The first step to start a dropshipping business is to choose a suitable platform serving your store. The choice marks the very start of your business, and the right dropshipping supplier can help you weather the storm in the business sea. With their assistance, you can easily import products, list goods, fulfill orders automatically, and scale up your business quickly.
Before you make up your mind about which supplier to go for, here is a comparison between two dropshipping platforms, CJ Dropshipping and Oberlo, and scrutiny of their functions and services will be presented for your consideration.
Outline:
1. Fundamental Difference
2. User Interface & System
3. Pricing
4. Product Sourcing & Listing
5. Costs of Purchasing Product
6. Packaging and Shipping Methods
7. Product Details
8. Warehouses
Fundamental Difference
CJ Dropshipping and Oberlo have differences in many aspects, but the fundamental one lies in their target customers.
Oberlo is one of the earliest dropshipping platforms to launch and is a dropshipping app extension for Shopify that helps you find trending products and add them to your store. It can only work with one eCommerce platform----Shopify. But it allows you to import goods from AliExpress. In a word, Oberlo can help you find a supplier with specific goods that your customers need, and ship them to customers directly on the condition that you own a Shopify store.
CJ Dropshipping is a platform integrated with product sourcing, automatic order processing, and shipping fulfillment. It's like a combination of Aliexpress and Oberlo, dropshippers list or connects products on CJ to their stores, then CJ syncs orders from their stores and takes care of everything. Warehouse service, photo/video shooting, POD, COD, affiliate, and API support, and the like are all available. CJ is a one-stop service platform covering all the services related to dropshipping business. In short, CJ dropshipping has combined all the possible functions to provide a thorough service to all kinds of merchants and store-owners from different platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce, ShipStation, Lazada, and Shopee, etc.
They vary in the target customers and equip their platforms with different functions and services to better cater to their target markets. It is the fundamental difference that leads to a series of other differences.
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User Interface & System
Aiming at the Shopify store owners only, the system of Oberlo is quite simple with a clean UI that makes it easy for you to go through products it offers, connect to your store, and begin your sale without drowning in a sea of hands-on information. Dropshipping in Oberlo can be simple and smooth while owning a Shopify store, otherwise, you are not able to enjoy the effectiveness and simpleness.
While the system of CJ is quite complicated, because it combines the functions of Aliexpress and Oberlo, and goes further than these two platforms can do. But once you have set the features you need in place, you can save tons of time and energy. To make things easier for new users, it has made a tutorial video for every feature. In a word, CJ Dropshipping offers multiple services, a freshman may need to sort through a flock of choices in the very beginning, but eventually, everything will be worthwhile.
Pricing
Oberlo has fixed pricing plans for customers to choose from: a Grad version that costs $7.90 per month, and a Boss version which is priced at $29.90 per month. In addition, it has launched coaching services in Grad and Boss versions, helping users to learn more. But you have to pay at least $7.90 per month to enjoy the service.
On the other hand, CJ Dropshipping, as one of the best free dropshipping suppliers, requires no set-up fee nor monthly fee. CJ Dropshipping is a membership-driven website, allowing users to try its pro-service for free including Print on Demand, fulfillment services, and CJ supplier sourcing. VIP requires no monthly fees but long-term cooperation and regular orders. Similarly, CJ Dropshipping has offered a mentorship program for its users. Also, Users can download monthly product reports. And they can join the CJ Facebook group where dropshipping influencers, mentors, and CJ experts can help to solve their questions about the dropshipping business. But unlike Oberlo, CJ has offered those services for free.
Product Sourcing & Listing
Given that the difference in target customers, their ways of sourcing products apparently differ from each other. Currently, Oberlo only supports adding products from AliExpress according to its announcement on the official website. And in this case, it can only support suppliers from AliExpress to work with dropshippers to offer better prices, packaging, or product customization. It has more specific and simplified services and functions that help online store-owners to find products or source them in their stores to start selling. But the production listing can be limited because of its pricing, it only allows you a maximum of 500 products listed for the Grad version and 30,000 products listed for the Oberlo Boss version.
