Lulu Direct

This app has been great so far! I was hesitant at first because of some of the negative reviews, but I'm glad I downloaded it. Set up took about 45 minutes minute in total, including the mapping of my book products from Lulu. We have completed multiple test orders and the process and end product has been excellent. This app allows us to create and sell several books and journals that will generate extra revenue for us while we focus on building our other product categories. *Pro tip: watch the videos Lulu provides on their youtube channel, as those were also a great help when configuring shipping and other stuff.

Update: 2/5/2021. I am no longer using this app. I had a lot of calendars ordered that took months to arrive, and only did get printed and shipped because I contacted customer service relentlessly. I have entire threads of emails. Customer service did help get the orders fulfilled after customers started complaining, and after MANY emails back and forth. The calendars were really nice, and I would have preferred to keep using Lulu but not at the expense of my customers' business. Update: I really wanted to come back and change my original review saying things were resolved, but I can't. After multiple attempts, I finally got a human on the phone, who I thought was helpful. They did enable my product in my store so that customers could order, which they did, however, it has been 20 days now and the order has not even gone to production because the original issue was not fixed. I am stuck with $400 in sales, no product, angry customers, and still, no answer when (or if) they will get their product at the height of the holiday season. If I could give zero stars I would since they have done nothing to assist nor can I get any product. I made a calendar for my Shopify store, it shows up in my store but you can't order it, I keep getting an error message when attempting to place an order. I have contacted their customer service, no response. I contacted Shopify, they confirmed it was not on their end and contacted Lulu xPress's customer service copying me on the email and I did get an email back several days later. I sent screenshots as requested and since then nothing. I have tried for 10-days to resolve this and nothing. I will move on to another app and start over.

I launched a print on demand store for stationery. And have had a horrible experience in terms of the length of time it takes for orders to be delivered in addition to customer assistance. The "estimated time frames" are merely suggestions. The real dates of arrival could be more than 2 weeks past then... Also, they never actually say how long production takes. however, once they list your order's status as "in production" they refuse to allow you to cancel your orders. Would definitely look into other print on demand partners for books

Have tried multiple times to get this app working and all I have to show for it is a lot of frustration and wasted time. Absolutely the WORST app experience I've had so far. Incredibly disappointed, expected much better from such a major company.

The app is very glitchy and there are major issues with their fulfillment and printing of the books. Their site has a production time of 3-5 business days which is false advertising. When emailing them about how it is taking much longer, now on 12 business days they respond saying that they're aware of it and that I should tell customers that it is a custom printing job for each and every book and that should keep them happy. This is before the shipping even occurs. I'm only in the stage of printing out proofs and am realizing I likely will not be able to use this for print on demand and dropshipping directly to customers due to the insanely long print time. This is not a sustainable model for print on demand and more so a better model for printing in bulk and holding inventory.

Lulu Direct is not feasible with their current setup, so I've switched to ordering in bulk and shipping out myself. First, Lulu takes almost a week to mark orders as fulfilled with the tracking info, so I've had to inform every customer of this fact. Second, if a customer does not enter their phone number, then Lulu Direct throws a fit and you have to add the phone number plus additional steps of updating the address and shipping info. If you require phone numbers for all orders, then maybe this won't be an issue. Third, sometimes there's an extra payment flow in Lulu Direct which I don't understand. Orders have been delayed because this was not obvious. I'm also switching back to shipping myself because I can bundle the books with other products and include promo material.

Shipping errors: Lulu should be applying the lowest available shipping rate, per their documentation, but this doesn't work in practice, it's not "set and forget", and the head-scratching caveats essentially mean you can't manage shipping effectively unless you're on the Shopify Advanced or Plus plans. Phone number required by Lulu: There's no way to collect phone numbers for one product in Shopify, so if you're not *only* selling books then you'd be forced to collect phone numbers for every product, which is a total disaster for digital product sell-through. It's not Lulu's fault per se, because the global phone number setting is Shopify's decision, but I'm sure Lulu could find some way to collect phone numbers via their app instead. So... I mean, technically it is an app that works, so yay. The caveats are critical though. UPDATED: To the response: This is a good note to read because it's not clearly documented in the support docs that the phone number is the key to the automatic shipping assignation.

i wish i could speak to a live person quicker an more direct

Our experience with Lulu has been wonderful. They are quick to fill orders and ship them to where they need to be. We have had an amazing experience with our Customer Success Manager, Courtney. Any concern or issue we run it to gets rectified almost immediately and there is always a fix. We appreciate the quick responses and willingness to help!

