A primary step in dropshipping is the search for suppliers after finding the famous Holy Grail of a winning product. Like many beginning dropshippers, the first destination is the marketplace of AliExpress, an e-commerce platform. Indeed, many suppliers exist there, presenting similar products with quite competitive prices. So far, this has been the so-called basic method.
However, one problem remains and has become even worse since the COVID-19 crisis: the delay in deliveries. During the global quarantine, people didn’t have much to do, so long delays were more noticeable. Nowadays, things have largely improved, but a long delay can be associated with a less than serious site, or even represent a scam for many potential customers.
The most obvious solution is to go to suppliers located in the countries where we sell our products in order to reduce its famous waiting times. Only, these suppliers don’t work with the first comers and building a relationship of trust takes time. They simply can’t partner with people who don’t even have enough sales yet.
This is where CJ Dropshipping comes into play by offering better services, better delays and most importantly products that are just as qualitative as those of AliExpress. This article aims at presenting you our opinion on CJ Dropshipping By presenting you its advantages, disadvantages, the rates they offer as well as its alternatives.
What is CJ Dropshipping?
As you may have understood, CJ Dropshipping is a platform similar to AliExpress, permitting exchanges between vendor suppliers and entrepreneur customers (dropshippers) or simple consumers. CJ Dropshipping is a Chinese e-commerce platform established in 2014 where you will find many manufacturers and suppliers to power your dropshipping business.
Like its main competitor, the platform offers tens of thousands of products distributed among thousands of niches in order to meet the needs of as many people as possible. CJ Dropshipping’s strength lies in its short delivery times and the quality of the products the platform offers.
CJ Dropshipping, as its name suggests, facilitates your dropshipping business by taking care of all the logistics aspects of your project. You don’t have to deal with packaging, customization and even less with shipping your packages. Your only work is concentrated in managing your online store and promoting your products.
It is important to note that while the platform is great for intermediate dropshippers due to its short delivery times, it is not as great for beginners. That doesn’t mean they should shun it, though.
How to use CJ Dropshipping?
As previously mentioned, CJ Dropshipping is an e-commerce platform dedicated to dropshipping. CJ Dropshipping allows you to sell and source products from their platforms by connecting your store. To start selling products using CJ Dropshipping, you must first sign up for free, then link your store.
Which e-commerce platforms can be connected to CJ DropShipping?
You can link CJ Dropshipping to stores found on the e-commerce platforms that are: Shopify, WooCommerce, eBay, Wix, Adobe Commerce, Etsy, ShipStation and Shoplazza.
If your online shop is not present on these platforms, you can always integrate CJ Dropshipping through the API of your store. And to take full advantage of the platform, don’t forget to install the CJ Dropshipping Chrome extension.
To be precise, in order to link CJ Dropshipping to Shopify, you need to install the CJ Dropshipping application on your store.
CJ Dropshipping features
CJ Drosphipping is neither an application nor a marketplace, but a mixture of both. In other words, it offers features of sales platforms such as AliExpress while integrating inventory synchronization features such as Oberlo. Find out more about the main features of CJ Dropshipping below:
A large product catalog
The main reason to turn to CJ Dropshipping is for the various suppliers that fill its product catalog. The platform offers more than 400,000 product references divided into dozens of categories.
No matter what niche you operate in, there is little chance that you will not find your product on CJ Dropshipping. You can find products in, among others:
- Electronics (computers, headphones, gadgets etc.)
- Office supplies
- Wellness and beauty products
- Jewelry and watches
- The toys
- Car and motorcycle parts
- Clothing for men, women, and children
- The sports business
- The house and the garden
A print-on-demand service
You will also find custom-made and personalized items on CJ Dropshipping. You can offer your own designs for t-shirts or mugs. Since the service is available to both you and your buyers, it is possible to present customizable products on your ecommerce store.
