Shopify vs Alidropship For Dropshipping Review – Who Is The Winner?

Shopify vs Alidropship is probably one of the important things you’re looking for before deciding which one to use for your dropshipping business.

After all, these 2 names are heard very often on the internet nowadays.

You might get a bit indecisive because both of them are known as user-friendly platform without having technical knowledge.

This means you could have your website up-and-running even if you don’t know anything about programming.

Of course, it is the main benefits of using them.

But…There must be something different between the 2, right?

So, in this post, I’m going to defuse the components in these awesome platforms so you could see both their strengths and weaknesses.

Ready for the eye-opening journey?

Good…Let’s go…

Shopify

It’s a powerful platform that has helped many people around the globe building exciting and stunning E-Commerce websites…

…without having to mess with complex programming ever.

The company was founded in year 2004, based in Canada…

…and has served around 600,000 businesses worldwide (as the date of writing this post).

Shopify is also having the presence in New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)…

…which indicates it has great financial capability.

These strong elements have position it to be a good choice for anyone who want to get into the E-Commerce journey hands down.

Shopify Themes

It has a wide variety of themes available for you to create your own dropshipping e-commerce store.

You have the flexibility to choose either free or paid option.

Of course, the paid one would give your store a more premium feel and better customization.

The theme you’ve chosen would play an important role for your online Shopify store appearance and the menu structures.

Shopify Pricing

It has different pricing plans which you can choose based on your budget constraint and requirements.

It’s good because it does not enforce a single pricing and allows the freedom to choose.

There are 3 plans being offered currently:

1. Basic Shopify
2. Shopify
3. Advanced Shopify

All plans do come with 14 days trial.

This is a good news because you have 14 days to try it out for FREE…

…means you don’t have pay any money within the time period.

And you can test things out to see if the platform is a good fit for you or not.

If yes, you can continue with a suitable paid plan right before the trial expires.

Else, just discontinue the service before 14 days time periods and you wouldn’t be billed in future.

The pricing for these 3 plans are inclusive of hosting – you don’t need a separate one.

It starts from $29 per month (for basic plan) to $299 per month (for advanced plan).

However, please take note that there are extra transaction fees (0.5% – 2% depending on plan) you need to pay Shopify for each sale you’ve made using the platform.

Also, for using additional apps, you’ll be charged extra.

Shopify Functionality

It is having super extensive range of apps that can be used to extend the functionalities of the Shopify store.

The categories consist of marketing, customer service, accounting and reporting and many more.

This means you have more than enough apps to choose from that can give you the automation as much as you need.

Some of them are must have apps to help support your online business day-to-day operation.

There are both paid and free apps available.

For most paid apps, you’ll be charged monthly fees.

If you’re running a dropshipping E-Commerce business, unfortunately you can’t really escape from using paid apps…

…You’ll need them to give your store special functionality.

To import product images and details (such as description, inventory, etc) from Aliexpress to your own store, the Shopify platform by itself is unable to support the function.

Besides that, you’ll also need the capability to process your customers’ orders, pass their shipping details to Aliexpress and get the tracking information back to your store.

The apps that can help you perform the tasks above are such as Shopzie and Oberlo.

You can choose either one of them.

Both are doing similar jobs.

For Shopzie, you have 14 days to try out FREE and $29 per month thereafter.

Where as for Oberlo, it does offer a FREE plan and also PAID plans.

However, FREE plan comes limited functionality such as no order tracking and only can fulfill up to 50 orders only per month.

So if you want to have order tracking or fulfill more than 50 orders in Oberlo, you still need to choose PAID pricing plans of either $29.90 per month or $79.90 per month.

Alidropship

It is a specialized plugin designed for WordPress to transform the platform into a powerhouse for running dropshipping E-Commerce business using Aliexpress.

Alidropship was created by a team of experienced developers and dropshippers.

It’s not just being offered to the market only but also being used by the company team themselves to run and manage their own dropshipping store.

This is in fact a plus point because as an user by themselves, they could understand this business model better and always come out with new update for the plugin that benefits you as a customer.

Alidropship Themes

Alidropship offers 2 types of plugin version:

i) Original Alidropship plugin

ii) Alidropship Woo plugin

Depending which version you choose to install, it’s going to affect themes you can use.

Alidropship Woo version requires deep understanding about WooCommerce and also more efforts to get your store up-and-running.

It allows any themes that are supported by WooCommerce (both free or paid) except built-in themes in the plugin.

Original Alidropship version is the simple solution to build a dropshipping E-Commerce store from scratch without WooCommerce skills.

It supports only built-in themes come with the plugin, there are 3 available currently (all free).

Alidropship Pricing

You’ll just need to pay the price of $89 one-time fee to get this powerful plugin and you can use it for lifetime to run your dropshipping E-Commerce business.

However, you still need a web hosting so you can run WordPress and install the Alidropship plugin on it.

It is recommended to use the hosting plan from Alidropship.

Because its web hosting are designed with 100% compatible with Alidropship plugin and optimized with the speed and security needed in E-Commerce environment.

The pricing is affordable also. You can start with silver package – $48 per year for the hosting.

It is good enough and able to support up to max 5 stores.

Means if you can have additional store up-and-running without paying for extra web hosting fees (before the limit reached).

You’ll need to get a new Alidropship plugin, though for each extra store you’re going to have.

It’s because each purchase will come with a license key that eligible to run one dropshipping store only.

Alidropship Functionality

The Alidropship plugin is by itself has the capability to perform the important tasks needed to run an effective dropshipping business using Aliexpress.

It can import product images and description into your store, process customers’ orders, send shipping details to Aliexpress and receive the tracking number.

You’re able to extend the functionality of your Alidropship plugin even further by using those add-on plugins specially crafted by their team.

However, there are very limited number of plugins available currently (less than 10 as the date of writing this).

And the focus so far are on helping you to increase sales and run marketing more effectively.

If you’re looking for plugins to help you with accounting or customer service, sorry to disappoint you, they are not available yet at the moment.

Most of the plugins available are paid version but there are some FREE as well.

Here is the interesting thing to know, though…

All the paid add-on plugins are one-time payment, no recurring monthly fees.

This is a good news to you…

Because after purchase, you can use them forever without ever paying anymore.

That’s a really sensible offer by the Alidropship team.

The Comparison: Shopify vs Alidropship

Shopify is having a large inventory of themes available at your disposal to customize your dropshipping store according to your branding and liking.

Whereas Alidropship has a very limited number of themes (only 3 at the moment) to choose from (for Alidropship plugin original version).

The Woo version for Alidropship plugin is having more themes than the original version to use but still has lesser number than Shopify.

In terms of themes availability, Shopify is having the advantage.

For Shopify, the cheapest plan is $29 per month (not include yet the transaction fees for every sales made).

And for using paid apps used to increase the store functionalities, there is a monthly recurring fees.

For Alidropship, the plugin itself cost $89 one time payment and can use forever thereafter (no transaction fees for the sales made).

The web hosting needed to build the Alidropship dropshipping store is costing only $48 per year.

The paid plugins offered by Alidropship is one time payment and no monthly recurring fees.

It is clearly shown that Alidropship has proven itself to be more cost-effective and cheaper solution compared to Shopify.

Shopify is having a wide variety of apps that can be used to achieve various advanced functionalities needed.

On the other hand, Alidropship is only offering a small number of plugins to extend some extra functionalities.

In terms of functionalities, Shopify can achieve much more than Alidropship.

Shopify vs Alidropship, which one you would choose? Do leave your comments below.