I am noticing a very inconsistent product when ordering. I ordered 3 copies of a book entitled "Life's A Journey" that should have been printed in an 8 1/2" x 8 1/2" book format. I received 3 books in 8 1/2" x 11" format. As I didn't need them immediately I didn't open the package until to longer after the order. Then I ordered a 2nd book entitled The Wonderfully Wacky World of those Crazy Critters Around Us!". Again 8 1/2" x 8 1/2", color book. It came in the correct size but was in B/W. LuLu's put in a request to reprint it with expedited shipping. Shipping was delayed, it arrived in color, whoever, the shipper had managed to mangle the book. I am now attempting to secure an updated version of the 2nd book; however, the system isn't allowing me to connect it to the right item. Therefore, I can't get it in their system so I can request a printed copy to see what I might get this time. More than a bit annoyed at the lack of quality. I can see how my customers would feel if getting charged for a product that didn't arrive as specified and requested.

Our experience with Lulu Direct has been wonderful. The process from purchase to books received is so seamless and requires no involvement on our end, unless there is something specific to check on. The customer service is quickly responsive and always resolves issues quickly and effectively. Our customers love their high-quality, beautiful prints. Printing and shipping is a complex business with so many parties and moving parts involved, and Lulu coordinates it wonderfully. We appreciate the personal service we receive on our account and greatly value our relationship with Lulu Direct!

(SECOND REVIEW - 9/21/2020): Production times are over a month. I have customers complaining daily, asking where their orders are. This is not an issue of the USPS or Fedex, this is a production/manufacturing issue that Lulu has faced since we began working with them. We get the same old runaround from customer service about how they are working on it. We have been working with Lulu for about a year now and it has just been painful from start to finish. If you're serious about starting a print-on-demand product, look elsewhere. It will save you a lot of headache in the long run for your business. Do not be fooled by Lulu's flashy interface and design. It's all smoke and mirrors. Behind the scenes it's a mess. (FIRST REVIEW - 4/27/2020): If you are planning to start a business around selling books, be vary wary before jumping in head first with this app. There are issues with the app as well as print quality control. We have been using the Lulu Xpress App for about 4 months now to print thousands of books. Our library consists of about 90 titles and we have spent thousands of dollars with Lulu. The app is riddled with bugs and issues. It is finicky and breaks easily. Many times it feels like wrestling a bear to get the app to do what it is supposed to. Whether you're trying to view your orders or trying to upload/update a book, a new error or bug will present itself. The app requires various workarounds to avoid these bugs, but regardless a new one will pop up in its place, bringing production to a halt. "Internal Server Errors" seem to never go away. We hold our breath every time we launch the app, cringing at what broken mess we're going to run into. This is not something that a business can afford to deal with on a weekly basis. As it stands, we have not been able to access the app at all in over a week. We have been working with customer service to solve these issues. This is an additional problem in itself. The line of communication is not efficient. You will be in contact through an email support ticket chain. With this chain, your customer service rep will relay or mediate your issue to a "developer" who is "working on the problem." It is just flat out inefficient and we expected more support and competency considering the volume we are producing and future plans of growth for our business. To their defense, customer service does reply fairly quickly. They do try and it seems they are sincere in their efforts to help in whatever way they can. Unfortunately, they're dealing with a broken app. The backend development of this app has a long way to go. The errors and bugs shouldn't exist to begin with. Because we are in this far, we will continue using Lulu for the time being, in hopes that they are able to iron out these issues soon. I will update this review once they do. Until then, I would not recommend this app.