While on CJ Dropshipping users are provided with diversified eCommerce platforms for product sourcing. CJ supports other platforms besides Shopify, so does it support a diverse way to import products. Users can search the products by the name and URL, or sync products with their stores. Customers and users can put forward a sourcing request once they find a winning product – the CJ team then sources the requested products for them. CJ Dropshipping, on the other side, has over 400,000 products. CJ focuses on listing products according to evident demand or customer requests.
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Product Details
Oberlo has offered product details and product statistics for your reference before you decide what products to purchase or list. Product statistics is quite helpful and useful, presenting data, such as reviews, ranking stars, how many people imported the products, and the order amount.
On the contrary, CJ Dropshipping has provided reviews, comments, and detailed descriptions of the products, as well as photos.
Costs of Purchasing Product
Oberlo imports its products from AliExpress, so the price it offers syncs with AliExpress. On the contrary, the product price on CJ is usually lower than on Aliexpress for the same item.
This is because those AliExpress stores are mostly owned by individuals or partners who have no inventory or stock. Adding to it, manufacturers only provide competitive prices exclusively for retails or other sellers on Alibaba, a wholesale platform known as a famous B2B solution. In this case, AliExpress sellers have to pay more to buy inventory and pay extra fees, including the annual fee, showcase fee, and charges for advertisement on AliExpress. All these factors make products inevitably more expensive.
On the contrary, CJ Dropshipping is run by the CJ team themselves, from product sourcing to product delivery, they make overall arrangements of every section, helping to cut down the operational cost. Therefore they can provide a more competitive price for customers.
START & SCALE YOUR BUSINESS WITH CJDROPSHIPPING
Packaging and Shipping Methods
With AliExpress as the only channel for product sourcing, Oberlo adopts the package and delivery offered by suppliers on AliExpress. In this case, you can only choose among the methods provided by AliExpress for shipping and delivering products to your customers. Problems may occur when your customers order different products that their orders will be delivered by split-shipping, which may affect the shopping experience.
While CJ has offered CJPacket services, allowing customers to make their own choices of the packages and delivery. CJPacket provides insurance for packages from China to most countries. CJPacket is a shipping line established by CJdropshipping, mainly for ordinary and electronic products, including CJPacket ordinary and CJPacket sensitive according to different product attributes. Furthermore, CJ will make a refund or resending if the package is damaged or lost during the transition.
Warehouses
Oberlo itself has no warehouses while its suppliers from AliExpress can have warehouses in different locations, therefore, the shipping times may vary. Therefore, it is very important to select a supplier with a reliable warehouse, otherwise, the delivery time will be longer. If you want to do dropshipping successfully, you need to choose the supplier carefully.
As for CJ Dropshipping, it has 29 supplier warehouses in Thailand, the US, Germany, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, India, Brazil, Russia, Britain, Singapore, Malaysia, France, Czechia, Uganda, Romania, Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Spain, Italy, Chile, and New Zealand.
Products in the CJ supplier warehouses are free-shipping and delivered to the local destination in one week. For instance, if you buy products from the Britain warehouse, they could be delivered to your customer in 3-7 days via Standard UK. And if you have noticed some winning products, you can buy a private inventory and send products to our warehouses in advance, which means a faster processing time and guaranteed inventory, and no storage fee will be charged.
Furthermore, it has three China warehouses (Jinhua, Yiwu, and Dongguan warehouses), two US warehouses (New Jersey and Chino warehouses), one Thailand warehouse, one Germany warehouse, and one Indonesia warehouse. Country-sensitive customers don't want parcels showing Chinese information.
CJ global warehouses are set for country-sensitive customers. For instance, if you buy products from CJ US warehouses, you can enjoy 2-4 delivery by USPS+ from the time you place orders to the parcel received.
Final Words
Oberlo and CJ Dropshipping have their own specific target customers and markets, which lead to their unique advantages and services. Oberlo is more dedicated to Shopify store owners and has a rigid pricing plan, while CJ Dropshipping is a one-stop service platform covering all the services related to dropshipping business. Inevitably, it owns a complicated system but offers comprehensive services needed for a dropshipping business. It is important to choose a platform for your dropshipping business, so take your time to know what works well for you.
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