Embroidery digitizing services

You already have the artwork and the machine, so the question is which supplier to send it to. This page is our side of that decision written down: what a design costs, how long it takes today, which part is done by software and which by a person, what arrives in the folder, what a change round covers, and the things we do not do. Every number here is generated from the files this site runs on, and every number that is not ours is quoted from the page it came from.

What a design costs

One price per design. We do not bill per 1,000 stitches, there is no stitch-count minimum or ceiling, and there is no rush fee, so the figure below is the figure for your job whatever it turns out to contain. Prices are in US dollars; Polar is our merchant of record and adds any VAT or sales tax your country charges at checkout. The package you pick is a set of limits: the same person checks every file against the same checklist, whatever you paid.

A design wider than 100 mm, or carrying more than 5 thread colors, needs Standard rather than Basic, and the free check decides that before you pay rather than us afterwards. The pricing cards show the same four packages side by side.

How that compares, and why comparing is hard

The trade runs three incompatible pricing models at the same time. Below is what 10 suppliers published on their own pages, read on 18 September 2026, in their words. The point is not that one number is better than another: it is that a per-1,000-stitch quote cannot be compared with a flat quote before the file exists, because nobody knows the stitch count yet.

Quoted from those suppliers' own pages as they stood on 18 September 2026; prices change and the links go to the source so you can check. Etsy and Fiverr listings refused our request, so no marketplace figure appears here rather than a figure we could not read for ourselves.

How long it takes, and what is behind the number

Delivery takes 1–3 business days, most orders the same day. That sentence is counted from the orders paid today, so it changes with the queue and it is the same sentence the order form and the confirmation email give you. There is no rush option and no rush fee: one digitizer works one queue.

The reason nothing here arrives in minutes is not the queue alone. Generating the stitch file is machine time before a person has looked at it, and the checking afterwards is a person reading a simulation shape by shape.

Which part is the engine, and which part is a person

The routing is a rule in the code. Premium and Enterprise are always digitized by hand. Basic and Standard go to the engine only when the free check says the artwork is flat enough, at most 6 thread colors and at most 130 mm wide; everything else is digitized by hand at no extra cost, and so is any draft the digitizer is not satisfied with.

Nothing runs unattended and nothing is stitched in the cloud. The files are made and checked on one machine, one order at a time, and no file has ever been sent to a customer without a person opening it first.

What “a digitizer checks it” actually means

It means a written checklist, not a glance. The checklist is generated from the artwork you approved: one item for every shape of at least 3 mm², the largest six pieces of each color listed separately and the rest grouped, plus every word you confirmed. The digitizer works through it against the stitch simulation the engine renders, corrects what is wrong in the editable SVG, and runs it again.

Before that, every run measures itself. These are the numbers recorded beside the one order we have delivered:

What those measurements cannot see is whether a word reads. On that same order our own text reader returned SASTDGE PLUNEE and 351-1998 where the artwork says BLUE RIDGE PLUMBING and EST. 1998. Machine reading of heavy embroidery lettering is not trustworthy, which is why you confirm the exact words yourself before anything is stitched, and why a person, not a score, signs the file off.

And the part no simulation can answer: how the file behaves under a needle, on your fabric, with your stabilizer. We have not sewn any of it out, so the delivery mail tells you to test on a scrap of the real fabric before the final run.

What arrives in the folder

Every order also carries the stitch simulation and the thread list as their own files, because the stitch file alone does not tell your machine which threads to put on it. What a DST file does and does not store is on the PNG to DST page.

The editable source is an Ink/Stitch SVG that opens in Inkscape. It is not a Wilcom EMB, and we do not deliver EMB in any package, which is worth knowing before you compare our format list with a shop that lists ten.

Change rounds, in writing

A change round covers size, placement, thread color and small shape fixes, for 30 days after delivery. The number of rounds per package is in the price table above. Three things that are usually left unsaid:

• Our mistakes are not rounds. Anything we got wrong is fixed free and spends nothing.
• A different prepared-art preview costs a round. On Basic that round is not split: spend it on the preview and the delivered file has none left. The order page says so before you ask, not after.
• Silence does not stall your order. If the preview is waiting on you we send one reminder after two days and continue as approved after three, and that costs you no round.

Refunds

If we cannot produce a usable file at all, we refund in full. Our own policy is otherwise no refunds once an order is paid, written with its limit showing, because a guarantee that does not say what it excludes is not one. Polar is the merchant of record for the payment and can refund under its own buyer terms, which are not ours to override.

What we do not do

• No rush lane. There is nothing to sell you that would not be taken from another order.
• No sew-out claim. Nothing we have made has been sewn on a machine. Every image we publish is a stitch simulation from our engine, and this page shows no garment photograph because we have none that is ours.
• No stitch-count billing. No per-1,000 rate, no minimum, no maximum, no surcharge for a busy design.
• No EMB and no Wilcom source. The editable file is an Ink/Stitch SVG.
• No customer counts, ratings or testimonials. One order has gone through this end to end and it was our own pilot, so there is nothing to count.
• No file delivered unopened. There is no automatic delivery path, for any package, at any price.

