If you look at the dropshipping market, you’ll see that AliExpress is the best place to buy and sell items for dropshipping. It is the best in its field, brings in a lot of money, and helps customers make the most money possible.
But it makes sense for a dropshipping business to look at other options. So, if you’re trying to decide between Alibaba and AliExpress, here’s what you can expect.
Alibaba is one of the best places to connect with Chinese manufacturers, and AliExpress is a marketplace where people can buy from different Chinese sellers.
Below, we talk in more depth about Alibaba vs. AliExpress.
How Alibaba Works
Before we look at how Alibaba compares to AliExpress, let’s look at what Alibaba is and how it works.
Alibaba is an online business-to-business platform that has been around for more than ten years. Since then, it has become one of the most popular choices for wholesale trades. It has a lot of small and medium-sized businesses in China as suppliers.
If we look at Alibaba’s past, we’d see that it has always helped different suppliers’ markets reach customers all over the world. They have a group of websites that work together, such as Taobao.com, Alibaba.com, and tmall.com. All of the platforms are a little different, and you can find millions of things on them, from clothes to machines.
How does Alibaba really work?
To use Alibaba, you have to buy a lot of things at once. Because this is a platform for wholesalers, you can’t buy just one item. If you want to dropship these items, you need to buy them in bulk and keep track of your stock.
There is no fee to sign up for Alibaba. It gets a cut of every sale made through the platform.
AliExpress: How It Works
AliExpress is another big place where you can buy things. It began in 2010 to serve customers all over the world. The products on this website come from Chinese sellers and distributors.
How does AliExpress really work?
There are a lot of items on AliExpress that are also on Amazon. These products are cheaper on AliExpress because the marketplace ships them directly from China. The cost to ship these items is low, but it takes longer to get them to you. This means that you might have to wait a month or more for the things you ordered, and you might not even get any information about when they will arrive.
But you can make a lot of money by selling things on AliExpress. Dropshippers can even order just one product and send it straight to the customer. In this case, there’s no need to keep track of an inventory.
The Differences Between Alibaba and AliExpress
To set up the right supply chain for your dropshipping business, you need to know the differences between Alibaba and AliExpress. This is why we’ve gone over all the important differences between Alibaba and AliExpress.
Whose is it?
The Alibaba Group started and owns both Alibaba and AliExpress. Both platforms were made for different reasons.
It’s easy to dropship
AliExpress has a model called Alidropship for drop shipping. It is used by tens of thousands of dropshippers right now to sell products, build a brand, and make a lot of money. AliExpress’s pricing models for goods are much more flexible and workable than those of other websites or marketplaces.
Also, AliExpress doesn’t charge you anything up front to dropship products.
Dropshipping is also possible on Alibaba, but you have to buy in bulk from wholesalers. Since you can’t buy just one thing from Alibaba, people naturally don’t like this platform. But Alibaba has taken away all the other rules that used to apply to its dropshipping model.
Payment Options
In this case, AliExpress is better than Alibaba because it has more ways to pay, like Mastercard, web money, American Express, PayPal, and so on.
You can use different ways to pay on Alibaba, like Western Union and credit cards.
Pricing
Both Alibaba and AliExpress have different ways of figuring out prices. On AliExpress, prices are set, and they are usually low. You can even find prices that are different from seller to seller.
AliExpress doesn’t let you negotiate with the seller, but Alibaba does. This means that you can make more money in this case.
Products
In this case, both Alibaba and AliExpress are the same. Both AliExpress and Alibaba have a lot of products in a wide range of categories. These items come from either China or Hong Kong. You can get better prices on Alibaba if you buy in bulk, but AliExpress has more niches that you can take advantage of.
Shipping
The cost of shipping is the last thing that makes Alibaba and AliExpress different.
You can use ePacket shipping, which is free and quick, to send items through AliExpress. So, ePacket shipping is a great way for new dropshipping businesses to save a lot of money.
Shipping options are not free on Alibaba, and there is no way to keep track of your orders. You need to get in touch with the seller if you want to know about the shipment. This means that you don’t always know how your order will be shipped or when it will get there.
Alibaba vs AliExpress: Dropshipping Tips
Once you’ve decided between Alibaba and AliExpress, here are some ways to grow your business:
- When you have made categories of products from a seller, you need to buy one product. See how much time is needed, check the quality, and think about other factors to figure out if this model is possible.
- To reduce risks, only work with sellers who have a possible rating. You don’t want to spend money and get nothing back or something that isn’t very good.
- Compare the prices of products in the same category from different sellers, and then check the ratings of the sellers to see if you can order a low-priced item.
- Use a dropshipping tool to make your business run more smoothly. This one-time investment will pay off for you in the long run.
AliExpress Dropshipping Tool vs. Alibaba Dropshipping Tool
The AliExpress marketplace’s best dropshipping tool is dropship-empire. It comes with a lot of built-in features that make it easy to make sales.
Let’s talk about what these things are:
- The most noticeable thing about the dropship-empire tool is that it makes it easy to choose the seller. In the dashboard, there is a smart AI system that helps you choose the right seller for one purchase. You don’t have to do research by hand.
- You can make bulk orders. Don’t let those big orders get you down, because you can fill them all with click-through dropship-empire.
For dropshipping to work well, you can connect more than one platform to the tool. Wix, Shopify, and WooCommerce are just a few examples. - Your orders’ tracking numbers are automatically added to your dropship-empire dashboard. This means you can just open your dashboard to help your users, check on the status of their requests, and get other information.
Conclusion
Whether you should use Alibaba or AliExpress depends on how you run your business. AliExpress is best for dropshipping businesses, though. You can also buy just one item, and it is possible to use dropship-empire with AliExpress. So, this is a situation where everyone wins. So, if you have a store that does drop shipping, it might be best for your business to use AliExpress.