WooCommerce custom t-shirt designer: 5 best WordPress plugins

Do you want your customers to design their own t-shirts in your WooCommerce store? Use a WooCommerce custom t-shirt designer plugin!

T-shirts are one of the most sellable items for eCommerce stores with global revenue of a whopping $38.88 billion in 2022 according to Statista! Allowing customers to design their own t-shirts makes your store more engaging and can help you increase your overall sales.

WooCommerce, by default, doesn’t let you set up a t-shirt designer in your store. In this article, we’re going to show you the best t-shirt designer plugins for WooCommerce and highlight their standout features. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll know exactly which custom t-shirt designer plugin is right for you.

What should I look for in a t-shirt designer plugin?

There are many WooCommerce plugins out there that enable customers to design their own t-shirts in your store. While different businesses have specific needs, there’s a set of criteria that is important to consider when looking for a t-shirt designer plugin for your store.

These are some of the main features to look for in a WooCommerce t-shirt designer plugin:

Compatibility with WooCommerce

Some t-shirt designer plugins only integrate with WordPress, not WooCommerce. However, if you plan on selling t-shirts from your site, we recommend setting up WooCommerce first and then getting a plugin that integrates with it.

This approach makes more sense for any eCommerce business since you’ll be able to make use of the payment gateways that integrate with WooCommerce. This makes it possible to sell t-shirts and other products easily.

Lots of customisability and flexibility

The plugin you choose should make it easy for customers to design t-shirts exactly as they want them, with plenty of options to choose their colours and prints, add text, select fonts, upload custom images, and so on.

Of course, you may not want to display all these options if you don’t offer totally customised t-shirts. For example, if you only sell white t-shirts that customers can add text to or print custom images on, you won’t want to include a colour picker option. However, it’s always better to have more options than you really need!

Easy to set up and use

Flexibility and customisability are pretty useless if the t-shirt designer plugin isn’t easy to set up in the back-end and get started with. The plugin you choose to go with should make it easy for you to configure and display the different design options on your website.

This way, you can set up as many options as you’d like by yourself and change things up whenever you need to.

Professional display options

More customers will want to design their own t-shirts if the designer tool looks good and is intuitive to use on the live site. One way to ensure this is by choosing a plugin that lets you add display options like swatches and plenty of add-on fields that you can add to your product pages.

Flexibility beyond t-shirts

While we’ll list a few t-shirt-specific plugins in this list, our best advice is to get a plugin that lets you add design options for more custom products. The reason for this is that you may want to expand your business in the future.

So, by using a plugin that isn’t limited to t-shirts alone, you won’t have to buy a separate plugin if you choose to sell, say, custom totes or caps. For the same reason, we also don’t recommend using a t-shirt designer WordPress theme.

The best t-shirt designer plugins for WooCommerce

Now that we have a better idea about what features to look for in a custom t-shirt designer plugin, let’s look at the top WooCommerce plugins that enable your customers to design their own t-shirts.

1. WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate

The WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin lets you add swatches and a variety of add-on fields to your products. Customers can use these to personalise t-shirts (as well as other products) directly from the front end. You can check out a working example of a custom t-shirt designer created using the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin.

Out of the box, the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin comes with 16 different add-on fields that you can use to display options for t-shirts. These include image swatches, checkboxes, dropdowns, colour pickers, upload fields, and more.

Many of these field types are very useful for t-shirt design. For example:

• Text area field – let customers add custom text or enter a slogan
• Upload field – let customers upload custom designs for print
• Colour picker – let customers choose the t-shirt’s base color

If you want to create the ultimate t-shirt designer on your WooCommerce store, you may want to consider the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate Pro. The pro plan of the plugin gives you access to some additional fields which are also really useful for t-shirt design, such as image swatches and child products.

In addition to this, you can set custom pricing options for different add-ons so the price of the t-shirt will automatically scale depending on how complex the t-shirt design is. For example, you can set a price per character for the text area field. When a customer adds text or a slogan to their t-shirt, they’ll be charged an additional fee based on the number of characters. If you’d like, you can also offer discounts on certain add-ons.

The WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin also lets you use conditional logic and variation-specific fields to create a unique t-shirt design experience. For example, you can set the text field to appear only if users choose a small print.

