When you decide to launch your dropshipping store, you will have many product fulfillment options to pick from. Two of the most popular ones that expert dropshippers choose are AliDropship vs Oberlo.
Dropshipping has now made it easy to launch an e-commerce store with just a hundred dollars and generate big returns.
AliDropship and Oberlo are both great solutions that offer features that meet the typical needs of e-commerce store owners and dropshippers.
And if you’re on a low budget and want to get the best out of it, you will probably want to know the most cost-efficient solutions to create your online store.
Many will go for Shopify while others prefer WordPress…
Shopify is no cheaper than WordPress no matter what you hear out there and Shopify has advantages that AliDropship does not have in WordPress and vice versa.
Their common drawback is that they only work on their respective platform. This means that Oberlo cannot be swapped with AliDropship.
Oberlo only works on Shopify where AliDropship is created for WooCommerce and WordPress. In other words that the dropshipping solution you choose to go with, will certainly determine the platform you will be using.
What is AliDropship?
AliDropship is an all-in-one service to set up your e-commerce store on WordPress. It’s the best solution for WordPress because it has everything and gets updated regularly. It comes in the form of two plugins.
The first one is AliDropship Plugin which lets you launch your e-commerce store directly on WordPress without using WooCommerce. It offers a full features package that makes it easy to use and maintain.
In specific, it allows you to fully automate your dropshipping business straight from the WordPress interface.
In addition to the above, the AliDropship Plugin has a version that works with WooCommerce. This is the second plugin and is called AliDropship Woo.
AliDroship Woo is a plugin that synchronizes with the WooCommerce interface and provides a user-friendly experience that makes it easy to handle orders, stock, and fulfillment.
If you were to use only WooCommerce (without the plugin) it would be almost impossible to maintain your dropshipping business due to the difficulty and effort needed to manually fulfill orders…
What is Oberlo?
Similar to AliDropship, Oberlo is a very popular app that is used in the Shopify e-commerce platform.
The Oberlo app lets you easily import dropshipping products from AliExpress to your Shopify store by semi-automating the orders' fulfillment and payment.
When dropshipping using Shopify, it’s a necessary app that will connect your store orders with the Aliexpress orders.
It also shows a selection of products that may be winners and helps you find great items to sell online – saving you the time of researching across multiple websites.
Oberlo was one of the first to provide this service but since dropshipping became popular, other similar applications such as Dropified provide similar services.
Remember, Oberlo works only on Shopify, so in order to use it, your website needs to be hosted on Shopify.
Some statistics about eCommerce…
We know that e-commerce has been steadily developing for many years and its importance became more apparent with the break out of the pandemic!
E-commerce websites now take about 45.4% of all websites, which translates to an increase in purchases and sales.
The two main players in the market are, as you would expect, WooCommerce and Shopify.
About WooCommerce
When WordPress came out it was mainly a blogging platform for websites of informative nature – this however changes when interest in online commerce increased.
That’s when WooCommerce was introduced. It's a simple free extension to WordPress that lets you sell anything with it.
This plugin is not stand-alone, by working with WordPress, it offers advantages, but also has drawbacks, especially for dropshippers…
That’s why a solution like AliDropship exists.
What about Shopify?
Along with WooCommerce, other e-commerce platforms have been created by competitors. Even though there are quite a few out there, Shopify quickly became the most popular because it followed the growing trend of dropshipping.
This is the main reason that Shopify became widely known despite the fact that is more widely used to set up an online store for companies that don't necessarily follow the dropshipping.
Shopify is not free (it does however have a 14-day trial) but it offers all the important aspects for your store, from hosting to data analysis.
This does not mean you have full control over your website…
To give you a better picture, here’s a small graphic from 2018 summarizing the performance of the main players:
Similarities between AliDropship and Oberlo
Product sourcing
Both Oberlo and AliDropship allow you to search for products directly on AliExpress and quickly import them into your store with just one click, including browser extensions.
Before publishing the imported products, you will be able to amend the descriptions, names and edit the images if needed.
Inventory management
When it comes to dropshipping, the good news is that there is no stock to look after, but inventory management is essential.
These two solutions offer easy inventory management and automate product availability when the products are not available anymore
Sales management
Both platforms have a complete dashboard that lets how your shop is performing in real-time, the sales made, and the relevant profit in detail.
You can the items your customers order as well the shipping and delivery date. You can also see the number of visits and other relevant data.
Price rules
You can import multiple products at once so automating pricing rules will certainly come in handy.
You can easily set up rules when importing, which could be x3 on all prices of imported products from AliExpress.
Even though the option is available to use, entering prices manually may be a better reflection of the values you want.
Automatic execution of orders
Being able to place multiple orders at once will save you lots of time. And of course, this is your main goal, to save time.
You will be able to click on a single button and then manually confirm the information on Aliexpress. The whole fulfillment process will be done without your input and the customer will receive his order without you having to do anything further.
This exists in both Oberlo and AliDropship but also in other Oberlo alternatives.
ePacket shipping filter
Finally, the two applications let you apply filters during product sourcing, specifically by shipping method.
