On many occasions, dropshipping is often associated with easy money, passive income, zero expenses, and other superlatives, but, dropshipping is not the easiest way to make money, despite all the false claims from YouTubers promising you that success is guaranteed if you buy a course.
Just like anything, to achieve success in dropshipping, you need to plan how to succeed. Planning involves researching relevant tools and requirements necessary for Dropshipping, which is what you’re doing right now.
I will be reviewing AliDropship, a WordPress plugin that you can use to customize your store for selling products on Aliexpress. Assuming you know that you need a Dropshipping website and you have selected your niche, let’s get right into the review.
What is AliDropship Plugin?
AliDropship is a plugin built for WordPress for E-commerce websites to earn money through Dropshipping business. One great feature of the Dropshipping business is that you don’t need to worry about things like inventory and shipping. You can just focus on promoting your products online and driving customers to them, and AliDropship will take care of the rest.
So what this means to you is you have the opportunity to grow your Dropshipping business through promotions and advertising and need not worry about codes or incur the extra cost of paying web developers. It is like an all-in-one ready-made drop-shipping business; either you can host your site with it or use the plugin for your WordPress site with it.
However, the AliDropship plugin comes in two variants. The standard plugin and the WooCommerce plugin. If you are a beginner, I encourage you to use and download the standard plugin, which is easier to customize.
Is AliDropship Legit?
Yes, it does what it says. It is easy to install and customize; with One-click, you will import top-selling Aliexpress products directly to your WordPress site.
You set your profit margin, manage, and market with the plugin’s automated solutions. It ranked among e-commerce tools at the 8th number and got an excellent rating among consumers as well.
Is AliDropship Part of Alibaba?
The AliDropship software is developed by Sunshine Digital Marketing LLC and is not a subsidiary or product of the Alibaba group. It works directly with them, but Alibaba has no control over its product and decisions. AliDropship is an independent service.
Advantages of AliDropship
First of all, why should you dropship from Aliexpress? Well, it allows you to sell more than 100M products from over 100K+ different suppliers, from every possible category! Now, here is the list of excellent benefits you can get from AliDropship, that will help you with that:
- Easily import unlimited AliExpress products to your store, including product reviews.
- Allows Dropshipping integration in the WooCommerce store.
- Built-in marketing features to send an email and create coupons.
- Set custom rules to automate pricing.
- From your dashboard, you can track products and access analytics
- Free support.
- Automated plugin updates.
Disadvantages of AliDropship
There are a few, that we still must talk about. We don’t think that any of those are critical.
- To use the Ali-Dropship plugin, you will need a basic understanding of WordPress.
- There are not many themes available.
- There is not much room for design flexibility.
- Not all services are free.
- To use the one-click import feature, you have to be logged in from Google Chrome.
Dropship, is it Easy?
Okay, we already debunked a popular Dropshipping myth earlier, which is with Dropshipping, all you need to do is set up, boom, and make money. With the AliDropship plugin, the myth is still a myth. It would be best to get customers to purchase things from the suppliers and improve your online marketing skills.
In other words, you need to take it seriously as you would do a full-time job, and approach it as with a real business that you have. No easy money here, but, many have succeeded to start profitable dropshipping operations and with enough hard work and persistence, you could reach this point as well.
How to Start AliDropship?
Starting with AliDropship is a pretty easy and straightforward process. Let’s go over the main steps of it.
- Visit alidropship.com and buy the AliDropship plugin.
- Install the AliDropship plugin on your WordPress site.
- Ensure your website theme is a WordPress built-in theme as the plugin is only compatible with this.
- Go to the AliDropship settings and create your price formula, and this will be applied to all your products automatically. You can set it to x2, x3, or x4 the cost price, or you can leave it on the recommended setting.
- Set your payment gateways.
- Using the license key you received in your mail after purchasing the plugin activates your dashboard license.
- To import products to your store, install the AliDropship Chrome extension.
- Use the plugin to find products manually or use Dropship.me plugin, to get all the bestselling products from AliExpress.
