Becoming a maker
What you're signing up for
You list what you can print. We send you requests that match. You quote what you want, print what you take, and ship it. PrintFlows keeps 15% of the part price.
No minimum volume, no monthly fee, no obligation to quote anything.
The checklist
Four steps. Until all four are done, no request reaches you and no customer can pay you.
1. Profile
Shop name, city, province, a few sentences about what you print, and how far you'll ship. This is your public page.
Your street address is never shown. We use the city for distance; Stripe holds the rest.
2. Printers and materials
For each machine: make and model, technology, and the build volume in millimetres. Measure it. Don't copy the spec sheet, which often quotes the theoretical maximum rather than what actually fits with a brim.
Then the materials and colours you have on the shelf right now. This is what we match against. List PETG you don't have and you'll get PETG requests you have to decline, which costs you time and shows on your reply stats.
3. Pricing
Price per gram, price per hour of print time, a setup fee, and a minimum order.
The per-gram rate should cover filament plus waste: most makers land between $0.05 and $0.20. The per-hour rate is machine time, power and your attention, not your hourly wage. The setup fee covers slicing, bed prep and watching the first layer.
These numbers produce the reference price you'll see on every request. You can quote above or below it.
4. Stripe and verification
See Getting verified. Stripe collects your banking and tax details directly; PrintFlows never sees them.
What we expect once you're live
- Quote what you can actually deliver, on the machine you'll actually use.
- Answer or decline. Your median reply time is measured from your real replies and shown on your profile.
- Ship with a real tracking number, or hand over in person for pickup.
- If a print fails or you're running late, message the customer before they have to ask.
- Refuse anything on the prohibited list in the terms, and anything you don't have the right to reproduce.
- Delete customer files once the order is done. They aren't yours to keep or reprint.
Things worth knowing before you start
You won't be busy immediately. PrintFlows is early and the maker network is small. Volume depends on how many customers are in your region and how wide your material list is.
Payment is held until the customer confirms. You don't get paid at order time. Read Getting paid as a maker before you price anything.
Your taxes are yours. PrintFlows doesn't file for you. Stripe provides annual documents. If you're heading toward $30,000 in revenue, talk to an accountant about GST/HST and QST registration.
Vacation mode exists. Turn it on when you're away and new requests stop. Orders already in progress still have to be finished.
How long the checklist takes
About twenty minutes of your time, plus however long Stripe takes to approve your account and however long verification takes on our side: usually a few business days.