Head to head
ShopVOX vs Printavo
Two different industries wearing the same category name: ShopVOX grew up around sign and wide-format shops, Printavo around screen printing and apparel.
These two get compared constantly, and the comparison is usually the wrong one. They were built for different trades. ShopVOX comes from the sign and wide-format world — substrates, installs, work orders with a dozen line items. Printavo comes from garment decoration, where the job is a shirt count and a print location, and it shows in every screen.
The practical difference is depth versus speed. ShopVOX will model almost anything you sell, and asks for weeks of setup and a person who owns the system in return. Printavo is faster to learn and calmer to look at, and it will fight you the moment your quote needs substrate, thickness, laminate and an install crew.
Where they land in the same place is the production model. Both march a job through a fixed status pipeline, and both make you configure that pipeline before the software does anything for you.
What you actually get
ShopVOX
The established all-in-one shop management suite for sign & print.
Larger, established shops with a dedicated admin who can invest weeks learning a deep, configuration-heavy system.
Where shops get stuck
- → Dense, dated UI — lots of clicks and screens to do simple things.
- → Long onboarding; users report months learning product templates, often with paid training.
- → Pricing climbs quickly with users and add-ons — long-time customers report steep increases.
- → Fixed workflow — your shop adapts to its stages, not the other way around.
Printavo
Shop management built primarily for screen printers and apparel decorators.
Screen printing and apparel-decoration shops whose work is mostly garments.
Where shops get stuck
- → Workflow and pricing skew toward apparel/screen printing, not signage.
- → Limited fit for wide-format, vehicle wraps, and sq-ft based pricing.
- → Sign-specific materials (substrate/vinyl/laminate/grommets) aren't first-class.
Which should you choose?
Choose ShopVOX if…
You run a sign or wide-format shop with genuinely complex quoting, and you have somebody who can own the setup for a few weeks.
Choose Printavo if…
You print apparel. Printavo knows your trade, and a sign-shop system will make you translate every job into a shape it does not fit.
Choose PrinterFlo if…
You are a sign or print shop who wants ShopVOX's depth on quoting without ShopVOX's setup — your materials priced properly, and no workflow to design first because the quote writes the job's checklist for you.
ShopVOX vs Printavo — FAQ
Is ShopVOX or Printavo better for a sign shop?
ShopVOX, of the two. Printavo is built around garment decoration and quoting a channel-letter set or a vehicle wrap in it means forcing the job into a shape the software does not have. The trade-off is ShopVOX's setup time, which is the complaint its own reviews return to.
Which one is cheaper?
Printavo generally starts lower, and ShopVOX climbs as you add users and modules — long-time ShopVOX customers report steep increases. Compare the number for the seats you will actually have in a year, not the entry tier.
Do either of them price by substrate and square foot?
ShopVOX does, through product templates you build. Printavo is not designed for it. PrinterFlo does it out of the box: size times options, with cost, profit and margin shown on the line as you type.
There is a third option
PrinterFlo prices your materials properly, writes each job's production checklist from the quote, and lets your customer approve the proof and pay the deposit from one link. No workflow to configure first.