Most "best tech pack software" articles are written by the software companies. This one isn't. Honest breakdown of four real tools, who each is for, and when it's a waste of money.
Photograph: Unsplash
Most articles about "tech pack software" are written by SaaS companies who want you to use their tool. This one isn't. We've spec'd over 2,000 tech packs across the UK, USA, and EU, and we use four different tools depending on the job. Here's the honest breakdown of what each one is for, who it's right for, and when it's a waste of money.
There are only four categories of tool worth thinking about. Forget anything else you've read.
A fifth option is to skip software entirely and hire a service. We'll get to that.
For the first 10–30 styles of your brand, Illustrator plus a spreadsheet is enough. Stop reading software comparison articles. Just buy Illustrator.
Why: every factory in the world speaks .ai (Adobe Illustrator) files. Every freelance tech-pack designer knows it. Every PLM tool exports to it. It's the lingua franca of apparel production. £20/month for Creative Cloud. Steep but learnable in a weekend if you've used any vector tool before.
What you'll build in it:
What you'll not build in it: the BOM table, the points-of-measure table, the size grading table. Those belong in a spreadsheet linked from the tech pack.
The right line weight: 1.5pt for the silhouette, 0.75pt for internal seams and details. That contrast is how factories quickly read which lines are structural and which are decorative.
Most first-time founders try to make Illustrator do everything — including the BOM and the POM table as a giant text frame inside the same .ai file. Don't. Tables in Illustrator are painful to update; the moment a fabric supplier changes, you'll re-format the whole document. Keep tables in Sheets.
The unsexy truth: most professional tech packs are 60% Illustrator, 40% spreadsheet. Sheets handles:
Sheets is better than Illustrator for these because data changes. Suppliers change. Fabric weights change. You add a size to the grade. With a spreadsheet, you edit one cell. With Illustrator, you re-typeset.
The trick is linking. Either embed the Sheets data as a CSV-export-to-PDF page in the tech pack, or paste-as-table into the final PDF compile. Either works. The bad option is keeping the spec in Illustrator forever.
Cost: free.
PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) tools are real industry software. Big brands use them. They're built to manage hundreds of styles per season, with version control, multi-user collaboration, factory portals, and audit trails.
The four worth knowing:
Techpacker (techpacker.com). Brooklyn-based. Recently split into TechpackBuilder (lighter editor) and Plmbr (full PLM). Good if you're at 30+ styles per season. Their export-to-PDF is clean. Their bigger problem: factories often don't accept Techpacker-format files directly and want it as a PDF or .ai. So you're adding a tool that doesn't replace Illustrator — it sits on top of it.
Backbone PLM (backbonepm.com). LA-based. More established. Used by mid-size brands. Pricing is "contact us" — usually $200–500/month per user.
BlueCherry (bluecherryconnect.com). Older, more traditional. Often bundled with full ERP for brands doing serious volume. Probably overkill for under 100 styles a year.
Centric Software. Enterprise. If you're asking, you don't need it.
When PLM makes sense: 30+ styles per season, more than 3 people touching specs, multi-supplier production, version-control headaches. Below that threshold, you're paying for features you don't use.
When PLM doesn't make sense: indie brand, one founder, 4–10 styles per season. You'll spend more time setting up the tool than spec'ing the actual garments.
CLO3D and Browzwear are 3D garment-simulation tools. You build a digital sample, fit it on an avatar, see drape and seam stress, and iterate the pattern before cutting a physical sample.
Genuinely useful — for the brands that can use them. The learning curve is steep (3–6 months to get fluent), the software is expensive (CLO3D is ~$50/month, Browzwear is enterprise), and you need digital patterns to start with. If your designer hands you a sketch and a flat, you need someone to convert that to a pattern file first.
When this makes sense: 100+ styles a year, repeated fit issues, or you're trying to reduce sample rounds for sustainability reasons. Adidas, Nike, and Hugo Boss use these tools heavily.
When it doesn't: your first 50 styles. Most indie brands skip it until they have a dedicated tech-design hire.
