Vistaprint vs Zazzle custom magnets

By Fridge Magnets Editorial

Vistaprint publishes 0.5 mm flexible sheet at $1.20 each, in 2 x 3.5 in and 4 x 6 in, minimum order 25, USA delivery in 5 to 7 days. Zazzle is a marketplace and does not publish magnet thickness or material in a comparable form, so ask a seller before ordering.

Two tabs open, a magnet in each, similar pictures, similar prices. One of them tells you the magnet is 0.5 mm of flexible sheet. The other tells you the artist's name and how many people liked the design.

That is the honest shape of this comparison, so we are going to stop pretending it is Vistaprint against Zazzle and treat it as what it actually is: a printer that publishes a specification against a marketplace model that does not. The useful version of this page is a list of questions to put to any seller in the second category, and a warning about what happens when nobody answers them.

What Vistaprint publishes

Vistaprint lists flexible sheet magnets at 0.5 mm. Two sizes, 2 x 3.5 in and 4 x 6 in, which come out at 51 x 89 mm and 102 x 152 mm. The listed price is $1.20 per magnet with a minimum order of 25, and USA shipping in 5 to 7 days.

Every one of those is a number you can hold a delivery to. The 0.5 mm figure in particular does real work, because thickness is what predicts hold on flexible sheet. At a 50 mm footprint, 0.5 mm stock lists 60 g and 0.75 mm stock lists 110 g on flat bare steel. Knowing which grade is in the parcel tells you roughly what will happen when you clip a school newsletter under it.

The sizes are worth a second look. Vistaprint's small magnet is 2 x 3.5 in, half an inch longer than the 2 x 3 in that most other printers list, so a photo cropped for one is not cropped for the other and a save-the-date template built to 2 x 3 will come back with a strip of white along one end. The large one, 4 x 6 in, is a full photo print at 102 x 152 mm, which on 0.5 mm stock is a lot of area held on by the thinnest grade of sheet in common use. If that magnet is going on a textured door, put a thumb on each corner after a week and see whether they are still flat.

The minimum of 25 is the other figure that decides things. Twenty-five magnets at $1.20 is a thirty dollar floor, which is fine for a business handing out contact details and wrong for one magnet of a dog. How many to order covers where that floor stops being a problem.

Why the second column is empty

Zazzle is a marketplace. Independent sellers upload designs, a production partner makes the item, and the listing sells the artwork. It does not publish magnet thickness or material in a form that can be lined up against a Vistaprint specification, so every specification row below stays blank rather than getting a number we made up.

That blank is the point of the page rather than an omission from it. A marketplace listing usually gives you a size in inches, a price, and an image. It rarely gives you a thickness in millimeters, and it rarely names the magnetic material, because the seller who made the design often does not know either. They uploaded a file.

Note the print method row. Vistaprint does not publish that either, so it is blank on both sides. We would rather show a comparison with holes in it than fill the holes in with plausible guesses.

Five things to ask any marketplace printer

Thickness in millimeters. Not "standard", not "premium", not a thickness in mils unless you convert it. On flexible sheet the answer should be 0.5 or 0.75 mm, and the difference between those two is roughly a doubling of hold at the same size.

The magnet material. Flexible sheet is ferrite powder in vinyl, with a surface field around 300 Gauss. A pressed magnet has a flat ferrite slab behind a steel shell. Sheet holds 60 to 110 g depending on thickness, and the pressed slab holds several times that at a comparable footprint, so the material answer is worth more than any adjective in the listing.

The print method, and what covers the print. Laminate film, mylar, or nothing. An unprotected inkjet print on a fridge door is in the worst room in the house for it, between the steam off a kettle and whatever gets wiped across the door. Printing methods goes through the options.

The minimum order, in units. Marketplaces vary from 1 to a pack size chosen by the seller, and a listing that quotes a per-magnet price for a pack of ten is not offering a per-magnet price at all.

The delivered price per magnet. List price plus shipping, divided by the number of magnets that arrive. This is the only figure that lets you compare two sellers, and it is the one most likely to move after you add a postcode. Vistaprint's $1.20 is a list price too, so run the same arithmetic on it before treating the number as settled. Twenty-five magnets is light and flat, which keeps the shipping share small, while a marketplace order that ships from a different country can add more per magnet than the magnet costs. We keep the method for that calculation on price per magnet.

What a missing thickness actually costs

Say the marketplace magnet turns up and it is 0.5 mm rather than the 0.75 mm you assumed. At a 50 mm footprint that is 60 g instead of 110 g, and then the door takes its cut. Paint adds 0.1 to 0.2 mm of gap, and texture and door curvature add more, so multiply by about 0.7 for a working estimate. Sixty grams becomes about forty.

Forty grams holds a photograph and a single sheet of paper. It does not hold a stack of school letters, and on a brushed or dimpled door it may not hold itself for long. On a large magnet the loss shows at the corners first, because a 4 x 6 in sheet has plenty of area but no reserve of thickness at the edge where the vinyl wants to lift.

None of that is a marketplace problem in itself. It is a not-knowing problem. Buy 0.5 mm on purpose for a save-the-date going out by post and you have chosen well. Receive 0.5 mm when you were planning to hold a calendar with it and you have bought the wrong magnet at a fair price. What to look for is the general version of that check.

Who each one suits

Vistaprint suits a run. Twenty-five magnets minimum at a published price, one specification, two sizes, and a delivery window in days rather than a range set by whichever seller you clicked. For a plumber's number or a school fundraiser, a known 0.5 mm at a known $1.20 beats an unknown magnet at a similar price, and bulk against single covers where the per-unit cost goes from there.

A marketplace suits design. If what you want is a specific illustration by a specific artist, or a design nobody else is printing, that is exactly what the model is for, and the magnet under it is a substrate rather than the product. Buy it for the picture, ask the five questions above, and if the seller cannot answer the thickness one, order a single magnet first and put a ruler on its edge before you order forty more.

Where the magnet has a job to do rather than a picture to show, buy from whoever publishes a number. That points to Vistaprint here, on the strength of a specification page rather than anything we have measured, and it would point the other way the day a marketplace seller starts listing 0.75 mm stock and a delivered price per magnet. Published beats unpublished. It is not a compliment to the company, it is a way of not guessing.