Customization
Personalization is not limited to print-on-demand, it also concerns product packaging. It allows you to put your branding on the packaging of your products. You can enhance your brand by offering originality and quality.
Creation of professional product photos and videos
Professional photos allow you to offer much more qualitative product pages and to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Videos will not only be used to present your products, but also as creative for your ads on social networks.
If you normally have to use an external service or do it yourself, CJ Dropshipping offers it directly in its platform. This is a significant time-saver.
Quality control
To ensure the quality of the products you sell on your store, you should usually have them delivered to your home. Or, if you are lucky enough to work with an agent, have it checked by him. This is not at all easy for a beginner. CJ Dropshipping offers quality control on every item before it is shipped to ensure the condition and quality of the products you sell.
Management and execution of orders
Unlike other product sourcing solutions, you can directly manage your product listings on the CJ Dropshipping website. By installing the CJ Dropshipping application, you can do this from the backend of your e-commerce store.
Order validation is easy, delivery data is automatically synchronized. And as with the Oberlo extension, you can import products into your store with just one click.
CJ Dropshipping rates
As previously said, registering with CJ Dropshipping is free, and you can use the platform for free. Although in real life, you will have to pay user fees, these are directly included in the price of the products you dropshipping.
However, if you wish to use additional services such as personalization of packaging, logos or labels, an additional fee may be charged. This will depend on your order, your company, the supplier, or the agent you will be in contact with.
Please note that warehouse fees only apply if you decide to send your products to their warehouse for storage.
The advantages and disadvantages of CJ Dropshipping
After introducing you to how CJ Dropshipping works, it is important for you to know the advantages and disadvantages of this platform.
The advantages of CJ Dropshipping
Product prices
Since CJ Dropshipping takes care of sourcing from suppliers, it takes care of price negotiations in advance. This allows you to take advantage of the best prices on the products you wish to resell on your store. This is why the products on CJ Dropshipping cost less than on AliExpress.
To obtain its lower prices, CJ Dropshipping displays the number of potential resellers. This allows CJ Dropshipping to consolidate orders and achieve economies of scale with suppliers and manufacturers.
Product photos
Poor quality product photos can hurt your dropshipping store. You can always order the product at home and make the photographs yourself. Nevertheless, you don’t need to do that, because the product photos provided by CJ Dropshipping are of excellent quality, and you can reuse them as you like.
But in order to differentiate yourself from your competitors, custom photos play a huge role in your conversion rate. Using CJ Dropshipping, you can request additional photos from suppliers.
Delivery times
As for the majority of the sales platforms, the processing of orders is done within 1 to 4 days. The good point is in the shipping methods used by the platform.
While ePacket by AliExpress takes a minimum of 14–17 days to deliver packages, CJPacket by CJ Dropshipping does it in 5–12 days. This is possible not only because of their shipping service, but also because of CJ Dropshipping’s multiple warehouses spread all over the world (in China, Asia, Europe, North America, etc.)
In addition to being fast, this in-house shipping system allows you to track your packages in real time. It is always possible to opt for much faster and also more expensive delivery methods by going through DHL, for example.
The grouping of orders
When you sell dropshipping, it is quite common for each of your products to come from different suppliers. Using AliExpress, for example, once the customer places an order with multiple products, it’s no wonder that the customer will receive multiple packages. This is not ideal, as it can create anxiety with your customer, and it is more difficult to track these packages.
CJ Dropshipping, thanks to its various warehouses, can group these orders, by regrouping or splitting them. This allows the customer to receive all their products in one package. This will provide better service to your customers while taking advantage of better processes in your back-end.
Order automation
It is possible to automatically place orders on CJ Dropshipping by linking your store to the platform. It is worth mentioning that this option is even faster by using the CJ Dropshipping Chrome extension.
Every minute you save is time you can use to optimize the various processes in your store.
Personalization of the packaging
One of the best-selling points is differentiation. CJ Dropshipping allows you to personalize the packaging, logos, labels, and even the products you want to sell on your store.
