Bear Grips Pro Shops and Teespring, now operating as Spring, both solve the same basic problem: sell custom merch without holding inventory. They reach that goal from different angles. Spring built a general creator storefront that stretches across apparel and non-apparel products with YouTube integration built in. Bear Grips Pro Shops built a fully branded, apparel-focused shop with a published flat base price on every product. Here is the comparison broken down by what actually changes a seller's monthly numbers.
A Spring storefront gives a creator their own product lineup and page, but it lives on Spring's own domain structure by default, with a custom domain as an added step. Bear Grips Pro Shops issues a branded URL at signup, with the header, logo, and product categories already organized around the vendor's brand from day one.
| Item | Teespring (Spring) | Bear Grips Pro Shops |
|---|---|---|
| Cotton tee | Base cost set per product in the seller dashboard | $19.88 VIP base, free shipping included |
| Pullover hoodie | Base cost set per product in the seller dashboard | $36.88 VIP base, free shipping included |
| Snapback hat | Base cost set per product in the seller dashboard | $25.86-$29.86 VIP base, free shipping included |
| Monthly cost | No required monthly fee | $0 free plan or $59/mo Self-Service VIP for the lowest bases |
Spring's catalog reaches past apparel into mugs, phone cases, posters, and digital products, useful for a creator who wants one dashboard for everything they sell. Bear Grips Pro Shops keeps a tighter 63-product catalog built specifically around athleisure and team apparel: tees, hoodies, joggers, leggings, and headwear from brands like Bella+Canvas, Champion, Gildan, and Sport-Tek. A seller who needs non-apparel merch alongside shirts may run both in parallel, the same trade-off covered in the Bear Grips vs Printful comparison.
Spring's built-in YouTube merch shelf integration is a real advantage for a creator whose audience already lives on that platform. Bear Grips Pro Shops does not plug into a single video platform. Instead, every vendor gets a built-in affiliate link (10% of a referred vendor's subscription forever plus $1 per unit they sell, paid bi-weekly), which turns other vendors and audience members into a second acquisition channel rather than relying on one platform's discovery feature.
A creator whose main traffic comes from YouTube and who wants mugs or posters alongside shirts likely keeps Spring in the mix. A seller who wants one branded shop, a flat published base price, and an apparel-only catalog is closer to what Bear Grips Pro Shops is built for. See the full Teespring pricing breakdown for the cost side in more detail.
Branded storefront included, free US shipping folded into the base price, no minimum order. Free plan to start.
Start FreeYes. Both support single-piece orders with no minimum, so a side-by-side sample comparison is realistic before switching anything.
No. The storefront is included and hosted on a branded URL from the start.
Both use printing processes common across the print-on-demand industry. Quality differences are more about the specific blank garment than the platform name.
On Bear Grips Pro Shops, the vendor sets the retail price and keeps the margin above the VIP base, including the default $10 per item most vendors start with.
Bear Grips Pro Shops