Every shop says it's "competitive." We wanted to know if we actually are.
So we did what a customer does. We picked three real orders, used the same art, the same shirts and the same sizes, and asked 11 shops to price them: five local Phoenix-area print shops and six national online printers. Then we put our own Shirt52 price next to theirs.
We're a print shop, so yes, we have a horse in this race. That's exactly why we kept it strict. Every price below is all-in with tax, for the same job, and we kept every email.
How we did it
We posed as a local landscaping company ordering shirts for its crew. The three orders:
- Order A (small): 24 black Gildan 5000 tees, full-color logo front and back
- Order B (mid-size): 100 black Next Level 6210 tees, 1-color silver logo on the front
- Order C (large): 250 sport grey Gildan 5000 tees, 2-color left chest and 1-color full back
Local shops got the request by email and were asked follow-up questions the way a real customer would ask them. National sites were priced through their own online designers, all the way to the checkout page. We never placed an order.
Local shops are not named. They're small businesses and this isn't about calling anyone out. National sites are named because their prices are public. National prices were captured October 28, 2026 and may have changed since.
The prices
Order C: 250 shirts, chest and back
The art we sent: a 2-color left chest and a 1-color full back, shown on sport grey.
| Shop | All-in price |
|---|---|
| ooShirts* | $1,855 |
| Local Shop B | $2,261 |
| Bolt Printing* | $2,297 |
| UberPrints* | $2,519 |
| Shirt52 | $2,523 |
| Local Shop D | ~$2,544 |
| Local Shop C | $2,573 |
| Local Shop A | $2,662 |
| RushOrderTees* | $2,808 |
| Custom Ink | $3,497 |
* Tax estimated at 8.1% where the site would not show tax without a full street address. National orders ship to you. Local orders, including ours, are picked up. Two local shops add a 3% fee when you pay by card, and their prices in this post include it. Shirt52 doesn't charge a card fee.
The spread here is almost $1,650 for the identical order. We landed right in the middle of the pack, within $5 of UberPrints and below most of the local shops that quoted.
Order B: 100 premium tees, 1-color front
The art we sent: a 1-color silver logo, shown on black.
| Shop | All-in price |
|---|---|
| Bolt Printing* | $873 |
| ooShirts* | $901 |
| Local Shop B | $1,009 |
| Local Shop D | ~$1,010 |
| Local Shop A | $1,055 |
| Local Shop C | $1,162 |
| UberPrints* | $1,178 |
| Shirt52 | $1,409 |
| Custom Ink | $1,476 |
* Tax estimated at 8.1%.
We'll be straight with you: we came in on the high side here, and here's why. This order asked for a Next Level 6210, a softer, premium blend tee. We price every shirt by what it actually costs us, so a premium shirt costs more. The same 100-shirt order on our standard Gildan 5000 is $9.79 a shirt, right in line with the local shops' $9 to $10.
Some shops charge about the same for a premium tee as a basic one. We'd rather show you both options and let you pick.
Order A: 24 shirts, full color front and back
The art we sent: a full-color logo with gradients and a drop shadow, printed front and back.
This small order was the hardest one to get priced. It took a full week and repeated follow-ups to get prices for 24 shirts from just two of the five local shops. One priced it 82% higher than we did. The national sites priced it instantly.
| Shop | All-in price |
|---|---|
| Shirt52 | $419 |
| Custom Ink | $494 |
| ooShirts* | $521 |
| Local Shop A | ~$551 |
| RushOrderTees* | $616 |
| UberPrints* | $722 |
| Bolt Printing* | $725 |
| Local Shop C | $763 |
| Local Shops B, D, E | No price yet |
* Tax estimated at 8.1%. Local Shop A quoted 22 shirts at $492 before its card fee. We added the two missing 2XL shirts back using the shop's own 2XL upcharge, then its 3% card fee. Local Shop C's quote for this order showed no card fee.
What it was actually like to get a quote
Price is only half of it. The other half is what you go through to get a number you can trust. Here's what happened with the five local shops.
- One shop never answered. Three emails over a week. Nothing.
- One shop told us our artwork was low resolution. It wasn't. They accepted it after a second look, then gave us rough per-shirt prices with no setup fees or tax spelled out.
- One shop wouldn't price the job the way we asked until we accepted a disclaimer, and pushed a different print method instead.
- One shop put its prices behind a link to an online store, then asked if there was "a certain price point you're looking for." That tells you the first price wasn't really the price.
- One shop did it right. Fast reply, a clear PDF estimate, and a proof of the design before asking for money.
A few more things we ran into:
- Deposits: two shops wanted 50% up front.
- Card fees: two shops add 3% if you pay by card. We don't.
- Time: the fastest first quote took about an hour and a half. The slowest took two business days. It took 27 emails from us to get two of our three orders priced, and a week in, only two shops had priced the small order.
The national sites
The national sites are fast. You get a price in the cart in minutes. But:
- Placement options are limited. Two of the six had no left-chest option in their designer.
- The follow-up emails don't stop. After we left designs in our carts, one site sent us 13 emails in a week. Another sent 11.
- You don't see the full price right away. Some sites wouldn't show tax or shipping until we typed in a full street address.
What we do differently at Shirt52
This study told us where we stand, and it confirmed what we already try to do:
- One clear price. Shirt, print, tax. No setup fees, no screen fees, and no extra fee for paying by card.
- We don't haggle. Our first price is our real price, so you never have to wonder whether you could have paid less.
- Fast answers. Over the last six months, when a customer texted or emailed us during business hours, our median reply time was about 6 minutes, and 83% got an answer within an hour. Texts were answered in a median of about 2 minutes.
- Payment before we start. We take payment up front so your order gets our full attention from day one, with no half-finished jobs waiting on a balance.
- A free digital mockup to approve before anything is printed.
- Local pickup in Tempe, or we ship anywhere in the US. Production is 10-15 business days from proof approval.
- Your choice of shirt. We'll show you a standard option and a premium one, each priced honestly.
The bottom line
We're not the cheapest shop on every order, and we're not going to pretend we are. What we found is that our prices sit right in the pack with shops across Phoenix and the country, and most of the shops we tested made us work much harder for a price than we make our customers work. We answer in minutes, not days, and our first price is the real one.
If you want to see for yourself, get your price here.
How we measured
- Same three orders, same art files, same size splits at every shop.
- Prices include tax. Where a shop showed tax, we used it. Where it didn't, we estimated 8.1% (Tempe) for national sites and 9.1% (Phoenix) for local shops.
- Prices are what you'd pay by card. Where a shop charges a 3% card fee, it's included. Those two shops drop the fee if you pay another way.
- "~" means the shop gave approximate per-shirt prices, which we applied to our exact sizes.
- Printful was priced but left out of the tables because its total would not show shipping without a street address.
- RushOrderTees is left out of Order B because its designer did not offer the same shirt.
- Shirt52 prices come from our standard quoting system, the same way we quote any customer.
- Local shops got Order C first, then Orders B and A as follow-up questions in the same email thread, between October 28 and November 4, 2026.
- The 24-shirt request went out last, after a shop had priced the first two orders: October 29-30 for three shops and November 3 for a fourth. The fifth shop never replied, so it never got that request.
- Shirt52 reply times: every customer text or email received Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm Phoenix time, May to November 2026 (about 2,400 messages), measured to our first reply.