Print-It 26 vs PrintSmith: choosing a print MIS for a commercial shop
PrintSmith Vision is one of the longest-standing print management systems in commercial print. It grew up around sheetfed and quick-print work, and a great many shops have run their estimating on it for years.
Print-It 26 is a newer cost-based MIS covering the same ground — estimating, orders, production, purchasing and invoicing — with more of the shop floor and the material yield calculation built into the quote itself. This guide sets the two side by side, including where PrintSmith's maturity is the stronger argument.
The short version
Choose PrintSmith if you want a long-established estimating engine with a deep history in sheetfed and quick print, an existing base of shops running it, and a familiar workflow your estimators already know.
Choose Print-It 26 if you want estimating, live production tracking, purchasing, shipping and invoicing in one modern browser-based system, and you want every quote to trace back to the actual substrate cost and press time behind it.
How estimating works
PrintSmith is built around a configurable estimating engine with press definitions, stock lists and rate tables. Set up correctly, it produces detailed, reliable estimates, and that setup is the reason many shops stay with it.
Print-It 26 approaches the same problem from material yield first. A quote line names a substrate, a finished size and a quantity. The system nests the piece onto the stock sheet or roll, works out how many sheets or linear feet the run really consumes including waste and setup, prices that against the cost of the stock you hold, adds work-center time at your rates, and applies your markup.
The practical difference shows up on odd sizes and mixed substrates. When the job is not a standard imposition, the nesting result is the estimate rather than an adjustment made on top of one.
Feature comparison
| Area | PrintSmith Vision | Print-It 26 |
|---|---|---|
| Primary market | Commercial print, quick print, in-plant | Commercial print, wide format, signage, mixed substrate |
| Estimating model | Configurable estimating engine with rate tables | Cost-based, driven by nesting and material yield |
| Deployment | Server or hosted deployment | Browser-based, nothing to install |
| Shop floor | Production tracking available | Live production board plus a touch kiosk for the floor |
| Purchasing and stock | Inventory and purchasing modules | Purchasing, receiving and FIFO material costing feeding the quote |
| Shipping | Handled alongside fulfilment | Carrier labels and shipment tracking in the order record |
| Accounting | Established accounting integrations | QuickBooks Online sync for customers, invoices and payments |
| Maturity | Decades of production use | Newer, actively developed |
Where PrintSmith is the better fit
- Your estimators are fluent in it and the estimating setup already reflects years of tuning.
- You depend on a specific integration or reporting pack built around it.
- You value a long production track record above a newer feature set.
Where Print-It 26 pulls ahead
- Margin visibility on every quote line, not just at the document total.
- Nesting and waste built into the price rather than estimated separately.
- One record from lead to paid invoice, including proofs, production and shipping.
- Role-based visibility, so production and shop-floor users never see pricing.
Moving your history across
Switching costs are the real objection, so Print-It 26 treats them as a feature. Customers, vendors, materials, product templates and price lists import from CSV or Excel. Old quotes, purchase orders and work orders can be read straight from a PDF printed by your current system, keeping the original document number so history stays searchable.
Your existing numbering carries over too: set the next quote, work order, invoice and purchase order number to match where you are today, and carry on from there.
PrintSmith is a proven estimating system with a long history in commercial print. Print-It 26 is for shops that want that estimating rigour plus live production, purchasing and shipping in one modern system, with material yield driving the price.
The honest way to choose is with your own numbers. The Print-It 26 demo is a fully worked example shop you can open without signing up, and a 7-day trial lets you quote a real job end to end.