WooDropship and AliDropship are competing products or technically plugins in the dropshipping business. Both have advantages and disadvantages. We're here to help set you straight on which product you should use to start your dropshipping business without having the setback of picking the wrong product for your needs.
We'll review and compare WooDropship and AliDropship to see which plugin is the best when setting up an AliExpress dropshipping business.
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So what will you end up using, WooDropship or AliDropship?
What is Dropshipping?
If you're not clear, dropshipping is the fulfillment portion of product selling. You find suppliers, list their products on your website, and try to sell to customers. Once a customer purchases that product, you buy it from the supplier. Then, the supplier will send it out to the customer. There may be some differences in exactly how your setup works, but this is a general idea.
You never physically have the product or store it in your warehouse. You don't buy the product until the customer has paid you. In short, you are a middleman between the seller and the buyer. So the core component of this business model is very cheap because you get the payment before purchasing the product you're selling.
You are in charge of marketing, getting customers to notice the product, and making them want to buy it. This could mean handling social media, SEO, buying advertisements, and finding prospective buyers.
It's a great way to make money without having to spend a lot of money on products that you may not be able to sell. However, you need strong marketing skills. Otherwise, nobody will visit your store, and you won't fulfill any customers' orders.
Where do WooDropship and AliDropship come in?
The core components you need to get initially started are:
- A website: should you build your own, which can take time, or have you decided to use WordPress to get up quickly? WordPress is a great option, and it has a lot of free plugins and themes to make you look professional with minimal technical knowledge.
Both WooDropship and AliDropship companies can step in at this stage and build the entire online store for you. They will provide a complete custom website for you with a dedicated theme. This service includes everything from the WordPress site, WooCommerce store plugin, and dropshipping plugin. This option makes it even easier to get started if you have a little extra money. If you choose to do this, you already have everything and can forget the following points.
However, if you have your site already set up or want more control, you can still install their dropshipping plugin yourself. In this case, you will need:
- An e-commerce plugin to run the actual store, and if you've picked WordPress, the e-commerce store plugin to use is WooCommerce.
- A dropshipping plugin connects your online e-commerce store to an actual supplier of products. AliExpress is a major Chinese marketplace with millions of suppliers, and multiple plugins link you to them, including WooDropship and AliDropship.
This guide doesn't cover e-commerce platforms you rent, such as Shopify (a SaaS or Software as a Service). Indeed, both WooDropship and AliDropship work only on WordPress/WooCommerce.
Head to Head Review of WooDropship and AliDropship
| WooDropship | AliDropship | |
|---|---|---|
| Search and Import Products | Yes | Yes |
| Built-In Product Editor | Yes | Yes |
| Built-In Image Editor | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic Order Fulfillment | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic Inventory Sync | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic Pricing Updates | Yes | Yes |
| Team Member Support | No | Yes |
| Profit Calculation | Yes | No |
| Affiliate Program | Yes | No |
| Free Trial | No | No |
WooDropship Review – What does it do?
You can purchase the WooDropship plugin and perform the install steps yourself. This install includes setting up a WordPress site with the WooCommerce plugin for the storefront and then installing the WooDropship plugin to access the AliExpress marketplace for dropshipping.
Otherwise, you can have the WooDropship team build the entire store for you. Depending on how much money you want to spend initially and your technical comfort level, you have both options available to you.
In case you prefer to let them build the store for you, they ask for a one-time fee to purchase the store. They do not charge a monthly payment on anything. However, if you are looking for a dropshipping business from them, you will still have to pay for the domain name and hosting once a year. In that case, you should count about $40-50 USD, including both domain and hosting. It's very convenient; WooDropship will take care of your business.
If you want more freedom, you can also use your hosting and buy your domain elsewhere; they don't lock you.
Also, if you want the WooDropship plugin, it is available for $49, which is a one-time fee.
WooDropship makes it quick and easy to add AliExpress products to your WooCommerce store so you can start dropshipping right away.
Google Chrome extension
The plugin has a Chrome extension that lets you browse the actual AliExpress website and quickly add a new product. You can instantly sell this product in-store without making any time-consuming updates or technical configurations. But, of course, you can still customize product descriptions and make changes to pricing or modify the product photos the plugin will add to your store.
WooDropship and Pricing
The plugin will also allow you to make price adjustments automatically. If you sell a $20 product with a $10 profit, but the cost of the item changes, you may run into difficulties. The plugin has an automated price update option to ensure you always have the most up-to-date price of the item.
