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Our top picks
In case you are in a rush, here are some top picks for various situations (but make sure to read the full article to understand our choices) :
🏆 Best overall – Kickflip
Best for small business or startups – Kickflip
Best for Enterprise brands – Kickflip, ConfigureID or Threekit
Best for 3D product visualization - Threekit
What is a product customizer?
A product customizer, also often called 'product configurator', essentially guides your customers in a fast-paced, iterative, trial-and-error process to design a product, within your company's offering. The customers can try out different combinations from a list of predefined components to design a unique product that best fit their preferences.
Every offered option can be visualized, described and priced, to help the customer in his decision making process and guide him towards placing an order. Once the order is confirmed, the order data is saved and can be transferred to production. The product customizer software also integrates with your ecommerce platform and should fit with your company's branding. Here's a sneaker customization experience by the company Baabuk Shoes from Switzerland.
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Baabuk By You Sneakers Customizer, powered by Kickflip
Should you build your customizer from scratch or use a Software as a Service solution (SaaS)?
When companies decide to offer customization and are looking for the perfect product customizer app, they will often go down the path of meeting with web development agencies and consider designing, coding, and implementing a solution from scratch. After all, your company is unique so a custom solution would best fit your needs, right?
Unfortunately, after talking with hundreds of company founders, a story we consistently hear goes like this: "We have paid thousands of dollars to web developers and after several months of limbo, the software they have built is still not functional or does not come close to meet our needs." Yaakov Karda, ex co-founder of Getwear, a custom jeans startup that had to shut down, experienced this first hand:
We decided to get an agency to build everything for us. (...) To make a long story short, in a year we launched with a custom-coded website costing more than $100,000.
Twelve months is a very long time to go to market and test your business idea and a hundred thousand dollars is just the tip of the iceberg. If you build a software from scratch, you will also have to spend a considerable amount of money for hosting, updates and maintenance.
These days, nobody in their right mind would build an ecommerce platform from scratch because there are outstanding pre-built solutions out there such as Shopify, Magento, PrestaShop or Bigcommerce. We strongly recommend you to pick a great pre-built software as a service solution, and adapt it to meet your needs. For more custom integrations or if you need to build an entire ecommerce website and need help, we suggest to hire a magento developer service or any development services.
What are important product customizer software features?
There are many Shopfiy product customizer apps and you’ll see that a lot of varied features make each service stand out. For our reviews of the best product customizer apps for Shopify, we kept things simple, looking at the ones that generate the best results for businesses of all sizes. Here's what to look for:
Self-serve
A great product customizer software should include a content management system, giving you full control to build and maintain your custom products with your team. That system should be powerful enough to let you create the customization experience you have in mind, without being so complex that the learning curve is too steep. Some product customizer softwares do not include that piece. It means you will have to pay the company to setup and update your customizers.
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Kickflip's content management system allows you to build a very professional product customizer with a user friendly interface, without having to write a single line of code.
Great product visualisation
When your customers interact with the product configurator to make their selection, they will want to see a live visualisation of their design every step of the way. It's very important that it looks great and as realistic as possible. It's also always interesting to see a few angles of the product and be able to zoom in to see closer details. After all, according to research from Performics and Northwestern University, when shopping online for clothing or furniture, more than 85% of respondents put greater importance on visual information than text information.
Great customization user interface
The customization user interface your customers will use to design your custom product should be intuitive, easy to understand, attractive and efficient. Bonus points if you can make it fit with your branding!
Mobile friendly responsive design
73% of ecommerce sales will be made on mobile devices by the end of 2021. Needless to say, your product customizer software must be fully responsive and easy to use on mobile devices.
Add logic
You might not think about it right away, but you will often need your customizer to have some logic. For example, you might want certain options to only appear when a certain choice has been selected. Your product customizer software should have a tool allowing you to easily program these types of rules.
Technology
Last but not least, it's important that your product customizer software loads quickly and runs smoothly. You'll want to make sure that the software you choose is built with the latest and most robust technologies. Cloud-hosted solutions offer hosting for their customers via off-site solutions like Amazon Web Services. Cloud platforms like Kickflip manage 99.8% uptime annually. The advantages of choosing a cloud-hosted product customizer software is its lower cost, since you don't have to fund the servers nor any related maintenance or updates.
Best Shopify product customizer apps comparison
All product customizer softwares have their advantages and disadvantages. It is important for businesses to evaluate the various platforms based on their own needs.
Here is a quick overview of the most popular product customizer apps for Shopify:
Productimize
Zakeke
Spiff 3D
Angle
Colorlab
Threekit
ConfigureID
Product Options & Customizer
Fancy Product Designer
Kickflip
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Pros
Generates professional product customizers
Photorealistic product visualization
Fully customizable themes to match with your branding
Easy-to-use and very powerful content management system
Seamless integration with Shopify
Advanced features like inventory management and bulk orders
Powerful logic rules engine
Pay as you go pricing
Cons
No 3D visualization
The Kickflip app is rapidly becoming the frontrunner across Shopify product customizer software providers.
Kickflip (formerly MyCustomizer) has been working with massive brands like Dick's Sporting Goods, Suunto and New Balance since 2010. We have leveraged that expertise to build a powerful, yet easy to use, self-service platform, empowering businesses to setup and manage their customizers all by themselves.
