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 — 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 → recipes → 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 & 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 — 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; it lands on the order. See Options & 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 — the five-step setup
- Plans & Billing — free plan with 3 custom orders/month; paid from $5/month
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