SaleHoo vs AliExpress

Intro

AliExpress is an online marketplace where you find products to purchase directly. It’s China’s equivalent of Amazon for Western consumers. It can be a good place to find inexpensive products to resell for a profit or to dropship, but this does come at some costs, which we will look at further in the article.

SaleHoo has two primary tools for online sellers, their Dropship tool, which enables their members to directly import products to dropship into their online store, and their Directory tool which enables members to peruse a huge range of vetted suppliers from around the globe and find ones that meet their requirements.

The key difference between the two companies is the confidence you can have about working with suppliers listed on each platform.

Take a look at our general overview comparison chart.

Platform Comparison		AliExpress
Dropship Tool
Supplier Directory
Vetted Suppliers & Products
Extensive Product Search Filters
One-Click Product Import
Better Business Bureau Accreditation
100% Money Back Guarantee
24/7 Customer Service

Dropship Tool

SaleHoo offers a tool for dropshippers to find products on AliExpress and easily import them into their online store. Because they only vet out high-quality, vetted products, their tool can be a real time-saver making it easy to start selling great products and helping to prevent you from having to write and upload product information manually - the one-click store import uploads that all for you. Once you’ve imported the product, you may wish to edit some of the information, such as changing the images, description, variants, collection, and more.

The SaleHoo Basic monthly plan ($27 USD) allows you to import up to 500 AliExpress products into your store, what customers generally consider a generous amount. This allows your store heaps of room for trial and error when testing how well new products sell. The one-click import can work for filtered, reliable AliExpress products listed through SaleHoo, but there is no way to do a similar import from AliExpress without a tool like SaleHoo.

Screenshots of SaleHoo

Dropship Tool Comparison		AliExpress
Easy to set up		Does Not Have Feature
Product Information Edit		Does Not Have Feature
Product Variants Edit		Does Not Have Feature
Image Selection		Does Not Have Feature
Vetted Suppliers & Products
24/7 Customer Service
100% Satisfaction Guarantee of Your Money Back

Directory Tool

SaleHoo has a directory tool which complements its dropship tool, making it easier than ever to find reputable products and suppliers for your business needs. There are more than 8,000 suppliers listed in their directory and all have met strict requirements to test for their quality and reliability. Their directory features more than just dropshippers. They have wholesalers, for you to purchase and distribute your own inventory. They also have manufacturers and private labellers who can customise products to your specifications. Additionally, they have liquidators selling brand-name products at steeply discounted prices.

Among other requirements for SaleHoo suppliers, they must:

• Be a genuine manufacturer, dropshipper, liquidator, wholesale supplier, or distributor authorized to sell at or below wholesale prices.
• Have an active website and email (and be able to receive emails from us from time to time to make sure they are still active).
• Clearly display their contact details on their website.
• Have had their website up and running for at least two years.

AliExpress, as an online marketplace, is similar to a directory, where you can use it to find a wide variety of sellers and products, but it has not been curated, which is typically how a directory is defined. For this reason it wouldn’t be accurate to consider the AliExpress marketplace on par with a directory. Suppliers can easily set up their listings on AliExpress without having to meet specific requirements. Furthermore, while some sellers may also be wholesalers or manufacturers, sellers will list these capabilities separately on AliExpress’ parent company, Alibaba, which was developed for exclusively wholesale and custom manufacturing suppliers. You may need to use the two platforms separately to identify suppliers for various needs.

A similarity that SaleHoo and AliExpress share are their extensive search filters which they provide to help you narrow down your product searches and more easily find ones that will be right for your requirements.

In summary, SaleHoo makes it easy to find trustworthy suppliers for a range of needs. On AliExpress, you may be able to find the suppliers you need, but the process could be more time consuming as you have more suppliers to sort through and need to determine which ones are going to be reliable. This may use up a lot of your time to quality check each supplier. And if you decide to go ahead and just take the risk of dropshipping from AliExpress with the quality checks, be prepared to get customer complaints and refunds, which may potentially damage your online store’s reputation.

If you look for suppliers on Alibaba, your dropshipping options will be limited as Alibaba usually requires you to buy in large quantities. Therefore, it’s a more common practice to use Alibaba for wholesaling products instead.

Screenshots of SaleHoo

Directory Tool		AliExpress
Vetted Suppliers
Dropshippers
Wholesalers
Manufacturers
Liquidators
Extensive Filters
100% Satisfaction Guarantee or Your Money Back