Over the past few months, we have continued working on two main directions: delivering new features to improve the customization and configuration experience, and redesigning the Zakeke Backoffice to make it more modern, intuitive, and efficient.
This release introduces major improvements across two key areas:
- New features and tools
- The second release of the redesigned Zakeke Backoffice for the Visual Product Customizer (first part here)
- New UI for the 3D Product Configurator
1. New Features and Tools
Mini-Sites
Zakeke has always been strongly connected to eCommerce, thanks to its code-free integrations that allow businesses to connect Zakeke with the world's leading eCommerce platforms.
We are now expanding Sales Channels with a new option: Mini-Sites.
Mini-Sites are hosted customizable portals where you can showcase your customizable product catalog and let customers access the Zakeke configurator directly, with no eCommerce platform required.
They are ideal for a variety of experiences, including kiosks, in-store customization, showrooms, B2B sales, and POS environments.
Mini-Sites can be combined with the Get a Quote module to create a complete B2B workflow, or integrated natively with Shopify POS. Other POS systems can be connected through API integrations.
Display Placement for AI Image Generator & Transformer
You now have more options to make the AI Image Generator & Transformer easier for your customers to find and use. Choose where the tool appears in the Customizer UI:
- Upload Image (Default) – Displays the tool in the list of upload options.
- Separate Tool in the Side Toolbar – Adds a dedicated button to the left sidebar on desktop and the Add menu on mobile.
- Images – Adds a dedicated button to the Images & Clipart Gallery, allowing customers to generate AI images alongside browsing the existing gallery.
These flexible placement options help you integrate AI image generation into the workflow that best fits your customers' experience.
Go to Customization Experience > AI Creative Tools > AI Image Generator & Transformer > UI Placement to choose where the tool appears in the Customizer UI.
Ready-to-Use Image Library
Zakeke now provides a Free Image Pack to help you quickly populate your Image and Clipart Gallery with ready-to-use images that your customers can use to personalize your products.
For accounts created on or after July 14, 2026, the Free Image Pack is automatically added to the account. For accounts created before July 14, 2026, the pack is available to import manually: go to Customization Experience > Image & Clipart Gallery and click Import Free Image Pack. This ensures that existing galleries are not affected unintentionally, as merchants may have already created and customized their own image collections.
All images included in the pack become part of your gallery, allowing you to fully manage, edit, and remove categories and images according to your needs.
In the coming months, we will release additional image collections and themed packages to further expand your gallery.
Ready-to-Use Background Image Library
Zakeke now provides a preloaded Background Gallery to help merchants offer customers ready-to-use images for the Fill Background feature.
For accounts created on or after July 14, 2026, the Background Gallery is automatically available. For accounts created before July 14, 2026, the gallery can be added manually without affecting existing setups. See guide here.
The images included in the gallery become part of your account, allowing you to fully manage, edit, or remove them according to your needs.
In the coming months, we will release additional background image collections and themed packages to further expand your gallery.
Limit Image Resize & Disable Image Rotation
New options to give you more control how customers manipulate images during personalization:
- Limit Image Resize: Set minimum and maximum width and height (in mm) to prevent images from being resized beyond your defined limits. These restrictions apply to both uploaded images and images from the Images & Clipart Galleries.
- Disable Image Rotation: Prevent customers from rotating uploaded images or images selected from the gallery.
Go to Printing Methods > Images & Uploads > Image Settings to configure these options.
AI Utilities for Product Images, Variants & Print Areas
We are continuing to introduce AI-based utilities in the back office to make Zakeke setup faster and easier.
Following the AI improvements released in the previous update, you can now use AI to automatically generate product images, variants, and print areas during the setup of a customizable product.
When generating product images, you can choose to use your existing product images as a reference. For example, if you have already created a product and need to configure additional variants, AI can generate the missing variants based on the existing ones, such as creating new color variations while keeping the same product style and appearance.
For Print Areas, the AI tool uses product-specific data and insights to identify and generate the most suitable print area for your product, creating accurate results based on the product characteristics rather than random placements.
These new AI utilities help reduce setup time and simplify the creation of customizable products.
Names & Numbers - Support for Images
The Names & Numbers tool now supports images, giving you more flexibility when creating bulk personalization workflows.
Customers can now use the Names & Numbers form to add not only text fields, but also images, making it possible to collect multiple personalized items with the same design and different image elements.
For example, businesses selling ID badges can let customers upload individual photos for each item directly from the bulk order form. See image below.
More UI customization options for Visual Product Customizer
We continue to collect your feedback on Zakeke’s user interfaces and, based on your suggestions, we have introduced new options to further customize the Visual Product Customizer experience.
You can now:
- Choose the position of the Plus button and place it wherever you prefer within the customization window.
