Merchandise is a fantastic way for content creators, influencers, and businesses to engage with their audience and generate income through their brand.
Fortunately, there are several free merch maker apps that allow you to design, create, and sell custom merch online—without the hassle of managing inventory or taking on financial risks.
Let’s dive into the top free merch maker apps that can help you create custom products easily and effectively.
Without further ado, and from our merch experience and research, here is what we found as the best merch making apps:
Merch design apps:
- Best for beginners: Canva
- Best for artists and illustrators: Autodesk Sketbook
- Bets for brand marketers: Adobe Express
- Best for simple t-shirt creators: Snaptee
On demand merch app services for printing and fulfillment :
- Printful
- Printify
- Spreadshop
Before delving into the details of these apps, let’s discuss:
What are merch making apps and how do they work?
Merch making apps are tools that allow users to design and sell custom merchandise online. These apps provide a platform for creating designs that can be printed on various products, handle the manufacturing and shipping processes, and often include features for store management and marketing.
Who can benefit from using merch making apps?
Artists, influencers, brands, and small business owners can all benefit from using merch making apps. These tools make it easier to monetize a following or enhance a brand by offering personalized products without the need for upfront investment in inventory.
What features should you look for in a merch making app?
When selecting a merch making app, important features to consider include a wide range of product offerings, user-friendly design interfaces, effective integration with social media and e-commerce platforms, and comprehensive customer support.
Are there any costs associated with using merch making apps?
While many merch making apps offer free entry points, they typically take a portion of the sales as a fee. Some apps may also offer premium features for a subscription that can enhance your store’s capabilities and marketing efforts.
> Now let’s dive into the details of each merch generator, tool, and service:
The Best Merch Maker Design Apps
1. Canva Merch Designer – best for beginners
Canva app is best for beginners and those looking for a user-friendly interface with a wide range of templates and editing tools.
Canva provides an all-in-one solution for designing merch, which includes T-shirts.
With this feature, users can create and personalize their own T-shirt designs using Canva’s pre-made templates or by starting from scratch.
Canva’s merch design tool boasts a vast array of design tools and features that enable users to create distinctive and polished T-shirt designs efficiently.
With just a few clicks, users can add various elements, such as text, graphics, images, and more, to their designs and tailor them to their preferences.
Once users have finished designing their T-shirts, they can order prints directly from Canva, making the process hassle-free and streamlined.
Canva also offers a wide range of printing options, ensuring that users get their T-shirts printed to their exact specifications.
Here is a Canva t-shirt design demo:
Canva Merch App
The Canva mobile app is a powerful tool for creating t-shirt designs on your smartphone.
It offers a wide range of features, including access to all of the powerful Canva tools, templates, and fonts.
With these features, users can create high quality t-shirt designs quickly and easily.
Users can unlock Canva Pro with a free trial to access even more features.
Pro tips:
- Use design elements to create visually appealing and professional-looking merch designs on Canva.
- Revise one of Canva’s pre-designed templates to make it completely unique while saving time and effort.
2. Autodesk Sketchbook – best for artists and illustrators
Autodesk Sketchbook app is best for creating designs on the go with a template-free design experience and all necessary tools for designing.
Autodesk Sketchbook is an app suitable for both beginning designers and professionals.
It has a convenient interface and offers plenty of tools such as brushes, fonts, templates, libraries of images, and a variety of other editing instruments.
Here is an Autodesk Sketchbook design demo on a sneaker:
Can I Use Autodesk Sketchbook App to Deign Merch?
Yes, you can create merch designs using the Autodesk Sketchbook app.
The app features a color wheel that’s made up of a Hue ring and a Saturation/Value slider. You can use these tools to customize combinations of shapes and textures for your designs.
The app allows you to set the maximum canvas size for printing.
You can also add text to your designs using the app’s text editor.
Pro tip: Use the app’s layers feature to create complex merch designs with multiple elements and edit them independently.
Video: Merch design tutorial using Autodesk Sketchbook
3. Adobe Express – best for brand marketers
Adobe Express app is best for those looking for an all-in-one design and photo tool with text-to-image capabilities and a wide range of templates.
Creative Cloud Express: Design by Adobe provides a freer approach to designing T-shirts without any boundaries or templates. It offers a vast library of fonts, shapes, and design elements, and users can add their own images and logos to create custom T-shirts.
Pro tip: Use the app’s undo/redo feature to make changes to your designs quickly and easily.
Here is a merch design demo using Adobe Express:
Tutorial video: using Adobe Express to design own merch
4. Snaptee – best for simple t-shirt creators
Snaptee app is best for designing t-shirts on a mobile phone with a simple interface and the ability to create original designs and sync them with Instagram.