For a lot of brands, the right answer is: don't buy software, hire someone who already owns it.
You'd hire a service if:
Services charge £200–£900 per tech pack depending on complexity. We charge £349 for the basic tier, £549 for pro, with 2 revisions and a production-fit guarantee. Compared to ~40 hours of your time at any reasonable hourly rate, the service is cheaper.
This is the part nobody else publishes. Here's what we reach for, by garment type and brand stage:
First sample, indie brand, single style: Illustrator + Google Sheets. Hand-finished. No PLM. Output as PDF + .ai.
Repeat client, season 2+, 6–12 styles: Illustrator + Sheets + a shared Notion or Google Drive folder for revisions. Still no PLM.
Active brand, 20+ styles per season: Illustrator + Techpacker (for version control) + Sheets for BOM. Factory still gets PDF + .ai.
Activewear or technical knits with multiple fit rounds: add CLO3D for the fit-simulation step. Worth the 50% extra time for 30% fewer sample rounds.
Knitwear with complex stitch structure: Illustrator + Stitch Painter (Cochenille) + Sheets. Stitch Painter is a niche tool but it's the standard for knit specs.
The tool is not the bottleneck.
The bottleneck is: do you know the standard 11 points of measure for a top? Do you know what 8 SPI versus 12 SPI looks like on jersey versus woven? Do you know that fusing the inside of a collar versus interlining it changes the price by 4%? That's the actual craft. The software just records it.
Most articles about "best tech pack software 2026" rank tools by feature count, which is the wrong way to rank them. The right way is: who's going to use it, what factory speaks back to it, and what happens when you outgrow it.
If you're spec'ing your first 1–10 styles: Illustrator (£20/month) plus Google Sheets (free). Total cost: £20/month. Learning curve: 1–2 weekends.
If you'd rather not learn the software: hire a service. We start at £349 per style. Or download our free 14-page template and try the structure yourself first.
If you're at 30+ styles per season: add Techpacker or Backbone PLM. Don't add it before that threshold; it's overhead you don't need.
If you're making technical performance gear or running into fit-round costs: CLO3D is genuinely worth it. Block out 3–6 months to learn it.
If you're being pitched on an "all-in-one tech pack platform" by a startup with 200 customers: wait six months. Half of them won't exist next year and you'll be migrating files. Stick to the industry standard until the new tool has shipped a million styles.
Is Canva good for tech packs? No. Canva is a design tool, not a vector tool. Factories will not accept Canva files. Use Illustrator.
Can I use Figma instead of Illustrator? Some boutique studios do, and Figma exports to PDF cleanly, but most factories want .ai. If you use Figma, plan to also export to Illustrator for delivery.
What about AI tools — can ChatGPT or Claude write my tech pack? Not yet, and the gap is bigger than people realize. AI is useful for the prose parts of a tech pack (the construction notes, the labelling spec text) but it can't produce the technical flat sketch or the graded POM table that actually drives the factory. Use AI to draft the text, not to replace the spec.
Is Backbone PLM better than Techpacker? Different tools for different scales. Techpacker is friendlier for under 50 styles. Backbone is stronger for 100+ styles with multiple users. Both are valid; pick based on team size, not features.
What does an actual brand use? If you want to see real-world examples, we publish anonymised client tech packs — every one of them is Illustrator-based with linked Sheets, and 0% of them were built in a "tech pack platform."
The software conversation is a distraction. The real question is: do you have the technical knowledge to spec a garment correctly, or do you not?
If you do: use the cheapest tools that get the job done. That's Illustrator + Sheets. Total cost £20/month.
If you don't: no amount of software will fix that. Hire a service or learn the craft first. The cheapest mistake is paying for software you can't use; the second-cheapest is paying for a tool that produces beautiful PDFs the factory can't manufacture from.
We're a service. We use Illustrator + Sheets daily, the same way we did five years ago, on the same files our factories trust. If you'd rather skip the learning curve, send us a brief — we'll send back a finished tech pack in 7 days.
— Hasebul, Fabrickly