Which is better for your business: dropshipping through Amazon or Shopify? That question has a lot to it. Both of these options are solid bases for running your eCommerce business. But each has its own features, pros and cons, and limits. On top of that, every online seller has their own needs and situations to think about. So the real question is not which one is the best, but which one is best for you.
Amazon Dropshipping vs. Shopify Dropshipping: Starting Off Right
If you are just starting out in eCommerce or want to add another storefront to your business, the platform you choose is very important. You need to look at the options carefully and weigh the pros and cons based on what you need. If you make the right choice, you can give yourself and your customers a smooth experience, and you won’t have to make a big change in the middle of things.
Once your eCommerce store is up and running, it would be a big waste of time and money to start over with a new platform. Still, you may not have a choice if the platform you choose doesn’t work for what you want to do. Doing some research can help you avoid something so expensive.
Amazon and Shopify for Dropshipping:
To help you make the right choice the first time, we’ll look at how easy it is to use, what features it has, how you can change it, who can help you, and what analytics are available. We’ll also look at how much each one costs and what, if any, help they offer to bring in customers.
Simple to Use
We’ll start by comparing how easy it is to use Amazon Dropshipping and Shopify Dropshipping. Because for some people, this is the most important thing. To start an eCommerce drop shipping business today, you don’t have to be a tech whiz. But some platforms make it easier to do things than others. You can decide for yourself how tech-savvy you are and how eager you are to learn new things. Once you do that, you can decide how important this category is.
In other words, if you don’t like learning new things and don’t have an expert to help you, you might put ease of use first. If that’s the case, Amazon is probably the best choice here. Most of the work is done for you by Amazon. Just make an account and follow the steps on the startup pages. For many people, uploading images is the hardest part, but it gets easier the more you do it. As you read more, keep in mind that Amazon keeps things simple by having a small number of features.
This doesn’t mean that you have to know a lot about technology to use Shopify. But because there are so many ways to make it your own and so many powerful features, it might take you a little more time and learning. Even with all of its features, Shopify’s interface is easy to use, and help is easy to find. Even people who have never built a website before shouldn’t have too much trouble getting up and running. Also, if you need help, you can hire experts through Shopify’s Experts Marketplace to help you with just about any part of getting started.
Features of Amazon Dropshipping and Shopify Dropshipping
For dropshipping, Shopify is probably a better choice than Amazon if you want the most features and the power and flexibility to make a store that works the way you want it to. Amazon’s few features make it easy to get started, but Shopify has everything you might need to run your online store the way you want to.
It has everything you need to set up and run your site, and it also has tools to help you run your business. These include an inventory system, a tax calculator, a logo maker, and a pay stub generator. Shopify now has a feature that lets you let customers leave tips.
Getting what you want
When deciding between Shopify and Amazon for dropshipping, it’s important to think about how customizable each is. Whether or not the ability to customize is important to you will depend on your goals, business plan, and main products. But let’s say you want the most control over how your site looks and feels, and you also want to set and follow your own store policies. If so, Shopify is likely the best choice for you.
You can start making your own store by using a pre-made, dynamic template that looks great on computers, tablets, and phones. You can change the settings from there until everything looks the way you want. You can make your own discounts, checkouts, payments, and more from there.
Support for Shopify vs. Amazon for dropshipping
When you run your own eCommerce business, problems can cost you a lot of money quickly. This is especially true if you can’t get help while your site is down and you’re not making any money.
There are two kinds of help in modern web service platforms. The first kind is the “DIY” kind, which gives you access to guides, tutorials, videos, forums, and other tools whenever you want. Both Shopify and Amazon have a lot of help for do-it-yourselfers. In the Amazon beginner’s guide, you’ll find all the information you need to get started. Shopify also has a help center with tools to help you improve your site and fix problems.
The second kind of help is when you need to talk to a real person by phone, email, or chat. This is one area where Shopify beats Amazon. If you use Shopify to run your dropshipping business, you can count on phone and chat support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Someone is always there to answer your chat message or phone call. That means you can get your question or problem fixed quickly and get back to work. Amazon does offer help from real people. But it can be hard to figure out what is available because different levels of support are tied to different plan levels.
The study of data.
Pay attention to your analytics if you want to do well in the dropshipping eCommerce business. With the right information, you can make decisions about your business’s inventory, marketing, site layout, prices, and many other things. Without the information you can get from analytics, you can only guess what works and what doesn’t. Shopify is a clear winner for the average seller because everyone on the platform has access to a wide range of analytics. You can see an overview of sales for as long as a month or as short as certain times of the day. Sellers can also see information about the rate of conversion, completed checkouts, and even carts that were left empty. You can even connect your Shopify store to your Google Analytics account for a deeper look.
If you choose to host your dropshipping store on Amazon, you won’t have nearly as many analytics at your disposal. Amazon gives you some basic information, like sales, referrals, and traffic. But their more in-depth analytics are only available to sellers who have their own brand at the moment.
Price Differences Between Amazon Dropshipping and Shopify Dropshipping
Running an eCommerce business will always cost money. Still, the less you spend, the more money you make. When you’re just starting out, it can be hard to think about price. This is because the best pricing model depends on how much traffic you expect through your store and what you need from your platform. For example, Shopify’s pricing is based on a flat rate, while Amazon’s is based on how many units are sold.
Shopify has three price levels: $29 per month, $79 per month, and $299 per month. The only extra fees you’ll have to pay per transaction are credit card fees if you use their payment processor or transaction fees if you choose to pay with something else. Amazon does things differently by not charging a monthly fee and charging $0.99 per unit sold. Their extra transaction fees, on the other hand, are much higher and start at 8% and go up from there. Amazon now has some monthly pricing plans, but they are mostly for bigger sellers and still have extra fees.
Still, when deciding between Shopify and Amazon for dropshipping, most people look at cost in a more complete way. Some business owners would be happy to pay Amazon higher prices in exchange for what they offer, which is access to a huge number of motivated customers. On the other hand, Shopify’s prices might be more appealing to sellers who can find their own customers.
Even within Shopify, the prices of the different plans vary a lot. A plan that costs $29 a month is much cheaper than a plan that costs $299 a month. But a closer look at the features of each shows that sellers who sell more will quickly make up for the extra costs thanks to lower fees and bigger discounts on costs like shipping.
How to Get to Customers
Even if your dropshipping site is the best in the business, it won’t help much if you can’t reach new customers. Before you choose between Amazon dropshipping and Shopify dropshipping, you need to figure out how you will find buyers for what you have to sell. The built-in customer base is what draws many sellers to Amazon. Millions of people visit every month, so if you sell the right product at the right price and can get to the top of search results, you will have customers right away.
With Shopify, you have a lot more control over how you bring in customers. It will be up to you to get people to your store, whether it’s through social media marketing, email, Google ads, organic search, word of mouth, or something else. On the plus side, you can market your products however you want since you don’t have to follow Amazon’s rules. Also, once you get customers to your Shopify store, you don’t have to compete with other sellers on Amazon for customers’ attention and money.
Who is Better: Amazon Dropshipping or Shopify Dropshipping?
Both Shopify and Amazon have their own features, benefits, and limits, as was already said. At the same time, you as the seller are the only one who knows what you need from your selling platform. This means that no one is a clear winner. Still, if you take the time to look at all the information on both platforms, you and your business are likely to find a clear winner.