This was written in May 2026.
This is of no interest to most people, and of great interest to a few people who, like me, are in the position of placing a large order of shirts from CustomInk.
Representatives
By default, you will be put in touch with an order representative after placing an order, not before. To get in touch with them earlier, email [email protected] or call their number and say you want a representative immediately to coordinate a big order.
You will get a different rep every time you email them with a question. After I got 4 people of varying quality, I asked to work with a single one (naming my preference) and got assigned a dedicated rep (although not my named preference).
Be wary of ordering samples, because they use different printing methods for different order sizes.
DTG (”direct to garment”) is the printing process they do for small orders (under 6). The whole shirt goes under a printer that transfers a digital design onto the fabric. The result is relatively soft.
Screen printing is what they do for huge orders. Screen printing has slightly raised/bumpy ink. This is fine for “lineart” art. (The 2025 shirt felt fine.) I think this is possibly bad for big blocks of color. I ordered a sample specifically because I was afraid of texture problems, but unfortunately they used DTG and I was unable to find out what a shirt with a large area of screen-printed art feels like.
You can get DTG for huge orders, but your rep will have to apply for an exception to get access to the DTG printers, which will be put under a lot of strain for a huge order. So they generally do not do DTG for rush orders.
On the other hand, you cannot get screen printing for under 6 shirts. I infer this is because screen printing has two upfront costs that are not worth it for small orders:
- Physical: they need to cut out the screens for the design, one screen per color
- Labor: a human being has to go over the design and adapt it for screen printing. For monochrome lineart there is almost no adaptation needed. More complex art may be transformed in ways you don’t expect by the person.
Design size
The design is the same size on every shirt. They do not scale the design for different shirt sizes! I ordered an S and XL for my samples, choosing less than the maximal size the design could take up on the shirt. It looked really small on the XL.
This was not noticeable on previous years’ shirts where the design did in fact take up most of the available space – so, err on doing that rather than leaving tasteful gaps.
You can ask for different scales for different shirts, but this means they have to manufacture extra screens for each scale and this costs more. The pricing I got on this was:
The cost for the Various Sized Screen service depends on your design’s color count and applies per print location: - 1 color = 40 - 3 colors = 70.
They will not do VSS above 4 colors.
Colors / gradients
A comment from them specifically on manufacturing time (not cost): “Gradients aren’t really an issue on our end, and removing them would still result in the same turnaround time for the order.”
Ordering timeline
CustomInk has 2 week normal delivery, 1 week rush delivery, and 3 business day super rush delivery.
There’s a team specifically trying to fulfill the delivery promises for bulk orders. (They told me this in their response to an email I sent after their 1 week delivery for samples took 9 days.) That said, it’s easier for them to meet the 1 week delivery if the design is simpler.
Fabric
Manifest has mostly used the Comfort Colors shirt and liked it a lot. LessOnline uses the Bella Tri-Blend. I think the Bella is softer and nicer. But it is thinner, and I predict that it deals less well with screen printing.