Want to start a dropshipping business and looking for the best providers? In this article, we present you the top 6 dropshipping providers that you should definitely know.
Learn how dropshipping works, how to choose the best provider and get valuable tips for a successful start. Start a long-term partnership with the most reliable providers and find out what matters in your dropshipping business.
These are the contents of this article:
- How does dropshipping work?
- The 6 best dropshipping providers
- Identifying the best dropshipping provider
- Contact dropshipping providers and negotiate
- Tips for building a dropshipping business
- Conclusion – Dropshipping provider
- FAQ – Frequently asked questions
How does dropshipping work?
Dropshipping involves three parties: Customer, seller and dropshipping provider. As soon as a customer places an order via the seller’s online store, it is forwarded to the dropshipping provider.
The latter then sends the order to the customer. The seller has no physical contact with the dropshipping product and acts exclusively as an intermediary.
Sounds like a pretty simple business model, right? – But watch out! As a salesperson, you also have a lot of tasks and responsibilities. For example, you must ensure that each individual order is correctly routed to the dropshipping provider and that the dropshipping provider is capable of delivering the corresponding dropshipping product.
In addition, as a salesperson, you will be responsible for managing the online store. In the following, we have clearly presented all the advantages and disadvantages:
| Vorteile | Nachteile |
|---|---|
| – Sämtliche Lagerkosten entfallen | – Abhängigkeit vom Händler |
| – Keine überschüssigen Produkte im Lager | – Wenig Einfluss auf Kundenzufriedenheit |
| – Geringes Startkapital notwendig | – Starke Konkurrenz |
| – Ortsunabhängig | – Zuständigkeit für den Kundenservice |
The 6 best dropshipping providers
Thanks to the latest technologies and automated processes, there are now many wholesalers who
Dropshipping products
offer Among them are some very well-known and good dropshipping providers that you should definitely know. In the following we present you the 6 best dropshipping providers ago
AliExpress
AliExpress is one of the most well-known places to go when looking for a suitable dropshipping provider and belongs to the China-based alibaba group. Unlike alibaba, which is aimed at B2B business, AliExpress is more for retailers and thus intended as a B2C marketplace.
AliExpress is similar in structure to the online giant Amazon. Similar to Amazon, there is an endless number of different products in all possible variations.
AliExpress is especially known for its wide range of products in the field of electronics. Due to the high number of dropshipping merchants, AliExpress is a good place to go in terms of value for money.
A big disadvantage of AliExpress compared to Amazon is the delivery times. In some cases, delivery times are between 5 and 60 days, as many of the products offered are produced and stored in China. This may entail certain disadvantages in terms of plannability.
It is important that you pay attention to product quality and test products extensively before offering them in your own online store. The quality can vary greatly depending on the chosen supplier. In addition, it must be assumed that not all products offered meet European safety and quality standards.
DHGate
Similar to AliExpress, it is a question of
DHGate
a Chinese trading platform. The platform is comparable to eBay due to the large selection of different merchants who independently handle the shipping of the goods.
Besides, DHGate is mostly known for counterfeit branded goods. As a store operator, you should therefore pay particular attention here, as the import to Germany is not necessarily legal.
As with AliExpress, you should also keep in mind the longer delivery times of the goods at DHgate. This can range from 7 to 30 days.
To avoid long delivery times and counterfeit goods, you should take a closer look at the supplier’s rating profile. As with other portals, it is relatively easy to determine which supplier is reputable and offers safe products based on the reviews.
Another plus point of DHGate is that many suppliers offer free shipping.
BigBuy
BigBuy is one of the few providers on our list that is headquartered in Europe; Spain to be precise. The company is focused on B2B customers who distribute items through online stores.
BigBuy differs from the other suppliers in that the quality of individual products here is often higher. Conversely, however, this also means that the purchase price of the products is higher. However, for the high product quality, you can eventually charge higher prices.
Since Bigbuy ships its products from Europe, delivery times are significantly shorter than competitors like AliExpress or DHGate. This makes this provider particularly interesting for stores that rely on short delivery times.
A special feature of BigBuy is the setup fee. This is because if you want to dropship products through this online marketplace, you will have to pay the one-time setup fee of €45. The €45 allows the user to access the basic version. However, after paying the setup fee, further use is free of charge.
Oberlo
For the use of
Oberlo
a Shopify store is required. If you already run such a store, this provider is particularly convenient, since Oberlo is located in
Shopify
can integrate
The tool is operated using a Google Chrome plugin, with which you can then integrate products from several marketplaces, such as AliExpress, into your own store at the click of a mouse.
Oberlo can thus be understood as an interface with the help of which the user can obtain products from various marketplaces. AliExpress is one of the main suppliers, but you can also contact alternative wholesalers or manufacturers.
Accordingly, the shipping time depends on the wholesaler and thus ranges from 7 to 60 days.
