Printing Planet UK
The £20 digitising fee is the most common reason small embroidery orders feel expensive. A single embroidered polo might cost £18 for the garment and decoration, but with the digitising fee added the first order feels like £38.
Here are the three ways to avoid or reduce the digitising fee.
1. Order Over 50 Pieces
The most straightforward route is volume. At Printing Planet UK, the digitising fee is waived on orders of 50 or more pieces. The fee is absorbed into the production cost.
If you are planning a large uniform order or a team kit, hold the embroidery order until you have enough pieces to hit the threshold. Placing a 10-piece order now and a 45-piece order later means paying the fee twice. Combining them into one 55-piece order means paying it zero times.
2. Supply an Existing Stitch File
If your logo has been embroidered before, the shop that did it created a stitch file in DST, PES, EMB or a similar format. Ask for a copy. Most professional embroidery shops will supply the file on request, or include it in your invoice as a matter of course.
Bring the file to a new shop and they can often load it directly without re-digitising. Some adjustment may be needed if the machine brand or thread type differs, but minor adaptation is usually free or low cost.
Files to ask your previous embroiderer for:
- DST file (universal format, most machines accept it)
- PES file (Brother machines)
- EMB file (Wilcom software format)
3. Reorder Without Paying Again
The digitising fee is a one-time cost. Once your logo is in our system, it stays there. Any reorder uses the existing stitch file at no extra charge.
This makes the first order the most expensive on a per-piece basis. The second and all subsequent orders only pay for garments and decoration. The more you reorder, the lower your effective cost per piece across the lifetime of the logo.
What Does Not Avoid the Fee
Placing a very small first order does not avoid the fee. The fee applies regardless of quantity below 50 pieces.
Sending a very simple logo does not significantly reduce the fee either. Simple logos take less digitising time, but most shops charge a flat fee rather than an hourly rate.
What to Do If You Cannot Meet 50 Pieces
If you genuinely need fewer than 50 pieces and cannot supply an existing stitch file, the £20 fee is unavoidable on the first order. On a 10-piece order, that is £2 extra per garment. On a 25-piece order, it is 80p extra per garment.
Think of it as a one-time investment. Every order after the first does not pay it.
Alternatively, if your design is simple (text only, geometric shapes, two to three colours, nothing smaller than 5mm), consider whether vinyl or DTF printing achieves a similar result at a lower cost without any setup fee. For complex or detailed logos, embroidery remains the premium choice.
For full embroidery pricing and turnaround times, visit our embroidery service page. For more on the digitising process itself, read our guide on what garment digitising is and why it costs £20.