AliDropship Review: Custom Dropshipping Sites with a WooCommerce Plugin

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Dropshipping advertisements often promise futures of success and financial wealth without putting in much work. However, if you've been in the dropshipping space before, you know there's nothing easy about it. It's great for smaller companies without much starting capital, and we also like it for established brands that would like to branch out into a new product without having to buy in bulk.

Since dropshipping is so similar to regular ecommerce, we love finding tools that expedite the process for vendors and make business easier. AliDropship is one of those tools, and in this AliDropship review, we'll outline which features are offered to help your business and if it's worthwhile for you to check out.

If you're not familiar with AliExpress, it's part of the giant Alibaba company from China. Alibaba is similar to Amazon but it dominates the Asian market instead of more of the western world like Amazon.

Eventually, Alibaba came out with a service called AliExpress, which allows businesses and individuals to purchase individual, or smaller batch, products for close to wholesale pricing. Because of this, many dropshipping plugins and apps have been created to instantly pull AliExpress products into your online store.

AliDropship is one of those plugins, but with some differences.

How Does AliDropship Work?

You may notice that Shopify seems to have the most options for dropshipping apps with AliExpress. That's one of the main advantages of AliDropship, in that it integrates with WordPress and WooCommerce instead of Shopify. You can also get hosting and build a complete website through AliDropship, without developing the site yourself.

So, essentially, AliDropship connects with your WordPress store and allows you to browse and pick products from AliExpress. After that, the products are automatically sent to your shop with product details included such as the description, title, and photos.

You have two options to choose from when deciding to pay for AliDropship. The first is the custom store, which lets you develop your own dropshipping website on the AliDropship platform. As mentioned, the hosting is provided and you enjoy 100% ownership of your shop. In addition, AliDropship has a library of templates so it's not that difficult to make your online shop.

The alternative is to consider the WordPress plugin. The plugin looks and works similar to the custom store, but it integrates with a previously designed WordPress site. So, if you're already using WordPress and WooCommerce, or you're familiar with that interface, the AliDropship plugin makes the most sense.

AliDropship Review: The Best Features

The primary feature with AliDropship is the one-click plugin that turns your entire WordPress site into a fully functional online store with dropshipping options. You could also argue that the custom websites are features, but that's more of a service than anything.

As for the features that actually come with the plugin, here are some of the standouts:

Full Automation

Quite a few automated tools are packed in with the AliDropship plugin. One of them is for searching for and importing your products, with filters and a button to add the products to your site. Another helps out with pricing automation since it lets you create your own rules to set your own markups when pricing changes. We also like the options to fulfill orders automatically and send out order tracking.

A Handful of Awesome Add-ons

From Google Merchant support to Facebook Business add-ons, you don't have to spend much money to include a fully automated solution into your store.

If you want to get started quickly we encourage you to read more about Dropship.me, an Alidropship add-on that eliminates the need for guesswork and time-consuming product research.

This plugin helps you find and import top quality goods from virtually every AliExpress product category.

Read our full Dropship.me Review to learn more.

Site Customization

AliDropship comes with several built-in themes so you don't have mess with code. There's also WooCommerce support, a built-in image editor, and product variations.

Marketing

The marketing section is one of my favorite parts of AliDropship, because you rarely get this with dropshipping programs. To start, AliDropship includes an option to share discount coupons with your customers. You can also set up an area for product reviews.

Email lists are possible if you'd like to collect emails, and the abandoned cart feature helps you bring people back to your site.

AliDropship Review: The Pricing

Although the pricing for AliDropship is fairly straightforward, there are several items you have to decide between, and the website also has some add-ons you might need to consider in the future.

To start, AliDropship sells its WordPress plugin for $89. It's not clear on the website if this is a one-time fee or if you have to pay yearly for continued support. Regardless, most plugins like this have the one-time fee and the upgrade for support. This payment includes updates, automation, unlimited products, and all of the main features we talked about.

If you'd like to construct a custom dropshipping store on the AliDropship platform, the packages start at $299 and goes up to $2899 for the Supreme Package. This is a one-time fee where the store starts with 50 products (added for you) but then allows for an unlimited number of products after. The online store is created for you, so there's not much development work on your end.

