or other line items. If you have rush fees configured for your shop, those can also be applied automatically.
Another useful feature is the ability to save quotes. When you generate a quote, you can attach a customer name and save it for later. Your saved quotes become a simple history you can review anytime. If a customer comes back later asking about a previous quote, you can open it, review the details, or generate a new quote based on the same pricing profile.
Built for Mobile, Synced Everywhere
One of the design goals behind Pricely was to make it useful in real-world situations. Shops don’t always quote jobs while sitting at a desk. Sometimes you’re on the shop floor, at an event, or talking to a customer in person.
Pricely is designed to work well on a phone, but it’s still a full web application. When you sign in, your pricing profiles, settings, and saved quotes sync across devices automatically. That means you can create a quote on your phone and review it later from your computer without needing to move files around or track down spreadsheets.
Free and Pro Options
Pricely starts with a free plan so shops can try it without any commitment. The free tier includes one pricing profile and access to 11 pricing engines across all decoration methods. You can generate unlimited quotes, save and manage them, and configure your shop settings including rush fees.
For shops that need more flexibility, the Pro plan unlocks additional features. Pro users can create unlimited pricing profiles and gain access to all 16 pricing engines, including advanced screen printing pricing models like Cost Plus, Hourly Rate, and Full Matrix. Additional engines for embroidery and laser engraving are also unlocked, along with features like duplicating profiles and color coding them for organization. The Pro plan is currently $4.99 per month, making it accessible even for small shops or side businesses.
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Why Tools Like This Matter
For a long time, spreadsheets have been the default tool for managing shop pricing. While they can be powerful, they also tend to become complicated and fragmented over time. When pricing lives in multiple spreadsheets or calculators, it becomes harder to stay consistent and harder to experiment with different pricing strategies.
Pricely was designed to solve that by keeping everything in one place. Instead of relying on a single rigid formula or juggling multiple tools, you can manage all of your pricing methods in a single system. If you’re just starting a print shop, this gives you a simple way to begin pricing jobs without building complicated spreadsheets. If you already have a pricing strategy that works, you can recreate it inside Pricely and make it easier to use day to day.
And if your shop offers multiple decoration services like screen printing, embroidery, DTF, or laser engraving, you can manage all of those pricing models without switching between different calculators.
See How It Works
The easiest way to understand how Pricely works is to see it in action. In the video at the top of this post, I walk through creating a pricing profile and generating a quote step by step. You can also try Pricely yourself for free and see how it fits your shop’s workflow.
Visit pricely.ink to get started. No credit card required.
Pricely already has a free plan that gives you access to one pricing profile and 11 pricing engines across all decoration methods. That’s usually more than enough to get started and see how it fits your shop. But if you want to explore everything the platform can do, including unlimited pricing profiles and all 16 pricing engines, you can try the Pro version for a month at no cost.
Just use the code RYONET when you upgrade and your first month of Pricely Pro will be free. That gives you time to experiment with different pricing models, build profiles for different customers or services, and see how it works in your day to day quoting process.