The Data Is Clear: Why Print Businesses Prefer Independent eCommerce

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12/29/2025

The Data Is Clear: Why Print Businesses Prefer Independent eCommerce

Over Bundled with Web-to-Print In 2026

Source: DesignNBuy, December 26, 2025

After working with thousands of printing companies, packaging businesses, and custom merchandise vendors over the past decade, Abhishek Agarwal has noticed a fascinating trend: despite the convenience of all-in-one web-to-print platforms, the majority overwhelmingly choose to separate their eCommerce infrastructure from their personalization technology.

At first glance, this seems counterintuitive. Why manage two systems when everything could be bundled into one? The answer lies in the numbers — and those numbers tell a very clear story.

The Market Has Already Decided

Let me share some eye-opening data from BuiltWith that validates what we’ve been observing in the industry:

211,400 printing company websites globally
157,700 packaging business websites
895,145 custom t-shirt and merchandise websites

Now here’s what’s remarkable: when we analyze the eCommerce technology choices of these businesses, we see an unmistakable pattern.

Shopify currently leads the U.S. eCommerce market with about 30% share, followed by WooCommerce at roughly 20%. BigCommerce and Magento make up much of the remaining market.

Combined, these independent platforms run more than 80% of online stores — including most of the print and packaging businesses.

This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a deliberate strategic choice driven by clear business advantages.

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