SaleHoo vs. Shopify

Intro

SaleHoo and Shopify have both been around for a while. SaleHoo was founded in New Zealand in 2005 and Shopify in Canada in 2006, both riding on the rising wave of the era of eCommerce. Since then, they have served millions of customers between them. In 2020, it was reported that Shopify alone had 1,749,000 merchants using it and its user base is growing rapidly.

This article has been built to give you the low-down on what functions each serve and how they can work together in harmony to help you build your eCommerce dream.

General Overview

You can see from the brief comparison that SaleHoo and Shopify are both in the eCommerce space but they fulfill different purposes. With Shopify you can build your own online store very easily (i.e. within hours - not days or weeks!) and then integrate it with a range of powerful third party apps to automate many processes and ensure your store is functioning as smoothly as possible.

SaleHoo, on the other hand, is a tool which can be used alongside Shopify to find and import products onto it and manage order fulfilment. A large benefit of SaleHoo is that you can use it to locate high quality products and vetted suppliers to use for your store. It’s all very well to make an amazing store on Shopify but it won’t be of much use to you unless you have some killer products to fill it up with. SaleHoo allows you to easily import up to 500 products into Shopify on their Basic monthly plan.

Having the ability to directly import products into Shopify can be a big time saver, too, so that you don’t have to manually write out product descriptions and select variants such as sizing and colour options. However, of course, you can edit the information on Shopify that is automatically loaded with each product import, giving you full control to display the product information any way you want.

Both companies offer 24/7 customer support and a range of contact options so that you can reach out to a representative in the way that’s the most comfortable for you, whether that be through chat or telephone. We have found some great feedback about the level of service offered by each platform, which we will cover in the ‘Customer Service’ section later on in the article.

Both businesses can be considered highly reliable, with full accreditation from the Better Business Bureau and an A+ grading.

Dropship Tool

SaleHoo offers a powerful dropshipping tool that we will run you through.

You can use this tool to find products to import into your online store to dropship. This tool makes it incredibly easy to source high-quality products and start selling them in your store in just a few clicks. As mentioned earlier, when you import products into your store, product information will automatically load, saving you a lot of time. You are able to edit any of it as you choose and may even want to write your own unique product descriptions.

The SaleHoo Basic plan allows you to import up to 500 products into your online store, which gives you a lot of room to trial a large range of products and see which ones perform the best, and easily remove the ones that don’t.

All of SaleHoo’s products are risk free and have a 60 day money back guarantee to ensure that every customer is satisfied.

It’s also important for us to clarify that Shopify hasn’t slacked off by not providing a dropship tool, they are very much focussed on the online store builder and third party apps side of eCommerce, and SaleHoo Dropship is one such third party integration that can really elevate the Shopify selling experience and likelihood of store success.

Screenshots of SaleHoo

Directory Tool

SaleHoo also offers a directory tool for you to find the perfect suppliers for your business. There are over 8,000 suppliers listed in their directory and all have met strict vetting requirements. You can find suppliers that are dropshippers, manufacturers or liquidators.

Another popular eCommerce trend is private labeling, where suppliers brand their products with your business logo to create a more unique product and give it extra brand value. Many of the suppliers listed on the SaleHoo directory will be happy to private label their products for you.

It’s very easy to reach out to potential suppliers with the in-app message template that SaleHoo generates. You can also use their supplier chat centre on mobile so that you can keep in contact with suppliers on the go.

In summary, the SaleHoo directory is useful for filling out your online store with products that you can be confident are high quality and gives you the option to develop customised products with manufacturers or private labelers.

Again, Shopify doesn’t have its own version of this feature, and why should it when there are companies like SaleHoo to offer it through them? We will hear more about what Shopify does offer in the following section.

Screenshots of SaleHoo

Online Store Tool

Shopify is best known for its online store builder, where you can create a functioning store in mere hours, not weeks. You select a store template and customize from there, choosing your store colours, layout, imagery and logo.

With Shopify, it is easy to build a visually appealing and unique online store in minimal time. That is the cake of their offering, while their third party app integrations are the cherry on top, that is to say their store builder is the primary benefit that they provide their customers with and they have put a lot of time into ensuring that it meets customer needs. Their stores are fast loading and reliable, with the ability to handle a range of apps. Shopify also provides their own payment gateway, Shopify Payments, for secure online purchasing, alongside options such as PayPal.

SaleHoo doesn’t have its own store builder, but it's dropship and directory tools are to complement eCommerce platforms such as Shopify. What a mighty pair!