Keeping track of inventory
The plugin will keep track of inventory on AliExpress so your store can stay updated. If a product runs out, you want to pull the product so customers don't buy it, and you have to offer refunds.
Ease of use
The WooDropship plugin is straightforward to use. You browse the AliExpress website, select the products you want with the Chrome extension, and those products will end up in your store. If you're starting in the dropshipping business, it takes all of the hard work out of the process for you to focus on getting your products sold.
Pros and Cons: WooDropship
| WooDropship Advantages | WooDropship Disadvantages | |
|---|---|---|
| Importing products to WooDropship is extremely simple with the chrome extension and browsing the AliExpress website. | WooDropship is simple and easy but lacks advanced features, so once you grow, you may need to move to another product. | |
| WooDropship has a native image editor and a watermark removal tool. | No free trial is available, so you can't try it to test if it's the right fit for you. | |
| WooDropship automates the order fulfillment process. | ||
| WooDropship automated price updates to ensure you never get caught giving a customer free products. | ||
| WooDropship has a straightforward interface with no flash or frills. | ||
| WooDropship has comprehensive reporting for your sales. | ||
| WooDropship allows you to bulk update prices when needed. | ||
| WooDropship allows you to customize invoicing rather than looking like a standard dropshipper. |
AliDropship Review – What Does it Do?
Like WooDropship, AliDropship comes in two versions. Either you buy a fully functioning store from them. Hence, they create your store on the AliDropship platform, or you can buy the plugin and integrate it with your WordPress and WooCommerce setup.
Both versions are similar, but the plugin lacks some of the more advanced features you get with an AliDropship store. However, you get more freedom and flexibility in managing your WooCommerce store with your hosting/domain and template while using their dropshipping plugin.
Installation
AliDropship is a simple install process that turns your WordPress site into an online store listing AliExpress products. The plugin allows you to search for and select whichever products you want to add to your store from within WordPress.
AliDropship and pricing
It allows you to set your automated pricing markup so that you don't have to modify that for each product you import. Just select the rules on prices, and when imported, they will be automatically adjusted.
AliDropship will poll AliExpress automatically to ensure that your prices and product counts are always up to date. This removes the requirement for you to keep track of individual products yourself.
Advanced features
On top of that, AliDropship has many advanced features to make the product and customer handling very automated, such as automatic customer updates on their order status, abandoned cart notifications to potential customers, coupons, and automatic fulfillment.
Pros and Cons: AliDropship
| AliDropship Advantages | AliDropship Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| AliDropship has an effortless searching, filtering, and import process for products directly in WordPress. | AliDropship having two different plugin versions can confuse beginners, which gets them off to a bad start. |
| AliDropship is simple to install. | While the support is free, it's only via text or public forums. |
| AliDropship has a one-time fee with lifetime updates on the product. | No free trial to test out the product. |
| AliDropship allows you to start as a beginner and progress to advanced options in the same product. | |
| AliDropship even has a Chrome extension if that is your preferred way to add products to your store. | |
| AliDropship allows you to track and keep customers updated on orders. | |
| There is no actual limit on the number of products you can sell with AliDropship. | |
| AliDropship has free support to go along with your one-time fee. |
WooDropship vs. AliDropship: Which Plugin Should You Be Using?
Both WooDropship and AliDropship allow you to add AliExpress products to your store without having to design a new e-commerce site from the ground up if you already built the store yourself. Both companies can also take on the e-commerce store-building process for you and deliver the complete solution.
They provide similar experiences, with a chrome extension that allows you to add products easily. At the same time, AliDropship enables you to do it all from WordPress by searching and filtering for products.
WooDropship
WooDropship comes across as a more simple option for the beginner. If you have limited experience in dropshipping or all of the WordPress, WooCommerce configuration is already causing you headaches. WooDropship is a great option to keep things simple and just get started. However, the simplicity and fewer advanced features mean that you may need to move plugins in the future or will need to start incorporating other additional plugins to handle those advanced features.
AliDropship
AliDropship, on the other hand, is still relatively simple but provides a host of additional and advanced features that WooDropship doesn't offer. So it's a great all-in-one option for you if you are looking for advanced reporting, customer follow-up, or the host of other features that AliDropship provides. It just requires a little extra work at the start to understand and use those features.
Best beginner dropshipping plugin: WooDropship
Best advanced dropshipping plugin: AliDropship
You will need to decide if any of the features in AliDropship would be nice to have and if you want them right now or whether you want to get started dropshipping, have the store up right now, and move on to the marketing and sales side of things.
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