Custom Magnets: Are They Worth Selling Print on Demand?

TL;DR: Custom magnets are a real print-on-demand product, but the magnet itself is the cheap part and postage is the expensive one, so a lone magnet rarely makes sense while a themed set or a bulk order can. Printful, Printify and Gooten all list magnets right now, mostly in flexible vinyl or photo-paper styles between about 2 and 6 inches. The best buyers are gift shoppers, couples ordering save-the-dates, small businesses, and collectors building a set. Keep designs bold and short, because anything fine disappears at fridge size.

A magnet looks like the easiest product in any print-on-demand catalog. It is flat, light, cheap to produce, and nobody returns one because the sleeves are too tight.

That simplicity hides the catch. When the item costs so little, almost all of the buyer's bill is shipping, and a buyer who sees shipping bigger than the product tends to close the tab. Magnets reward sellers who think in sets, bundles and bulk orders, and they punish anyone who lists a single 3-inch square and waits.

This guide is for you if you are deciding whether to add custom magnets to a shop. If you only want one for your own fridge, the sections on sizes and on magnet strength will still save you a disappointing order.

What suppliers actually make right now

I checked each supplier's own pages in September 2026 instead of trusting memory, because catalogs change quietly. Here is what I could confirm, and where I could not.

A few things stand out.

Printful and Redbubble are die-cut, not kiss-cut. The magnet is cut right through to the outline of your design, so there is no rectangular backing sheet around it. Kiss-cut is a sticker term, where the blade cuts the top layer and leaves the backing whole. You will see "kiss-cut magnets" on some Etsy listings, but none of the POD supplier pages I checked used that wording.

Gooten is the photo and set specialist. Its standard photo magnets ship from US production only, and its metal magnets let you set a different image for each magnet in the pack. That second detail matters more than it sounds, and we will come back to it.

Printify is a marketplace of print providers, so specs, production times and even available sizes depend on which provider you pick inside a product. Open the product in the catalog and compare providers before you commit.

Production times are not in this table on purpose. They vary by provider, by season and by country, so check the supplier's current production schedule for the exact product. The same goes for price: open each supplier's current price sheet and do your own sums, because base costs and postage shift often.

The economics: postage decides, not the unit

If you have read our guide to custom keychains, you know the pattern with small, cheap products. Magnets push it further.

A single magnet is a tiny object in a mailer. The supplier still has to pick it, pack it and hand it to a carrier, and the carrier charges for the parcel, not for how little is inside. So the postage line on the order can easily rival or beat the magnet. The buyer sees one number at checkout, and on a lone magnet that number looks high for what it is.

Now compare three ways to sell the same design:

The set and the bulk order are different products from the single, even when the artwork is identical. The set turns a throwaway purchase into a gift. The bulk order turns a low-value item into a meaningful one.

This is where Gooten's multi-image packs earn attention. A pack where every magnet carries a different picture is a natural "set of five" listing: five dog breeds, five national parks, five pages from a family photo album. You design five images and sell one product.

When you run your own numbers, this pricing walkthrough shows building in postage honestly, which is the whole game with magnets.

Designing for something the size of a coaster

Physical size changes the design more than anything else here. It helps to picture the real options.

• Gooten's smallest photo magnet is 2x2 inches, with corners rounded to a 1/4 inch radius.
• Redbubble's small die-cut magnet tops out at 2.8 inches on its longest side, and Redbubble describes a white border of about 4 mm around the shape.
• Printful's smallest die-cut is 3x3 inches.

Two inches is roughly the width of two fingers held together. Hold your design at that size on screen, at arm's length, and be honest about what survives.

Text has to be short. A 2-inch square can carry a name, a date, or three to five words in a heavy face. A ten-word quote in a script font turns into grey noise. If a phrase needs more than a glance to read on the fridge, cut words or go up a size.

Fine lines vanish. Thin outlines, hatching, small linework and delicate lettering drop out first. Filled shapes and strong contrast hold up.

The die-cut border rounds off your silhouette. With a white margin of a few millimetres all round, a thin tail, a wisp of hair or a gap between letters gets swallowed into one blob. Compact shapes with no skinny parts work best.

