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Shopify apps
Print on demand (POD)
Lulu Direct
Lulu Direct
by Lulu Publishing
3.4
(45 reviews)
Best suited for merchants running print-on-demand storefronts who want to source products directly.
Create, Sell and Ship books easily with the Lulu Direct App Entrepreneurs and business owners agree that having control over your product is critical to successfully growing your business. The Lulu Direct App connects our global print and fulfillment network to your Shopify storefront for a more efficient way to sell your books. Now every time an order is placed for your books, we’ll print and ship the order, and provide you and your customer tracking to ensure everyone is happy. It’s that simple! Entrepreneurs and business owners agree that having control over your product is critical to successfully growing your business. The Lulu Direct App connects our global print and fulfillment network to your Shopify storefront for a more efficient way to sell your books. Now every time an order is placed for your books, we’ll print and ship the order, and provide you and your customer tracking to ensure everyone is happy. It’s that simple! more Easy to Use: Connect your books in a matter of minutes. Flexible Formats: Over 3,000 book format options, binding types, and layouts. Professional Quality: We deliver high quality printing at competitive prices.
Copy from the Shopify App Store listing, unedited.Print on demand (POD)
Bottom line
sourcing cost
Free to install. Additional charges may apply.
60/100
Solid · from 45 reviews
What it does
Easy to Use: Connect your books in a matter of minutes.
Flexible Formats: Over 3,000 book format options, binding types, and layouts.
Professional Quality: We deliver high quality printing at competitive prices.
One plan, no tiers to choose between
This developer publishes a single plan (Free to install), so plan choice does not arise — the only decision is whether to install it. The listing summarises it as “Free to install. Additional charges may apply.”.
Pricing
Free to install
60
/ 100Solid
Scored on 45 merchant reviews we hold for Lulu Direct, across five checks. Every figure is computed from those reviews — expand any row to see the counts behind it.
Recent reviews rate below this app's own average
Reviews in the last 12 months average 3.17, 0.21 stars below the lifetime average of 3.38. Worth reading the newest reviews before installing.Total cost is not knowable up front
1 plan listed, but the listing notes additional charges may apply.Review history
2018–2026 · 45 reviews read| 2018 | 1 reviews |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 2 reviews |
| 2020 | 8 reviews |
| 2021 | 13 reviews |
| 2022 | 5 reviews |
| 2023 | 6 reviews |
| 2024 | 2 reviews |
| 2025 | 2 reviews |
| 2026 | 6 reviews |
What merchants say
3.4
20%
of reviews get an answer28%
had used it a year when they wroteRecent merchant reviews
The newest 8 of 45. Open one to read it in full, with the developer's reply where there is one.
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.
We use Lulu for some of our magazines and it works perfectly. The support team is very nice and always helping. We love how easy it is to set up with our Shopify store.
I highly recommend the Lulu Direct app. The setup took just a few minutes, and now every order flows straight to Lulu for printing and fulfillment with zero manual work on my end. Print quality is consistently excellent, shipping is quick, and customers get tracking updates automatically. I’ve tried other POD services, but Lulu Direct is the only one that delivers the same high quality every time and ships reliably worldwide. If you’re a small publisher looking for a dependable fulfillment partner, Lulu is hands-down the best choice.
i wish i could speak to a live person quicker an more direct
Lulu has been incredibly helpful!! We thank them so much for their responsiveness with their support staff, ability to fix the issues, their patience and understanding were great. We received our first printed, full color books and they were outstanding quality! Thank you
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.
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.
Working with LuLu and creating books directly on their website is easy and the quality of the books is superb. I gave the app 2 stars because it is more expensive to go through the app with a fulfillment charge on top of that. Better off going directly through LuLu website, it is free as well. I also found that I can't connect my LuLu books already made online into shopify without having to redo the entire process of creating a book through the app.
Lulu Direct FAQ
Answered from this app's own listing and its full review record.
Best suited for merchants running print-on-demand storefronts who want to source products directly.
The Shopify App Store lists this app as “Free to install. Additional charges may apply.”. It does not publish plain monthly prices we can compute against.
On our scorecard Lulu Direct rates 60 out of 100 — solid — read from 45 merchant reviews. The developer has published replies to 9 of 45 reviews. The score reflects what the review record shows, nothing more.
45 merchants have reviewed Lulu Direct, averaging 3.4 out of 5. We hold the review history from 2018 to 2026, which is what the year-by-year chart on this page is built from.
At a glance
3.4 / 5 · 45 reviews
3.17 from 6 reviews
6
9 of 45 reviews
6 months
Free to install. Additional charges may apply.
April 26, 2018
2018 – 2026
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