Dropshipping sounds easy, but it's often a hassle to contact suppliers, find reasonable prices and update products on your website. At the end of the day, you end up with small margins and a frustrating situation. However, in this Oberlo review, we'll see that they seek to change that.
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Oberlo isn't a full ecommerce platform, but rather an extension you can install on sites built on Shopify and other places.
Created to help people access the eCommerce environment as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, Oberlo belongs to the dropshipping space. If you haven’t heard of dropshipping before, it involves essentially removing the warehousing and fulfilment concerns from your sales process.
Instead of buying items, storing them, and shipping them to customers when they make a purchase, you only place an order with a supplier when a customer buys a product listed on your website. With Oberlo, you can export products from AliExpress, and similar sites, directly to your Shopify store.
Oberlo was founded in 2015, but it has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years. Today, it’s one of the most popular applications in the Shopify marketplace.
The goal with the tool is to quickly import products to dropship while sitting back and having Oberlo package and ship the products to your customers.
An advantage for Shopify customers is that Oberlo comes pre-installed for new Shopify users so that merchants can search and add products quickly right from when they sign up in Shopify.
Although Oberlo is available worldwide, it’s worth noting that it works exclusively with Shopify stores. If you want to run a dropshipping business with a WordPress site, or something else, then you’re going to have to try a different application.
Still, the fact that Oberlo only works with Shopify isn’t going to be too much of a problem for most people. Shopify is one of the most popular and feature-packed platforms for today’s shoppers. It’s way ahead of a lot of it’s competitors, and it’s pretty affordable too.
If you’re a beginner in the eCommerce world, it only takes a few minutes to launch a store with Shopify and add Oberlo to the mix.
Once you’ve created an account on Shopify, you can search for Oberlo on the app store and install it with the click of a button. With Oberlo, you don’t need to complete all of your orders on your own. All of your sales on Shopify sync immediately with Oberlo. After you find the product you want to sell and publish it on your store, all you need to do is check your orders in Oberlo with the order button.
Whenever you click the order button, Oberlo opens AliExpress, displays the purchase history, and adds the products you need to your cart. From there, you just fill in the shipping details, and you’re on the way to a happy customer.
After the order is shipped, Oberlo automatically updates the status on your online business store, and notifies the buyer. It’s one of the most attractive dropshipping app options around because it’s so simple to use!
Sounds pretty good, right? Well, let's see if it's worth your money.
Btw, here's a video review of Shopify created by my colleague Joe. 🙂
Orbelo Review: Pros and Cons
All products come with their positives and negatives to consider, and the same is true of Oberlo. For many, this tool is one of the best ways to start selling online. However, there are some downsides to Oberlo too.
Oberlo Pros 👍
- Simultaneous integration with Shopify
- Quick and secure product importing from AliExpress
- Easy-to-use interface with a friendly interface
- Automated product order fulfilment
- Daily product syncing
- Inventory and pricing automation
- Extra scalability for growing businesses
- Free Chrome extension
- Sales and shipment tracking options
- Ability to change suppliers whenever you like
- Pricing markup options
- ePacket filter built-in
Oberlo Cons 👎
- Only works with Shopify
- No option to work as a standalone service
- None of the products are edited in Oberlo
- Only AliExpress is supported
Oberlo Review: Features
The goal of Oberlo is to connect your online store with thousands of suppliers and manufacturers. This way, you're able to choose some products and sync them with your store. The content creation (for product pages) is mostly done for you, and you don't have to call around to find the right suppliers.
There's also the added benefit of not having to store, package, or ship your products. You do lose some control over your product this way, but the features from Oberlo seem to make things easy for the merchant. You don't need lots of capital to get started and the integration is about as smooth as they come.
Now, let's talk about some of the specific Oberlo features:
Impressive Importing from Suppliers
The primary feature you get from Oberlo is the importing from AliExpress. Since so many dropshippers use AliExpress to find and sell products, it's a wonder as to why a tool like this hasn't come around sooner. Not only do you gain access to thousands of suppliers on AliExpress, but the product images, details, and prices are all situated right there for you.
