Well I wouldn't neccesarily say it is a scam, because you do receive the products and they are lower priced than many others.
But you also have to be really serious about a long term business, hence the initial startup cost.
And if you aren't prepared to do the research that simplx requires of you, its simply not worth it to sign up.
Simplx appears to be made for not startups, but people looking to leave retail and move their retail stores from offline to online.
Simplx is a better deal than Doba, because you access over 60,000,000 products versus a few hundred thousand.
However it is a ripoff. Especially for any startup company, since they don't have any of the capital which retail businesses do.
And it takes too long to get started if you did.
Look at it this way, I could show you for FREE (and NO startup cost) where to find over 100,000,000 different products at various wholesale or liquidation lots but you would still have to pay for them and sell them.
Simplx does the same thing with less discounts, and charges you fees just to get access.
I could find nearly all that information for free that Simplx is so convinced is worth that price, and then start doing real dropshipping with real warehouse outlets.