Corners eat detail. On a 2x2 photo magnet, a 1/4-inch radius takes a visible bite out of each corner. Keep faces and dates away from the edges.

For photos, resolution is the other trap. Redbubble's own announcement for magnets said a 2800 x 2800 pixel file makes a design available on all three magnet sizes. For other suppliers, work backwards from the physical size and the dpi they ask for. Our print size calculator does that conversion for you and tells you whether your file will look sharp at 3 or 4 inches.

A useful habit is to design at the smallest size you plan to sell and scale up, not the reverse. What reads at 2 inches reads at 6. The opposite is rarely true.

Who buys magnets, and why

Magnets sell to four very different buyers, and each one needs a different listing.

Photo magnet gift buyers. Someone uploads a picture of their kid, their dog or a holiday, and gives the magnets to grandparents. This is gift-driven and seasonal, strongest around Mother's Day, Father's Day and the end of the year. They want personalisation, a set rather than a single, and delivery before a date.

Couples sending save-the-dates. A bulk order with a hard deadline. More on this below, because it is the most demanding and the most valuable.

Small businesses and promoters. Plumbers, estate agents, pizza places and gyms put their number on a fridge magnet because it stays in the kitchen for years. Printify's page leans on this use, including business card magnets. This buyer is repeat and bulk: they reorder when the batch runs out. They care about the logo being crisp, the phone number being legible, and the magnet actually holding.

Collectors and fandom sets. Themed collections, state and city sets, cute animals, food puns, hobby jokes. Redbubble's own suggestions for magnet themes were food and drink, positive quotes, hobbies and passions, and upcoming holidays. These buyers come back to complete a set, which is why a series beats a one-off design. The same thinking applies to our list of sticker ideas, since the two products share buyers and design logic.

The save-the-date angle deserves real care

Save-the-date magnets are one of the most searched uses of custom photo magnets, and they are not a normal POD order.

Think about the buyer. A couple is sending one magnet to every household on their guest list, usually many months before the wedding. They need maybe 60 to 150 identical pieces, often with envelopes, arriving at their own address in time to post them. If they arrive late, damaged or with the wrong date, there is no quiet fix.

That changes what you can promise.

Promise a proof, not a date you do not control. Show the couple a digital proof of names, date and photo and get a written "approved" before you order. A typo on 120 magnets is the worst message you will ever receive.

Publish a cutoff. State clearly how many weeks before their mailing date they need to order. Build the cutoff from the supplier's own published production time plus shipping, with slack on top, not from your best case.

Order a sample first. You need to know how the photo prints, how glossy it is, how strong the magnet feels, and how it arrives. Put that sample in your listing photos.

Check how bulk orders are handled. Some suppliers treat many units of one item as a single order, others split it. Printful's die-cut page mentions bulk ordering. Ask the supplier's support what a 100-piece order looks like in practice before you advertise one.

Remember personalisation is manual work. Each couple means a new file. If you sell through Etsy with a POD integration, a personalised order usually needs you to build and submit the design yourself, so price your time in.

Done well, this is a strong niche: a high order value, a buyer who shares photos of the result, and a steady flow of new weddings every season. Done carelessly, it produces the angriest reviews in your shop.

Where to sell magnets, and what I could verify

Redbubble is the lowest-effort route. You enable magnets on a design you already uploaded for stickers, and Redbubble handles printing and delivery. The trade-off is that you do not set postage or bundle rules, so single-magnet sales are what you will mostly get. Our guide to print-on-demand stickers covers the same upload flow.

Etsy is where the personalised and wedding buyers are, because they expect to message a seller and approve a proof. It is also where you can build real bundles and set your own shipping.

Your own store suits business and bulk orders best, since you control pricing tiers and can quote custom quantities.

The honest downsides

Magnets have real problems. Better to know them before a buyer tells you.

A low price ceiling. Nobody pays much for one magnet. Your only real levers are sets, personalisation and bulk.

