ShapewaysReviews 149

Shapeways is a company offering customers with extremely helpful customer services and almost answer your questions and enquiries within half day according to my experience, and follow up your concerns quickly.

Regarding to the printing quality, it is the best, and in case the deliverable is broken by whatever reasons during shipping, customer service will evaluate the case and able to reprint it for you! I can't see any others can offer this kind of wonderful service to customers!

I've been 3D printing with Shapeways for more than 5 years. And can't be more happy! I am a product designer, therefore Shapeways is super helpful when it comes to printing plastic prototypes. I also 3D print a lot of jewelry pieces in precious metals like silver and gold. They are stunning! Shapeways cutomer survive is top notch! I've always received quick replies when had questions. Overall I've always had the best experience with Shapeways, I am 100% hooked - can't stop 3D printing :)

I contacted the customer service few months ago and everything was fine. Not only I've got response within 24 hours (also on weekend, not that usual somewhere else), all the questions were clarified but on top of it I could communicate in my native languege which made it much easier, definitely. So far I'm moreless satisfied. Of course, some items could be more pricey (hence -1*) but because of the rare items and frequently quite difficult model it's overall OK.

I've been modeling jewelry for shapeways for 4.5 years now. And I think its Ok. Yeah, I have dealt with the change of minimum requirements, printing failures, price changes etc. All my designs are on shapeways, I sell like 3 models per year on the platform, but I see shapeways as a tool for my business, and also as a business of their own. Their guidelines are good, they have always delivered quality, solved my issues etc. As a business they have to make a profit to continue working and the best way to have profits is to not produce what they belive cannot be done.

Lately I've been producing and selling my pieces localy because for me its cheaper, but Shapeways continues to have all my catalog because its free and only represents a small part of my business.

So, I was a little surprised they received so many negative reviews, as my experience has been overall positive. However, I am reviewing from the perspective of a small enthusiast, and used Shapeways a few times over the years for metal prints (I have my own plastic 3D Printers at home). I have always had great customer service, from fast replies to answers for very random / specific questions (I once asked for estimated weight of a steel print).

I still design some small knickknacks here and there with the intention of ordering through Shapeways, so I am, and have been, a repeat customer.

Over the years, their site changed a bit, and is slightly more difficult to navigate, but overall materials are laid out in an easy to find manner. However, the amount of new materials begin to confuse me as I don't always keep up to date with all the types of plastics and new printing technologies. It can get a bit overwhelming. Perhaps more and up to date photographs of example prints might help a bit.

I have noticed some price changes, but some of my prints seem to have even dropped in price? (I could be wrong). So overall, my experience has still been on the positive end. But I do hope they continue to work towards better pricing and clearer descriptions of materials.

Prices have gotten more expensive, broken models in shipping more frequent but Shapeways always other provides a credit or reprint if this occurs. I have never had a rude customer service person or had to ask for a supervisor. The turn around time can be lengthy but I am not looking for a speed service. The post cleaning of parts is hit or miss. I have to clean all models before painting so this is not a deal breaker for me. I have not found a service that is cheaper that provides access to the same machines any where.

As a designer, i was very happy with shapeways, from the freedom to price my models, still be the owner of them, shipping wasnt the best but still worked for me, the quality, well i got some really good prints and not many bad, most printed ok for prototypes, so i was happy, then everything changed, they decided suddenly that the already proven and tested minimum requirements for prints were not good, and increased them(completely making unprintable more than a half of my entire store, then the random price increase, with no proper explanation, from 2 to 10 times(yeah some people reported ridiculous price increases with screenshot proof and all, then the worse and worse customer service, they didnt care even if a model was printed succesfully a dozen times without any problem, the new guidelines were the only way to tell if the model was good to go, no real way to tell how much a model would cost, the only thing they improved form before the massive change... was the page layout, did i mention lower quality models in almost all plastic materials? So why the hell did they change the minimum requirements for a model? So i ended up deleting my shop, and they couldnt even get me the descriptions i had in there but i could search for the page form the outside(google) and get them? Yeah, like the entire staff of shapeways was replaced by morons they couldnt even find a cached version of a page on their own... but a google search could.

My D&D miniature orc 3D print came out in VERY poor quality compared to its MASSIVE price! $7.15 originally, came out to about $16 dollars for a very SMALL & low-quality print!

Not only is Shapeways such an astonishly low-quality for its price, but it is misleading when it comes to its MASSIVE added shipping prices. They will hold onto your item in order to make you pay more to get it quicker. And the day they say it will ship IS NOT the arrival date, but instead, it is the day they sent it out! Is there a delay when paying extra for faster shipping? Too bad!

When ordering and item is canceled in the order
It will be adjusted once shipped
Just have to watch they dont charge you again in a second charge for the item cancelled
No good to talk with them they say you just dont understand
Have screen shots sent them but yeah its me thats stupid and do not understand the process
Going back and forth w them is a waste of time
Husband loves the prints
Credit union is alwasy aware of how placed holds on funds
So
Just watch your account
But the products are great but shapeway is the middle printing man

First of all, you have to pay before you even know if they will be able to print your object. If you can not, prepare to receive an email in which they will tell you that you need to change or correct some aspect of the piece.

The problem comes when you place an order for more than one object because if one can be printed it and another can not, then they will send you the one they can print before you can correct the other one. This way you will have to pay the shipping costs again.

On the other hand, in its web it says that they have a "print it anyway" service for some materials. In my case, an object that I wanted in polished brass had too much detail so it would get lost in the polishing process, so I told them to print it in unpolished brass (since this material entered the print it anyways service) and even so they did not keep their word.

Fortunately I have seen that imaterialise guys offer these services so I will try them because in addition to being something cheaper, it seems that they can print in higher quality (at least jewelry).

I've built a part and offer it to partner labs at no profit for at least 2 years. Shapeways increased the price by more than 25% in October and will not call or email me to help me understand how to either change the part or make it easier for them to print to reduce the price. I've inquired at least 3 times using their online contact tool, and I only received one canned response that described their price increase.

People built businesses, maybe foolishly, using their 3D print service, and without notice or explanation, they've increased the price so much that the business isn't possible. In my case, I will be moving as quickly as possible to a much cheaper subtractive manufacturing model as soon as possible.

When I ordered six rings to be customized for my hyper mobile fingers, I went over my numbers multiple times before I send them to the maker. I got them in the mail only two of them actually fit. They said they could refund one of them because it was broken but I said to wait because they were supposed to be remade. They were never we made. I even took a new measurements of my fingers and resend them. Understand that shape ways itself is supposed to be a hub for 3-D printers to get work through, but you also think that they would know if their printers were reputable or not. Not fun to waste money.

Count on cleaning your own Parts 80% remain uninspected. Consistency is not likely. They will mail them anyway they feel like it