At first I was intimidated by Lulu’s self-publishing platform because I had never published a book and am not proficient in Adobe Suite products which several of the templates require. My customer support expert, Tim S, was fantastic. He answered all my many questions, in detail, within 1-2 business days and was helpful in sending me templates to help me format my book. He even helped prepare my files when I ran into a printing issue with certain images not printing correctly - he helped me understand what the problem was with my file and fixed the issues for me so that my books would print correctly. When I received a damaged book I ordered for myself as a sample, he issued me a refund so that I could get a new sample book clear of shipping damage, which was considerate. He was always professional, positive, responsive, and immensely helpful in the setup process of my book. I am so grateful to have had his support through the file creation process and initial ordering process to help me get my book set up online correctly. I'm proud to now officially be a published author and happy the quality of the books looks very nice. I can't speak to other customer rep experiences at Lulu but Tim S. was 5 stars! Thank you Tim!!

This app has been really helpful to us! We've been able to hook up our printed items from Lulu (we love their printing quality!) to our shopify buttons and use them on our website for a streamlined order and fulfillment process. We couldn't do business without this!

I tried installing the app but it appeared to be buggy. My one star is based on just that experience. I was thinking I might try it again, but reading these reviews, I don't know if that's wise. I'm new to Shopify and ecommerce, but I can read! It seems there is more dissatisfaction than there should be with the lulu app. I've never used them before. I'm awaiting arrival of a sample calendar I did that I'd wanted to offer on my store. I created the calendar on the lulu site and thought I could just pull it into the lulu Xpress app, but apparently I'd have to start over and re-do the calendar inside the app. But I see nearly as many complaints about service here as satisfied customers. Are there any other options that anyone knows about for print on demand books publishers who integrate well with Shopify and are more highly rated?

I'm a small (2 product) self publisher of natural history field guides (BYOGUIDES) who was badly burned a few years back by Shipwire. The combination of Shopify / Lulu has allowed me to relaunch my business without the hassle of warehousing and arbitrarily changing Shipwire policies. The Shopify / Lulu interface / model is not 'simple' to understand or navigate initially, especially if you are trying to distribute globally to small oceanic territories as well as the big ones (e.g. North America). So if you are not a web / developer type I would say you should find someone with solid Shopify store building experience before discovering the many rough edges. I would have rate the Lulu App 3 stars but for Lulu tech support haven been STELLAR and patient as we beat a path (together) to the solution I needed for my customers. I am seeing evidence of constant improvement in the APP but there are still numerous rough edges must navigated daily. For example: there are form field character limits in the Lulu world that are NOT surfaced to the customer in Shopify world. Consequently, orders constantly crash because there is one-too-many characters in a field. The SHOPIFY system doesn't tell you this so they need to discovered by manually checking the Lulu app after each order arrives and hand managed through by me and sometimes tech support. It's a hassle but it is getting better as time goes by.... I could go on esp. w.r.t. to having to manually set up multiple freight rates around for every country you MIGHT sell to - this was auto-magic with my previous solution. But the bottom line is that the system is viable and getting better and there is good support. But if your time is worth anything (or you want to go holidays and relax) make sure you partner with a developer with Shopify store building experience and focus on doing a bunch of test orders that mimic who, and where, your customers are - especially if they are outside the US and EU. Finally, Lulu printing itself, while efficient and of excellent quality does have format limitations. For example, a limited selection of paperweights such that everything feels like a coffee-table book when you might need something with more heft for practical purposes. Also, if you coil bind you can not get a straight run of pages and are forced to have a blank page at the front and back of you book. Otherwise great.

When i am trying to connect Lulu direct to my shopify store and open the app, it fails to load and brings up a new tab saying unable to find correct link to website. So this leaves me unable to use Lulu direct for my needs. If anyone could help me out on this situation, I would be very grateful thankyou.

I use Lulu xPress for about two years now. It worked well until several months ago and it became a disaster. Apparently there is 0 quality assurance made at the printing facilities. I have numerous copies of my book delivered with pages empty of content. The support is always helpful and sends a replacement, but in last several weeks I had several clients who received faulty product even on second and THIRD attempt. Unfortunately it damages my relationship, since I really look unprofessional when customer receives a faulty product, then the replacement arrives faulty again and the next one again. It also affects my income since I have to refund such customers. I asked for clarifications when such issues can be fixed but didn't receive concrete answers. If you have an alternative consider avoiding Lulu.

Lulu has been great to work with! We print and ship around 100+ books per month. Very few issues with that volume of orders and when there have been any issues Kristen with customer support has very quickly fixed the issue (even when the error was due to customer issues and not Lulu). Highly recommend!