The free check, and what it does not measure

Before you pay anything, the check measures your own file at the width you asked for and hands back: a verdict, the reasons behind it, the number of thread colors, the palette as swatches, how much of the artwork is gradient or shading, the thinnest line in millimetres, the resolution it measured at, warnings against the package you picked, and the version of the rule set that produced all of it. The warnings are plain: a color count over your package's limit, a width over it, or a thinnest line under a millimetre, which it calls “under 1 mm sews badly”.

It does not measure letter height. Reading text from an image needs a reader that only runs on the digitizer's own machine, so the check leaves that field out of the answer entirely rather than returning a number it never took. Lettering is redrawn rather than traced, to a stroke of at least 1.8 mm with at least 1.5 mm between letters, and 4 mm of cap height is the floor below which only a hand digitizer works. Run the check on your file.

Width by placement

The package sets the ceiling; the placement sets what is sensible inside it. These widths are common practice rather than our measurements, so confirm them against your hoop and your garment.

The placement also changes the file before a shape is drawn: pick a cap, a beanie or a towel and the minimum letter height rises, because pile and knit swallow thin lettering. The cap heights themselves are on the PNG to DST page.

How many of these have we done

One. Our own pilot order, placed on the staging site on 18 September 2026 and delivered the same day: a work shirt left chest logo at 90 mm on the Standard package, checked at 3 thread colors and a 1.11 mm thinnest line, the prepared art approved, then the five Standard machine formats, the stitch simulation and the thread list. That is the honest answer to “how long have you been doing this”, and it is why there is no rating, no review count and no customer number anywhere on this site. It was a test of the machinery rather than of the checking: we placed the order, approved the preview and delivered it ourselves, in minutes, and it found two faults worth fixing — a delivery could carry a format the package does not include, and a queued status could overwrite a customer's own change request.

What stands in place of a track record is written down instead. The rule set is our own, versioned at 1.3, published as code with the evidence for each rule, and every rule is there because a blind checklist judge scored a stitch simulation and charged the defect it fixes. On one crest design, stitching enclosed shapes after the shape around them moved a blind checklist score from 48 to 72 out of 100, and the rules that followed took the same design to 96, 96 and 88 from three independent judges. Those are development scores, in the past tense, on simulations: no order is given a score and no model approves a file.

The engine is also reproducible. The DST delivered for that pilot order is byte for byte the same file as the evaluation run of the same approved artwork under rule set 1.3, which means the same artwork under the same rule set produced the same stitch file twice, months apart.

Your files afterwards

Questions

Do you charge per 1,000 stitches?

No. One price per design, decided by the width, the number of thread colors and the change rounds you need, from $9.99 to $49.99. There is no stitch-count billing, no stitch-count minimum or ceiling, and no rush fee, so the whole price is readable before you send anything.

Is there a rush option?

No. One digitizer works one queue, and a rush lane is a promise to move somebody else down it. Delivery is one to three business days, and the page itself shows where the queue stands as you read it.

What counts as a revision, and when does it expire?

A change round covers size, placement, thread color and small shape fixes, for 30 days after delivery. Anything that is our mistake is fixed free and uses no round. Asking for a different prepared-art preview after payment does use one, and on Basic that single round is not split: spend it on the preview and the delivered file has none left. Your order page prints that sentence before you ask, not after.

Do I get an EMB file?

No. Premium and Enterprise include the editable source as an Ink/Stitch SVG, which opens in Inkscape. We do not produce Wilcom EMB, so if your embroiderer needs an EMB to edit, we are the wrong supplier.

What happens if you cannot make a usable file at all?

We refund in full. That is the one exception: there are no refunds otherwise once an order is paid, and we would rather write the limit down than call it a satisfaction guarantee.

Have these files been sewn on a machine?

No. Everything we show is a stitch simulation produced by our engine, and this page carries no photograph of a sewn garment because there is none to carry. It is also why the delivery mail says to test on a scrap of the real fabric before the final run.

How wide should a left chest logo be?

Common practice is 60 to 100 mm wide, and a cap front 50 to 115 mm with 57 mm of height to work in. Confirm it against your own hoop and garment. The package sets the ceiling: Basic up to 100 mm, Standard up to 130 mm, Premium up to 200 mm, Enterprise up to 300 mm.

Check your file freeSee pricing

This page carries no photograph of a sewn garment: nothing we have made has been sewn, and the only images we publish are stitch simulations produced by our own engine. Competitor prices are quoted from those suppliers' own pages as they stood on 18 September 2026.