Oberlo vs Dropified: Which is a Better Tool for Dropshipping?

Dropshipping entrepreneurs today seek cutting edge automation, seamless integrations and a dedicated support team who’s got your back. But there are very few dropshipping automation services that can tick this list.

Oberlo and Dropified are two of the most popular dropshipping automation tools in the market. But each one, has its own unique selling proposition.

In this article, we’ll compare Oberlo and Dropified so you can decide which one is the best for your business.

• Oberlo View
• Dropified Overview
• Oberlove vs Dropified: The Key Differences
• Is Dropified Better Than Oberlo?

Oberlo Overview

Oberlo is a dropshipping tool for Shopify stores that allows you to source easily from Chinese suppliers, primarily, Aliexpress. Oberlo was set up in 2015 by a group of dropshipping entrepreneurs who found a massive void in the market for an effective sourcing tool.

Since its inception, Oberlo has become the go-to dropshipping tool for Shopify store owners. That’s because of the sheer number of features it offers and its ease of use. Oberlo allows you to find products to sell on your store, add them with a single click, and have them shipped, without ever having to deal with the hassles of inventory or manual order fulfillment.

Pros & cons of Oberlo

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of using Oberlo:

Pros:

• Oberlo is designed for ease-of-use. The cloud-based software has a WordPress inspired user interface with a clean look and layout. Even if you have never used a similar tool before, you can get up and running in minutes.
• Oberlo syncs with Aliexpress, which is hands down, the largest and most popular dropshipping marketplace in the world. This gives you access to millions of products that you can add to your store with a single click. They also have their own list of vetted suppliers, which can be added to your store with a single click.
• Oberlo lets you filter suppliers by shipping times to the destination country. Shipping is probably the biggest detractor in overseas dropshipping from Aliexpress. So this feature is a big plus.
• Oberlo offers a 30-day free trial which is pretty generous and allows you to get a feel for the tool and see if it fits your business model.
• You can actually set automation rules fairly easily in Oberlo. This can run a large chunk of the business on autopilot.

Cons:

• Oberlo only integrates with Shopify. This means, it’s not even a consideration if you’re not using Shopify as your ecommerce platform.
• Oberlo does not have global suppliers yet. All their suppliers are based in China. If you are looking to offer one-two day shipping in USA, it may not be possible through Oberlo.
• Oberlo shares best selling product data with all their subscribers. So, if you have found a winning product, there’s no exclusivity since this data is available to all Oberlo subscribers. This increases competition manifold.
• Oberlo is not third-party friendly. You can only import from Aliexpress and only sell on Shopify.

Related Reading:

Oberlo Dropshipping Review 
Top 9 Oberlo Alternatives 
Oberlo vs Spocket 
Oberlo vs DSers

Dropified Overview

Dropified is a dropshipping automation tool that takes Oberlo’s limited integrations and blows it out of the water. It offers one-click integration with 80+ marketplaces and sales channels, not limited to China.

The automated fulfillment is limited to just two of these, Aliexpress and eBay. But even if you’d have to manually process the orders for the rest of the platforms, there’s ample automation tools to make the process much easier.

You can source from Macy’s, Target, Costco and many more and resell in key marketplaces like US and EU with one-two day shipping. That alone will give you an edge over the competition.

Pros and cons of Dropified

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of using Dropified.

Pros:

• Dropified integrates with more marketplaces and sales channels than any other dropshipping tool. Its 80+ marketplaces to be exact that are spread across the world and include some great French options too. This gives you access to millions of products that you can add to your store with a single click. A lot of these are based in key marketplaces like the USA and EU, where shipping is a major consideration.
• The automation is much better on Dropified. While it is limited to complete automated order fulfillment to just Aliexpress and eBay, it is complete automation. From order placement to payments, everything happens automatically. If you limit your sourcing to these two marketplaces, you are going to have a hands-off dropshipping business that lets you focus on the marketing. Dropified even gathers the tracking information from the supplier on and updates it in the dashboard, sending an email to the customer on time.
• Their product management tools are amazing. We love the integrated photo editing app that makes it effortless to remove watermarks.
• Dropified gives you a single interface where you can manage multiple storefronts selling on different platforms. You can source products from different suppliers and push them to different sales platforms with complete mapping.
• Dropified offers volume pricing, which are wholesale rates if you wish to source in bulk. This is one of the few dropshipping automation tools that does offer wholesale rates.

Cons:

• Dropified charges a 3% wholesale transaction fee on all orders for retailers on their basic plan. This can quickly add up the overall procurement cost and eat into your profits. This was 8% earlier, mind you. So the 3% is actually a reduced price.
• Some of the customers have mentioned technical issues while using Dropified. 80+ platform integrations with different image dimensions and settings are not easy to get right. So minor quibbles are to be expected. That said, they are constantly updating their software so this may have already been resolved.

You might be interested to read our Dropified Review Here 

Oberlo Vs Dropified: The Key Differences

While both of these dropshipping automation tools offer a lot of similarities, there are some key differences that set them apart.

