Business cards, photo mugs, door signs or printed shirts: if you sell personalised products online, you need web-to-print. Your customers design in the shop, your production gets print-ready data, and nobody sends proofs back and forth by email. Many web-to-print solutions bring their own shop system for this. configento.app takes the other route: the product designer comes into the shop you already have, whether Magento, Shopware, Shopify, PrestaShop, WooCommerce or any website.
What is web-to-print?
Web-to-print, also Web2Print or W2P for short, means: print products are ordered online, and the customer designs the artwork themselves in the browser. The result is a print-ready file instead of a round of emails.
At its core, a web-to-print solution has four parts:
- an online designer in which the customer places text, a logo or a photo on the product,
- a price calculation by format, material, quantity and design,
- a print data check (preflight) that finds errors before the order,
- and the output of print-ready files for production.
The problem: design and pricing run separately
In many shops, personalisation consists of a "your text" field and an upload field. The customer can't see how their logo looks on the mug, and the print shop rebuilds the design in graphics software. Queries about resolution, margins or colours cost days.
The alternative is often a separate web-to-print system with its own shop. Then you maintain products and prices twice, and your existing shop is left out.
configento.app combines both: the product configurator calculates format, paper, quantity and surcharges, and the product designer adds the design, in the same configurator on your product page.
How the product designer works
Your customers type their text or upload a photo or logo and see it straight away in the product image, exactly where it will later be printed, engraved or embroidered.
- Design zone in millimetres: You draw the zone on the product image and enter its real size. With SVG templates it grows with the chosen format.
- Text: 24 fonts under open licences, served by configento.app instead of Google. You set the colours and size range; text that is too long shrinks automatically if you want.
- Picture and logo: PNG or JPG up to 20 MB, SVG up to 5 MB. Your customers move, rotate, mirror and crop.
- Pantone and finishes: Customers state the Pantone colours of their logo. The preview shows gold and silver hot foil, embossing and blind embossing the way you produce them.
- Your leeway: You lock font, size, colour, alignment and position individually. Your customers only see what they are allowed to change.
Print data check while designing
Good preflight doesn't start in prepress. The product designer already checks while your customer designs:
- the resolution in dpi, based on the real print size,
- too little contrast between motif and background,
- the safe margin to the edge and to punched holes,
- overlapping text and picture,
- more print colours than booked.
For each check you decide whether it warns or blocks the cart. You add your production's own rules, such as "logo at least 15 mm wide", with JavaScript or as a webhook on your server.
Print-ready files: SVG and PDF with bleed
For every designed field, configento.app creates a print file as SVG and as PDF, at the real size of the design zone:
- text as paths, so the print shop doesn't need the font,
- pictures as the original, with the customer's crop, rotation and mirroring,
- SVG logos stay vectors in the PDF as well,
- ink only, without product image or guides,
- the PDF with 2 mm bleed and crop marks,
- finishes such as hot foil or embossing noted in the file.
The files come with the order, in shops with a price check such as Shopware, Magento, PrestaShop and WooCommerce. Colours stay RGB; your prepress converts them to CMYK. Details are in the guide to print files from the product designer.
Prices and rules like in your own calculation
Web-to-print is only as good as the pricing behind it. In the configurator you combine the design with everything that makes up a print product:
- format, paper, material and quantity with surcharges, tiered prices or a price matrix from Excel,
- formulas that calculate with the design, such as €0.50 per engraved character, a surcharge per print colour or a set-up fee for the logo,
- design rules that adapt colours, fonts and finishes to the selection, such as gold only with hot foil.
You maintain colours and fonts centrally and use them in many products.
Typical use cases
- Printing and stationery: business cards, greeting cards, invitations, labels and stickers
- Engraving and signs: door signs, trophies, jewellery and gifts
- Textiles and promotional products: mugs, shirts and bags, printed or embroidered
Web-to-print software or a product designer in your shop?
| Separate web-to-print system | configento.app product designer | |
|---|---|---|
| Shop | usually its own shop system | your existing shop |
| Products and prices | maintained in addition | in the configurator, with rules and formulas |
| Design | often a free editor with layers | guided text and image fields on fixed zones |
| Print data | depends on the system | SVG and PDF with bleed per field |
| Getting started | usually an implementation project | 14-day free trial |
To be honest: for freely laid-out multi-page products such as brochures or catalogues, a full web-to-print editor is the better choice. For personalised products with fixed design zones, from business cards to door signs, a guided designer in your shop is usually quicker to set up, and your customers make fewer mistakes.
What does the product designer cost?
The product designer is an add-on for every edition: €49 per month or €490 per year, plus VAT. It is included in the 14-day free trial. You'll find all editions on the pricing page.
Try it now
Try the product designer yourself in the photo mug demo or the business card demo. You'll find all features on the product designer page, and the set-up in the guides to custom text and custom images.