Anyone who has used AliExpress knows that it's pretty simple trying to search for a keyword and locate a product that might fit well in your store. And the Oberlo system makes it so much easier. Basically, you can complete your usual browsing, but this time you receive an Oberlo button that automatically imports the desired product to your online store. There's nothing more to it.
There's More
Oberlo used to only offer a connection to AliExpress. The only unfortunate part about that is that most suppliers came from China. So, companies elsewhere would get stuck with very long shipping times. However, Oberlo has now added two other types of suppliers: Oberlo Verified Suppliers and Oberlo Suppliers. The regular Oberlo Suppliers are companies that have been vetted and monitored on the Oberlo marketplace. Many of them are located all over the world and have better shipping times than AliExpress. The Oberlo Verified suppliers are the top performers who have been handpicked by Oberlo as the best of the best.
A Beautiful Interface for Managing Products
Similar to the WordPress configuration, the Oberlo dashboard has a clean menu on the left-hand side for completing a wide variety of tasks. For example, you can search for products, set your featured products, import lists or view your products. All the items in your store are organized in a reasonable fashion, with information about your sales and earnings for each one.
Editing a product on Shopify can be done in one click, so essentially you have two dashboards in this situation. None of the product details are really managed on the Oberlo dashboard. Rather, you would go to your Shopify website and complete that.
Automated Order Fulfillment
This is my favorite part of the Oberlo platform because it makes dropshipping what it should be: Super Easy. Once an order comes in through your online store, all you have to do is locate that product in your inventory and hit the Order Product button. You can add a few products into your own cart, even if the items are coming from different suppliers.
The best part is that once you hit that button, everything else is automatically handled by Oberlo. They package and ship the items so that your customers don't know you're dropshipping, and you don't have to worry about storing, packaging or shipping your products.
Inventory and Price Auto-Updates
Inventory is constantly managed so that you never sell an item that's out of stock. The same goes for pricing. So, if a price drops from the supplier's end, you will be notified in case you'd like to adjust the pricing on your own website.
Quick Supplier Changes
With Oberlo, you gain access to millions of AliExpress and Oberlo Verified products. They're currently testing a wide range of certified suppliers. These are convenient suppliers and you can check out ratings to see what types of products they supply. Sticking with one supplier is not required either. If you notice that a different supplier has a better price, a simple click of the button can switch you over to the better one.
Oberlo Review: Supply
Millions of products are available for you to choose from in Oberlo. You can sift through the different categories like beauty, home, and jewelry, while also searching from the search bar.
Needless to say, the supply will not be a problem with Oberlo. It's by far the best dropshipping solution when it comes to the number of products. In addition, you can look at each product to see things like pricing, color, quantity, and shipping.
Oberlo Pricing Review
Every plan from Oberlo starts with a 30-day free trial, giving you a taste of what to expect if you start paying. You can also cancel your account at any time and go over your plan limits without affecting your order process. However, one thing to keep in mind is that going over a plan limit removes the dropshipping component of the service, so you'll have to process the orders manually.
In terms of pricing, it's rather reasonable, and you have three plans to choose from depending on the size of your store.
- Starter – For $0 you receive a setup for 500 products, 50 orders per month, daily product syncing, automatic order fulfillment, pricing automation, a free Chrome extension, and sales reporting.
- Basic – For $29.90 per month you receive a setup for 10,000 products, 500 orders per month, everything from the previous plan, shipment tracking and order fulfillment monitoring.
- Pro – For $79.90 per month you receive a setup for 30,000 products, unlimited orders per month, everything from the previous plan and multiple users.
Overall, I like the Starter plan, considering support for 500 products is quite a bit. The Basic Plan is the most popular, and many businesses will need the shipment tracking and order fulfillment monitoring.
The free starter plan from Oberlo is sure to appeal to a lot of people who don’t have much of a budget to spend on their dropshipping strategy. You only need to pay extra when your business starts to scale and needs some new features.
With the Starter plan from Oberlo, you don’t really need much in the way of initial funds to start your dropshipping business. You only buy from your supplier when a customer purchases from you, which means that you keep the ingoing and outgoing cash flowing smoothly.