The other custom store plans cost $499 and $899. These upgrades have various benefits like promo videos for your products and social media promotional tools.

The hosting is quite reasonable with AliDropship, seeing as how it starts at $48 per year and includes a free SSL.

Here are all of the hosting plans compared:

  • Silver – $48 per year for 3GB of space, unlimited bandwidth, a control panel, 20 email addresses, free SSL and up to five websites.
  • Gold – $86 per year for 8GB of space, 40 email addresses, support for up to 10 websites, and everything that came in the previous plan.
  • Platinum – $220 per year for 17GB of space, 80 email addresses, support for up to 30 websites, and everything that came in the previous plans.
  • Supreme Package – $2899 – one time payment. This package is one of our favorite. Basically you will have a ready made business in 25 days. Comes with Niche research, Domain name (.com), Platinum hosting for 1 year, Custom design (mobile ready), Google Analytics integration, AliDropship plugin, 500 product to sell, Unlimited products to choose from.

AliDropship Add-ons

The only other expense with AliDropship is if you end up paying for some add-ons.

The add-on library doesn't have that many items, but it's definitely a place to look if you need some sort of special functionality. For instance, there's an add-on for a recent sales pop-up, countdown timer, and Facebook product catalog.

Some of the add-ons are free, but they go up to $69.

What's the total cost of AliDropship?

For a custom online store from AliDropship, the least expensive option–with hosting and all–is $347. That's not a bad rate since it's a one-time fee.

As for the WordPress plugin, you should only expect to pay $89 unless one of the add-ons catches your eye.

AliDropship Review: The Customer Support

Customer support from AliDropship is provided for free as long as you pay for the WordPress plugin or get a custom website built by AliDropship.


A support email is a primary way to get in contact with the support team, so you'll end up in a queue and receive a response within a reasonable period of time. AliDropship also has several social media pages. You might be able to ask some questions through places like Facebook and Twitter if that's your style. The main reason I like social media for customer support is when you scroll through and look at other people's questions from before.

The knowledge base appears to have a large collection of articles for topics like improving your store, add-ons, hosting, and more. Some of the articles have videos as well, so this is clearly a larger operation than a basic plugin you would typically grab for free and install on your WordPress site.

Finally, AliDropship offers a community forum to chat with other users, along with some guides and a full blog to learn about updates and tips that come straight from the company.

Overall, the online resources are rather impressive for a company that sells a WordPress plugin and eCommerce design services. I don't notice any phone numbers for calling in, but there is a live chat that is sometimes online.

Who Should Consider AliDropship?

There are two types of companies that should consider AliDropship. The first is a brand that wants to dropship but doesn't have the desire, resources, or skills to make the online store. In that case, you could contact AliDropship and ask for a custom dropshipping solution configured with access to AliExpress and all of the backend tools to start selling. These design services are reasonably priced compared to many other developers you'll find online.

The other type of business that should consider AliDropship is one with a WordPress site already running. Or, you might have experience with WordPress and WooCommerce and want to start your dropshipping store with that platform. In this situation, you'd pay for the AliDropship plugin and install it on WordPress. After that, you're able to stick with your website's design and start adding products to the store.

A reason you might avoid AliDropship is if you're not keen on the slow shipping times that plague AliExpress. It depends on the location of your customers, but I live in the United States and all of the items I've ever bought through AliExpress take weeks, if not months, to arrive. Other than that, the pricing is usually amazing.

If you have any questions about this AliDropship review, drop a line in the comments section below.

Joe Warnimont

Joe Warnimont is a Chicago-based writer who focuses on eCommerce tools, WordPress, and social media. When not fishing or practicing yoga, he's collecting stamps at national parks (even though that's mainly for children). Check out Joe's portfolio to contact him and view past work.