Customer support
Although it offers many advantages, CJ Dropshipping remains a rather complex platform. Fortunately, it offers a very responsive customer service that will assist you in the shortest possible time. Moreover, thanks to its thousands of users, CJ Dropshipping has a huge community that is at your disposal to answer all your questions.
Activity during the Chinese New Year period
Chinese New Year, although festive in China, is a real ordeal for dropshippers around the world. This normally week-long event can extend the downtime of various suppliers and delivery services for over a month.
To alleviate this problem, CJ Dropshipping has implemented a system that allows employees to do rounds of service. In short, instead of crippling your dropshipping business for a month, their activities only cease for a single day.
CJ Dropshipping Affiliate
For every person you bring back to CJ Dropshipping through your affiliate link, you will earn 2% of each new affiliate’s earnings every year.
The disadvantages of CJ Dropshipping
Fewer products than on Aliexpress
As you know, if you can’t find the product you are looking for on CJ Dropshipping, you can simply make a sourcing request. However, it is not impossible that the product you are looking for cannot be found, this limits the number of products you can sell through CJ Dropshipping.
Customer reviews
Since CJ Dropshipping allows you to deal directly with suppliers without going through a merchant site like AliExpress, you will not benefit from customer reviews directly on the platform. It is still possible to use an application to retrieve reviews from AliExpress, for example, but this adds work to your business.
Our rating on CJ Dropshipping
Discover our evaluation on CJ Dropshipping. It is based on all the parameters we have analyzed throughout the article.
4.1/5
Presence of a marketplace ✅
Alternatives to CJ Dropshipping
Since there is no alternative offering exactly the same functionality as CJ Dropshipping, find below marketplaces and online software offering similar features.
Aliexpress
How can we talk about dropshipping without talking about AliExpress? AliExpress is China’s number one e-commerce platform for everything related to connecting resellers and suppliers.
You can literally find anything and everything on AliExpress. This makes it easy to find the product you want to sell on your dropshipping Shopify store, no matter what niche you’re in.
Although AliExpress offers endless products, it lags behind in delivery times. As previously stated, its cheapest express delivery service takes a minimum of 2-3 weeks to reach its destination.
However, AliExpress remains a great alternative during your testing phases. You don’t have to pre-order en masse, and by talking to suppliers, you can establish a fairly functional dropshipping business. Once you move on to larger orders, you can switch to CJ Dropshipping.
Our rating on Aliexpress
Discover our evaluation on Aliexpress. It is based on all the parameters we have analyzed throughout the article.
3.5/5
Presence of a marketplace ✅
Alibaba
Alibaba is a Chinese e-commerce behemoth. The platform features dozens of warehouses in more than 50 countries around the world. In addition, it offers more than 200 package shipping methods.
In other positives, Alibaba offers 24-hour wholesale order processing and wholesale pricing. The only downside is that if you’re targeting North America for your dropshipping business, Alibaba’s warehouses there have a low inventory of products. This can be detrimental during major sales periods or when your products are successful.
Our rating on Alibaba
Discover our evaluation on Alibaba. It is based on all the parameters we have analyzed throughout the article.
3/5
Presence of a marketplace ✅
Spocket
Unlike previous platforms, Spocket does not feature Chinese suppliers or represent offshore warehouses with Chinese products, it features suppliers directly based in the target country of your e-commerce business.
This allows them to provide hyper-fast delivery times and in a sense boost the local economy by offering services in the same territory.
It is worth mentioning that the majority of these suppliers are in the US and UK. If you want to sell to the US and UK market, Spocket is a great option for you.
The floundering point is that Spocket unlike CJ Dropshipping is not a free service, you need to purchase a subscription. And to enjoy all the features ideal for dropshipping, you need to opt at least for their Pro plan at $49.99/month.
