Society6 has been a go-to print-on-demand platform for artists and designers for over a decade. Its curated home decor catalog and design-forward aesthetic made it a popular choice for anyone looking to sell art prints, throw pillows, and phone cases without managing inventory.

But Society6 isn’t the same platform it was a year ago.

In early 2025, the company shifted to a curated, invite-only model, removing thousands of artist accounts in the process. Markups are now fixed at 5–10% depending on the product, and artists can no longer set their own prices.

If you weren’t handpicked to stay, your shop was shut down by March 2025.

Even for artists who survived the cut, the new terms are a tough sell. A 5% royalty on most products is one of the lowest rates in the POD space. And with a second round of account removals in October 2025, the writing is on the wall: Society6 is becoming a much smaller, much more controlled marketplace.

So whether you’ve been dropped from the platform or you’re just fed up with the direction it’s heading, there are real alternatives worth exploring. We tested five of them and explain below why each one might be a better fit—depending on what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

Why Not Society6?

Society6 still makes decent products. The print quality on wall art, in particular, holds up well. But like any platform, it has some serious drawbacks that have gotten worse over the past year:

Extremely low royalties

Since March 2025, most products pay artists just 5% of the net sale price. A handful of categories—pillows, tapestries, framed prints, and posters—pay 10%. You can’t adjust these rates. On a $30 art print, you’re making about $1.50.

No control over pricing

Society6 sets all product prices. You can’t experiment with premium pricing, run your own sales, or do anything to influence what the customer sees at checkout. Your only lever is the designs you upload.

Invite-only access

The open marketplace is gone. New artists must apply and be approved by Society6’s curation team, and existing artists can be dropped at any time based on sales performance and “alignment with brand direction.” Two rounds of account purges happened in 2025 alone.

Zero access to customer data

You don’t get email addresses, shipping info, or any way to contact the people who buy your work. Society6 owns the customer relationship entirely. You’re a supplier, not a brand.

Shrinking product catalog

As part of the 2025 overhaul, Society6 retired several product categories to “focus on higher-performing items.” The range of products available to artists today is smaller than it was two years ago.

If any of these issues are dealbreakers for your creative business, it’s time to look elsewhere. Here are five alternatives that do things differently.

Quick Comparison Table

Platform	Best For	Profit Margin	Built-In Traffic	Ease of Entry
INPRNT	Fine Art	~50%	Medium	Application
Fourthwall	Brand Building	You Set It	None	Open
Redbubble	Stickers & Trends	Varies*	Very High	Open
Zazzle	Custom Gifts	10–15%	High	Open
Spoonflower	Fabric & Textile	10–15%	Medium	Open

*Redbubble royalties depend on your account tier. Standard accounts are charged a 50% platform fee on earnings; Premium accounts pay 20%. Pro accounts pay no fees.

5 of the Best Alternatives to Society6

The best Society6 alternative depends on what matters most to you. Here are five platforms that each outperform Society6 in a specific, meaningful way:

1. Higher Profit Margins: INPRNT

If you’re tired of Society6’s 5% royalties, INPRNT is a breath of fresh air.

Artists keep roughly 50% of the sale price on art prints—and you can push that higher by adjusting your prices upward from the default minimums. That’s not a typo. Where Society6 pays you $1.50 on a $30 print, INPRNT pays closer to $15.

The catch is that INPRNT is also curated. You need to submit three pieces of work and get approved before you can open a shop. But unlike Society6’s corporate curation, INPRNT’s selection process is community-driven—existing artists vote on new applicants. This keeps the quality bar high and the catalog relatively small, which works in your favor if you get in.

Print quality is the other major selling point. INPRNT uses giclée printing on archival paper and handles all production, packaging, and shipping from their own studio. Artists who’ve worked with both platforms consistently say INPRNT’s output is a clear step above Society6’s.

The downside? INPRNT’s product range is narrow—mostly wall art, canvas, framed prints, and greeting cards. If you want your designs on mugs, tote bags, or phone cases, this isn’t the platform.

And while the community is enthusiastic, it’s a niche marketplace. You’re not going to get the same volume of passive traffic that Society6 or Redbubble generates.

Pros

• Artist earnings around 50% on prints—roughly 10x what Society6 pays
• Exceptional giclée print quality on archival paper
• Community-curated, which keeps the catalog high-quality and low-clutter
• Fully passive—INPRNT handles all production, shipping, and customer service

Cons

• Application required; not everyone gets accepted
• Very limited product range (wall art and cards, primarily)
• Smaller marketplace with less organic traffic than bigger platforms
• Payout threshold of $100 and relatively slow payment processing

Best for: Professional illustrators and fine artists who want gallery-level print quality and fair profit margins. If your goal is to sell your work as “real art” rather than mass-produced home decor, INPRNT treats it that way.