- Import the products to your store; you can edit the product descriptions and then publish them to the store.
Alidropship Review
AliDropship is a plugin for WordPress that enables users to integrate Dropshipping in their stores. The fact that the AliDropship product comes as a plugin, allows the use it to be easy and does not require any coding experience to set up on any WordPress site. This means you don’t need to employ a web developer’s services, just click and set things up for yourself, and you are good to go.
AliDropship Automations
AliDropship can automate a whole lot of functionality for you according to your taste. Some of the things automated include; order completion, product pricing, product searching, and importation.
As a store owner, you only have to focus on driving customers to your store to make purchases and not worry about product searching and pricing because AliDropship provides you with the best-selling products on AliExpress.
For instance, in the search bar and with the import products feature, by using the smart filter, you can get the very products you’re looking for, and if your customers require fast shipping, you can use ePacket shipping to search and get the products that can ship fast and free of cost.
Automate pricing by using the advanced mark-up feature to configure prices for all your goods.
The auto fulfillment feature confirms orders, and AliExpress takes care of crediting you when a customer buys the product.
AliDropship plugin also looks over the status of orders made on your store, and customers can track their order information.
AliDropship Customizations
The AliDropship plugin has a couple of compatible themes, and customization is pretty easy. Popular AliDropship compatible themes include; Dali, Da Vinci, and Michael Angelo. These themes have been designed specifically for this plugin and also these themes are simple or easy to redesign.
You have the option to edit your product info, and with the help of the Image Editor, it is easy to edit product images from AliExpress before you import them to your store.
There is no limit to the goods number you can add to your store, and it offers suppliers to choose from and also can choose an extensive variety of goods.
This gives you total control over the design of the user interface and experience of your web store.
AliDropship Marketing
What marketing advantages do AliDropship users have? All the basics of e-commerce marketing are sometimes missed out on by other workers of e-commerce integration software and other advanced marketing strategies.
Discount codes and coupons can be used to route promotions on the store, incentivize customers to make purchases, and already Search Engine optimized product titles. The plugin helps build an email list of new customers and customers who make the purchase.
We all know that not all customers will make a purchase when they visit a store for the first time. Customers will often add items to their carts to pay at a later time. Many times they forget to come back and check. AliDropship has a marketing feature that follows up with users that have abandoned their carts with reminders, and this feature is absolutely free.
Also, all the frontend data the Alidropship creates is SEO optimized, those will be liked and promoted by the Google search engine.
AliDropship Add-Ons
You see, one core sale driver is countdown timers. Using the Countdown Timer add-on, display flash sales and limited-time product offer to customers, the timer counting down will drive your customers to buy a product before the discount time runs out.
No doubt having your store or products listed on Google’s platform enhances your chances of meeting prospective customers. The Google Merchant add-on helps you get your store name and items on to google search results; with this, you will promote your business more efficiently.
In the Facebook shop, you get the most out of Facebook’s dynamic ads. Allowing you to create and add your shop to Facebook and Instagram. More Marketing if you ask me.
There are just so many add-ons (reasons) why you cannot go wrong with AliDropship.
AliDropship Management
From your dashboard, you can monitor everything. AliDropship performs product updates, traffic, sales, and other inventory-related tasks.
There’s also a prospect to receive up to a 12% discount when a purchased product is delivered, boosting your Dropshipping return. There are also many payment gateways you can set up, including Stripe, PayPal, and PayU.
AliDropship Dashboard
AliDropship’s intuitive user dashboard helps you make the right choices for your business as you monitor & control your sales, orders, traffic, and all-important online store activities. On the AliDropship dashboard, you can view the statistics from your store’s log, such as the number of orders received, your earnings, published products, as well as sales reports, and traffic. Generally, the dashboard keeps you in the loop with the general presentation of your e-commerce business.
Your orders are clearly displayed in the tab ‘orders’, and you can filter them by payment status, date, and fulfillment status. On the dashboard, you can export emails in bulk. This exports all e-mails from previous orders, and then you can use them for market strategy.
