Dropshipping is often considered one of the easiest ways to sell products and earn money online.
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If you want to jumpstart a business without worrying about the shipping, storing, and inventory of your products, then that’s where dropshipping comes in.
What is Dropshipping?
This article is about dropshipping. So what is dropshipping. Dropshipping is when somebody comes to your store and purchase any products then the third party suppliers shipped the order directly to their consumers. Which means you don’t have to handle the product directly. Many other online stores use dropshipping as a fulfillment model. There are big differences between old retails and dropshipping. In dropshipping sellers don’t have to stock anything, the seller only has to buy products.
In a nutshell, dropshipping is a method of order fulfilment wherein sellers are not directly housing inventories but tap to manufacturers and wholesalers to ship the items directly to the customers using a dropshipping supplier. It comes with several advantages:
- It provides a wide array of products, services, and goods.
- It decreased overhead costs.
- Quicker delivery times.
- Less costly shipping fees.
The main difference between the conventional shipping and dropshipping is that the seller removes the extra space, allowing them to save from the budget that is normally used for the costs of renting a warehouse.
Moreover, they also purchase inventory on a “need” basis from the manufacturer or wholesaler, who is responsible for the entire shipping process.
List of the Best Ecommerce Platforms for Dropshipping
If you want to learn dropshipping, you’d know that it requires having an e-commerce platform.
However, it’s quite challenging to look for the best platforms since there are so many in the market right now. Some might even claim to be best even if they’re nowhere near the quality and pricing others could offer.
That said, we’ve listed down six of the best e-commerce platforms for dropshipping:
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is one of the most popular platforms for dropshipping. If you are searching for ease of use and functionality for your online store, then this is the ideal solution.
Although it has less advanced features, WooCommerce is one of the most user-friendly platforms available in the market. However, this can be a bit challenging to customize, and most of its functionalities needed to be acquired via third-party plugins.
- User Friendliness: Comes with a GUI interface that any beginner can understand. Built on WordPress, it is one of the most favorite platforms of bloggers, even allowing users to add several add-ons for free.
- Support: Has a community of designers and web developers who are actively working to promote the platform. Users can find a wide range of materials on support and installation.
- Price: Free. WooCommerce comes as a WordPress plugin that anyone can use. WordPress users can easily install it without paying anything.
2. Magento
Magento is the world’s second most used platform.
It is powerful yet a bit complicated, and therefore, might not be suitable for beginners. That’s why dropshippers who are using Magento either hire developers or employe store development:
- User Friendliness: Comes with a user-friendly design. Anyone who wants to start a dropshipping business could utilize Magento to build an e-commerce store. Although you might need some help in making updates and solving errors. So, it is not suitable for beginners.
- Support: Because this platform is widely used, developers and designers are there to help out newbies. It also has numerous off-site channels like blogs, forums, and YouTube channels where users can turn to if they want to overcome hurdles on the process of developing their sites.
- Price: This is a free e-commerce platform where anyone could launch it with minimal help.
3. Shopify
Shopify is another great platform. It claims to host over 500,000 dropshipping stores and e-commerce websites. Today, it is one of the most commonly used e-commerce platforms by tech-savvy users.
- User Friendliness: Extremely user-friendly, users can sign up in the platform and then can start adding products to it. It is also pre-filled with About Us pages, Return Policy, Privacy Policy, Shipping Calculator, and Shipping Information so that you could easily set up your store.
- Support: Comes with 24/7 email, chat, and phone support. It also comes with its own forum wherein users can ask for help if they encounter hurdles along the way.
- Price: This is a paid e-commerce platform with plans ranging between $29-$299.
4. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a dynamic e-commerce platform, making it an ideal solution for large retail brands.
At the same time, it’s also a great e-commerce platform for small business owners and startups that want to boost their online presence and sales.
It has a wide array of tools and features that make it possible for anyone in the industry to achieve success.
- User Friendliness: The platform is easy to use. You can set up a trial account and start easily. The majority of its themes are free, and you can easily customize layouts depending on your liking.
- Support: It has the same support as Spotify, with email, chat, phone, and forum.
- Price: It has three basic packages with prices that range between $29-$250. It also has the enterprise version, but you might need to get in touch with BigCommerce to avail of it.
5. OpenCart
OpenCart is another e-commerce platform that’s easy to set-up. The platform comes with a variety of free and paid plugins, as well as themes for dropshipping.
- User Friendliness: Since it’s tailored for e-commerce, it offers payments, analytics, and order volume at the admin dashboard. It comes with a point-and-click interface, which makes it a great platform for non-technical users, too.
- Support: It has email and ticket support, and has a forum wherein users could find solutions to their problems in the process of setting up their stores.
- Price: Free. You’ll only pay for posting.
6. Wix
Wix is a fantastic website builder that allows you to upgrade to full website functionality for only $20 monthly. It also has hundreds of designer-made templates, product galleries, promotions, order management, and shipping.
Furthermore, Wix could customize your online store on mobile, including all Android and Apple devices.
You can also customize your mobile e-commerce site through its online store builder tool. With Wix, you don’t have to dig deep into CSS and HTML to create a stunning website.
- User-friendliness: Comes with a ton of free amazing themes in a very user-friendly platform. It’s also easy to use and set-up.
- Support: Provides on-page support for most of your needs.
- Price: Available for free, but allows you to upgrade its full functionality for $20 monthly.
Final Thoughts
There you have it. Hopefully, this article has helped you make a wise decision for your dropshipping needs.
Remember that the e-commerce platform that you need to pick for your dropshipping business should be specifically tailored to your needs. You also need to do your research, check-in with the security, as well as with the other protections that you’re given as a seller.
Keep in mind that a secure e-commerce website is seen as more credible and trustworthy by users, and will more likely make a purchase.