There are many AliExpress suppliers that take forever to deliver a product due to the delivery methods they have available in China.
It has to be noted though that there are also applications for working with European suppliers, one of which is Spocket.
Fortunately, Oberlo and AliDropship can easily help you find products that offer ePacket or Ali Standard Shipping shipping to get the best delivery times from China.
Both solutions are great, but as you would expect they have a few differences, like the type of e-merchants.
Differences between AliDropship and Oberlo
Store personalization
It's important to have a store that surpasses its competitors. Oberlo and AliDropship offer themes for dropshipping.
In specific, WooCommerce has thousands of free themes you can choose from. They are actually WordPress themes created for the main purpose of selling – at the same time, you can further customize them to meet your needs.
Oberlo works with all Shopify themes which can also be customized with a few clicks and designed for dropshipping.
If you’re looking for the best Shopify dropshipping themes, I suggest you take a look at TemplateMonster and EnvatoMarket because they both have affordable prices and the themes have exceptional designs.
Alternatively, if you are on a very low budget there are multiple free Shopify themes you can try before moving on to a paid one.
If not sure where to start, you can check the reviews of the themes that I personally use for an e-commerce store, Wokiee, and Debutify.
Prices
AliDropship has the option to import unlimited products from AliExpress. Once purchased the plugin, you can import and sell any product without any limits.
Oberlo has a limited number of products you can sell per month. The basic plan lets you import 500 products – this is more than enough for a given month – but to order up to 50 products per month.
AliDropship and Oberlo premium plans let you order 10,000 and 30,000 products respectively.
The key difference here is that AliDropship is way cheaper in the long term since it’s a one-off purchase whereas Oberlo has a monthly subscription.
If we include the Shopify subscription which costs a minimum of $29 per month ($348 per year) and other expenses that may come along the way, this adds up quite a lot.
AliDropship, however, doesn't have a free trial or monthly subscription. You only have to make a one-time payment of $89.
This one-off payment gives you access to all features, updates, and lifetime support with AliDropship. There are no other costs, which sounds ideal!
Cashback Aliexpress
Cashback allows you to recover some percentages from your online purchases and in this case, Aliexpress.
AliDropship lets your earn the AliExpress cashback via their dedicated program. Normally, to get cashback on AliExpress, you would need to install a plugin like DSers Pro.
AliDropship however has this feature without having to install additional plugins.
What this means is that any order you place on AliExpress for a customer will earn you a small additional commission of up to 12% – depending on the product.
Marketing activities
The AliDropship plugin was created to serve both experienced as well as beginners who are trying dropshipping for the first time.
They took their add-ons to the next level by offering the bellow marketing features:
- Discount coupons – this lets you improve the number of your sales and promotions by offering discount coupons on your products.
- Abandoned cart emails – you can easily send emails to retrieve customers that abandoned their shopping carts during checkout and never completed their order.
- Product reviews – allow existing customers to review the products you offer so you can entice future visitors to make a purchase on your store.
These of course are only three out of many features available….
In order to achieve the same on Shopify, you would need to install plugins like Recart or specific themes like Debutify which may not always be free.
With AliDropship however you have the same power under one single solution.
The disadvantages
Set up
The main issue that WordPress and AliDropship have when it comes to building a dropshipping store is that you need to be a bit a tech-savvy person.
If you put some effort and time, it will seem a very straightforward process but I know that may be not the case for everyone.
Shopify on the other hand is an extremely simple and easy platform to use to create an e-commerce store – and this is why it's widely preferred by beginners.
Safety and security
Shopify seems to be more secure than WordPress when it comes to an eCommerce store. The reason is that Shopify has full control over the security of your shop, which increases its protection against vulnerabilities.
With AliDropship, you may have to wait for an update or a patch if a security issue is discovered, which can take some time (usually days).
But strictly speaking from stats and personal experience, both platforms are extremely secure.
Control
Shopify controls all the stores which means that your store could only crash or worse if something happened to Shopify as a platform – your store and many others would face the same issue at the same time.
This problem has happened to me 3 to 4 times in the past five years that I've been using Shopify.
In addition, if you are not careful about what you are trying to sell (e.g. illegal stuff), Shopify may close your store as it doesn't comply with their terms and conditions.
With a WordPress store, this problem is not apparent.
If you exclude the hosting element which is done via a hosting provider like Bluehost or Namecheap, you keep total control of your store.
In other words, if your host closes your site (e.g domain), you can easily restart it with another hosting provider without having to set up everything again.
AliDropship vs Oberlo: Which solution to choose?
Choosing between AliDropship and Oberlo depends on factors that are important to you.
I recommend Shopify to beginners because it’s very easy to use and you can quickly create a store and start selling.
If you are already familiar with the e-commerce world and want total control over your website, AliDropship is an excellent solution.
It will certainly cost you more at first, but in the long run, you’re a winner. And WordPress is great if you want to do SEO and get organic sales.
What did you think of this AliDropship vs Oberlo review? Let me know by leaving your comments below.