Screenshots of Shopify

Price

Both SaleHoo and Shopify offer flexible monthly plans to meet your needs. The SaleHoo monthly price refers to its dropship tool, whereas the Shopify monthly price is for all its features -  although, please note this does not mean you have unlimited access to all their third party apps, too, as many of these have additional monthly charges to use.

Both of the cheapest monthly plans allow you to have two users which can be really useful if you have a business partner or colleague who you want to give account access to. With the $97 per month SaleHoo plan you can have up to 3 users and on the Shopify $299 plan you can have up to 15 staff accounts. The more expensive plans on SaleHoo and Shopify allow you to operate multiple stores, so if you want to sell menswear but also pet products, then you can open two stores through one SaleHoo and Shopify account, respectively.

SaleHoo additionally offers an annual or lifetime price for full access to their supplier directory.

Customer Service

Both SaleHoo and Shopify offer 24/7 customer service. You can choose the contact option that is most useful for your needs. You may need to get in touch with a representative for a time sensitive issue and use the telephone option, but for less urgent requests you can also talk to representatives through chat or email.

In order to understand what the most important people - that is, the customers - think about the level of support offered by each company, we had a look around the internet to find out what they are saying.

SaleHoo frequently receives positive comments about their customer service, many of which can be found on their Trustpilot page. Katherine, in one such review on Trustpilot said, "I had a lot of questions before signing up. The chat with John was awesome. He worked really hard for me. I asked a lot of questions and he gave me really thorough and prompt responses. Great customer service!” In another Trustpilot review, Marcia said “Excellent service and prompt responses! I love how I was guided through my setup and all my queries were met with clear, concise responses that were given promptly.” Another customer, CVerdon, said on his Better Business Bureau review, “SaleHoo offers sales help and support that far exceeds other e-commerce support companies.

Nandakishor said in his Shopify review that they were “highly satisfied with their customer support. . .The support team of Shopify was with us when we needed it.” Another customer said in their g2.com review, “The access to Shopify experts has been a resourceful feature for finding developers and website professionals to help us customize our store experience. I'm thankful that this is available to our team! Plus, Shopify's customer support is always A+.” Ihor said, in their Trustpilot review “The support was really helpful, friendly, and super fast when I contacted them about closing my store (as I'm not into e-commerce anymore). They provided me a refund for the last billing and gave some good tips for creating a store in the future.

SaleHoo vs Shopify Reviews

SaleHoo and Shopify have both been accredited by the Better Business Bureau and given an A+ grade to indicate their reliability. It is also useful to consider what their customers rate them.

SaleHoo has a 4.7 TrustScore on Trustpilot and consistently receives five star reviews (91%). Leon said, in their review, “I love how I was guided through my set up and all my queries were met with clear, quick responses.” In her review on Trustpilot, Michelle said that “I have had several interactions with SaleHoo over the past 6 months and each time my questions have been answered very quickly and to my satisfaction. Their customer service is top-notch and they practice what they preach. It's refreshing to interact with a business who has the best interests of clients in mind.

Shopify has a 1.8 TrustScore, which we found surprising, so we investigated it further. We found that a lot of reviews left on the platform were from customers referring to eCommerce stores built using Shopify, not Shopify the company. Denise said in their review, “In reading reviews on this page, I noticed that many reviewers conflate Shopify with the stores that use their platform. Shopify itself doesn’t sell anything. It provides a platform, plus merchant services and shipping, for online stores.” Another customer said in their review “a lot of the remaining complaints are from people who are ignorant about how the platform works or how to get help to fix any problems they are having, or even the basics of running a business. There wouldn't be as many business giants on Shopify if it was bad.” Henry said in his review, “You have been a great partner in launching my online business, I feel confident with your payment services, support in the ownership of our customer data and love how easily you integrate with other tools to help me manage my business. Your mobile app is the best and can make easy tweaks to my site, product descriptions anywhere.”’

SaleHoo has a tidy 4.8 rating on g2.com and Shopify has a 4.2 rating. You can use the links in the previous sentence to have a look through the reviews left on the site; most of them are quite detailed and give you a really good idea about what customers think of the companies.

	SaleHoo Sign Up Here	Shopify
BBB Accreditation
BBB Grading	A+	A+
Trustpilot Rating	4.7 “Excellent”	1.6 “Poor”
g2	4.9	4.2

Top Alternatives

In summary, SaleHoo and Shopify are two different tools that can be very powerful when used together. Though there are alternatives to SaleHoo and Shopify, they’re not typically shared alternatives, since each offers different benefits.

You may wish to do some more research to find out what else is out there. To make it easier for you, we’ve included some more comparison articles in the ‘Related Articles’ section below.

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• SaleHoo vs Worldwide Brands
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• SaleHoo vs eSources.co.uk
• SaleHoo vs Oberlo