Dropshipping is wildly popular, especially among start-up online stores. The world and digitalization are transforming at lightning speed, so dropshipping stores are everywhere.
In this blog you will read about what dropshipping is and discover the five best e-commerce platforms for dropshipping stores. Finally, we’ll give you advice on the best platform for your start-up.
Table of Contents
What is dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a form of e-commerce where you run a webshop without stock. When you make a purchase, the manufacturer, wholesaler or dropshipping supplier sends the products directly to your customer’s delivery address.
Not holding stock has several (financial) advantages. For example, you have no purchasing risk, you do not need staff for packing and shipping orders to the customer and you can easily expand your range without having to deal with residual parties. In short: dropshipping is a cost-efficient way of doing business.
Maybe it might interest you: How to start a dropshipping business?
Woocademy’s 7-Day Challenge: Your Path to a Successful WooCommerce Dropshipping Store Awaits!
5 best e-commerce platforms for dropshipping stores
To get off to a good start as a dropshipper and to take maximum advantage of the growth of online retail, a good e-commerce platform is essential. An e-commerce platform allows you, as a webshop owner, to easily manage online sales activities. Nowadays, there are many providers on the market, making it difficult to choose from all those dropshipping platforms.
To help you on your way, we have listed the five best e-commerce platforms for dropshipping stores for you.
1. WooCommerce – best platform for dropshipping
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce solution for WordPress. As many as 5 million people worldwide use the plugin. WooCommerce was founded in 2008.
WooCommerce is easy to use and has a large number of functions. Make use of dashboards, set up your dropship platform as desired and easily add product pages, checkout pages, and secure payment methods through Mollie. This is great to start with, as a dropshipper who is just beginning. If you want to expand your webshop further, you can add paid and free extensions.
The main advantage of WooCommerce is its flexibility. In addition, WooCommerce is an open source platform and free to buy. Moreover, you don’t pay any license fees and the plugin is a powerful analytical tool. In short: a great plugin for both the novice and the experienced dropshipper. However, take into account that there’s a lot to learn about WordPress, especially when compared to Shopify.
2. Shopify
Shopify is an all-in-one SaaS solution. It allows users to quickly build their own website and/or webshop to sell products without coding.
With over 1,000,000 active sellers and more than 14,000 partners, Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform designed for businesses of all sizes.
The software has an extensive range of technology products, including dropshipping apps that allow you to sell to customers almost instantly. At the same time, the extensive offering can also be a pitfall: it can cause working with Shopify to be perceived as complex, but it is still a powerful SaaS solution.
Unlike the free WooCommerce plugin, Shopify requires the purchase of a subscription.
3. Wix
Wix is a cloud-based web design platform with over 100 million users worldwide. You can use Wix as a dropship platform. Because Wix is originally a platform for web design, you can distinguish yourself in a competitive market by adding a creative and visual impulse to your webshop.
Within Wix you can easily create product categories and make use of multichannel integrations. You monitor orders easily from a powerful dashboard where you integrate CRM and sales solutions seamlessly. Customers pay easily through any of the payment methods they offer.
Wix is a great platform for safely growing and scaling. It easily adapts to your needs. The monthly cost for an online dropshipping business is between $20 and $44 per month.
4. Lightspeed
Lightspeed is a CMS system and a software package which you can easily build up from and manage websites and web shops. For Lightspeed you do not need any technical knowledge. You simply choose templates and URLs and import your products. Moreover, with Lightspeed you are assured of a standard mobile-responsive design.
Lightspeed gives you control over your stock, orders and returns. SEO and marketing tools give you the opportunity to keep growing.
You can choose from three subscriptions at Lightspeed, with a starting price of 49 Euros.
5. Magento
Magento is an open source system for web shops. The software is free for everyone to download and use, and is particularly popular among large players. Magento allows you to efficiently manage orders, shipping costs and warehousing.
The advantage of Magento is that you can easily launch several webshops from one platform. The open source system has both free and affordable versions. The latter can run into thousands of Euros on an annual basis, which is why many webshops make the trade-off for the free variant.
Conclusion
We have briefly explained to you what dropshipping is and what the five main e-commerce platforms are. As you can see, there is a wide range of options available when it comes to choosing an e-commerce platform for dropshipping. The right option for your business depends on your goal. If you want to start a dropshipping business, then WooCommerce is the best solution for a dropshipping platform. WooCommerce gives you the ability to sell in multiple environments around the world, is user friendly, can work alongside your existing site and is cost effective.
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FAQs
What is dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a form of e-commerce where you run your own shop without stock. When you make a purchase, the manufacturer, wholesaler or dropshipping supplier sends the products directly to your customer’s delivery address.
What is a dropship platform?
A dropship platform is your own webshop or an online sales platform from which you sell your own products.
What is an e-commerce platform?
An E-commerce platform is a software application that allows you to build your own online store. Thanks to the software, you can easily manage online sales activities as a web store.
What is a WordPress plugin?
A WordPress plugin is a piece of software that extends the functionality of a WordPress website. WooCommerce is one of the most popular WordPress plugins.
Check out our awesome WooCommerce plugins >>>