We are going to take a look at the primary ones, based on various parameters that dropshippers use for their business.

1. Supported eCommerce platforms

Oberlo as we mentioned earlier is a Shopify exclusive. Shopify recently acquired it. So, we don’t expect this to change ever. That said, Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms out there. If you are looking to start a store, it is definitely worth considering.

Also, the integration is very smooth with negligible glitches or flaws. It was always designed for native integration with Shopify. But, if in the future, you want to migrate to a different ecommerce platform, you cannot do that. Not without jumping through some hoops at least.

Dropified works with every major ecommerce platform available including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce & CommerceHQ. It is designed to work seamlessly with all popular sales channels as well as marketplaces that amount to 80+ in total.

So, if you want flexibility then Dropified definitely gives you the edge.

2. Product sourcing

Oberlo is a massive marketplace that lists products from suppliers based in China. But their own marketplace is limited and their big draw is that they allow seamless imports and sourcing from Aliexpress.

Now, Aliexpress is huge. But, the problem with sourcing from Aliexpress is that you have very little control over the entire operation. Even ordering sample products to verify the product functionality or quality, is very slow, and that can be a pain point for entrepreneurs who are starting out.

Also, Aliexpress shopping leaves a lot to be desired, especially when customers demand 1–3-day deliveries thanks to Amazon turning it into the norm.

However, since they only work with Aliexpress, they offer nearly full automation of the supply chain. The only manual input is when you have to log on to Aliexpress to pay for the orders.

Dropified does not have its own marketplace. It integrates with other marketplaces. But these marketplaces are spread out all over the world. They are not limited to China or suppliers from Aliexpress. You can source products from anywhere in the world and list them on any of the supported sales channels.

This gives you a much larger product selection, and more importantly, more reliable suppliers. Because if one of your supplier’s listings get taken down on one marketplace, you can quickly switch to another marketplace and still have your products up for sale.

There’s Costco, Wish, Target & many more top brands in the US that you can sync your store with and import products. That gives you a huge edge over the competition and certainly over Oberlo.

3. Chrome extension

Both these ecommerce tools offer chrome extensions, which are like browser add-ons that are intended to help you use the tool seamlessly outside of the cloud-based software interface.

But Oberlo’s chrome extension primarily works as a product finder for Aliexpress, whereas Dropified’s chrome extension offers more robust features.

For instance, when you cannot find a product on the Oberlo dashboard and wish to browse directly on Aliexpress, the chrome extension comes handy. You can hover over the product image, click on ‘Add to Import List’ and the product is automatically added to your Oberlo import list.

It also allows you to filter products by price, country of origin and shipping method. For instance, you can filter out products and sellers who only use ePacket. It is also handy if you are looking to place orders directly on Aliexpress. But beyond that, there’s little you can do with it.

But Dropified’s chrome extension offers more features such as the ability to add products from other marketplaces like Walmart, Amazon, and eBay, to name a few. This is in the truer sense, a virtual inventory management system, as it allows you to sync your ecommerce store with the product catalog on multiple retail websites for one-click imports to your store.

The filters are not as robust as what you get with Oberlo though. But that’s not really a deal breaker. It still covers the basics like price, country of origin, and shipping method, which should be good enough for most store owners.

Also, one feature that we like is that the dropified chrome extension displays price change alerts. Many times, dropshippers carry on their product research for days. It’s not uncommon for the price to fluctuate in the meantime. The price change alerts feature comes in handy because it alerts you via desktop push notification when there is a change in prices for the products you have imported.

We give the chrome extension point to Dropified because of its more robust features compared with Oberlo’s simple product finder feature that only works with Aliexpress.

4. Product management

Product Management, which spans importing, editing and making changes to your products, is one of the key features of an ecommerce tool.

Both these tools, offer a bunch of product management features that make life easier for you. Dropified has several features that entrepreneurs will appreciate. For instance, it lets you save products for later, which means, that these are not imported into your store but you can always import them later when you’re ready.

You can then tweak every tiny detail of a product in Dropified, from adding images and editing titles to changing stock quantities. Adding and deleting variants is much quicker at this stage, than importing it to the storefront and then making changes. Dropified also has an efficient in-built image editing software called ‘Photopea’ that lets you change backgrounds as well as resize and crop images.

As implied by the name, it’s a Photoshop clone. Price edits can be cumbersome generally. But Dropified allows you to edit prices on multiple levels, that too in bulk. Overall, you’d find it much more efficient to manage your products on Dropified than on Oberlo.

Once a product is ready for sale on your store, you can sync it with Dropified in one click.

Oberlo’s product management features are not too bad either, mind you. The import list is one of the best features because it allows you to make changes to the product without as much effort as it generally takes to do, on Shopify.

You can change tags, titles, images, descriptions and import it when the product is ready to list. Oberlo also has a bunch of price automation rules, that allow you to automatically change prices, whenever there is a price change on the source marketplace.

