Well, I can tell you that I had a bad experience using dowels. Lots of people use them without any problems! Dowels displace the cake - the cake has to go someplace and it can push out the cake. That happened to me, so I switched to bubble tea straws. The cake goes inside the straws and holds the cake board up nicely, without displacing the cake. Whenever I stack something straight up, I use bubble tea straws with the cakes sitting on foam core instead of card board. Card board tends to absorb moisture. If I am doing a tiered cake I use the SPS. I hope that helps!!!