Strength complaints. Flexible vinyl magnets are thin by design. Printful's public reviews for its die-cut magnet include buyers calling them thin and weak, one saying they are closer to "stickers that don't stick," and another pointing to a rough, uneven top edge. Rigid formats like metal, acrylic or porcelain feel more substantial. Order samples and describe the product accurately, as a flexible magnet for light use rather than something that will hold a stack of paper.

Stainless-steel fridges. Printify's own FAQ says magnets may not stick to stainless-steel refrigerators because the steel often contains nickel, which weakens attraction. A lot of modern kitchens have exactly that fridge. Say it in your listing, and suggest a whiteboard, locker or filing cabinet. It prevents a whole category of one-star reviews.

Damage in the post. Flexible magnets bend and crease in thin mailers. Acrylic can scratch or chip. Photo paper can scuff at the corners. Your sample order will show you what arrives, and your photos should match it.

Trademark exposure in fandom sets. Collectible sets are where sellers drift into characters, team logos and show quotes. Those sell, and they are exactly what gets listings removed. Our print-on-demand trademark guide explains what to check.

Validate before you design a whole set

The principle is simple: before you spend a weekend on twelve designs, confirm that people are buying magnets in your theme, and that the space is not already packed with near-identical sets.

Look for two signals together. The first is demand: evidence that magnets in the niche are actually selling, not just being searched. The second is saturation: how many sellers already offer something close to what you plan. A theme with steady sales and a thin field is the target. A theme with huge search interest and a wall of identical listings is a trap.

If a style is clearly working for a buyer, making your own version for that same buyer is legitimate, and it does sell. Bring your own drawing, your own wording and your own angle, rather than tracing what is there. Our guide to finding low-competition keywords goes deeper on reading those two signals.

Checked manually on four marketplaces, one idea can eat an afternoon, and it is the stage most sellers rush.

Where my own tool fits

Disclosure first: Trendlytic is my company, so read this paragraph as the owner talking. I made it for the stage before any of the design work above, the stage where you find out whether a magnet idea has buyers at all. One lookup reads Etsy, Redbubble, TeePublic and Amazon Merch side by side and shows how much demand a niche carries next to how crowded it already is. Designs gaining ground at the moment get a rising badge, which is the first thing I would check for a collectible set. If a phrase you like might belong to someone else, one click on any plan passes it to the live USPTO register, as an early screen and not as legal advice.

Plans begin at $9 a month, and you get a trial period before anything is charged. You can start a trial here if that step is where you keep getting stuck.

FAQ

Can you sell custom magnets with print on demand?

Yes. Printful, Printify and Gooten all list magnets, and Redbubble and TeePublic sell them as marketplace products. Gelato did not list magnets when I checked its product overview.

What size are custom fridge magnets?

Common POD sizes run from 2x2 inches up to 6x6 inches. Gooten offers 2x2, 3x3, 3x4 and 4x6 inch photo magnets, Printful's die-cut magnets come in 3, 4 and 6 inch squares, and Redbubble's small die-cut size is up to 2.8 inches on its longest side.

Are print on demand magnets strong?

Flexible vinyl magnets are thin and suit light use like holding a photo or a note. Some buyers review them as weak. Rigid metal or acrylic magnets feel sturdier, so order a sample and describe the hold honestly.

Do custom magnets stick to stainless steel fridges?

Often not well. Printify's FAQ notes that stainless steel frequently contains nickel, which reduces magnetic attraction. Iron or ordinary steel surfaces work better.

Are magnet save-the-dates worth offering?

They can be, because each order is large and new couples arrive every season. They also carry a hard deadline, so you need proofs, a published cutoff date, and a sample in hand before you advertise.

What is the difference between die-cut and kiss-cut magnets?

Die-cut means the blade cuts through the whole magnet along your design's outline, so it arrives as a finished shape. Kiss-cut is a sticker method where only the top layer is cut and the backing stays intact.

Your turn

Magnets are a small product with an unusual rule: the listing structure matters more than the single design. If you were adding them this month, would you start with a themed set, photo gifts, or wedding save-the-dates, and what is holding you back from the other two?