For instance, you can set a markup rule with a pre-defined level, which automatically adjusts prices so that your profit margins remain intact. Also, if one Aliexpress seller runs out of inventory, you can swap sellers while retaining the same listing. This is one of the features Oberlo offers that Dropified doesn’t.

But we think that Dropified’s product management features are a bit more polished overall. Be it the photo editing software or the variant management, Dropified has a big edge over Oberlo.

5. Order fulfillment

How easily does the tool let you fulfill orders? We generally look for a completely automated order fulfillment process, or as close to it as it can get. Sometimes, order fulfillment can get complex and will require human intervention. For that reason, complete automation is not always possible or desirable.

Dropified though, earns the distinction of making it fully automated if you source from Aliexpress and eBay. You dont need to do anything manually, once the order is placed. Dropified will automatically fulfill the order for you, and even bill you on the registered card, without you having to even enter the payment details.

The order details are then seamlessly synced to your store, emails are sent to the customer and order fulfillment finishes here. If you are using one of the other 80+ marketplaces, then you ‘ll need to handle the order fulfillment manually though.

This means, once the customer pays you on the store, you head to the respective marketplace and then place the orders and pay yourself. Even then, the dropified interface is so efficiently designed that you can fulfill orders in a few clicks, without wasting any time.

Oberlo also offers an automated order fulfillment process but it’s not as fluid as Dropified is. There’s a little more manual work involved. Once the customer pays for the order on your store, the order status changes in the Oberlo dashboard.

You can select the products and click on process orders. Oberlo will then redirect you to the supplier’s page on AliExpress and you can place the order there. After that, Oberlo will automatically update the order status on your store and send out tracking details to the customer.

The manual bit is making the payment on Aliexpress, which Dropified allows you to do from within their dashboard itself.

Both these tools allow real time order tracking now. So, if an overly anxious customer asks about the status of their order, you can check and tell them precisely where it is in the fulfillment cycle.

6. Dashboard and ease of Use

Before we even get to the nitty-gritties of each service, you will interact first with the dashboards. The ease of use is an integral part of any business solution, and more so for these kinds of store management tools.

Dropified has a stunning and minimalistic interface. It’s streamlined, there is no clutter visible anywhere on the page, and intuitive design touches, help you complete the tasks of adding products to your store quickly.

Generating reports, analyzing analytical data, fixing errors with the order, changing photos of listings, are some of the tasks you will be doing with the dashboard on a daily basis.

The Dashboard is perfectly-laid out with smooth navigation. The navigation menu on the left is thoughtfully-divided into Products and Business. Products let you search, import, find US dropshipping products and create boards for research. The business menu contains more details like profit dashboard, marketing emails, tracking, alerts and so on.

What’s great is that you are never too far away from the task you need to complete or the information you need to access.

Oberlo is no slouch in this regard either. The interface is clean with perfectly laid out graphs, stats and links. You can get all the vital information about your business with one glance, and there is also a help menu in case you get stuck.

The only downside is that Oberlo’s dashboard might seem a little too busy for some people. It has more graphs and data displayed than Dropified does. This could be overwhelming for some users and it definitely takes some time to get used to all.

But that’s subjective, isn’t it? We know several users who prefer Oberlo’s interface because of the sheer amount of information it offers. It gives them a better understanding of their business and what they need to do to improve it.

What you should know, is that both these tools offer easy onboarding and you’ll be up and running in no time.

7. The free plans

Both Oberlo and Dropified offer free plans that let you research up to 500 products. These plans are a great way to test out the waters and see if these tools are a good fit for your business.

But there’s one key difference. Oberlo allows you to import the products you research and actually dropship them for free. There’s no hidden charge involved. You only pay for the product you buy.

But with Dropified, you can use the dashboard to research and import the products to your import list. You can edit, tweak, get a feel of the service, before you go ahead with it. You cannot actually import the products to your store and sell them though.

For that, you have to subscribe. In other words, Oberlo allows you to start testing and selling for free, while Dropified does not.

Conclusion: Is Dropified Better Than Oberlo?

Both Oberlo and Dropified are excellent dropshipping automation tools. They have their own strengths and weaknesses, which we’ve outlined for you in this article.

But at the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide which tool is right for your business. Here’s what we think.

Use Oberlo if you are starting off your dropshipping business on Shopify and want to test the waters. It’s free to use and you can import products to your store and start selling. The caveat is that you will be sourcing from Chinese vendors only. Also, once you start to generate some sales consistently, you’ll be reaching a limit on the number of products you can order at one go. That’s when you seek flexibility and better customer service.

This is when you should expand to work with a dropshipping agent who can find products for you from private suppliers and help with product fulfillment. A reliable agent will also be your eyes and ears throughout the fulfillment cycle. So, there’s fewer chances of potential problems.

Use Dropified if you want to start dropshipping with products from suppliers all around the world. The paid plans give you access to sourcing from 80+ marketplaces. Their automation tools are top notch. They make managing large orders easy and keep the whole process streamlined.