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Hobbyist workflows: getting the most from SimplyPrint with one or a few printers

If you run one printer, or a small handful, SimplyPrint can feel like it has more features than you'll ever touch. That's fine. You're not meant to use all of it. The question that shapes everything is simpler: why do you want SimplyPrint in the first place? Your answer decides which features matter to you and which you can happily ignore.


This article walks through the most common hobbyist reasons for using SimplyPrint, the workflow each one unlocks, and how a small setup tends to grow over a few months. It's about the shape of your workflow, not the click-by-click steps - those live in the deeper how-to articles we link as we go.


If you're brand new and haven't connected anything yet, start with getting started with SimplyPrint and common use cases and come back here once your printer is online.


Table of contents


Start with why you're here

Most hobbyists land on SimplyPrint for one of three reasons: they want to watch and control a print from somewhere other than the machine, they want the extras a basic printer app doesn't have (a filament manager, a browser slicer, AI failure detection), or they only want one tool - just the slicer, or just filament tracking. Each of those leads to a slightly different workflow.


When you first sign up, SimplyPrint asks what you want to use it for. The options are "manage my 3D printers" (the default and recommended choice), "slice 3D files online" or "track filament inventory". Pick a single-tool option and the panel tailors itself to that tool - the sidebar, the empty-state screens and the getting-started tasks - and tucks the rest away. You can change it any time in account settings, and nothing is removed permanently, so there's no wrong answer here.


It's worth being honest with yourself about the answer, because it changes how much of the platform you'll set up. Someone who just wants to slice on the sofa has a very different first hour than someone wiring up remote monitoring for two printers in the garage.


Printer detail page showing an active print with progress, controls and order info


One place for a mixed fleet

Here's the situation where remote control pays off the most: you own more than one brand of printer. Say you've got an Anycubic and an Elegoo. Each comes with its own app, its own login, its own way of showing you a camera feed. Checking on both prints means juggling two apps, and neither one knows the other exists.


SimplyPrint puts every printer, whatever the brand, in one panel and one mobile app - with one set of cameras, controls and notifications. That single place is the value, even when each printer also has a perfectly good native app of its own. You glance at one screen and see everything.


Live webcam feed from a printer in the control panel


The same goes for your phone. The mobile app shows live cameras, lets you pause or cancel, and gives you push notifications from every printer your account can reach, across brands, in one feed. If you're standing in line at the store and want to check the print at home, you don't care which brand made the machine - you just want to see it.


Mobile app print history showing recent jobs across the fleet with status badges


Connecting a printer to SimplyPrint usually means running the SimplyPrint Client - a small bridge app - on an always-on computer on the same network (Windows, macOS, Linux, Docker or a Raspberry Pi). It can't run on a phone or tablet, and that host device has to stay on for remote control and monitoring. A print already in progress keeps going locally even if the bridge or your internet drops; you just lose the live view until it's back. This host requirement is one reason some people start without connecting a printer at all - and that's completely fine. See connect your printers with the SimplyPrint Client for the how-to.


If running a mixed fleet is your main reason for being here, your workflow is mostly: line up the cameras, set up push notifications to your phone so you're told when a print finishes or fails, and otherwise let the printers do their thing.


What SimplyPrint adds on top of a native app

Beyond putting your printers in one place, SimplyPrint adds things most native printer apps don't have:

  • a filament inventory manager, so you can track what spools you own and how much is left
  • a cloud slicer you can run from a browser, tablet or phone, with no software to install
  • AI failure detection that watches the camera feed for you
  • a shared print queue once you grow past one or two machines (the queue, 1-Click Print and AutoPrint all start on the Pro plan)


Think of these as extras layered on top of what your printer's own app does, not as a head-to-head "we beat your app" claim. You add the ones that solve a problem you actually have, and skip the rest. A hobbyist with one printer might use the camera and the slicer and nothing else for months, then add filament tracking the day they get tired of guessing whether a spool will finish a print.


Catching a failed print before it wastes a roll

The extra most hobbyists fall in love with is AI failure detection. SimplyPrint's AI watches the printer's live camera feed in the cloud and can spot the three most common ways a print goes wrong: spaghetti, warping and blobbing. Because it works on the camera feed rather than the printer itself, it runs on any printer with a camera, whatever the brand - you just need a camera connected through SimplyPrint.


AI failure detection confidence gauge showing detected classes: spaghetti, warping and blobbing


For the AI to do its best work it needs a clear, well-lit view of the bed. If detection feels unreliable, the camera angle or lighting is usually the cause - there's a short guide on optimal camera setup and lighting for AI failure detection.


Getting the alerts is available on every plan. It draws on a monthly AI quota - the feature article describes 12 free AI-detection hours a month shared across your printers, with a paid AI license add-on after that. The hands-off part, where SimplyPrint automatically pauses or cancels a failing print without you lifting a finger, is a Basic-plan-and-up capability. The feature is still in beta and improving, so treat it as a strong safety net rather than a guarantee. Full detail is in the SimplyPrint AI failure detection feature.


The practical version of this for a hobbyist: you start a print, leave the house, and an hour later your phone buzzes because the print turned into spaghetti. You open the app, look at the camera to confirm, and cancel it from wherever you are - instead of coming home to a melted bird's nest and a wasted half-roll. Watching a print from your phone covers the live-camera-and-cancel side, and if a print does come out badly, the print troubleshooting wizard helps you work out why.


Browser notification telling you a print has finished


You can use just a slice of it

You don't have to adopt the whole platform. Two of SimplyPrint's tools work perfectly well on their own, and plenty of people use only one of them.


The first is the cloud slicer. You can slice in a browser, on a tablet, on a Chromebook or in the app, with no printer connected and without even running the SimplyPrint Client - slicing happens on SimplyPrint's servers, not on a local bridge. Slice a file, download it, and get it onto your printer however you like. It's available on the Free plan with a limited monthly slice count (currently 15 a month), and unlimited on Basic and up or on the dedicated Cloud Slicer plan. If that's all you want, set your usage intent to "slice 3D files online" and the panel becomes a slicer-first tool. The whole slicer-only workflow has its own article: the slicer-only workflow.


iOS app slicer with a model on the build plate, slicing from a phone


The second is filament tracking on its own. If you just want to know what spools you own, how much is left on each, and when one's about to run out, you can use the filament manager without leaning on anything else. That has its own decision guide too: filament tracking workflows.


Not sure which way to actually start a print once a file is sliced? There are a few ways - manual start, 1-Click, the queue, AutoPrint - and which one fits depends on how many printers you run and how hands-off you want to be. Ways to start a print in SimplyPrint compares them.


How a hobbyist workflow grows

Almost nobody sets up everything at once, and you shouldn't either. A typical path over a few months looks like this. You start by connecting a printer and watching it from your phone, because remote monitoring is the thing you wanted on day one. A week or two in, you start using the cloud slicer because slicing on the couch beats sitting at the printer. Then a failed overnight print convinces you to turn on AI failure detection and notifications. Eventually you buy a second printer, maybe a different brand, and suddenly the one-panel-for-everything value clicks into place.


That's the whole idea: SimplyPrint adapts to where you are now, and it's still there when you're ready for more. You don't need a plan for the end state - just know why you're here today and turn on the parts that serve that. For the bigger picture of how the personas and workflows fit together, see the workflows overview: SimplyPrint workflows: set it up for the way you work.



Updated on: 25/06/2026

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