Comments 20 Responses

  1. vlad says:

    Part 1)

    Purchased the plugin about 1 week ago – The “Import directly from Aliexpress” feature it is not working (just the extra one where you can only import from their selection of products) – emailed support & reached out via FB, twice, still no answer regarding my issue – They are never available on the live chat (when they are not in office I can see the chat but can only email them and when they are in office they are unavailable due to large number of requests) – Far from the #1 solution

    Part 2)

    They eventually replied and told me they have fixed the issue – In reality, the problem is still there – tool is not working but they have ruined my website.

    Asked for a refund, I don’t think I will get one – if you look closely to the Facebook reviews, many are fake accounts. Will report this “business” everywhere.

    Avoid if you don’t need trouble 😉

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Vlad, thanks for sharing. I hope you managed to solve this issue.

  2. Aamir says:

    Hi, I am currently using the Shopify Platform but what bothers me is the monthly fee I have to pay. Can I transfer my store/website from Shopify to AliDropship? I use GoDaddy for my domain

  3. Stefan Carter says:

    Firstly I highly recommend the plugin. It does everything as advertised and will help you with managing your products and export them from Aliexpress.

    However I do not recommend Alidropship for their services. I purchased the basic webstore creation page which took well over 20 working days to complete. My project manager Helen only seemed to respond to feedback on the questionnaire, one question at a time, at the end of the working day and even asked me questions which I had already answered in the questionnaire. She told me the time it took to complete my store was long due to having to get all the answers from me, but things like niche research, domain name research etc etc are included as a service description and a clear timeline is provided when provided when purchasing the service. Then Helen warned at the last moment of their holiday schedule. I had constantly asked for updates of the timeline for the project completion, the way Helen communicated with me about the timeline was unacceptable.
    I also purchased the advertisement pack. This was completed in an acceptable time frame.

    The issue is, now I’m running campaigns for the store on facebook ads. I see no promising results.I mean really, If I switch the campaign to a conversion based campaign, the CTR is really low, every ad unit (image ad, canvas, video, carousel) performs badly.

    The setup they suggested for the marketing campaign delivers a good CTR at an acceptable cost per click but beyond that, no add to carts and 1 purchase. I will never make a profit on continuing to run these campaigns. What am I optimizing for, web traffic? Yes i guess I will target people on Facebook’s platform that are always more likely to click but it does not mean they will purchase.

    Ah, one thing with these guys. The stores they sell you have already been prepared. A quick google search validated this. They’ve already got a list of products ready based on your niche, they already have the product descriptions and all the other content is ready for you.

    I also think they are unable to provide good product descriptions when they have a very low level of English.

    The saying goes, put shit in, get shit out. I didn’t expect a million dollars from the amount I paid for the service but I expected better quality and to be given a website, niche and products that I could sell.

    When I turned to Helen to see if there was anything she could do to support me with making my store successful and not making me an angry customer, I was told I should pay for their members club.

    My advice is to stay away from purchasing their services.

    1. Jason says:

      I Agree stefan with what you say about getting answers to the creation of your store. I too purchased a basic store and my manager was was very uninformative, every question I asked ended with a “you can purchase this add-on or this service” they where great at completing my store but anything else I found them to be useless. I seriously begged my manager Victoria to give me answers to how I could get my store more noticed and again ” purchase this” was all I got oh! And read a blog. I ended up writing a poor review and that’s when the CEO Yaros contacted me and I explained to him how I felt about the service and he was very considerate of how I felt and he even offered me the social rabbit add-on for free which was very much appreciated. But as far as these managers go I think they just do what they have to and no more and it’s sad cause they advertise that anyone can run a store even if u know nothing about dropshipping and I’m sure you know yourself that’s a crock. I’ve had my store for about 3 months now and I haven’t made 1 sale yet and I’ve ran facebook ads I’m posting on Instagram,Twitter, Pinterest and linkedin and still nothing I have many people visit my site but no sales. I’m considering ordering the Facebook business and google merchant but I’m very skeptical after seeing that social rabbit did absolutely nothing for me. I also noticed you said that alidropship has there stores or products all ready made and loaded which got me to thinking of when I chose my niche. I had made 2 different suggestions for a niche and was given some stories about how certain products of that niche has very much Chinese writing on there product or the niche was saturated so I was kind of made to pick a niche that I do enjoy as a hobby (auto accessories) but I knew it was a bad choice for dropshipping, I just wished I had of said something when I first decided, my bad. So I feel your pain and it sucks but I’m not giving up I’m going to continue to push forward and I’ve been researching other options such as my own store through wordpress, suppliers in Canadian and USA market only and deal directly with them. I’m sure it’s a whole new way to dropship as far as learning new platforms and product imports and such. I was considering Shopify but I am 100% against monthly payments for anything online, it’s one payment or nothing for me, the reason I’m with alidropship. Anyway I hope your store will pickup and you start seeing profits as will mine I hope someday. Have a great day