Brands mostly choose Kickflip because of the slick customization interface, that also works very well on mobile. Their very polished content management system and excellent support are the other big factors.
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You can find Kickflip on the Shopify app store. We offer a free 14-day free trial and if you need any help to get started, feel free to book a free demo with someone from our team.
Productimize
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Pros
Fully custom UI development based on your needs
Cons
No content management system
Minimum 2 to 4 months to launch
One-time setup fee + recurring fee + fee for updates
This solution does not offer a content management system allowing you to create and edit your customizer, but their team will deliver your project within 2 to 4 months. You will pay a one-time on-boarding fee to get started and then a monthly or annual licensing fee. The onboarding includes custom UI design based on your brand guidelines, integration, custom product features, number of initial products, and training. Their team also offers services such as an intensive design and kick-off strategy and custom product sales analytics.
Zakeke
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Pros
Lots of features : AR, 2D, 3D, web-to-print
Integration with many third party apps like Printful
Cons
Unrealistic 3D visualization
This Italian company is offering an elaborate solution including 3-Dimensional visualization, augmented reality (AR), text and image customization, and much more. If you are considering a 3D configurator, you will need the help of 3D modelling/rendering specialists to create and optimize your CAD files for the web. 3D visualisation will definitely become more and more popular because it provides a fun experience that reminds of video games. The disadvantages include slower loading times and sometimes sluggish performance, especially on mobile devices. 3D configurators will also often compromise on photorealism.
Spiff 3D
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Pros
3D visualization
Affordable pricing
Cons
Unpolished customization interface
Unrealistic 3D visualization
Spiff 3D is a solution from Australia that might be an alternative to Zakeke. It offers 3D product visualization as well as augmented reality features, and a similar pricing structure. You have to decide if your users will prefer seeing the product in 3D or a 2D product preview that looks more realistic.
Angle
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Pros
3D visualization
Affordable pricing
Cons
Unpolished customization interface
Unrealistic 3D visualization
Angle is another affordable option if you are on the market for 3D product visualization and if photorealism is not important for you. To offer a 3D product experience on your Shopify store, you will need is a 3D model. You can hire a 3D artist on the Shopify Experts marketplace or other platforms to help you with that. Angle allows you to select a specific 3D model component and apply different colors or textures to it, or make it visible or not.
Colorlab
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Pros
Polished customization interface
Specialized in web-to-print
Cons
Only suitable for printed personalized products
This company specializes in web-to-print personalization. It's a good solution if you simply want to add text, logos and images on products such as t-shirts, coffee mugs, caps or phone cases. It allows your customers to choose artwork from your library in their customizations. Your designs are then transformed into a print-ready spec document.
Threekit
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Pros
3D visualization is more realistic than other solutions
AR visualisation is better than competitors
Cons
You will need to create 3D models
Long loading times, especially on mobile
Expensive solution
Threekit is probably the most high-end 3D visualization option on the market -- they work with large companies like Crate&Barrel and HP. There advanced solution includes parametric configuration: the ability to add geometric relationships and equation-driven dimensions to create wholly customized products. To get started with Threekit, you'll have to schedule a call with their sales team. From there, they will schedule a pricing presentation with you to review the details of their quote.
ConfigureID
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Pros
Full-service solution
Fully customizable interface
High quality customization experience
Cons
Very expensive solution
For large enterprise clients only
ConfigureID is a full-service solution made for enterprise brands like Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren and Pandora. Their highly customizable solution makes it possible to add configurable products on your site with photorealistic 3D product visualizations and extensive options. Like Threekit, before getting started with CongifureID, you need to book a call with their sales team to discuss about their pricing.
Product Options & Customizer
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Pros
Simple solution
Cheap pricing
Cons
No product visualization
Limited set of features
Only for simple products
Product Options & Customizer lets you add basic options to your product to bypass Shopify's variant limitations. With their app you can create unlimited product options fields for all your store's products. If you don't need product visualisation and simply want to add a few drop-down menus to your product, that might be a good fit for you.
Fancy Product Designer
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Pros
Print-ready export
Affordable pricing
Cons
Customization interface can be confusing
For simple personalized products only
Much like Colorlab, this app is oriented towards product personalisation but with a more affordable pricing. It lets your customers personalize simple products such as coffee mugs, t-shirts or business cards by adding texts and images. You can then export ready-to-print files in PDF, PNG, JPEG or SVG formats if you use their premium plan.
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Conclusion
The Shopify product customizer apps on this list all have their pros and cons. There might not be a perfect solution that checks all the boxes but using a software as a service solution is a wise decision, unless you've got thousands of dollars to invest in a development team and several months in front of you.
There's no better way to do that than trying them out to see for yourself! If you’re on a budget, some of these tools have free trials you can play around with.
That said, you’re going to have to put in the work to get the results you want. That means preparing your graphic assets, customization program and actually take the necessary time to learn the user interface and build your product customizer. We hope this article helps you towards your product customization journey. Your success is in your hands!
By exploring different these solutions, we hope that you will have a clearer picture of how to choose the best app for your needs. And if you’re still in doubt at this point, we recommend just starting with Kickflip.
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