You can earn your first sale as soon as you like with Oberlo, and as your business begins to scale, you’ll still be able to take orders as normal. However, the auto-fulfilment process will disable itself if you go over your plan limits. This means that you’ll have to handle the shipping yourself, or upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Another bonus of Oberlo is that you don’t have to stick with your plan if you decide that you want to try a different service. You can cancel the plan and uninstall your application from the Shopify store. There’s no commitments to keep you from trying something new.
Oberlo Review: Support
For not being a full ecommerce platform, the Oberlo company certainly treats its support pretty seriously. For example, a full blog provides information on updates, strategies, and inspiration. You can subscribe to the email newsletter for news, or check out information on the social media platforms. We often find that getting quick support often comes when you shoot a company a message on Facebook.
As for the real meat of the support team, Oberlo has a large forum to speak with other people who are using the platform. The forum is nicely managed with responses from Oberlo, and it includes topics like how much to expect in terms of income and how to build your own dropshipping brand.
Finally, a full knowledge base is provided for those who like to search for and find popular questions about Oberlo. If you can't locate a situation that occurred in the past, a ticket submission button is available as well. In terms of support, Oberlo seems to have all the bases covered.
What is Dropshipping?
A dropshipping business is a quick and easy way to start making money online. With this kind of business, you don’t actually own the products that you’re selling. You don’t buy items and store them in a warehouse to send directly to your customers. Instead, you choose products that you want to add to your store from a third-party supplier like AliExpress.
With dropshipping, the manufacturer is in charge of making the goods, carrying inventory, and shipping products to customers across the globe. On the other hand, as a retailer, you’re responsible for showcasing products to potential customers, marketing your business, and building a brand that your customers can get behind. You also need to make sure that the orders get through to your dropshipping suppliers from your customers.
As a business model, Dropshipping allows you to eliminate a great deal of the stress from the fulfilment process. You can develop your own eCommerce store, without just having to use Amazon or eBay. Additionally, you can choose your own Oberlo pricing guide, with markups that you control, so you can boost your chances of making a profit.
While you’re responsible for managing the Shopify app with Dropshipping, and making sure that your business can be found on Google, at least you don’t have to worry about order fulfilment and shipping.
Although Oberlo isn’t the only way to get started with dropshipping, it is one of the most popular choices for an eCommerce business. This is particularly true for organizations that already have a store on Shopify.
Another thing to keep in mind if you decide to take the dropshipping route, is that you may be responsible for delivering your own customer support. If that’s the case, it’s important to make sure that you work with a supplier that you can contact to ask about things like delays in shipping.
What is AliExpress Dropshipping?
Oberlo dropshipping is sometimes referred to as AliExpress dropshipping, because the Oberlo app allows you to choose items from AliExpress suppliers to add to your store. With tools like the Oberlo Chrome extension, you can even add new products to your Shopify list in seconds.
However, Oberlo isn’t the only way to access dropshipping through AliExpress. Businesses can also buy bulk products straight from AliExpress and send them to their customers themselves. However, Oberlo is the easiest way to access AliExpress dropshipping, where you don’t have to worry about things like storing products and fulfilling orders.
With the Oberlo plugin and AliExpress, you can easily add products, complete with photos and descriptions to your dropshipping store in a matter of seconds. For beginners in the eCommerce world, using Oberlo.com is often a much more straightforward way to make money than building your entire business from scratch. There’s even a free plan available from Oberlo to get you started with the basics.
Once you’ve learned how to master Oberlo, you can start working on other steps to make the most out of your eCommerce business. This could mean upgrading to the pro plan on Shopify so you can access more features, or just enhancing your SEO strategy. Whatever you choose to do next, the Oberlo supply marketplace will keep you stocked up on dropshipping products.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Oberlo with Shopify
Shopify and Oberlo are a match made in heaven for beginner entrepreneurs that want to start selling online as quickly as possible. Shopify provides small business owners with all the tools they need to start standing out online. The convenient website-building technology makes growth quick and simple, plus there’s a marketplace where you can access add-on tools and plugins for more functionality too.