How Much Does it Cost to Get Started with AliDropship?
We will now consider all the things you’ll need to get started Dropshipping with AliDropship. First, you must have a WordPress website to use the plugin, and WordPress hosting costs around $12 to $30. It is better to go for good hosting plans to get decent bandwidth and SSL security, which boosts your site’s credibility. If you are just starting out and on a budget, you can use beginner plans, and as you begin to get significant traffic, you can go for better plans.
Next up, after getting the web hosting plan from a trusted company, you want to get a good WordPress theme, you should use the built-in themes for WordPress if you are using the standard AliDropship plugin.
Now, after setting things up on WordPress, you will buy and install the AliDropship plugin for just $89, and there is no free trial available. A demo will be displayed for you to show you what you will be paying for. The $89 is a lifetime fee, so you don’t have to worry about monthly subscriptions as its competitors do. The fee doesn’t include hosting and domain fees.
Another thing you might add to your budget if you have an extra $10 to $50 is a professional email address for your business. Your hosting web service usually offers it for a yearly fee.
Finally, you have set things up in your store, and it’s looking beautiful waiting for potential customers. Well, you have to drive them to your store, and that is where online marketing comes in – you will need to run ads for $50 or less every month.
Should I Use AliDropship or AliDropship Woo?
If you use WooCommerce, then you should go for AliDropship Woo Plugin. AliDropship Woo is better for you since that with it, you will be able to enable WooCommerce themes. On the flip side, you are advised to add a maximum of 500 products, whereas you are allowed a near unlimited 10,000 with the standard AliDropship plugin.
It would be a wise decision, in my opinion, to opt for the standard AliDropship plugin over the Woo version, especially if you don’t use WooCommerce. Using the standard AliDropship plugin does not require WooCommerce.
How Do I Install and Run AliDropship?
Requirements
- A WordPress site running PHP 7.1+ (you can confirm it with your hosting company or check it on the WordPress site hosting dashboard).
- AliDropship plugin. Go to alidropship.com and purchase the plugin. It is not visible from the WordPress plugin directory search.
Note: You need a license. And the license can only work for a single store. That’s why you need to purchase the plugin from the site mentioned above. You will receive the license directly to your mail on purchase completion.
Steps for Installation
- Install the AliDropship plugin on your store.
- Go to the settings page.
- You want to go to the pricing settings. Here you define your product pricing ranges before you start populating your store with products. It would be best if you did this, so you don’t sell the product for the original price from AliExpress. You can check competitor prices to find the right margin, so you don’t lose customers.
- To use the one-click setup feature, use Google Chrome, and install the free AliDropship extension as other browsers are not yet supported. Doing this allows you to import products with one click from AliExpress.
To import products, click import on the AliDropship banner, and the products will automatically be added WordPress Products section as drafts.
It is good practice to edit your own product descriptions; failing to do this may damage your SEO, so you should change things because many product descriptions are not written for optimum SEO generation.
AliDropship also allows you to edit the pictures of the product directly from the plugin before publishing. You might want to remove supply logos and the likes.
You don’t need to use Photoshop or any editing software; just edit it right from your website.
AliDropship and Payments
In the world of e-commerce, one thing you hear quite often is “payment gateway.” A payment gateway is simply a merchant service that processes credit card payments for your e-commerce store. Popular ones include PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Square.
With the standard AliDropship, there are over 20 options to choose from, PayPal and Stripe and the most popular ones here. You get a few more top payment gateways on AliDropship Woo, such as; Authorize.net, Square, and Amazon pay.
AliDripship Add-Ons
This software comes with many free add-ons and themes, which can be downloaded directly from AliDropship’s official website.
AliDropship add-ons are divided into five categories: Sales Boosters, Packages, Workflow Automation, Customer Trust Boosters, and Social Media Promoters.