Our rating on Spocket
Discover our evaluation on Spocket. It is based on all the parameters we have analyzed throughout the article.
4/5
Presence of a marketplace ❌
Oberlo
Oberlo on the other hand is an application available on Shopify that allows you to automate deliveries and imports of products on your online store. It helps you choose the best suppliers on marketplaces, sorting them by sales volumes, their customer returns and assigning a score to each supplier.
You can import with one click the products you want to sell on your store. A Chrome extension is provided to make these actions even easier.
You can search for products by category, filter results by price and seller rating, and automatically update inventory and prices. There are free and paid plans, with additional features for the paid plans. For paid plans, pricing starts at $29.90/month.
Our rating on Oberlo
Discover our evaluation on Oberlo. It is based on all the parameters we have analyzed throughout the article.
4/5
Presence of a marketplace ❌
Dsers
Dsers is an application available in the Shopify app store. It allows dropshippers to optimize the time they spend on product management needs, marketing as well as optimizing their stores. Dsers offers a feature pack that allows you to manage and automate most of the actions needed to run your dropshipping store.
The tool allows you to order from any supplier of your choice on any marketplace. As you will have understood, Dsers does not propose any product catalog, but it takes care of integrating them into your store.
Dsers allows you to manage your orders, your shipments and allows you to track your different packages after they are sent. DSers is free access for an unlimited number of orders. To take advantage of all the features, you need to purchase a subscription costing from $19/month.
Our rating on Dsers
Discover our evaluation on Dsers. It is based on all the parameters we have analyzed throughout the article.
3.8/5
Presence of a marketplace ❌
Comparison table
| Platform | Ease of use | Integrations | Features | Presence of a marketplace | Service Client | Quality-price ratio | Note Globale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CJ Dropshipping | 3/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | ✔️ | 3/5 | 4/5 | 4.1/5 |
| AliExpress | 4/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | ✔️ | 2/5 | 4/5 | 3.5/5 |
| AliBaba | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | ✔️ | 2/5 | 4/5 | 3/5 |
| Dsers | 4/5 | 3/5 | 4/5 | ❌ | 3/5 | 4/5 | 3.8/5 |
| Oberlo | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | ❌ | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Spocket | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | ❌ | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 |
Conclusion
CJ Dropshipping is a platform featuring better rates than AliExpress, shorter delivery times and it offers order automation. In the headlines, this is a great platform to find suppliers if you want to get into dropshipping.
Nevertheless, not everything is rosy in this dropshipping platform that is CJ Dropshipping. Although it offers a sourcing service, this is not a guarantee that you will find all the products you are looking for, the catalog offered is limited.
You can customize your products and their packaging, but only after you have sold a significant amount of the same product. Therefore, you need to present evidence to suppliers to take advantage of the customization.
According to our CJ Dropshipping review, the platform is a great alternative to AliExpress if you are intermediate level dropshippers. It is possible to use it from the beginning, but you might not be able to enjoy all the benefits the platform provides as a beginner.
FAQ
How does CJ Dropshipping work?
Cj Dropshipping plays the role of an agent by contacting and negotiating product prices with suppliers on your behalf. All you have to do is link your store to the platform and choose the products you wish to sell. CJ Dropshipping takes care of the packaging, preparation, and shipping of the packages.
What could be better than CJ Dropshipping?
If you want to go far in dropshipping, using an agent allows you to find better quality products at lower prices and with much shorter delivery times than CJ Dropshipping.
Does CJ Dropshipping have a fee?
CJ Dropshipping fees are directly included in the price of the products it offers. To use CJ Dropshipping, all you have to do is register for free, you don’t have to plan for any additional fees.
Is CJ Dropshipping Chinese?
CJ Dropshipping is a Chinese platform for resellers to work with Chinese suppliers and manufacturers.
Is CJ Dropshipping legit?
Cj Drosphipping is a worthwhile platform if you’re already making money and want to take your dropshipping store to the next level.