How Custom Print Price Engine works
Formula-driven pricing for custom print products on Shopify. Customers enter dimensions and get an instant quote, with the price applied at checkout. Try the live calculator.
What is Custom Print Price Engine?#
Custom Print Price Engine replaces fixed variant pricing with a formula. Customers enter their dimensions on the product page, pick a quantity and options, and see an accurate price instantly, computed from your real material costs, markup, and volume discounts. No variant explosion, no "request a quote" emails, no mispriced jobs.
Try the calculator#
This is a working model of what your customers see, with the same maths the real engine runs:
Configure Your Order
A working model of the storefront calculator, with demo rates.
Your price
$43.25
$1.73 per unit · 30 × 40 cm × 25
Volume discount: −20%
| Qty | Per unit | Saving |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $2.16 | — |
| 10 | $1.95 | −10% |
| 25 | $1.73 | −20% |
| 50 | $1.52 | −30% |
| 100 | $1.30 | −40% |
In the real app, the rates come from your ingredient costs and markup, the tiers from your discount rule sets, and the calculated price is applied at checkout by a Shopify cart transform function.
The idea: ingredients to recipes to prices#
- Ingredients are your raw costs: a vinyl roll at $450 for 30 m × 1.37 m, laminate per m², labour per hour, a fixed setup fee. Nine cost units cover materials, liquids, labour, and flat fees. See Ingredients and cost units.
- Recipes combine ingredients for a product type, add your markup, a wastage buffer, dimension limits, preset sizes, and optional extras. See Recipes.
- Assign the recipe to products or whole collections, and the calculator appears on those product pages automatically.
- Customers configure and buy: the engine prices every combination live, applies your quantity discounts, and the calculated price is charged at checkout via a Shopify cart transform function. See How the price reaches checkout.
Because pricing is formula-driven, one product handles every size. A 10 × 10 cm sticker and a 120 × 80 cm banner can be the same Shopify product with the same recipe. No thousand-variant catalogues.
What else is in the box#
- Artwork upload: customers attach their print file right in the calculator, and it lands on the order. See Options and artwork uploads
- Custom options: dropdowns and radios with surcharges, or text inputs priced per character
- Volume discount tiers: reusable rule sets that discount material costs (never your fixed labour)
- One-click reorders: repeat customers can reorder a past custom job from their account
- Customisable calculator: labels and colours match your storefront. See The storefront calculator
Where to next?#
- Getting started for the five-step setup
- Plans and billing: free plan with 3 custom orders/month; paid from $5/month
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