The Shopify Marketplace is where you’ll find the Oberlo app. Oberlo is the go-to tool for dropshipping with Shopify. If you want to build a Shopify store where you’re not responsible for order fulfilment on your own, then Oberlo is the app for you.
The question is, how do you get started with connecting Oberlo and Shopify?
Step 1: Get your Shopify Account
The first step is creating your Shopify account. Go to Shopify and click “Start Free Trial” if you want to get a taste of the services you can expect before you sign on the dotted line. Once your fourteen-day free trial is over, you’ll need to choose which Shopify pricing package is right for you.
Costs for basic Shopify start at $29 per month. If you want more features, you can upgrade to Advanced Shopify for $299, or just the standard mid-level Shopify tier for $79 per month. There is the option to access Shopify Plus for enterprises, but this is really only worth considering when your company is growing at an astronomical scale.
Step 2: Signing up with Oberlo
Once you’ve got your Shopify account, you’ll need to create an account with Oberlo too. This will allow you to explore the various products available for you to sell on your website. Check out the Oberlo environment for a while, then go to Shopify’s app store so you can link your Shopify and Oberlo accounts.
Remember, once you link an Oberlo account to a Shopify profile, you can’t unlink them and connect the same store to a separate Oberlo account. You’d need to start a brand-new Shopify account to do this, so it’s important to take this step seriously. If you have any issues, get in touch with the Shopify team for advice on what to do next.
To link your Oberlo and Shopify accounts, visit the Oberlo page in the Shopify app store and click on Add App. You’ll need to be signed into Shopify to do this.
Oberlo will ask for permission to manage your data, products, and order information. You’ll need to agree to give Oberlo all of these functions by clicking Install App.
Step 3: Connect Oberlo to Your Store
Once you have Oberlo installed, it’s time to connect the app to your store. Visit the website and click on add Oberlo to Shopify to sign up for an account. In the dashboard, select Connect a Store, At this point, if you’re not logged into Shopify, you’ll need to enter your site’s information.
Oberlo asks you for permission to manage your products, orders, and other data. To give Oberlo permission for all functions, click install app. From your Shopify admin section, click on Apps then Oberlo to open the service.
To finish your setup, you’ll need to determine which shipping settings you should use in Shopify. In the Shopify admin section, click on Settings, then Shipping and Delivery. You only need to focus on the Shipping section here. This contains the general and custom shipping you can use for your customers.
Step 4: Complete your Shipping Profile
Shipping profiles within Oberlo allow you to adjust your shipping settings to suit the needs of your business, whether you’re fulfilling orders, dropshipping with Oberlo, or shipping products from home. You can even access different rates for shipping certain products to specific locations.
Your business needs will help you to determine how many shipping profiles are suitable for you. If you want to have the same rules for shipping all your products, then you just need to use the general shipping rates profile. This profile starts on each Shopify website you connect to Oberlo automatically. The great thing about this general shipping rates option is that it immediately includes all of your products, so you don’t have to assign individually.
If you’re looking for different shipping rules for different locations or products, you need to use the custom shipping rates function to create custom shipping profiles. These profiles need to be created manually, and you can access up to 100 of them, which means that you’ve got a lot of flexibility for your different kinds of products.
Once you’re finished managing your shipping profiles, you’re ready to start selling products with Oberlo. It’s as simple as that!
Who Should Be Using Oberlo for Their Online Store?
This question is pretty simple because any store that has dropshipping should consider implementing Oberlo. It only takes a few minutes, and the system cuts time spent with dropshipping. You can also find quality suppliers with reasonable prices. In short, it's how dropshipping should be.
Anyone can sign up for an Oberlo account, and start adding products to their store. Over the years, countless store owners have shared their success stories. Just keep in mind that Oberlo can’t do everything. It might make it easy to avoid warehousing your own products, but it won’t work with all stores, like WooCommerce stores.
Additionally, you may need to spend some time researching suppliers to ensure you’re getting the best quality of products, engaging product description solutions and a range of fast shipping options. Note that some AliExpress suppliers aren’t the fastest at delivering products to customers.
If you have any questions about this Oberlo review, please let us know in the comments section below.
The post Oberlo Review (Oct 2020): Super Dropshipping, the Way it Should Be appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.
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