AliDropship Vs Shopify & Oberlo (Dec 2024)

Last Updated: December 21, 2024

In this article, we’re going to be discussing the common question we get asked, what’s better to use for starting my dropshipping business? AliDropship or Shopify with Oberlo.

We’ll be answering this question from both an objective standpoint, and through discussing our own verdict towards the end.

Well, without further ado, let’s talk more about Shopify vs AliDropship.

Table of Contents

What is AliDropship?

AliDropship is a dropshipping plugin developed by Yaros, to be integrated with WordPress, with its primary function to transform your site into an efficient dropshipping website.

How does it do this exactly?

Well, AliDropship works to assist and automate most of the time-consuming tasks that come with running an online dropshipping store, particularly one sourcing its products from AliExpress.

These tasks include assisting in product selection & importing, automating order fulfillment, reputation management, etc.

We’ll talk about these specific features below, but you may want to read our full AliDropship Review article, which touches on this information in a deeper, more thorough way.

It should be noted that AliDropship also provide a custom dropshipping store (custom-made) and premium dropshipping store (select from a range of available stores) services, where you essentially buy a done-for-you ecommerce store, with products included, ready for you to market and promote. We’ve actually purchased one and they’re fantastic, you can read about it in our case study.

Core AliDropship Features

Easy setup with no coding experience required – Although initial hosting setup can be challenging, so we recommend purchasing hosting from AliDropship, as it’s extremely affordable
One-click product import from AliExpress
Compatible with WooCommerce themes (AliDropship Woo Version)
Specific filters to find desirable products on AliExpress
Free SEO & CRO optimized themes that are available with the plugin
Pricing automation – Use a pricing formula to apply specific rules to existing and new products
Automatic price updates – As AliExpress prices change, your store will adapt its pricing
WooCommerce Integration – With the AliDropship Woo plugin version (Both the Original and Woo version are included when purchasing)
Place orders automatically – Whether there are 2 existing orders or 30, just click the ‘order’ button and AliDropship will place all of the orders automatically
Active Chat & Email support – Usually emails back within a few hours to 1 day
AliDropship Forum – For customers to discuss their experience, issues, and successes
Fantastic learning resources, considering the company run their own highly successful AliDropship stores, they know what’s currently working.

Read more about AliDropship’s features here.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a popular e-commerce solution, used to create, host, and manage an e-commerce store in terms of handling inventory, marketing, and product fulfillment.

Whether you’re dropshipping or holding the stock yourself, Shopify can cater to your business’ needs.

The platform allows for the installation of specific apps, which in turn expand the store’s capability. Oberlo is one of the most popular apps to turn your new business into a fully-capable dropshipping store.

We’ll talk about specific features below.

Core Shopify Features

All-in-one e-commerce solution, including the ability to purchase domain, hosting and CMS access
Plenty of available E-commerce themes
Easy to use for those who don’t have coding experience
Free SSL
100+ payment gateways for customers
CRO optimization elements – Highly optimized templates, Abandoned checkout recovery, multiple languages, flexible shipping rates
SEO optimization elements – Such as metadata, structured data, sitemap, etc
Store management & order fulfillment capability
Marketing optimization elements – Discounts, email marketing, social media integration, Google Adwords credit
Web hosting – Unlimited bandwidth, SSL certificate, email forwarding, instant upgrades & updates
Analytics – Traffic, conversions, product-specific reports
24/7 customer support

Read more about Shopify’s features here.

What Are the Key Similarities?

There are some key similarities between both of these service operators, these include:

Highly reputable and successful

Both Shopify and AliDropship are leaders in their fields, both of which are competitors, dealing with different Content Management Systems.

Shopify powers over 1,000,000 online business’ including Tesla, Nestle, Red Bull, Kylie Cosmetics and so many more.

AliDropship is a solution used in conjunction with WordPress (which is free), that is specifically designed for dropshipping from AliExpress. It is currently used by over 50,000 customers worldwide, and has a 4.7* rating on Trustpilot.

Provides everything you’ll need to run your store

Both of these companies provide all-in-one solutions for you to be able to run your own dropshipping store, from offering web hosting, product importing, and marketing tools.

Now it gets a little more complicated, as Shopify requires customers to download the Oberlo app (it’s as simple as a 1-click installation) within their Shopify dashboard, in order to be able to import items and manage your dropshipping store, and this is an additional cost.