Basically, this application is very useful because on the one hand you can save yourself time and work, and on the other hand you have access to current stock levels, sales trend analysis and a support service.
Up to an order volume of 500 units, the basic version is free of charge. Orders of more than 500 units are subject to a $29.90 per month fee. With this subscription, you can then send up to 10,000 packages to your customers each month.
Banggood
Also
Banggood
is a platform to find a suitable dropshipping provider. Meanwhile, the company offers a selection of over 10,000 suppliers with products from more than 30 categories and 1,000,000 high-quality products ranging from consumer electronics, household appliances, tools, sports to clothing.
The marketplace is structured similarly to Amazon. Many of the products offered on Banggood are sourced from China. However, what makes Banggood special is that all of its products undergo quality control before they are put up for sale.
Since 2019, you can even book the express shipping service to Germany on Banggood, so that the delivery times here can also be kept relatively short. In addition, Banggood offers 24/7 customer service.
Printful
Printful is the dropshipping provider for you if you want to have custom products created and sold with print-on-demand. The advantage is that Printful has production facilities distributed around the world and can therefore always produce and ship close to the customer. This also means that delivery times can be kept short.
Printful also advertises automated processes that automatically trigger an order with Printful via orders placed in your online store. Printful can then directly start producing your product and ship it to your customer.
Printful is not associated with any initial costs. Only order processing and shipping will be charged. For design creation, Printful even lets you use design services and software tools.
Identifying the best dropshipping provider
Before we get to the best dropshipping providers, you obviously need to know what to look for when choosing. Below you will find the most important criteria for finding a suitable dropshipping provider:
- Reliability
- Delivery time
- Product quality
- Minimum order quantity
- Price-performance ratio
- Customer service
To properly weigh the criteria against each other, I recommend you do a utility analysis. Utility analysis is an evaluation process where multiple dropshipping providers can be evaluated based on various criteria.
Below, I’ll explain step-by-step how to perform a utility analysis for selecting the best dropshipping provider:
Step 1: Determine evaluation criteria
In the first step, you should think about the criteria according to which you want to evaluate the dropshipping providers. Above I have already given you six criteria. Of course, you can expand this list.
Step 2: Weighting of the evaluation criteria
After you have created the basic structure of your utility analysis, you need to determine the weighting of the evaluation criteria. So you have to ask yourself: “How important is a certain evaluation criterion to me, e.g., “How important is a certain evaluation criterion to me? the reliability of a dropshipping provider?
In total you can distribute 100 points to the criteria. Thus, each criterion is given a weight between 0 and 100. It is important that the sum of all weights equals 100.
To check, you can use the SUM() formula in Excel and calculate the sum of the weights.
Step 3: Search for suitable providers
In the next step, you need to expand the table with the dropshipping providers available for selection. Your table should then look like this:
Step 4: Evaluate dropshipping provider
Now you evaluate the dropshipping providers according to the established evaluation criteria. To do this, you need to fill in the rating column for each dropshipping provider. In the rating, you give each dropshipping provider a rating from 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good) for the corresponding criterion.
For example, dropshipping provider 1 receives a score of 5 for the reliability criterion according to our evaluation (see red marked field in the table).
Step 5: Calculate weighted score
To weight the evaluation of each criterion, the weights set at the beginning must be multiplied by the scores.
To do this, you need to fill in column E for dropshipping provider 1, for example, by multiplying the values from column C with the values from column D. For cell E3 you calculate =C3*D3.
Step 6: Calculate the sum of the weighted scores
In the sixth and final step, you only need to calculate the sum of the weighted scores. For this you can use the formula =SUM() again.
Based on these results, we can see that dropshipping provider 3 is the best for us with a total of 735. Basically, the dropshipping provider with the highest amount is the one most likely to meet your expectations.
Contact dropshipping providers and negotiate
Once you have found a suitable dropshipping provider, you need to contact them and request cooperation. Since first impressions are important, you should appear serious and be polite from the start.
As a first step, you should introduce yourself to your potential dropshipping partner. You should not overestimate yourself and provide realistic information about your company. Also, you should specify right at the beginning which product you want to distribute from the merchant’s offer.
Then you can go into specific details and ask questions. It should also be made clear what the planned quantity will be from the supplier, when the goods will be delivered, and how shipping will work.
Of course, as much information as possible should be exchanged during the first conversation. The following questions should be addressed in any case:
- What requirements does the company have for orders?
- What prices can you expect?
- How does distribution work and which companies are involved in it?
- How long are the delivery times?
- Where does the production take place?
- What shipping method is offered?
Your opening line might sound something like this:
“Hello, I have founded the company (…). We want to sell (…) and we are looking for a suitable dropshipping supplier. Please send me information about your order requirements and wholesale prices. Thank you very much!”
If the initial feedback from dropshipping providers is not particularly positive, this is no reason to hang your head. It’s relatively hard to get good prices that you can work with profitably. So stay tuned, look for more suppliers and always try to negotiate the best price.