  4. Jon Mitchell says:

    I bought this plugin and it doesn’t work. My website meets all of their minimum requirements (and then some). Product images do not load when you import products. Their “support” ignores your messages or tries to point the blame at WooCommerce. They will respond immediately … until you state you have any issue. Then your messages go unread and with no reply. Interesting form of “support” huh?

    I run other websites based on WooCommerce without issue so I know that isn’t the real problem. Even when I use their paid product import process, images do not load – which defeats the purpose because customers want to see what they are going to buy. My advice – steer clear.

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Sorry to hear about that Jon, I hope yo managed to solve the problem in the meantime.

  5. Charlotte Peters says:

    I paid a little over $1000 to get started with AliDropShip about a year ago. They were doing everything. I had two deaths in my family- first my aunt and as I was getting over that, my mother died. My life STOPPED. I did inform the person I was working with to build my store, site and business that my aunt had died and she acknowledged the fact and then everything just got put on the back burner. I have tried reaching out to Daria, my “coach” for lack of a better title atm, on Skype and on BaseCamp and I cannot seem to get anyone to reply. I want to continue with building my online store and if that cannot happen, I want a refund. Any suggestions? Thanks!

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Charlotte, they usually have very good customer service response times. Did you manage to solve the problem?

  6. Paul Dodd says:

    This was a nice review. You mentioned that the shipping can take weeks or months to the United States, but I have heard of something called e-packet shipping, which I believe it only supposed to take between 10-20 days. Do you have experience with suppliers who offer e-packet shipping?

  7. MANOJ KUMAR says:

    HI
    I AM VERY NEW TO DROPSHIPPING PLAT FORM. I AM LOOKING FOR A SUGGESTION IF I OPT FOR ALIDROPSHIPPING TO START WITH. PLEASE ALSO SUGGEST SHALL I GO FOR NICHE STORE OR GENERAL STORE.

  8. ghita says:

    I am really dissatisfied with this plugin as my customers dont receive a send order confirmation with track & trace number. I have contacted Alidropship support and they send me to Woocommerce with the reason that their plugin has to send the email. Woocommerce once again send me to Alidropship as it is their plugin not working proparly.
    Now I got stuck with mad customers as they dont know when to receive their order and keep sending me emails.
    Waist of my money as on other webshop I am using Shopmaster for free and it is doing its job more smoothly then for the paid Alidropship.

  9. Clay says:

    Are you disclosing that these are affiliate links and you’re making a commission off of sales? I’m looking for an non-biased review, although I do respect the hustle. What’s your honest opinion on the product?

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Sure, the affiliate disclaimer is available on all pages.

  10. Shoshanah says:

    Does it work to combine Alidropship PlugIn on a site that has print on products and some of my own products or would it be better to split the two?
    I have two WP websites. One is an online store I am developing the other is a service that I am looking to add more resources to. Any tips to decide which one to add Alidropship to? If I purchase the plug in, can it be used on both my websites or does it work per one website?

    Thanks for your help

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Hello Shoshanah,

      That would definitely work. I would strongly advice using the site with ecommerce functionalities.

  11. Marcus Titan says:

    A suggestion, automate the connection between the supplier and the store. I have to suggest taking a more all-encompassing solution clandestinebrain.com/dropship : No monthly fees, everything is automated in it – the payment goes to the seller of AliExpress, the order is formed and sent. Your business becomes just attracting traffic to the store and communicating with customers.

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