Dropshipping is a booming way of starting an online store. You don't have to stress about inventory, product delivery, and post-purchase experience – select a business niche and dropshipping supplier to get started.
According to Ecommerce-Platforms, 27% of online retailers choose dropshipping suppliers over the traditional method, which entails keeping track of inventory.
For a sustainable business, you must select the best dropshipping supplier based on its features, pros, and cons to find the one best for you.
Here is how you can do this.
What are the Benefits of Using Dropshipping Suppliers?
Starting an online store requires huge investments and a strategy in hand for inventory management, warehousing, and logistics. This makes it a high-barrier way of starting a business online.
With dropshipping, you can save yourself from all these hassles by partnering with a third-party supplier. You need to market products and receive orders, then send the order details to the supplier who will fulfill the order on your behalf.
You get your cut for bringing in the buyer, and the supplier also gets to sell the products.
Because of this win-win strategy, 27% of online retailers are now dropshipping. With that in mind, more online stores are looking for dropshipping suppliers compared to the traditional B2C or D2C method, which costs a lot.
So here are some enormous benefits of using dropshipping suppliers.
Costs For Starting An Online Business Are Lower
Businesses based on the dropshipping strategy are free from hassles of inventory management, inventory storage warehouse, or hiring staff for organizing inventory. Unlike the conventional retail store, it saves them from a lot of investment.
Moreover, you can test different products to see how well they perform in the market. You don't have to buy a product in bulk. Instead, your supplier will handle the order delivery.
You can start dropshipping with much less investment. A hassle-free convenient way of making money online would help you drop off your fears and figure out what's working for you.
Lower Inventory Management
As you don't own the inventory, you won't need a warehouse, so you don't have to be concerned about the physical warehousing. The supplier manages the warehouse structure, storage of inventory, inventory time tracking, and shipping of product.
It creates a huge opportunity to sell multiple product variations and categories, as long as they work for you to earn maximum profits.
Flexibility
Dropshipping is an online business model with many flexible options and opportunities. With dropshipping, you can
In short, you are free to make according to your potential.
What to Look for in Dropshipping Suppliers?
Here are the key factors to look at while selecting a dropshipping supplier.
Product Quality
Product is the biggest deliverable in the online selling business. Thus, checking the product quality is the biggest factor to look for. Sometimes, you will find a dropshipping supplier with great quality product images completely different from what they deliver.
Ensuring a great quality product will bring in
Pre-order Fees
The Pre-order fee is a small fraction of the total price dropshipping suppliers charge every time you place an order. They charge the remaining amount later when they successfully deliver a product.
Though it is supposed to be just a SMALL FRACTION of the total amount, many suppliers charge a high fee. You don't have to go for a supplier charging a high fee just because of any other convincing reason.
Instead, do your calculations.
Calculate how much profit you would make after paying the pre-order fees without compromising on any other important quality parameter or feature. If you can make a good profit, go for it. Otherwise, there are several other options to consider.
Shipping Time
Shipping takes days or weeks to deliver the product from the supplier to your customer. Shipping time and how your suppliers ship the product to your customers significantly affect customer satisfaction.
Moreover, dropshipping is a competitive business. If your supplier takes too long to deliver a product, you will lose your customer in no time.
Thus, to gain a competitive edge, it is best to test orders and then partner with a dropshipping supplier who offers quick shipping with a quality experience.
Up-to-date with Recent Advancements
Dropshipping is a part of the online world subject to advancements and new changes. In this competitive age, if your supplier isn't using
Then you must consider it a negative sign.
The suppliers' website should contain all necessary information and access to advanced data management tools. These are basic requirements.
Exemplary Customer Support
Dropshipping seems real quick to set up and easy. But even if it is, when you start for the first time, you would have a lot of questions to ask from your dropshipping suppliers.
For this, you must consider the quality of support your supplier provides. No one is a perfect and one-stop solution, but their willingness to hear out your problems and resolve your issues at their earliest or on time is what you need to succeed.
8 Best Dropshipping Suppliers for Newbie Shopify Merchants
AliDropship
AliDropship is a feature of AliExpress - the largest and world-famous online marketplace with millions of cheap products. AliDropship is an advanced automation WordPress Plugin designed for dropshipping experts and beginners.
If you are new to dropshipping, you can subscribe to a premium plan of AliDropship which comes with features like.
You won't have to worry about the technicalities of the business setup. Instead, focus on branding, marketing, and getting new customers.
If you can handle this much on your own, you can opt for a cheaper plan and set up your dropshipping store on your own. It is seamless and easy with the AliDropship plugin.
The biggest advantage of using AliDropship is its complete automation feature. It has several add-ons to help you with social media marketing campaigns and other promotional aspects to grow your business.
Moreover, the shipping facility of AliDropship is faster, cheaper, and better than AliExpress and Amazon dropshipping. Depending on the country you are selling products in, you can select the seller with a nearby warehouse for fast, convenient, and easy shipping at an affordable cost.
Pros
Cons
But the features and pros are still worth a shot.
Visit AliDropship to get started.
CJDropshipping
CJDropshipping is another china-based wholesale dropshipper list enabling retailers to scale their dropshipping business without spending a lot.
