What a $1,200 Rework Taught Me About Screen Printing vs DTG, Sublimation, and Total Cost

In Q2 2024, I went through the “dtg vs screen printing” question the hard way. A vendor quoted us $8.75 per shirt for a 200-shirt order. The screen printing estimate was $11.20 per shirt plus a $180 screen setup fee. I almost signed the DTG quote that afternoon.

Good thing I didn’t.

The setup

I’m the procurement manager at a 12-person custom apparel and promotional products company. I handle roughly $180,000 a year in equipment and consumable purchases. I’ve tracked every invoice for six years—maybe five and a half, I’d have to check the first-year records—and I’ve built a total cost of ownership spreadsheet that has saved us more times than I can count.

Our client asked for 200 custom T-shirts for a product launch. The design had six colors and a small text area. We already owned a manual four-color screen printing press we use for larger runs, but this order was bigger than our usual short-run work and tighter than our normal schedule. So I did what I always do: I compared options.

I looked at in-house screen printing, outsourced screen printing, DTG, sublimation for the polyester samples, and—because the client wanted sewn-in labels—an inkjet label printer for the wash labels. I also priced a DIY screen printing setup in the back room, even though our production floor was already tight. Old habits.

The spreadsheet

The DTG vendor’s base price was hard to ignore. $8.75 per shirt. No setup fee. The screen printing quote was $11.20 per shirt plus $180 for screens, which put the total at $2,420. DTG was $1,750.

Then I started filling in the hidden lines. That’s where the real numbers showed up.

Here’s something vendors won’t tell you: the first quote is almost never the final price for an ongoing relationship. It’s often the “here’s what gets you in the door” price. The DTG quote didn’t include pretreatment. Strikes and underbase white ink were listed as “depending on garment style.” The color proof was digital only; a physical production sample added $95. Rush delivery added $350 because our client moved the event date up by a week. By the time I added it all up—pretreatment at $0.60 per shirt, a production proof, a rush fee, and the extra white ink charge they finally confirmed—the DTG total was around $2,640. For 200 shirts.

I’m not bashing DTG. To be fair, DTG is a great fit for highly detailed full-color designs and for short runs. It’s also great for samples and one-offs. The issue wasn’t the technology; it was a quote that left out the things I had to ask for one at a time.

The same pattern showed up when I priced the inkjet label printer. The hardware looked reasonable, but the quote for the “complete package” omitted the RIP software, the label stock, and the ink. And in the inkjet printer vs sublimation printer comparison for our polyester sample runs, inkjet looked cheaper until I added the special paper and remembered that sublimation only works on polyester anyway. I should add that we ended up running those samples on an existing entry-level inkjet printer, so the label printer purchase was postponed.

In-house screen printing had its own hidden costs. I had to count the labor for reclaiming screens, coating them with emulsion, setting registration, and cleaning up. The washout booth space alone would have taken a corner of our production room. But we already had most of the screen printing supplies in stock—mesh, emulsion, squeegees, ink—so the incremental consumable cost was lower than it looked. And for designs that repeat, the per-unit cost drops quickly.

The twist

I went back to the DTG vendor one more time. The original quote said “no setup fee.” Their final invoice had a $200 “production setup and test print” line. When I asked why, the sales rep said they always charge that for six-color jobs, and the person I’d talked to earlier “should have mentioned it.”

I told the client no. Then I had a short internal debate: do we run the job on our own screen printing press, or outsource to a local screen shop?

We ran it in-house. The first 60 shirts came off the conveyor dryer with a small registration issue—I won’t pretend it was smooth. We reworked them, added an extra hour of setup time, and still beat the DTG total. Final landed cost: $1,980, including the rework. The “cheap” DTG quote would have cost $2,640, plus a longer wait for the physical production sample.

The experience changed how I evaluate equipment. I used to compare machine prices. Now I compare the total first-year cost: machine, consumables, training, downtime, floor space, and rework. I only believed that approach after ignoring it once and eating an $800 mistake on a vendor switch. I didn’t fully understand the value of line-item quotes until a $3,000 order came back with six add-on fees. That “free setup” offer actually cost us $200 in the end.

Lessons I’d share with another buyer

1. Ask “what’s NOT included” before you ask the price. It sounds obvious, but I’ve watched buyers nod at a base quote and then get surprised by setup fees, proof fees, and shipping upgrades. I get why people go with the cheapest option—budgets are real. But the hidden costs add up.

2. Put every technology in the same spreadsheet. The “dtg vs screen printing” debate is usually framed as one-versus-the-other. In my spreadsheet, both had a place. Screen printing wins after you get past a certain volume and the design has limited colors. DTG wins for one-offs and highly detailed prints. Sublimation wins only for polyester. If you’re comparing an inkjet printer vs sublimation printer, add the substrate limitations to the calculation—that’s where the real cost hides.

3. Count your own labor. A DIY screen printing setup can be a money-saver if you have consistent repeat orders and someone who gets paid to learn the process. If your team is already maxed out, the press might sit idle. An automatic screen printing press would have reduced the labor cost on that 200-shirt order, but we couldn’t justify the investment for one job. The manual press plus careful scheduling worked well enough.

4. Beware the “complete package” that isn’t. That applies to an inkjet label printer, a 3D printer for samples, or any other piece of equipment. 3D printer sizes vary from desktop units to industrial cabinets, and each size level has a different material cost and maintenance profile. Always ask what else you’ll need before you sign.

As for the “dtg vs screen printing” question I get asked about—I now answer it with a number. For our shop, screen printing is usually the lower-TCO choice for orders over 100 pieces with fewer than eight colors, assuming our press is available. That’s a rule of thumb, not a law. I check the actual spreadsheet every time.

Online printers like 48 Hour Print are useful for standard collateral: business cards, brochures, flyers. But that’s a different buying process. The U.S. commercial printing market is roughly $85 billion (source: PRINTING United Alliance, 2024), so there’s plenty of room for different technologies to coexist. The key is knowing what you’re really paying for.

The final client order? We delivered 200 shirts, on time, for $1,980. The DTG vendor’s “cheap” quote would have cost us $2,640 and a lot more stress. When I audited our 2023 spending, I found that 12% of our budget overruns came from add-on fees. Implementing a “quote must include all line items” policy cut those overruns noticeably. Now I always ask “what’s not included?” before I ask “what’s the price?” It’s a small habit, and it has saved us more than $8,000 over the past year.

Prices as of January 2025; verify current rates.