AliDropship on the other hand does not provide web hosting unless you purchase this as an add-on, which is very cheap when comparing it against other web hosting packages.

We’ll talk more about these differences within the next section.

What Are the Key Differences?

There are a number of key differences between AliDropship and Shopify, and they are as follows:

Shopify is the CMS, AliDropship integrates into WordPress & WooCommerce (Optional)

Ok, so we get a lot of questions specifically about the differences between Shopify and AliDropship, and here are the key differences in what they are:

Shopify is a content management system, providing customers with a domain (+$14 per year) and web hosting (included), alongside the ability to use both free and paid-for apps, in this case which would be Oberlo.

AliDropship is a plugin that integrates with the WordPress content management system. It does not provide a domain and web hosting is an additional cost. However, there are no monthly fees.

Shopify is a monthly cost (and requires Oberlo), AliDropship is a one-off cost

Below we’ve included the costs included in running a standard dropshipping store using either Shopify or AliDropship

Shopify Monthly Cost: $29 (basic), $79 (standard), $299 (advanced)
- Oberlo Monthly Cost: Free (up to 50 orders per month), $29.90 (basic), $79.90 (pro)

AliDropship One-Off Cost: $66.75 (After our 25% discount – provided below) for unlimited usage
- Web Hosting (optional): $48 per year (included free SSL) – Hosts up to 5 websites

Shopify provides 24/7 customer support, AliDropship provides support within 1 day

Both Shopify and Oberlo provide 24/7 customer support, which is fantastic, especially if you’re running a large store that would potentially lose thousands if an issue wasn’t resolved immediately.

You are however paying for this, with your $30+ monthly payment.

AliDropship provides lifetime support and updates for their plugin and any of their products, and their support team gets back to customers within a few hours to 1 day… and there’s no on-going cost for this.

AliDropship Provides a 25% discount for the plugin, and a 15% discount for a Custom Store

AliDropship Plugin (Original & Woo): $66.75 (25% Off) Get Discount here

AliDropship Basic Custom Store: $254.15 (15% Off) – Get Discount here

AliDropship Advanced Custom Store: $424.15 (15% Off) – Get Discount here

AliDropship Ultimate Custom Store: $764.15 (15% Off) – Get Discount here

AliDropship Supreme Custom Store: $2464 (15% off) – Get Discount here

AliDropship also provides a complete DFY (done for you) service

AliDropship provides a custom-store service, which we’ve actually spent time reviewing in our AliDropship custom store review.

This is a fantastic service for those who either have zero experience in setting up a dropshipping store, or have limited time available to do it themselves.

Here is some information about the service and what exactly is provided:

A personal account manager who does all of the work (after consultation with you)
Niche research, selection & competitor analysis
.com domain
Unique design, logo and banners
AliDropship plugin
50+ products (depending on package)
Basic on-site SEO
Social pages
Promotion video (depending on package)
Social media promotion tool (depending on package)

Shopify isn’t a great option for SEO purposes (Organic Traffic)

I can say from experience that Shopify stores are limited when it comes to SEO, in particular on-page SEO.

These are the following limitations of Shopify in regards to SEO:

Uneditable robots.txt file – Meaning that certain pages may be crawled and indexed that should not be
Uneditable canonical tags – Causing duplicate content issues
Forced URL structures – Although not the largest issue, it’s an inconvenience

These are quite technical SEO issues, but can really affect rankings.

This is why we always use WordPress and AliDropship for our e-commerce stores, as we heavily rely on Organic Search traffic.

Which one is best?

This question is definitely relative, with the answer really depending on your experience level, requirements, and budget.

However, in our opinion, AliDropship is the clear winner here!

It’s not only much cheaper to run, but the extra costs that Shopify requires don’t get you much more than the one-off cost that AliDropship requires.

For those that are completely new to even setting up a website, the next choice will be dependant on your budget:

Small budget: Purchase AliDropship plugin and use a tutorial on setting up your dropshipping store here.
Medium budget: Purchase AliDropship hosting and have them set up your server, install the plugin so that you can then start adding products
Large budget: Purchase a custom store or premium store, where everything is done for you – Learn more about about the AliDropship custom stores (custom-made) supreme store package or even their premium store package (pre-made) here. All of which include a 15% discount via our links.

Don’t forget to get our discounts here: