AliDropShip Review – An In-depth Look

What is AliDropShip?

AliDropShip was originally the name of a plugin, or two plugins really that allowed someone to take a normal-looking website or WooCommerce store, and turn it into an automated DropShipping store. 

These days, AliDropShip is really a brand, that includes plugins, themes, services and even custom-made stores. They have grown a lot since the original review, but this review is meant to cover the overall 'brand' of AliDropShip, with some focus on the plugins. 

I do dive into the AliDropShip Themes & AliDropShip Custom store in their own reviews, to allow for a more detailed look at the other offerings they have these days. 

As part of this particular AliDropShip Review, I do mainly focus on the features and tools that help build a WordPress website, rather than the WooCommerce version. You do get both plugins as part of the price.

How Does the AliDropShip Plugin work?

AliDropShip for WordPress works by adding a variety of tools, themes, settings and items to a standard WordPress site to create a high-end custom store.

Basically everything you would need to get started with DropShipping, without needing to pay for a stand-alone eCommerce platform. 

It directly connects with AliExpress, whereby you can find and automatically import products. You can also create your own listings if you use sites such as Salehoo to find local sellers.

The AliDropShip for WooCommerce part doesn't change the whole look and feel of the site, as it's essentially an add-on to the already powerful WooCommerce plugin that exists. It simply adds new functionality and automation to your woo commerce site. 

What Is Included With The AliDropShip WordPress Plugin?

As mentioned above, the AliDropship plugin comes with a massive variety of features, add-ons, themes and extras to turn your own website into a fully-fledged eCommerce store. 

There is a lot to cover, so I have tried to stick to the high-level features and explain how some of them work, certain sections now have more in-depth articles devoted to them due to their growing nature of them. Especially the themes section.  

Pre Made Themes

As of 2022, AliDropShip has vastly updated its offerings for themes. Increasing the number from about 5 or 6 in 2018 to 11 AliDropShip original themes, as they like to call them. They also suggest 9 WooCommerce themes that they recommend or have created themselves.

There are a number of free themes that can be installed and activated without hassle. There is also a growing selection of high-quality paid-for themes (around $69), which again can be purchased and installed much like any other WordPress theme. 

The AliDropShip team have created multiple themes from single-page stores designed to help sell single products, to large multi-product, multi-niche themes aimed at increasing conversions from start to finish. 

Some include Instagram feeds embedded in them, allowing you to showcase your products or possibly highlight happy customers, others have large bright vibrant sections devoted to including high-quality images and product features. 

The designs are fairly clean these days and do come with their own features. You will find sale ribbons, discount notifications, star ratings and a bunch of additional features that can help increase sales. 

The increased number of themes allows for a much more varied and wide-ranging selection. It also means that your Dropshipping store is going to look unique or like a high end custom store without paying thousands.

Some of the older themes are a bit dated. They have got newer versions of them, such as Da Vinci 2, that update the look and feel, so at least they are trying to ensure stores look modern. 

A more in-depth review of the AliDropShip themes can be read here. 

Quick Search & 1-Click-Import

One of the main features of AliDropShip, aside from turning your blog into a DropShipping store, is the direct link to AliExpress and their product import tools. 

The AliDropShip Plugin has its own built-in product importer, this allows you to apply a number of filters, and then search AliExpress with these filters in place, including keywords and categories. 

Or, you can use the direct import tool, something I found particularly useful. 

Once you are on AliExpress, you are then given the option to import the whole subcategory, category or just the page, you will find a variety of settings to change what you want to see.

If you want to narrow the search down, you can look for very specific criteria such as only e-packet, ships to certain countries and also what you want to do with the products when you import them. 

You are also given a Chrome Extension, that can be used to import products without having to be in your store. 

For me, the tool is quick and easy. You can either browse the AliExpress website yourself, and import directly from there, or I can run a more detailed search within AliDropShip and be shown a variety of products.

Easy Product Editors

As part of the 1-click imports or quick imports, you can also quickly and easily update each of the listings, including if you want to; 

• Import the images

• Import the descriptions

• Import the variations

When importing the products to your store, you get the ability to change the images, pricing, and descriptions. Allowing you to make your imported items unique to your store. 

This inbuilt editor is really useful from my personal experience, as other similar apps or tools don't give you such depth when trying to import them.

As you can see from the images above, you really can edit and change as you see fit, you can even load your own images if you have taken your own. I would suggest taking images and scaling them down to take up less space.

I will admit, there is a downside to the AliDropShip chrome extension. You can only edit one product at a time, and you have no ability to build up a backlog of imports (while on AliExpress).  Alternatively, you can add your chosen products to in import list, and change and edit them as you go.

Pricing Automation & One-Click Checkout

One of the biggest issues many shop owners face is the pain of having to set all the prices individually, this is more of an issue when you have 20 - 50+ items because it takes so long!

AliDropShip gives you the ability to set pricing formulas, for example, you can set all imported listings priced between $1 - $5 to be priced at $14.99 or x4.5 the original price.

Being able to have all of my prices updated automatically to be a 2x price, or similar means I know they will always make a profit.

Not a new concept, but one-click checkout is such a time saver. AliDropShip allows you to quickly and easily order your customers' goods, without having to edit and change your orders every single time. 

You can also add extra information such as notes, default phone numbers and default email addresses.

This is brilliant if you don't want AliExpress sending emails to your customers. Yes, they will do that, and it's annoying as hell.

You also have the ability to select a number of different sales and queue them up to add to the checkout (it then just processes the shipping address for every sale, one after the other). This is great for those who have to process tens or hundreds of orders a day or who want to bundle up a day or two days' worth of orders. 

Auto Tracking

The AliDropShip plugin lets you get the shipping ID and shipping information straight from AliExpress. The plugin will then send out an email to your customer with the tracking information, and then link them to your website.

You can also direct your users to your own tracking page, giving customers that sense of security, especially in this modern day and age whereby customers want to track everything, right to their front door. 

Abandoned Cart Follow Ups

This feature can cost a lot of money to have on its own, especially if you use apps on eCommerce Platforms. AliDropShip will show you its pre-done email campaign for you and then allow you to edit and change as you wish. 

For me, getting something like this as a free add-on is worth the price of the AliDropship plugin alone. Using similar plugins on Shopify cost between $19 - $49 per month, depending on if they include emails, how smart they are etc. 

So having one that I can turn on, add some logic to and even have a few emails that I can plugin means I can start saving time and energy instantly. 

In addition to the abandon cart plugin, you do get the ability to keep the email list of those who might have simply added their contact details, but never bought anything or were browsing, went to purchase but didn't.

Reporting Tools

Something I brushed past on the original AliDropShip Plugin Review, where the reports. In the past, you would have had to install different plugins to get this type of information.

You get 3 standard reports, you can also add your Google Analytics ID to your website to track even more data.

The reports provided include;

• Sales Report
  • Best Selling Products
  • Best Selling Categories
  • Total Sales
  • Profit
• Traffic 
• Activities Report

The sales report will show you how well your online store is doing from a sales point of view. Including the number of orders, how much it costs to purchase from suppliers, your profit margins and average orders. You can delve into top products and categories to allow you to start understanding how well your dropshipping store is doing.

The reports are easy to understand, clean and well laid out. For the average store owner, this is pretty much all they require to allow them to focus their efforts. 

The traffic report uses Google Analytics to help you keep an accurate view of your site. This is also fed back into the order report, and can be used to understand conversion rates. 

If you are running ads, you can also add the cost of acquisition etc and start to understand how much it costs to get those customers and how much they spend. 

AliExpress Best Sellers - Auto-Import

Another 'new for 2020' is access to 50 imports of their own database of 50,000 high-performing products. They are in a variety of niches, and it is a service that they actually now sell as an additional extra called 'import packages'.

The import packages essentially allow you to import pre-edited pages, including images and descriptions. So if you have a niche in mind, you can head over to their database and find high-performing 'best sellers', import them in and either leave them as is, or possibly do some minor edits to fit with your brand and style. 

I have spoken more about some of AliDropShip services , if you want to get a better understanding of what they have to offer.

Multiple Payment Gateways

They offer Stripe and PayPal straight off the bat, which is great as they are some of the best payment providers out there (customers trust PayPal, so gives your store more credibility).

There is a huge variety of payment and checkout options. So if you are in a country that has high fees or only supports certain checkouts, you can find the best one for you.

If you use the AliDropShip woo plugin, then you have even more providers and you are only limited by WooCommerce. 

Updating Mass Products

When using other platforms and apps, I found that trying to do a mass update was either difficult or the functionality didn't exist. Thankfully AlIDropShop does allow you to mass update as you wish, for example, you can do a force update every 5minutes or 5 hours to get the latest information from AliExpress, or you can update all products with a different pricing structure.

The auto-updating throughout the day always ensures that you have the latest stock, pricing and variations, which when running 100 + item stores can save you lots of time.

Cash Back & Discount Codes

Possibly one of the best parts of the AliDropShip plugin and AliDropship woo plugin is that they both allow you to add in your Affiliate ID or cashback ID when shopping via AliExpress.

AlDropShip suggests you can get around 8% cashback with this turned on.

Not essential, though something I find really useful, being able to have custom discount codes can be great for tracking affiliate sales or simply offering a discount in exchange for an email address. 

They can be used with Instagram influencers, or pop-up/email capture forms to help build that email list up. 

Product Reviews

Being able to utilise the product reviews from AliExpress is a great way to build trust for your site, if a product you sell has lots of 4 or 5-star reviews, then your customers know they are getting a good deal. 

Importing these product reviews onto your store allows you to then use them either on the product sales pages or simply used as a 'rating'. It also helps you decide if it's a product worth selling. 

Similar apps for other sites can cost additional dollars per month or will have a one-off cost. 

Additional AliDropShip Addons

I admit you get a lot of features and functionality for an $89 plugin, with a ton of free add-ons that they have included and added over the years, but they do also have their own marketplace. 

The add-ons they sell are one-off costs, so you will pay $39 for the split test add-on one time, and then it's yours for life in your store. They are tied to your web store, so if you own 5 more stores, you would need to buy 5 licences, but that's pretty similar to any other program or platform. 

They have a large and growing number of apps and add-ons that can be purchased to help increase sales, find more traffic or split test your pages. 

The AliDropShip team have also created a number of bundles that allow someone new to building a DropShipping business to get a head start.

The bundles put together a number of add-ons that the AliDropShip team think people will need.

For example, the Beginners Set includes;

• Urgency - Designed to showcase the number of times the product has been purchased, how many views it currently has and how many people are about to purchase it right now
• Product Bundle - Allows a user to put together their own packages or bundles, increasing the value of a cart, while also offering the customer a discount
• Reviews Pages - You can build whole pages dedicated to reviews of the products you sell
• Promo Banners - A great way to highlight the fact that a sale is on, or new products have arrived. With different promo 'looks and feel' you can have ones set up for different occasions 
• SEO Image Optimiser - Speed is essential, and increasing how quickly your pages load, especially when heavily image-focused can keep users on your site longer (or attract new ones quicker).
• My Suppliers - A neat addition that will start to collate stats about your suppliers, letting you find information about the products they sell, the feedback scores, if their pricing is decent and even what categories they fit into.

AliDropShip also offers a number of other plugins or add-ons that can be purchased when and if you feel you need them. 

AliDropShip Services 

The AliDropShip staff or team also now offer services. These services usually revolve around the AliDropShip Plugin, but they do have some that are simply 'store focused'. 

For example, they have marketing services, data entry services for products, theme switching, website installation, check-ups and a whole host of other services you can get. 

You can take a look at the different services AliDropShip offer, including my own review of them here.

AliDropShip Custom Store Packages

AliDropShip now offers custom store development or as they call it a custom store creation service. They offer a variety of packages;

• Basic - $299
• Advanced - $499
• Ultimate - $899

These premium store packages come with a differing number of ready-to-sell products included. The higher tiers add more features such as social media page set-up and additional promo options.

There is also a secret Supreme Package, which is really for those looking to smash the competition with a premium dropshipping store, with access to a support manager.

You can check out the alidropship ultimate package review and the AliDropShip premium stores review to see these particular offerings in a bit more detail. 

What I Enjoyed About AliDropShip

For me, one of the biggest things that made AliDropShip stand out was the fact I had the freedom to run it on WordPress. 

I have run sites and even online stores in the past, but never with a handy WordPress plugin doing the heavy lifting.

The training and installation guide is easy to follow. I have seen people without WordPress or eCommerce knowledge get their new online store set up very quickly.

Another thing that I love is the sheer number of add-ons that come with AliDropShip Plugin. 

I have to admit I enjoy the fact I can earn cashback on my own purchases. Other plugins and platforms actually use their affiliate links, so you are turning the tide.

Lastly, I actually appreciate that the guys behind AliDropShip are constantly trying to improve. They have come a long way in the few years I have followed them, with new apps, training, themes and even ready-built stores that can be purchased. 

The ability to purchase a custom store, essentially giving you a done-for-you online business is also a nice way to get started. Though there is no guarantee.

Finally, I have always had great customer service from their support team. They offer free lifelong personal support, which wasn't something I was aware of at the time. 

What I Didn’t Enjoy About AliDropShip

A few of the plugins that they sell, could easily be added to the core themes, such as the trust badges.

I am not a fan of trust badges personally. I always feel they look a bit scammy, but customers enjoy them and I feel it's something that could be a standard feature without needing to get the urgency bundle. 

Who Would Benefit From AliDropShip Plugin?

Anyone who is looking at getting into building a DropShipping business and need a simple yet functional platform to build their online business.

For those who are frustrated with some of the lacking features from AliDropShips competitors or who are fed up with paying high monthly fees, limited payment gateways or even just annoyances with apps such as Oberlo, then AliDropShip is possibly the right option for you.

AliDropShip Alternatives?

The main alternative is Shopify, it cannot be denied that this platform is huge and some claim it to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest for e-com store builders. 

Even though AliDropShip is a WordPress-Plugin and Shopify is a platform, you can still compare them as AliDropShip allows you to make a complete AliExpress dropshipping business with their offering.

To see a full breakdown to find out which is better AliDropShip or Shopify, check out this article to find your dropshipping solution.

How Much Is AliDropShip?

The cost of AliDropShip starts at $89. It's a one-time fee for that plugin at least. Which is a pretty low price to start a DropShipping business.

Obviously, you will need a domain name and a hosting package and these are not included in the cost, so take into account you may need to spend around $15/£10 extra a month for this.

You do get both the standard Plugin and the AliDropship woo plugin as part of that cost, and both will require the hosting/domain.

To give you a bit of an idea of which version you may want to use, read the handy little chart that they provide in their FAQs.

AliDropShip Review - Final Thoughts

So there you have it, an AliDropShip plugin review, that gives you a bit of an overview of the product the themes, some of the apps that you get as standard and even how it compares to one of the most popular eCommerce platforms. 

Would I recommend alidropship plugin as a way to build a drop shipping business? Yes, especially if you are new, and need access to a support team, who offers efficient customer service or training and guides to get started.

It's a pretty decent plugin for those who want to convert their WordPress site into a dropship website. Without having to pay additional monthly fees, and keeping the freedom that comes with creating websites on WordPress.