Alibaba has officially launched its dropshipping center, and it is exciting news for dropshippers and eCommerce owners as a whole.
In this post, we’ll show you how to access it and all of the features it currently offers.
What is Alibaba Dropshipping Center?
Alibaba Dropshipping Center works like a dropshipping app, helping you quickly search for dropshipping products with no MOQ, low shipping costs, fast shipping, and fast processing times on Alibaba. You can also connect it to an existing store to import items in a few clicks.
The platform supports 15 different languages, including English, Nepali, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Turkish, Dutch, Vietnamese, Indonesian.
However, it’s still in its early stage, so you won’t be able to see and fulfill your dropshipping orders directly from it yet. Plus, you can only integrate the platform with WooCommerce at the moment.
How To Access Alibaba Dropshipping Center?
You can easily access Alibaba Dropshipping Center via dropshipping.alibaba.com. It’s totally free and open to everyone.
The Complete Guide To Alibaba Dropshipping Center
To help you familiarize yourself with the platform, here’s the complete guide on how to use it.
Search for products
Currently, the platform supports 12 product categories, including Consumer Electronics, Apparel, Home & Garden, Vehicles & Accessories, Beauty & Personal Care, Fashion Accessories, Home Appliances, Gifts & Crafts, Timepieces & Jewelry, Bags & Cases, Sports & Entertainment, and Shoes. You can click on each of them to see all products in a specific category.
You can also type in keywords in the search bar to find your favorite dropshipping products. Additionally, it’s possible to filter results based on shipping countries. And, the currency box will help you display product prices in another type of currency.
Each product comes with its cost, shipping fee, and processing time. To see extra details, you can click on the product to open its full information page on Alibaba.
Import Products
Adding products to your import list is straightforward. Simply click on the “Add To Import List” button under each product you’re interested in. Then, visit the “Import List” tab to see all imported items.
Alibaba Dropshipping Center allows you to change the product name, type, collection, tags, description (rich-text editor), variants, prices, compare-at prices, images, and see profits and inventory before pushing it to your online store.
In case you have any questions, you can click on the handy chat button under each imported product to quickly have a conversation with the supplier.
Connect To Existing stores
To integrate an existing store with Alibaba Dropshipping Center, go to the “My Store” tab and click “Add Store.” Then, input your store URL and hit enter.
If everything works correctly, the two platforms are successfully connected, and you can now effortlessly push any imported products to your store with a click.
Manage Products
On the “My Products” tab, you will see all of the items that have been pushed to your online store.
It’s possible to remove any product from the list by clicking on the “Delete” button under it. Note that doing this will also delete the product completely from your online store.
Auto Update Settings & Pricing Rules
Alibaba Dropshipping Center provides you the ability to set up certain rules when there are any changes in product statuses.
We recommend setting “When a product is no longer available” and “When a variant is no longer available” to “Set quantity to zero.”
The reason is that the “Unpublish product” and “Unpublish variant” options will unpublish items or remove product variants from your storefront, which could affect SEO due to the 404 page not found error. The best course of action here is to set the quantity to zero to prevent customers from ordering out-of-stock products. You can always find new suppliers for those items later.
For the “When the cost changes” section, choose “Do nothing” instead of “Update price.” You don’t want the changes in Alibaba’s product costs messed up with your storefront prices.
For “When inventory changes,” we recommend leaving it as “Auto updates” so your online store is automatically updated with the latest product stock levels.
The next ones are pricing rules.
Suggested settings are “X” (multiply) for both “Price” and “Compare-at price” and “2.5” and “3” as multipliers, respectively. They’re standard pricing practices considering all of the advertising and operating costs you will have to spend.
It’s also a good idea to check the “Shipping fee” box to add the shipping fees into your item costs.
For example, if an Alibaba’s product is $5 with a shipping fee of $2, its total dropshipping price calculated by the system is $5 * 2.5 + $2 = $14.5.
Note that pricing rules merely work as general guidelines to help you price your dropshipping products faster. As we have mentioned, you can alter individual item prices in your import list.
Limitations Of Alibaba Dropshipping Center
Since Alibaba Dropshipping Center has just launched recently, it’s unavoidable that there’re many weaknesses it needs to work on. Here are some of them:
- Limited products and categories: The platform lacks a wide variety of products to choose from. On top of that, the category selection is not detailed enough. For example, if you want to select a subcategory inside Consumer Electronics, you cannot do so.
- No discounts: Currently, there’re no discounts for dropshippers generating a high volume of sales.