2. Better Brand Ownership: Fourthwall

Every other platform on this list is a marketplace—your art sits alongside thousands of other artists’ work, and you have little control over the storefront experience.

Fourthwall flips that model. Instead of a profile on someone else’s site, you get a fully branded standalone store with your own URL, your own layout, and your own customer relationships.

That last point matters more than it might seem. When someone buys from your Fourthwall store, you own the customer data. You get their email address. You can build a mailing list. You can run targeted promotions. None of that is possible on Society6, Redbubble, or INPRNT.

The free plan has no monthly fee. Fourthwall takes a 5% platform fee on digital products and memberships, but charges nothing extra on physical POD items beyond the base manufacturing cost—you keep 100% of the markup you set. The Pro plan ($19/month) eliminates the digital product fee and adds perks like a free .store domain and priority support.

The product catalog is solid: apparel, mugs, posters, stickers, home goods. Quality has improved a lot since 2024, and the mockup generator makes it easy to see how designs will look before you publish them. You can also sell digital products, memberships, and accept donations—all from the same storefront.

The tradeoff is real, though. Fourthwall has zero built-in marketplace traffic. Nobody is browsing Fourthwall the way they browse Redbubble or Etsy. If you don’t already have an audience on YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, or somewhere else, your store will sit empty. This is a tool for creators who have attention and need a way to monetize it—not for artists hoping to be discovered.

Pros

• Your own branded storefront with a custom URL
• You own your customer data (email addresses, purchase history)
• No monthly fee on the free plan; 100% of physical product markup is yours
• Can sell POD, digital products, and memberships from one store

Cons

• No built-in marketplace—you must drive all your own traffic
• Product listing limits on the free plan (50 items for new accounts)
• Less established brand recognition compared to older POD platforms
• Print quality depends on third-party fulfillers and varies by product

Best for: Artists and creators with an existing audience who are tired of marketplace platforms taking a cut and hiding their customer data. If you have 10,000+ followers somewhere and want to build an actual brand, Fourthwall is purpose-built for that.

3. More Marketplace Traffic: Redbubble

Redbubble is Society6’s most direct competitor, and for a long time, artists would list on both platforms simultaneously. The product catalogs overlap significantly—prints, apparel, phone cases, home decor—but Redbubble skews more toward pop culture, graphic design, and humor, while Society6 leans interior design.

The big advantage of Redbubble is sheer volume of traffic. It’s one of the most-visited POD marketplaces in the world, and stickers alone drive an enormous amount of organic search. If you design trendy, keyword-friendly work—memes, fan art, seasonal designs—Redbubble’s search engine can send you sales without any marketing on your part.

But here’s where it gets complicated. Redbubble overhauled its fee structure in September 2025, and the changes hit hard. Artists are now sorted into three tiers: Standard (50% platform fee on earnings), Premium (20% fee), and Pro (no fee). On top of that, if you set your markup above 20%, there’s an additional 50% excess markup fee on the portion above that threshold. There is a $150/month fee cap, but for most independent artists on the Standard tier, the math is brutal.

The tier system is opaque—Redbubble assigns your tier based on sales volume and “engagement,” and there’s no way to apply for an upgrade. If you’re a new or low-volume seller, you’re almost certainly on Standard, which means half your earnings go back to the platform before you see a cent.

Upload process is still the easiest of any platform on this list. You can list a design on 70+ product types in minutes, which is why many artists still keep Redbubble in their rotation even after the fee changes. It’s passive income—just not very much of it until you hit Premium or Pro status.

Pros

• Enormous built-in organic traffic, especially for stickers and trending designs
• 70+ product types; easiest upload process in the POD space
• Great for SEO-driven passive sales if you target the right keywords
• Free to join with no product listing limits

Cons

• Standard tier takes 50% of your earnings—the worst rate on this list
• Excess markup fee penalizes artists who price above 20% markup
• Tier classification is opaque; no way to request an upgrade
• Brand perception can feel “cheaper” than Society6 for fine art
  

Best for: Graphic designers, hobbyists, and trend-based artists who want passive income from a high-traffic marketplace. If you’re prolific and can upload volume, Redbubble’s traffic can still generate consistent sales—just keep your expectations realistic on the Standard tier.

4. Zazzle Best for Custom & Personalized Products:

Zazzle occupies a different corner of the POD market. Where Society6 sells pre-made designs on fixed products, Zazzle lets customers customize your designs—adding names, changing colors, swapping text. This makes it the dominant platform for gifts, events, and occasions: wedding invitations, birthday cards, holiday ornaments, custom business cards.