It is free to start and set up your dropshipping business with CJDropshipping. There is no requirement for the minimum order, no minimum fee, no storage fee, and no monthly fee.
There are around 400,000 products listed on CJDropshipping under various categories. You can purchase products in unit quantities at wholesale price without purchasing a huge stock.
CJDropshipping is designed for dropshippers, and it comes with captivating features like product sourcing, product listing, branding, customized packaging, and shipping services.
There are around 29 warehouses of CJDropshipping across the world. It also supports several shipping options, including DHL Official, CJPacket, and USPS. If you select a seller with a warehouse nearby in your target selling country, the shipping time and cost would be less.
You can import products from CJDropshipping to Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, eBay, Shopistation, Lazada, Shopee, or any other dropshipping website or platform you use.
Pros
Cons
Spocket
Spocket is a perfect dropship marketplace for people who want to start dropshipping original US and EU products easily. It is a relatively new marketplace compared to amazon and AliExpress but entails a wide variety of products in each category.
On Spocket, 80% of suppliers are based in the US and EU. Sprocket can help you deliver the best quality experience with minimal effort if you want to target these two big bucks.
It offers great features, including automated inventory syncing, branded invoicing, and order processing. You can also choose the most convenient payment method from multiple payment options that include Shopify Payments, PayPal, or any other third-party gateway.
Many of the Spocket suppliers offer worldwide shipping. Spocket suppliers use multiple carrier options, including DHL, USPS, ePacket, and FedEx. Some suppliers use local carrier services.
However, to avoid a hassle in the shipping process, you can make sure by searching the shipping location. This way, you can offer the fastest shipping.
You can also order samples of thousands of products you want to sell your customers. It will make it easy to check the product's quality and better know what you are selling.
Pros
Cons
Honest Fulphilment
Honest Fulphilment is a leading China-based eCommerce product sourcing and fulfillment solution. For dropshippers, Honest Fulphilment is a one-stop advanced solution with features including automated customer order processing, branded packaging, and product delivery.
Though there is a huge list of products currently available on Honest Fulphilment, if you want to source a specific product, you need to provide some information, and they will take care of it.
Though they are based in China, Honest Fulphilment has multiple warehouses worldwide and supports worldwide order fulfillment. With real-time tracking, you can check the progress of your orders at any moment.
Setting up your Honest Fulphilment dropshipping business is easy. You can integrate it with other eCommerce platforms, including Shopify and WordPress stores.
Pros
Cons
WIIO
If you are looking for cheap yet high-quality products to start dropshipping, Wiio is the perfect option to consider. They have three warehouses. One in the United States and two in China, but you won't be charged any fee for warehousing.
With Wiio, you can get a wide variety of trending and hot products sourced from trustworthy suppliers and sell them worldwide. There is no minimum order requirement. So, even if you have one order, Wiio will fulfill it.
Wiio supports multiple payment and shipping options that are accepted and accessible worldwide. Wiio has an expert customer support team for any issue or question to help you get through any difficulty.
Pros
Cons
Dropship.me
Dropship.me is a famous WordPress plugin for dropshipping with 50,000+ products to dropship around the globe. The plugin is powered by AliDropship, which helps you eliminate the guesswork of finding a profitable product.
It automates searching, and with one click import, you can start selling products without wasting your time on editing. You can focus more on marketing and a better shopping experience.
You can sell and ship products around the globe. However, the shipping cost and timeframe would vary depending on suppliers. It is best to research it before proceeding.
The available shipping options are AliExpress standard shipping and ePacket offered by many sellers of AliExpress. You can also provide free shipping on orders of specified cost and add it to your margin.
Pros
Cons
Drophippo
Drophippo is a famous free automated dropshipping app. It offers a complete dropshipping solution from outsourcing and fulfillment to automated order tracking updates, billing, and in-app checkouts.
Your orders are automatically synced, and you can check the details in your dashboard. Moreover, you can reach out to their multi-lingual expert support for any questions at any step.
Drophippo uses priority shipping methods to ensure the speedy delivery of products to your customers. Though the efficiency of this shipping method has been improving, it takes 6-10 days to ship products to Europe and five days for the USA.
Pros
Eprolo
Eprolo is a free dropshipping platform that offers full-fledged solutions, including product sourcing, branding, order fulfillment, and inventory management. It also offers a print-on-demand feature to let you dropship customized products.
Though this is comparatively a new platform to AliExpress, it has 300,000 low-cost niche products. The platform is completely automated. You can import products and process orders in a few clicks.
Eprolo has its warehouses in the United States and China. All products will be shipped from there. Like any dropshipping supplier, Eprolo also offers integration with Shopify, WooCommerce, eBay, and AliExpress to help you make profits.
Pros
Cons
Over to You…
Dropshipping is a convenient and hassle-free way to start your online store. You can sell a wide range of products under different categories without purchasing them in bulk and worrying about storage.
AliDropship is a great option to consider if you want to sell products worldwide. However, if you want to target the US and EU markets, Spocket would be the best.
There are other options, as discussed above, but each of them comes with a set of advantages with a few disadvantages – nothing can be ideal. One that suits your targets best would help you make profits.
If you want to take your game one step further, try Rush.app for your dropshipping store. It lets you create a custom order tracking page where you can block or restrict any country you don't want to sell to.