- No stock levels: You can only see stock levels when adding products to your import list.
- Lacks advanced filters: It’s unable to filter search results based on the price range, delivery time, shipping methods, product video availability, number of orders, or star rating.
- Basic pricing rules: The platform needs to have advanced settings for items at different pricing points and the ability to form the cent value to a specific number, such as .99.
- No order fulfillment automation: This feature will be implemented in the near future. Until then, this is a big weakness of the platform.
- No email or push notifications: You don’t get notifications when there’re any changes in product statuses.
- Lacks analysis tools: There is nothing to help you analyze product trends, sales history, or daily orders.
- Unable to multiple store management: If you to manage another store, you have to disconnect the current one or create a new account for Alibaba Dropshipping Center.
- Cannot connect to other eCommerce platforms: Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Ecwid, or ShopBase are not supported yet.
- No affiliate marketing integration: Similar platforms like Oberlo allows you to connect to the Admitad affiliate marketing program to get a small percentage of money back on each order.
Official Alibaba Dropshipping Center Partners
Alibaba features 5 dropshipping center partners. Below are all of them and what they can do for your business.
1. Modalyst
First, we have Modalyst. On here, you get to see millions of Alibaba dropshipping products available in single units. You also have the opportunity to connect with 100+ other vetted dropshipping suppliers, eco-friendly manufacturers, and designer brands.
Modalyst guarantees to deliver packages to international customers within 15 business days and within 4-7 business days for local shoppers.
Other Features
- Official Alibaba & AliExpress dropshipping partner.
- Exclusive discounts.
- Private label retailers with custom packaging and branding.
- Automatic order routing.
- Connect to Shopify, BigCommerce, and Wix.
Pricing
Modalyst has an importing limit of 25 products on the free plan. Pricing plans start from $35/month.
2. Syncee
The next partner is Syncee. Besides Alibaba, it also links you with trustworthy suppliers like BigBug, Matterhorn, Nova Engel, and other local US, UK, and AU retailers for high-quality dropshipping products with fast shipping.
Other Features
- Discounts for high-profit stores.
- AI-based product search and recommendation.
- Dynamic and advanced pricing settings.
- DataFeed Manager allows you to bring your own dropshipping partners to Sycee to manage all of them in one place.
- Connect with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix, Jumpseller, Shoprenter, and Ecwid.
Pricing
Similar to Modalyst, Syncee is available for free with a limit of 25 imported products. For more, you have to be on a paid plan, starting from $29/month.
3. Spocket
Apart from Alibaba, Spocket allows you to browse a catalog of reliable US/UK dropshipping suppliers. All products on the platform have competitive prices with 30-40% discounts.
Other Features
- Curated winning Alibaba products.
- Order product samples in a few clicks.
- Branded invoicing to create a unique brand identity.
- 24/7 premium chat support.
- Integrate with Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Felex, and Ecwid.
Pricing
Spocket’s product catalog is available for free. Pricing plans start from $24/month.
4. Dropified
Dropified allows you direct access to over 400K top-selling products on Alibaba from gold and verified suppliers. It offers many similar features as Alibaba Dropshipping Center but better.
Other Features
- Dropified Chrome Extension helps import any Alibaba products into your eCommerce store.
- Mapping multiple vendors to one product to avoid running out of inventory.
- Create bundles to fulfill all products in a group at once.
- Bulk orders.
- Automatic margin markup.
- Product image editor.
- Profit tracking dashboard.
Pricing
Dropified is free to use if you only want to use the platform to research and save dropshipping products. In order to import Alibaba’s products to your store, you need to be on a paid plan, which costs $19/month.
5. Sezam
Finally, we have Sezam. It’s the first official WooCommerce plugin for Alibaba dropshipping. Besides helping you import any product to your Woo store in one click, it also allows for automated ordering and auto data refreshing.
Other Features
- Auto-populate descriptions, images, and variants.
- Manage orders.
- Basic pricing rules.
Pricing
Sezam costs a one-time payment fee of $99.
Conclusion
With the born of Alibaba Dropshipping Center, dropshipping from Alibaba is officially a thing. It opens up a whole new opportunity for online store owners, allowing them to quickly search for Alibaba’s products with fast shipping times and make more profits by buying them at the true wholesale pricing with no minimum order requirement.
However, it’s still at a very primitive stage. In the future, we would like to see more tools coming to the platform, such as the ability to analyze product trends like AliExpress Dropshipping Center.
For more information on starting a successful dropshipping business, check out our complete dropshipping checklist.
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