AliDropship vs. Shopify

General Overview

Dropshipping is an increasingly popular business model which involves listing products to sell on your online store and getting your suppliers to directly fulfill orders, meaning you never have to hold your own inventory. You sell products at a higher price than they cost you and your supplier will ship them to your customer on behalf of your business.

Dropshipping is relatively easy and low-cost to set up, which makes it an attractive option for new online sellers.

In this article we take a look at what AliDropship and Shopify do, their advantages and disadvantages and mention some dropshipping tools which can be used with Shopify.

By the end of it, you should have a good idea about how each can be used to help you build a dropshipping business.

What is the Difference between AliDropship and Shopify?

AliDropship

AliDropship is a plugin which can be used with the WooCommerce eCommerce platform to import products directly into your online store to dropship from AliExpress. The plugin is available for a one-off cost of $89 USD and can be installed as a Google Chrome browser extension for easy access.

You can also purchase a custom store, which AliDropship developers will build for you on WooCommerce at an additional cost (starting from $299 USD) or premium store templates for WooCommerce ($300 USD).

Below is an example of a premium AliDropship store template which comes with all its products preloaded and costs $300 USD.

The AliDropship plugin comes packed with additional tools for dropshippers, beyond the easy AliExpress product import feature. These offerings include:

• Unlimited product imports and orders
• Automated ordering: Place bulk dropshipping orders in just a few steps, rather than manually through AliExpress.
• Automated pricing: Automatically update product prices based on a range of pricing rules.
• Marketing tools: Import customer reviews, generate discount coupons, create SEO product tags and employ abandoned cart recovery methods.

A disadvantage of AliDropship is that you will need to identify suitable products for your store on AliExpress by yourself. Because AliExpress does not pre-vet their sellers, it is advisable to take precautions to ensure you do not end up selling poor quality products or dealing with unreliable suppliers.

We suggest ordering product samples before you start selling. Then you can check the quality out and see how easy your suppliers are to work with.

Of course, there are dropshipping tools which pre-vet AliExpress products for you, so you can skip the samples and get straight onto selling. We take a look at some of these options in the Top Alternatives section below.

Shopify

Shopify is what WooCommerce is to AliDropship - that is a platform which can be used to build eCommerce stores and handle online payment processing.

Shopify offers a powerful solution for ambitious entrepreneurs wanting to build and run a stunning store, with a great order management system and marketing tools. Using Shopify, you can track your order, revenue and shipping, all from the Shopify dashboard. You can make notes on orders, mark them as fulfilled after you’ve shipped them out and manage all your customer information.

Shopify integrates with an extensive range of third party apps, including dropshipping tools similar to AliDropship, which can be used to import products into your Shopify store.

Stores built on Shopify include eCommerce successes The Oodie and Tidal Hair. Even though they are now bringing in the big bucks, their stores are still proudly powered by Shopify.

Using Shopify involves selecting a suitable membership for your needs. For most business owners, this will be their Basic plan ($29 USD per month), which you can use to build your store, sell on it and manage your orders, plus a point-of-sale system for if you sell in person as well as online.

This, of course, is a very brief introduction to a full list of features on Shopify which can be used to fulfill a wide range of eCommerce needs.

In the table below, we take a look at the main features each company offers to give you a better idea of how AliDropship and Shopify fulfill different needs.

Platform Comparison	AliDropship	Shopify
Dropshipping Tool Plugin
eCommerce Platform
Online Store Builder
Shopify Integration
WooCommerce Integration
Online Store Templates
Dropship Product Importer
Order Management System & Tools
Marketing Tools
Free Plan
Free Trial
Monthly Plan	Not Available	Starting from $29
Plugin Cost	$89	Not Available
Custom Store Build	Starting from $299	Not Available
Premium Store Templates	$300	Starting from $220
24/7 Live Chat Support

Advantages and Disadvantages of AliDropship

The AliDropship tool comes with an extensive range of features to support its core function as a plugin to easily import AliExpress products into WooCommerce stores.

Because the AliDropship plugin works directly with AliExpress, there is no product vetting process so it will be up to you to find reliable suppliers. This is likely the major disadvantage of the tool. We recommend you order product samples before you begin selling them, but this can be a time consuming process to arrange and wait for them to be delivered to you.

Pros	Cons
Easy to set-up	Only integrates with WooCommerce
One-time cost	No product vetting feature
Comes with online store theme templates
Great customer reviews

Advantages and Disadvantages of Shopify

Shopify is one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms of the web and is used by millions of online business owners to host their online stores.

While it doesn’t offer a built-in dropshipping tool, there are a range of these available on the Shopify App Store to make running your dropshipping store easier. We mention some of these in the Top Alternatives section.

Pros	Cons
Easy to set-up	Monthly recurring cost
Trusted by millions of business owners
Comes with online store theme templates
Supports huge range of third party apps
Integrates with most dropshipping tools

Top Alternatives

AliDropship can be a great option for you if you want to dropship on the WooCommerce platform, but if you want to work with Shopify, then you will need to look elsewhere.

Fortunately, there are a lot of dropshipping tools that can be used with Shopify. SaleHoo Dropship is one such tool that can be used to easily import pre-vetted AliExpress products into your Shopify store.

If you didn’t catch it earlier, we compared WooCommerce and Shopify on our blog, if you’re still deciding on which platform you want to set up your store on.

To discover comparisons of other dropshipping tools that work with Shopify, take a look at the box below.