Tips for building a dropshipping business
You are convinced and want to start a dropshipping business? There are a few things you should definitely keep in mind. We have listed below the most important points for building a dropshipping business.
Realistic goals
As with all other business models, you can’t expect to generate high sales within 4 weeks. For this reason, you should set realistic goals and increase your sales bit by bit. This also helps with motivation, as you’ll probably be disappointed if you can’t reach your goals, which are set way too high.
Product research
Before you start dropshipping, you should think about the products you want to dropship. The best products have little competition and high demand….
To do this, you can use the Black Box tool from Helium 10. It helps you find products with high demand and low competition on Amazon. Since Amazon is now the largest online marketplace, you can infer other markets through this analysis.
In the following we will explain step by step how to use Black Box:
1. log in to Helium 10
Use this link to get 20% off Helium 10 for the first 6 months. You can also sign up for free, but then you won’t be able to use all the features fully.
2. start black box
Start Black Box and open the advanced filters. Now you see that you have a number of options to search the entire Amazon marketplace:
3. set filters
Enter the values you want to search for. For your first product, you can use the values I give in this post. Remember that these are only recommended values. You can easily change it by +/- 10%.
- Monthly turnover: $5000
- Price: $15 to $50
- Max. Ratings: 100
- Number of images: 7
- Variations: 1
- Fulfillment: FBA
PRESSURE SEARCH
Now you should see plenty of products that meet all these criteria. Now you have to sort this list by monthly turnover.
4. sort the results
Go through the list and select products from major brands.
5. use helium 10 cerebro
Now you should have a lot of products on your watch list.
Next, you need to run all products through Helium 10 Cerebro (A tool that checks for which keywords a product holds rankings).
After that, you know through which keywords a product generates sales. You can also see how many products rank in total for each keyword.
For example, if 2,000 products rank for a keyword, that keyword is significantly more competitive than a keyword for which only 100 products rank.
Low number of products = Low competition
High number of products = High competition
Now you need to check whether these keywords are highly competitive or not. Use COMPETING PRODUCTS and CPR 8-DAY GIVEAWAYS for this purpose.
CPR 8-DAY GIVEAWAYS shows you how many products you need to sell per day for 8 days to rank on the first page on Amazon for a specific keyword.
If you go through all these keywords, you can see that there are some keywords with a high search volume that are very competitive:
If you go deeper, you will find some keywords with less competition and high search volume:
Try to find products that have a lower CPR 8-Day Giveaway Score than 10. Also, important keywords should not have more than 500 competing products listed.
Sure there can be keywords with multiple products, but there should also be some keywords with only 100-200 products listed.
Here you can sign up for Helium 10 for free and use Black Box and other tools for free. Once you decide to upgrade to a paid plan, you’ll get a 20% discount for half a year through this link.
Conclusion – Dropshipping provider
There is no universal answer to the question of which is the best dropshipping provider. This is mainly because every store owner has different needs. Some value high quality, whereas other online retailers care more about short delivery time.
Accordingly, it is important that you choose your dropshipping provider wisely. Think early on about what product you want to sell and what criteria are important to you.
FAQ – Frequently asked questions
Dropshipping means that an online retailer sells goods that it does not store itself. The goods are then shipped either from the manufacturer itself or from a wholesaler directly to the end customer.
We have selected a few providers which are suitable for dropshipping. Which one is best for your purposes depends on what products you want to sell. Here you will find the 5 best products for dropshipping.
It is difficult to give a general answer, because it depends very much on the product you are selling. Depending on the product category, the margin can be in the single-digit percentage range or as high as 100 percent.
Here you can find the best dropshipping providers:
- Aliexpress
- DHGate
- BigBuy
- Oberlo
- Banggod
- Printful
So far there are not many dropshippers based in Germany, but there are. Some examples are Dropshipping Europe, Best Nutrition or CJDropshipping.
The market leader among dropshipping providers in Europe is BigBuy. The platform offers different products in many different categories. The special thing is that BigBuy tends to offer higher quality products compared to other dropshipping providers.
Dropshipping is a business model in which a retailer purchases products from a supplier and ships them directly to the customer. The retailer does not have to stock or ship its own products.
- Lower startup costs: since the retailer does not need to stock its own products, the startup costs for a dropshipping business are relatively low.
- No warehouse: The distributor does not have to rent or operate a warehouse.
- Less effort: The retailer does not have to worry about shipping the products.
- Dependence on the supplier: The retailer is dependent on the supplier who delivers the products.
- Little influence on customer satisfaction: The retailer has no influence on the quality of the products or the shipping.
- Strong competition: dropshipping is a popular business model, so there is a lot of competition.
Among the best-known dropshipping providers are:
- AliExpress
- DHGate
- BigBuy
- Oberlo
- Banggood
- Printful
