The last few years have seen a massive rise in people opening ecommerce businesses, especially during the pandemic when a lot of people set up side hustles while they were stuck at home.
One of the most popular ecommerce business models is dropshipping. It’s seen as a simple way to start to sell products online, because it doesn’t need a large commitment of capital and there’s no need to acquire specific equipment.
But like all ecommerce, dropshipping success requires the right approach, the right dropshipping products, and the right tools. When it comes to dropshipping tips, the most important one is to find the right dropshipping platform.
We’ve put together this dropshipping guide to share all you need to know about finding the best dropshipping platforms for 2023.
First, let’s explain what a dropshipping business is all about. Dropshipping is a form of ecommerce where you sell products in an online store without holding inventory yourself. Instead, you use dropshipping suppliers who send the products directly to your customers. This way, dropshipping companies don’t have to run their own warehouses or worry about fulfillment for their products.
But dropshippers do have other challenges. Dropshipping is very competitive and the profit margins are slim, so you need to build an attractive dropshipping store that appeals to buyers, manage effective marketing campaigns, deliver excellent customer support, and pay careful attention to pricing. The right dropshipping platform can help you with all of these tasks.
You can run a dropshipping business through almost any online marketplace, like Amazon or eBay; through social media marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace; or through an online store attached to your own website on hosting platforms like Wix.
But dropshipping on a dedicated platform offers a lot of benefits. Dedicated dropshipping platforms generally provide more support in the form of dropshipping plugins and marketing tools designed for dropshippers, while marketplaces serve a broader audience of online retailers.
Here are the top issues to bear in mind when you compare the best dropshipping platforms.
The first dropshipping for beginners tip is to find a platform that makes it easy to set up and manage your dropshipping websites. Look for platforms that offer drag and drop interfaces so you can build your online store without needing code, and have integrated dropshipping software that helps you manage your dropshipping strategies.
Hopefully your online dropshipping business will grow quickly, so you’ll need a platform that lets you scale up to support more visitors. Things like slow page loading and data corruption push buyers off your page, so make sure your dropshipping platform can cope with more traffic without getting overwhelmed.
Dropshippers generally experience low profit margins, so low fees are vital. Ideally your dropshipping platform should be free or somewhere close to it, at least for the first few months while you are starting out.
As mentioned above, excellent marketing is crucial for dropshipping success. Many platforms offer marketing tools that help you with SEO optimization, writing marketing emails and text messages, and planning promotions and special offers, as well as providing marketing analytics so you can refine your strategies.
Dropshipping plugins offer extra features for dropshippers, so you need a platform that integrates easily. Some provide dropshipping automation to help you quickly find products from suppliers and display them in your online store, assist you with logistics, or enable you to accept more payment methods like MasterCard and Visa, mobile payments, and multiple currencies.
Even the best dropshipping platforms stop working properly from time to time, but you can’t afford to allow problems to continue. Choose a platform that has 24/7 customer support, is accessible through your preferred communication channels, and responds quickly to your concerns.
Most dropshippers have to manage international payments, both sending them to their suppliers for the products they import, and receiving payment from customers. You might also need to pay contractors for services like marketing, accounting, or bookkeeping, or pay affiliate partners overseas. Juggling transactions is much easier when your platform supports payouts from online payment service providers.
Shopify is repeatedly voted the best dropshipping platform, because it’s so easy to get started dropshipping with Shopify. It offers an intuitive, drag-and-drop platform to design your store, together with an enormous dropshipping marketplace for plugins and plenty of marketing tools.
But Shopify is also powerful enough to let you scale up rapidly. As your dropshipping business grows, you can connect all your online storefronts through integrations for Magento, OpenCart, Wix, BigCommerce, and more, to track all your sales channels in a single location. Shopify has a 14-day free trial, after which pricing begins at $29/month.
Technically speaking, WooCommerce isn’t a dropshipping platform, it’s a free WordPress plugin that turns your WordPress website into a dropshipping store, but it’s still beloved by many dropshippers. WooCommerce’s biggest strength is that it’s highly scalable and customizable, so you can build a unique store and cope with any amount of traffic.