Snaptee is a popular app that allows users to create their own custom T-shirts with just a few taps of their smartphone.
The app offers features like photo and Instagram integration, choice of fonts and colors, custom filters, and various T-shirt style templates to inspire creativity.
Users can design, order, and even sell their unique creations completely in-app.
Pro tip: Take advantage of the photo and Instagram integration feature to create personalized designs that truly reflect your brand.
Video: Snaptee demo
5. Bonus: Other recommended design apps
Printful recommends five free design apps for creating T-shirt designs. These include Canva, GIMP, Inkscape, Gravit Designer, and Placeit. These apps offer various features such as templates, graphics libraries, image editing tools, vector graphics editors, etc.
Pro tip: Explore all five design apps to find the one that best suits your design needs and workflow.
Top apps for merch customization, printing, and fulfillment on demand.
When it comes to customizing, printing, and fulfilling merchandise on demand, several top apps can help streamline the process for Shopify store owners. Here are some notable ones:
1. Printful
Printful offers a merch maker that allows users to set up an online shop for their merch and connect it to Printful.
Users can use the Design Maker tool to turn blank products into merch.
Printful offers a wide range of products, including T-shirts, hoodies, hats, bags, and phone cases.
Here a Printful custom t-shirt sample:
The Printful app for iOS and Android allows users to run their store from anywhere.
- With this app, retailers can create personalized designs that can be printed on clothing items, accessories, appliances, and other products.
- Additionally, users can easily track sales and monitor store performance.
Also, Printful is a dropshipping and warehousing service that provides on-demand fulfillment and shipping of clothing, accessories, home, and living items with no order minimums:
- This allows users to offer a wider range of products without having to worry about inventory management or shipping logistics.
- The app comes equipped with several features to help users create and market their products, including a custom mockup maker, a background removal tool, and a promo maker.
- Additionally, premium design and marketing tools are available to help users take their store to the next level.
Pro tip: Use Printful’s fulfillment service to handle printing, shipping, and customer support, allowing you to focus on creating and marketing your merchandise.
Video: how Printful print, pack, and fulfil your merch products
2. Printify
Printify offers a free merch maker that allows anyone to create and sell high-quality merchandise without inventory or risks.
The platform offers customizable print-on-demand products such as T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, posters, and various accessories.
Users can design their own merchandise using the design maker tool provided by the platform.
And here is a Printify sample of a custom crewneck:
Here are the key features of the Printify app on Shopify:
- Access to over 800 customizable products
- Free design tools for adding designs to products
- Integration with Shopify stores
- Connection to a network of over 110 print locations worldwide
- A mockup generator that simplifies the process of creating print-on-demand products
- A free plan for merchants starting a business, including five stores per account and unlimited product designs
Pro tip: Use Printify’s mockup generator to preview how your designs will look on various products before finalizing your designs.
Tutorial video: how to make your first merch
3. Spreadshop
Spreadshop is a print-on-demand/make-your-own-merch service that allows users to upload designs and create, sell, and ship their own merchandise.
And here is how Spreadshop merch process looks like:
- The SpreadApp is the mobile version of the service, available for iOS and Android smartphones.
- It provides users with access to their shop sales, statistics, and bestsellers in real time.
- The app also has features to help users analyze their balance, sales, and bestsellers with multiple filtering options.
Additionally, it includes a marketing feature that allows merchants to easily share all of their marketing campaign materials on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Tutorial video: Open Spreadshop merch store
FAQ About Merch Maker Apps
What app do you use to make merch?
There are several merch maker apps available, including Printify, Printful, and Spreadshop. Users can choose the app that suits their needs and preferences based on the available features and pricing options.
Can you make merch on Canva?
Yes, Canva is one of the free design apps recommended by Printful for creating T-shirt designs. Users can choose from various templates, graphics, and image editing tools to create their unique designs.
What app can I use to design a T-shirt?
There are several apps available for designing T-shirts, including Canva, Snaptee, Autodesk Sketchbook, Adobe’s Creative Cloud Express, and Google Arts & Culture. These apps offer different features and tools suitable for both beginners and professionals.
What app can I use for customizing hoodies?
Most of the merch maker apps mentioned earlier, including Printify, Printful, and Spreadshop, offer customizable hoodies among their products. Users can use the design maker tool provided by these platforms to upload their designs and create their custom hoodies. Additionally, some design apps like Canva and Adobe’s Creative Cloud Express also offer features suitable for designing hoodies.