- Move the UI footer to the top of the interface, including on mobile devices.
All these options are available in the UI Editor under Platform Settings > User Interface Settings > UI Editor, giving you more flexibility to adapt the customization experience to your brand and customer needs.
Improved Color Limit Management in the Customizer
We have improved the Visual Product Customizer experience when a color limit is applied to a design, introducing a more intuitive UI to help customers refine the automatic color adaptation performed by Zakeke.
When customers upload an image, Zakeke automatically adjusts it to respect the color limit set by the merchant. The new interface provides easier-to-use controls to fine-tune the result, including sliders and options to adjust the threshold that determines which parts of the image remain visible and which parts become transparent. This helps preserve the recognizability of logos and complex elements while respecting production constraints.
For users who need more control, an Advanced Mode is available, allowing them to manually adjust color mapping and further customize the result beyond the automatic adaptation.
The color limit applies to the entire design, not only to uploaded images. Any additional elements added by customers, such as text or other graphics, will also follow the same color restriction.
This improvement is especially useful for merchants using production techniques with a limited number of colors, such as screen printing, monochrome printing, or embroidery.
Improved CSV Product Import & Creation Management
We have improved the CSV import and product creation process for the Visual Product Customizer, introducing a more advanced and flexible way to manage product setup.
The new experience includes improved task management, clearer progress updates, and enhanced handling of import and creation processes. Customers using API integrations can now also create uncompleted products, allowing products to be imported even when some information, such as the product image or print area, is not available at the time of CSV creation. These products can be completed directly from the back office at any time, using the available tools and AI-powered utilities to add missing information and finalize the setup.
This gives you more flexibility when managing large product catalogs, reducing preparation time and allowing product configurations to be completed progressively.
2. The Second Release of the New Zakeke Backoffice
We continued the evolution of the Zakeke Backoffice with a redesigned layout and updated UI components, making workflows smoother, improving space management, and creating a more modern and intuitive workspace experience.
Below, you can find the most impactful changes introduced in this release.
New menu
We have redesigned the menu structure to better organize and streamline the different sections of the Visual Product Customizer back office.
Alongside the core sections - Customizable Products, Printing Methods, and Orders - we have introduced the following areas:
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Customization Experience
A dedicated space for all tools and features that directly impact your customers' personalization experience. This includes:- Printing Methods
- 3D Preview and AR
- Image and Clipart Gallery
- Pre-Desinged Templates
- Fill Background
- Shapes and Masks
- Collage Layouts
-
AI Creative Tools
-
Commerce Rules
This section includes all tools that affect the purchasing process of customized products:- Pricing Rules
- Bulk Variation Form
- Minimum Order Quantity
- Extra Options
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Profanity Filter & Image Moderator
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Sales Channels & Modules
Manage your stores connected to Zakeke and their settings, as well as Mini-Sites and modules such as Get a Quote, which transforms your Zakeke into a CPQ solution. -
Libraries
Access the functional libraries used by the Customizer, including fonts, color palettes, and other reusable assets. -
Platform Settings
Manage General Settings, integration with Print-on-demand Services and User Interface Settings.
A key improvement is the ability to star any tool. Starred tools are moved to the main menu, outside their category, allowing you to create a personalized menu structure with the features you use most frequently.
New Sections, Components and Improvement
Reorganized sections
Some Backoffice sections have been reorganized to improve accessibility and provide a more consistent user experience.
This work continues the changes introduced in the previous update (see here).
Changes:
- PDF Preview has been moved from Printing Methods to Platform Settings > User Interface Settings.
- Save and Share have been moved from General Settings to Platform Settings > User Interface Settings.
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CorelDRAW Compatibility has been moved from General Settings to Order Settings.
Discovery Mode
From Test Mode, you can now access Discovery Mode, a new testing environment where you can explore configurations and features that are not currently active on your products and see how they work in real time.
With Discovery Mode, you can experiment with new settings, such as applying a different Printing Method, testing a Pricing Rule, or enabling additional personalization tools. Once you find a configuration that works for your needs, you can save it directly and make it part of the customization experience available to your customers.
Discovery Mode helps you explore new possibilities and optimize your product setup before making changes live.
3. New User Interface for the 3D Product Configurator
We've redesigned the 3D Product Configurator with a cleaner, more modern interface: easier navigation across groups, attributes, and options, one-click preset configurations, and a built-in AI assistant. The biggest change is personalization — the full power of Zakeke's Customizer text and image tools now comes to 3D, with designs you can move on both the 2D canvas and the 3D model. See the complete guide for all the details.
Switching to the new UI. New customers get the redesigned interface by default. Existing customers can try it whenever they like — it's optional — using the Switch Configurator UI toggle in Platform Settings → User Interface Settings, and switch back at any time.