The royalty structure is more flexible than Society6’s, too. You set your own percentage, typically between 10–15%, though technically you can go higher. It’s not the most generous payout in the industry, but it’s at least twice what Society6 pays on most products.

Zazzle’s built-in traffic is substantial, particularly around Q4 holidays and wedding season. Interior designers, event planners, and small business owners shop there regularly, which means the customer base is different from the typical Redbubble or Society6 buyer.

The drawback is the design workflow. Creating templates with customizable text fields, editable colors, and layout options is more complex than just uploading a flat image. Zazzle’s editor is functional but dated, and the learning curve is steeper than on any other platform here. The interface feels like it hasn’t been meaningfully updated in several years.

For pattern designers who already work in repeatable formats—or for anyone whose art naturally lends itself to stationery and gifts—Zazzle is a genuine money-maker. For fine artists who just want to sell prints, the platform is overkill.

Pros

• Customers can personalize your designs, which drives higher conversion
• Strong built-in traffic for weddings, holidays, and events
• You set your own royalty rate (10–15% is standard; can go higher)
• Large, established marketplace with a loyal customer base

Cons

• Designing customizable templates is more complex and time-consuming
• Interface is dated and clunky compared to modern POD platforms
• Not well-suited for fine art or illustration-focused sellers
• Product discovery can be inconsistent; SEO matters a lot

Best for: Pattern designers and artists who create work for life events—birthdays, weddings, holidays, baby showers. If your strength is versatile designs that look good on stationery and gift items, Zazzle’s customization engine will work harder for you than any flat-image marketplace.

5. Best for Fabric and Wallpaper: Spoonflower

If what you really loved about Society6 was the wallpaper and textiles, Spoonflower is where the industry lives. It’s a dedicated marketplace for fabric, wallpaper, and home decor (curtains, tablecloths, napkins), and it has the largest community of surface designers, quilters, sewists, and interior designers of any POD platform.

The base royalty is 10% of the sale price after any discounts. Monthly sales above $300 trigger bonus tiers: an extra 1% at $300, 3% at $1,000, and 5% at $1,500—bringing top earners up to 15%. That’s not life-changing on a per-sale basis, but the platform’s audience is highly targeted. People who shop at Spoonflower are specifically looking for unique textile designs, not just browsing. Conversion rates tend to be higher than on general-purpose POD platforms.

Since January 2024, artists no longer need to buy physical swatches to proof their designs—a digital proofing tool handles that now. You can upload up to 50 designs per week, and Spoonflower also distributes your work through third-party marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, and Michaels at no extra cost.

The niche focus is both the strength and the limitation. If you want to sell art prints, phone cases, or apparel, Spoonflower isn’t the platform for that. But if you create repeating patterns or surface designs, there’s no better marketplace. The community is active, the quality of textile printing is excellent, and interior designers specifically seek out Spoonflower for custom fabric orders.

Pros:

• The industry-leading marketplace for fabric, wallpaper, and home textiles
• Tiered royalties up to 15% for high-volume sellers
• Digital proofing (no upfront cost to list designs since January 2024)
• Third-party distribution to Etsy, Amazon, and Michaels at no extra cost

Cons:

• Very niche—only fabrics, wallpaper, and home decor items
• Base 10% royalty is on par with Society6 (though bonus tiers help)
• Royalties are calculated on the discounted price, not the retail price
• The platform can feel overwhelming with millions of designs already listed

Best for: Surface pattern designers and textile artists. If your work is built around repeating patterns—florals, geometrics, themed prints—Spoonflower’s audience of sewists, quilters, and interior designers is exactly where your designs belong.

Conclusion

Society6 is still a functional platform, but it’s not the open, artist-friendly marketplace it used to be. The 2025 overhaul made it clear that the company is prioritizing a smaller, more controlled catalog with lower artist payouts. That’s a valid business decision, but it means artists need to diversify.

If you care most about print quality and fair profit margins, INPRNT is the closest thing to what Society6 used to represent—a curated platform that actually treats your work like fine art. If you want to build an actual brand with your own storefront and customer data, Fourthwall gives you tools that no marketplace ever will. For sheer passive traffic, Redbubble still delivers, even if the new fee structure makes it harder to profit on the Standard tier.

Zazzle and Spoonflower serve more specialized audiences—customizable gifts and textiles, respectively—but both offer stronger earning potential than Society6 in their niches.

The smartest move isn’t to pick one and go all-in. Most working artists upload to two or three platforms simultaneously and see which one actually generates sales for their specific style of work. Start with the platform that best matches your goals, give it 90 days, and adjust from there.

None of these platforms are perfect. But all five offer something that Society6, in its current form, no longer does: a realistic path to making money from your art.