Add-ons are easy to install; you just download them and import them to your website. Some of these add-ons are free while others are paid for. Some good add-ons to start with are the landing page add-on, which helps you convert your visitors into buyers, and the Beginners set all in one. It would be best if you took advantage of the free ones, too, such as the abandoned cart add-on we discussed earlier.
The AliDropship plugin is potent without add-ons, but they make it even better.
You Have the First AliDropship Sale!
Okay, you’ve done a lot of work, and you’ve gotten a paying customer. When someone orders a product from your store, it will be displayed in your dashboard. The next thing for you to do is to process this transaction with AliExpress.
If you are using Chrome and have downloaded the extension, you’ll easily place orders automatically. This saves you a whole lot of time. AliDropship will generate the entire customer’s information automatically, and you can use the bulk feature to process as many orders as you would like.
Then proceed to pay for the order(s). As soon as payment is confirmed, you will see the status update on your dashboard. Your customer will also get a notification confirming their order and tracking details of where the product is currently.
Now all you need to do is wait; AliExpress will be in charge from here on.
How Is The Free Support?
You get a lot of help as you use AliDropship. There is email support, live chat, and the AliDropship forum. You will encounter almost no problem that you will not find a solution listed in the forum. You can also post questions and wait for replies.
You can email the team or contact them with the live chat option, and you will get good responses to your questions. This is one WordPress plugin that offers so much information and support for its users.
You will find that there are over 400 conversations concerning themes and over 200 discussing the add-ons on the forums. Isn’t it great to have your questions answered by official members of the AliDropship team?
And if you are a video person like me, there are video tutorials for you, explaining how to get the best from the plugin.
AliDropship Custom Store Review
We know that to use the Ali Dropship plugin, you need to understand how to use WordPress. If you don’t, there is an opportunity to let the AliDropship experts build a custom store for you, based on AliDropship. Many people who do not fancy bog themselves with WordPress tech usually opt for this. If you decide to go for this, you will have to select from three packages. Just like with hosting, you get what you pay for.
Here is a breakdown of the AliDropship custom store:
- You first select a package based on what you need.
- After making up your mind on which package to get, you can place your order.
- A personal project manager will get in contact with you.
- The team creates/builds a store according to your package.
- And that is it; you can start selling products.
The packages range from $299 to $899 per annum, and I know you’re already asking if it includes hosting and advertisements; well, NO. You only get a perfect-looking WordPress site with the AliDropship plugin. So, it is of this worth? There is no single answer for that. If you know how to use WordPress, which is not too difficult, you don’t need it; else, it is worth it.
You are actually paying someone else to build a store for you. However, if you already use WordPress, why spend all that money that can be used for marketing on a developer? Just buy the plugin and install it on your store. This way, you have much control over how your store looks instead of a more generic one.
AliDropship vs. WooDropship
WooDropship is a software tool for WooCommerce store owners looking to integrate Dropshipping into their WooCommerce stores, and just like AliDropship, it agrees with dealers to import and trade goods from AliExpress. And also automates everything. The difference, however, comes with the pricing. While the AliDropship is a one-time payment that gives you both the standard and Woo plugins, the Woo Dropship plugin offers two subscription packages.
The plans include $20/month and a lifetime fee of $97. There is also a 7-day free trial, so you can get the feel of things, which AliDropship does not offer at this time. The Lifetime fee gives you access to all the features, but the monthly fee has some limitations. For instance, with the monthly plan, you get up to 5000 product variants, and 100 orders can be made. The Lifetime plan gives you unlimited access to both. It is convenient to import unlimited goods with AliDropship,
AliDropship is a better choice for me because it equips you with more marketing and advertisement tools. This is more important than anything in Dropshipping.
AliDropship vs. Aliplugin
Aliplugin is the affiliate marketing plugging for affiliates who take a fancy to earn money through the AliExpress associate program. It has no business with Dropshipping. The Ali plugin will import goods from AliExpress to your WordPress store. When a customer clicks on a product, they will then be taken to the product’s page on AliExpress. When a user buys a product after clicking a link from your site, AliExpress pays you a percentage.