WooCommerce also supports lots of third-party dropshipping plugins, offers powerful SEO tools, and doesn’t take any portion of your sales. But although the plugin itself is fee-free, it can get expensive to use WooCommerce. You have to pay for hosting for your website, any themes and extensions you use, and some plugins, so fees could run to over $120/month. .
AliExpress is one of the first platforms people think of when they consider dropshipping, but it’s not actually a dropshipping platform. AliExpress is a marketplace where dropshippers go to find suppliers for their dropshipping businesses.
Most dropshipping platforms and many web hosting services, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, have AliExpress plugins and extensions to make dropshipping with AliExpress easier. The fees for AliExpress plugins vary, depending on your platform.
BigCommerce is probably Shopify’s biggest dropshipping rival. It’s user friendly and makes it easy to create and open a new dropshipping store, with a similarly-sized library of dropshipping plugins and apps and strong marketing and SEO tools.
BigCommerce has excellent customer support and is a great choice for dropshippers who are growth oriented and hope to expand fast, because the platform is highly scalable and flexible. BigCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees, and monthly plans begin at $29.95.
Although it isn’t a dropshipping platform, you can still run a successful business dropshipping on Amazon. Amazon encourages dropshippers with programs like Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA). There’s no charge to set up a dropshipping store on Amazon, but you will pay varying fees according to the number of units you sell and how much you use services like FBA.
Amazon doesn’t integrate with dropshipping plugins, so you’ll have to source products yourself, but it does connect with some accounting software, and payment providers like Payoneer.
Sellers who are just getting started with dropshipping want to set up smooth online payment processes so they can receive payments from their dropshipping platforms and stores, process payments from customers and clients, and easily send payments to suppliers, online service providers, and partners.
One of the best options is to use Payoneer’s Global Payments Service for online sellers. Payoneer enables secure online payments that are more convenient and trackable than most traditional or digital banks. Manage over 150 currencies, making it easy to send and receive payments in your local currency and pay local costs.
Payoneer offers local bank details in 9 currencies, including USD, GBP, EUR, AED, and JPY, so you can connect a local account to your dropshipping platform and get paid faster without leaking money on currency conversion. You’ll receive BIC and IBAN numbers, just like a “regular” bank account, for SWIFT and other wire transfers.
Once the funds are in your Payoneer account, you can easily pay service providers and suppliers through a range of payment methods, including local bank transfer, ACH bank debit, credit card payments, and e-checks, or pay online costs such as marketing for your dropshipping store.
Payoneer also provides other tools that help you run your dropshipping company, like online invoicing that makes it simple to produce and send VAT invoices as part of payment requests, batch payments for paying multiple suppliers at once, and a dashboard to view all your revenue streams in a single location. It’s free to sign up for a Payoneer account, and there’s no monthly fee, management fee, or minimum balance obligation, making it convenient for dropshippers with tight profit margins.
[1] If you don’t make a single transaction within 12 months, an inactivity fee of 29.95$ will be deducted from your account balance
While dropshipping is highly competitive, many people have built successful online dropshipping businesses over the past several years. While smart marketing, careful pricing, and informed product choices play their part, selecting the right dropshipping platform, together with Payoneer’s payment solutions, can help you to run your dropshipping company smoothly and quickly scale your profits.
What is a dropshipping platform?
A dropshipping platform is an online space where retailers can purchase products directly from a supplier, and have the supplier ship the product straight to the customer, eliminating the need for the retailer to hold inventory or manage fulfillment.
What should I look for in a dropshipping platform?
The main features to look for in a dropshipping platform are:
Can I run dropshipping on Amazon?
Yes, many people have built successful dropshipping businesses on Amazon, using Amazon’s marketing tools and FBA services. But other dropshipping platforms offer more support like dropshipping plugins and business software integrations.
Is it expensive to run a dropshipping store?
One of the benefits of dropshipping is that you don’t need a lot of capital to get started. But some platforms come with high fees, so check the pricing before you choose your dropshipping platform.
Where can i find trusted dropshipping providers?
In Payoneer partner directory you can find all sorts of ecommerce business services and dropshipping providers CustomCat, Burger print, Dreamship, prinitfy and AutoDS