If you want to give your customers even more flexibility to design t-shirts and see how they’ll look before they place their orders, you can integrate WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate with a number of useful plugins. These are:

• Text Preview for Add-Ons Ultimate
• Advanced Uploads for Add-Ons Ultimate
• Image Preview for Add-Ons Ultimate

Want to let your customers more than just t-shirts? The WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin is perfect for creating all sorts of custom products in WooCommerce.

2. Product Add-Ons by WooCommerce

Product Add-Ons by WooCommerce is an official WooCommerce extension that lets you add extra options to products. These include gift wrapping, special messages, and other similar options.

With the Product Add-Ons extension, you can let customers personalise their t-shirts before placing their orders. The different options it offers include text boxes, dropdowns, sample images, checkboxes, and more.

The Product Add-Ons extension is affordable but also very limited for custom t-shirt designs as compared to the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin. For instance, it doesn’t let you charge additional fees or offer discounts based on the customer’s selections.

Product Add-Ons is a decent option for anyone that only wants to allow minor designs such as adding text or a slogan to a t-shirt.

3. Allada T-Shirt Designer

As the name suggests, Allada T-Shirt Designer can only be used for designing t-shirts and not other products. It integrates with WooCommerce, so you can use it to sell custom t-shirts on your online store.

Allada T-Shirt Designer comes ready with images of t-shirts from popular brands, organised by colour, model, and reference. This makes it easy for you to set up your store quickly and let customers design their t-shirts and place their orders.

The Allada T-Shirt Designer plugin gives customers lots of options to add and resize clipart and customise any text they’d like to have printed on the t-shirt with options for colour, font, and style. It also lets customers save their designs which is a handy feature should they want to order the same shirt in a different colour or size.

As we mentioned earlier, it might not be worth getting a plugin that’s limited to t-shirt design alone. If you scale your business by adding other customisable products to your catalog, you’ll have to get another plugin down the line.

4. YITH Product Add-Ons and Extra Options

YITH Product Add-Ons and Extra Options is another plugin that lets you add extra add-ons to products.

Users can choose whether they want to customise their product by selecting a “customise product” box which will reveal different options that you set. For example, you can choose to reveal the Upload field or Text field when customers enable customisation.

Users can upload photos, images, or files to request a customised product.

5. WooCommerce Product Designer Tool

WooCommerce Product Designer Tool is a product customiser plugin that integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce.

It gives you many options to manage the design process with features such as a resolution warning, lock and unlock elements, and advanced image editing. The plugin also comes with over 10,000 customisable clipart and custom font upload features.

You can also allow customers to print their designs or save them as PDF files. However, this feature may not be useful to you if your main focus is sales.

What’s the best t-shirt designer plugin for WooCommerce?

The best WooCommerce plugin that enables t-shirt design is WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate. Here’s why:

• It’s incredibly easy to set up and get started with. Once you install the plugin and activate it using the plugin’s license key, you just need to press the ‘Add Field’ button to start adding design options to your t-shirt products.

• It offers ample options for customers to design their own t-shirts as well as other products. For example, you might want to let customers enter a slogan, select a colour or pattern, or upload images.
• Comes with 16 different product add-on fields including image upload, image swatches, text area, colour picker, and child products.
• Lets you set custom pricing options for different add-ons, for e.g. price per character.
• It isn’t limited to t-shirt design alone. You can use it to let customers design other products as well such as totes, caps, face masks, or jewellery.

Add a t-shirt designer to your store today!

T-shirts are one of the most sellable items globally. Giving customers the option to design their own t-shirts before placing their orders can help you deliver an enhanced shopping experience and increase sales in your WooCommerce store.

WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate is the best t-shirt designer plugin available for WordPress sites. It offers plenty of customisation options for customers and makes it easy for shop owners to set it up however they’d like. The best part is that it isn’t limited to t-shirt design alone. You can use the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin to let customers design all sorts of products!

And, if you really want to create the ultimate t-shirt designer, consider getting the plugin’s extensions: Text Preview for Add-Ons Ultimate, Advanced Uploads for Add-Ons Ultimate, and Image Preview for Add-Ons Ultimate to take your t-shirt designer to the next level.

How much customisation do you need for your products? Choose between the basic and pro license for WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate and get started today. You can try out either plan with a 14-day refund guarantee.