Reference

Rules

Read this once. Artwork rights, key safety, and what we suspend for.

Max Murray Updated on Oct 18, 2026

In short

The seller must own, or hold a licence for, everything that gets printed. That includes artwork you generate or source for them. Our AI doesn’t check trademarks or rights, so the check is theirs and yours before anything is listed or ordered.
The API key is a password to the whole account. It lives in a secret store, never in a prompt, a repository, a URL or a log, and it is never shared between agents, tools or sellers.
Accounts are for business use by people aged 18 or over, one account per seller, and they can’t be transferred. You act as the seller, and the seller is the seller of record to their own buyers.
Every order is real and every product is custom-made, so check addresses, sizes and artwork before an order is paid.
We suspend accounts for breaches of our terms, unlawful activity, abuse, non-payment, and misuse of discounts, credits, refunds or claims. Everything else on this page is how to stay well clear of that.

Artwork rights

Sellers keep all rights in their artwork. We use it only to make and ship their orders and to run the listing tools they use.
Sellers must own or be licensed to use everything they upload, list or order, and we may refuse or remove content we believe is unlawful or infringing. “Upload” includes files you send through POST /api-create-product, POST /api-bulk-list and image.artwork_url on orders.
Characters, logos, brand names, celebrities and other people’s artwork are the usual problems. If you generate or find an image for a seller, treat “is this ours to sell?” as a step in the job, not an afterthought.
Our AI writes titles, descriptions and tags from what it sees. It doesn’t check trademarks, brand names or Etsy’s banned words, and the Listing Hub’s grades are fixed checks on length and count. Review before listing.
Marketplace rules apply on top of ours. The seller is responsible for their listings, prices and marketplace compliance, and for customer service with their buyers.

Keys and accounts

Only the seller can create an account or a key. A key gives full access: placing orders that get printed and charged, deleting products, and reading buyers’ delivery addresses.
Keep the key in a secret store. Never put it in a prompt, a code repository, a URL or query string, or a log, and never pass it to another agent, tool or service. If something else needs access, the seller creates it a separate key; up to 10 can be active.
If a key may have leaked, tell the seller at once so they can revoke it in Tools → Developer. Revoking is immediate. The seller tells hey@printshrimp.com promptly about any unauthorised use of their account.
One account per seller. Don’t use one seller’s key for another seller’s work, and don’t share accounts. Accounts can’t be transferred, sold, assigned or licensed to anyone else.
Accounts are for business use by people aged 18 or over. The seller keeps their billing address and country accurate, because they decide which taxes apply.

Orders and buyers’ details

Every API order is real: there is no sandbox. Once an order is paid it can go into production within minutes, and once in production it can’t be changed, so the address, sizes, paper and artwork need checking before payment, not after.
Every product is printed to order, so there are no change-of-mind returns. Orders that arrive damaged, get lost or are misprinted through our error are reprinted or refunded; the seller reports them through Report a problem within 30 days of the estimated delivery date.
Send only the buyer details an order needs: name, address, and optionally email and phone. We use them only to fulfil the order, as set out in our Privacy Policy, and we never contact the seller’s buyers ourselves. Handle those details with the same care on your side.
Fulfilment is white-label: no PrintShrimp branding, labels, inserts or packing slips. The buyer only sees the seller’s brand, and that is the seller’s to manage.

Being a good API citizen

Stay inside the rate limits and back off on a 429; they are shared by every key on the account and sized for real use. Polling faster than orders move gains nothing (see Limits and Errors).
Give every order an external_order_number and read before you retry a write, so a timeout never becomes a duplicate order.
Don’t use the API to work around something the app deliberately leaves with the seller: paying, publishing listings, cancelling, and opening cases are theirs on purpose.
Credits, discounts and refunds are for their stated purpose. The 20% discount applies to orders of 3 or more prints automatically, and nothing else about pricing is yours to change.

What gets an account suspended or closed

We may suspend or close accounts for breaches of our terms, unlawful activity, abuse, non-payment, or misuse of discounts, credits, refunds or claims. In practice that means: selling artwork that isn’t yours to sell, sharing accounts or keys, trying to game the discount or credits, claiming for orders that arrived fine, or not paying what is owed. Charges already incurred remain payable when an account closes, and a wallet balance is returned less anything owed.

Where the full terms are

This page summarises the parts of our terms that matter when an agent is acting for a seller. The full versions are the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, and if anything here seems to differ from them, the terms win. Orders delivered in the UK are supplied by Printshrimp Ltd and orders delivered elsewhere by PrintShrimp Artwork Services FZCO. Questions: hey@printshrimp.com, answered by a person.