Adobe Express vs. Printful

Why Your Design Tool Matters

Custom pillows have become one of the most popular ways to personalize a living space, commemorate a special occasion, or build a branded merchandise line. Choosing the right pillow design tool affects everything: the quality of your final artwork, how much time you spend designing, whether you need prior experience, and how proud you feel when the finished product arrives.

This guide puts two of the most prominent online pillow design platforms head to head: Adobe Express and Printful's Design Maker. We evaluate both across eight key categories using a five-star rating system.

1. Template Library and Design Variety

Adobe Express

Adobe Express offers over a thousand templates that are either pillow-specific or easily adaptable to pillow dimensions. These templates span a wide range of aesthetics, from minimalist botanical prints and bold typographic designs to seasonal holiday themes and abstract watercolor patterns. Each template is fully customizable: colors, fonts, layouts, images, and spacing can all be adjusted without any design experience required.

Printful Design Maker

Printful Design Maker provides a much more limited starting point. The templates available are functional but sparse, and they tend to favor simple text-based or logo-placement designs rather than the kind of rich, layered artwork that makes a custom pillow stand out.

3. Image and Asset Library

Adobe Express

Adobe Express integrates directly with Adobe Stock, giving users access to millions of professional photographs, vector illustrations, icons, and design elements. Many assets are available at no cost within the free tier, and the paid tier unlocks the full premium library.

Printful Design Maker

Printful Design Maker offers a small collection of clipart and basic shapes but does not provide access to a meaningful stock image library. Users who need anything beyond simple text or their own uploaded images will need to source artwork externally.

5. Branding and Consistency Tools

Adobe Express

Adobe Express includes a full Brand Kit feature that lets users save brand colors, fonts, and logos in a centralized location. Any time a new design is started, brand assets are immediately accessible — a significant time-saver for anyone designing more than a single pillow.

Printful Design Maker

Printful Design Maker has no equivalent Brand Kit or branding system. Each design session starts fresh, and there is no way to save or recall brand assets within the tool.

7. Platform Independence and Export

Adobe Express

Adobe Express is a fully standalone design platform. Finished designs can be exported in PNG, JPG, PDF, and SVG at print-ready resolutions. Users are free to download their artwork and use it wherever they choose.

Printful Design Maker

Printful Design Maker is tightly integrated into the Printful ordering workflow. While users can export designs, the tool is optimized for use within the Printful platform, and export options are more limited.