AliExpress turnover margins are minor, but just like Dropshipping, this is another lucrative business that does not require huge capital to start up.
Though, with Ali Dropship, you determine how much you make by setting the prices yourself. Another advantage of Aliplugin is that it does not burden you with customer service because it is used for the affiliate program, but you have to sell a lot more to make more. For brand creators, the answer is quite apparent here, AliDropship proves to be a better option.
AliDropship Vs. Oberlo
Oberlo works exclusively on Shopify stores, and it allows you to search for products easily on Ali express and import them straight to your Shopify store. Oberlo takes care of your customer orders and enables you to have your orders shipped to them in a few clicks. Oberlo is really easy to understand and use, and it offers excellent support for its users.
Let’s talk pricing; Oberlo has two paid plans, the grad plan for $7.90, and the boss plan for $29.90 monthly. They also offer users a free trial of 30-days and a beginner plan that allows you to import 500 products to your store.
Key Features: Search Aliexpress for products and import, automates everything, track and Deliver items to customers, product customization, 24/7 customer support, inventory management.
Conclusion, AliDropship Plugin
My final and honest opinion on AliDropship is that it is a very worthy option for WordPress based e-commerce store owners who want to sell products from Aliexpress.
The main selling points of Alidropship is its pricing, and streamlined experience of importing and managing Aliexpress product in your store, together with a wide selection of add-ons you can install. They help you make the most of Dropshipping by offering sale boosters and marketing options that others seem to be lacking.
It helps you remove the stress of searching for goods on Ali-Express and importing them to your store, and it even shows you which items will probably sell and ship faster with one click, how amazing. The dashboard is just like WordPress and is also a plus as you don’t need to stress if you already know your way around WordPress. It gives you so much control over your store’s general look and helps to focus on what is more important: getting customers. A great timesaver that every drop-shipper must use.
FAQ
Question: Does AliDropship work with Alibaba?
Answer: Sunshine Digital Marketing LLC is the company behind AliDropship and does not work for the Alibaba group.
Question: What if I have a Shopify store?
Answer: if you have a Shopify store, you should consider Oberlo. AliDropship only works with WordPress and WooCommerce stores.
Question: Can I add my own products?
Answer: Yes, you can add your own products to the web store.
Note that items that are not on sale on AliExpress will not be synchronized with AliExpress API; hence will not be updated with stock and prices. This means you have to account for them manually and set their prices.
Question: Is It Worth Installing WooCommerce to Use AliDropship?
Answer: Not compulsory. AliDropship works with both WordPress and WooCommerce, so you don’t have to make the change; just use the standard plugin, but if you already have WooCommerce, use the Woo version.
Question: How many sites do my license support?
Answer: After purchasing the AliDropship Plugin, you get an email containing your personal license key that is valid for only one website/domain name. Sub-domains are considered separate domains.
However, if you would like to create another store and use the plugin, the license will be deactivated on the first store and activated on the new one for free.
Question: Standard Alidropship or Alidropship Woo?
Answer: The standard AliDropship doesn’t support WooCommerce and cannot use additional WooCommerce plugins, and it comes with free built-in themes developed by AliDropship to work with the plugin.
AliDropship Woo works with WooCommerce stores and can be used with standard WooCommerce themes. Use it for your existing WooCommerce store or to start building it.
Question: Which themes are compatible with AliDropship?
Answer: To use the standard Alidropship plugin, you must use one of the free themes designed for the plugin by AliDropship.
Alidropship Woo plugin is compatible with standard WooCommerce themes and other WooCommerce compatible themes. It is worth noting that the built-in themes are very good on the standard AliDropship.
Question: How many AliExpress suppliers can I work with?
Answer: AliDropship allows users to import any product from any supplier. There are no restrictions on the number of sellers you can add products from.
Question: How many AliExpress products can I import?
Answer: With the AliDropship standard plugin, you can add up to 10,000 products to your store.
AliDropship recommends adding not more than 400-500 products with the Woo version to your WooCommerce store.
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