In the past, AliExpress has been the first go-to supplier website for many newbies in the dropshipping sector. But can AliExpress support your business thoroughly as you start to scale the market?
Just think about it in these terms: AliExpress was not developed as a dropshipping product sourcing platform, it is in fact the B2C brother of Alibaba.
While it is true that just a couple of years ago, there weren’t many alternatives to AliExpress, in terms of product sourcing in China, things have now changed. You can finally choose to rely on a supplier who will better meet your needs and assist you in every step of your sourcing and fulfillment processes.
If you want your dropshipping business to thrive as you grow, you can have Yakkyofy by your side!
MAIN DIFFERENCES
In this article we will make a comparison between AliExpress with Yakkyofy, to help you have a comprehensive understanding of the logistics behind the two platforms, and make a weighted choice on which one best suits your business.
ALIEXPRESS
AliExpress is a B2C Chinese online marketplace, similar to eBay and Amazon. The vast majority of its products originate in China and are sold by different vendors and resellers.
AliExpress is not involved in the fulfillment of the customers’ orders, it simply provides a showcase for the products.
YAKKYOFY
Yakkyofy is a free software developed to help dropshippers source their products at B2B prices, and automate the fulfillment process of their orders. It acts as a supplier and can provide quotations for over 12 million different products in real-time.
Yakkyofy provides full integration with some of the major online store platforms. Other store integrations are being developed and they will be released soon!
PRODUCTS AND CUSTOMER SERVICE
Both platforms source products in China, but there are fundamental differences in the quality of the products sourced, quality control checks, and additional or complementary services offered.
ALIEXPRESS DROPSHIPPING
Quite frequently, you will find several listings with the same products, even with the same pictures! This is because there are many vendors selling the very same products. Moreover, on AliExpress you can’t be sure that you are dealing with an actual supplier, it can be simply a reseller who sells the supplier’s products at a higher margin.
Keep in mind tough, that even if the photo is the same, AliExpress resellers sell items from different factories and consequently have different levels in terms of quality.
As we mentioned before, AliExpress does not have anything to do with the fulfillment of orders. After endless complaints of broken or “lost in the post” products, AliExpress introduced some additional warranties to reassure its customers and keep them coming back. However, the quality of the service still depends greatly on the seller from whom you buy your products.
In short, AliExpress acts as a marketplace, a sort of showcase of one’s products. They do not take any responsibility in the quality of the products that are sold.
DROPSHIPPING WITH YAKKYOFY
Yakkyofy is different, not only it provides you an integration to automate your business, but it also acts as your only supplier.
We only source from the best factories in China, and before shipping the products to your customers, we remove all the ads inserts from the producers. We also run quick QC checks, to make sure that items are physically intact and of the correct variant.
But there’s even more! We have a dedicated customer care team whose mission is to make your dropshipping life easier and stress free.
That’s why, should you have any issues, you can get in touch with us right away by writing a message to our Facebook Page!
Are you looking for high-quality products?
PRODUCT PRICES
As we mentioned previously, AliExpress is a B2C platform, the prices that you find there are already weighted for the final consumer market. Paying B2C prices on products that you market can be a costly operation, as it would make your profit margins quite low.
On the other hand, Yakkyofy only works with businesses, dropshippers and eCommerce owners. Since we source our products directly from factories, we can offer better rates, as much as 15% to 40% lower than the ones you see on AliExpress, Wish, GearBest and other Chinese marketplaces. Moreover, the more products you buy, the less you will pay per single product. And the less you pay, the higher your profits and chances to scale your market.
PRIVATE LABEL PRODUCTS
AliExpress is a showcase for Chinese vendors, who source their products from suppliers to resell to final customers.
Since these resellers are not the actual producers of the items, getting a private label on your products, personalising them with your very own logo is nearly impossible.
As you might already know, private labelling your products can raise the items’ perceived value in the eyes of your customers, and this means that you can ask for more money and earn more profit. AliExpress does not give you the possibility to personalise your products as you will probably purchase them from resellers and not actual producers.
With Yakkyofy you can request to private label your products or even to simply customise your packaging autonomously, by simply sending a request via your Yakkyofy dashboard and in just a few days you will have an all-inclusive price, with all the costs included.
FINDING NEW WINNING PRODUCTS
The two platforms offer different kinds of services. AliExpress acts mostly as a simple data collection platform, while Yakkyofy is a supplier and trending products finder, which you will find in the “Hot Products” section in Yakkyofy’s Dashboard.
ALIEXPRESS DROPSHIPPING CENTER
It is a great tool that can help you find new ideas for your dropshipping products. It gives you feedback on the sales in general and on trend of various products. AliExpress Dropshipping Center can also help you find resellers that you might have not noticed on AliExpress.com
You can use this tool to find winning products even if you are not dropshipping with AliExpress.
YAKKYOFY HOT PRODUCTS
Yakkyofy’s team of experts selects a set number of trending products for you every week. They are chosen after a careful analysis and exchange of information with producers. We only share items that have a rising trend in sales. Once you purchase these goods, they will be shipped to our warehouse in Shenzhen where our fulfillment and logistics team will run them through a quick Quality Control check, before sending them to your final clients.
PAYMENT OPTIONS
AliExpress only offers payments with Credit or Debit Cards, along with a guaranteed full refund if the shipped item is not as described or if it is not delivered. However it does not offer any alternative payment options, such as PayPal, Bank Transfers, etc.
Yakkyofy on the other hand offers several payment options:
- Stripe: a safe online payment platform also utilised by several Shopify stores;
- PayPal: an online payments system available in many countries that support online money transfers;
- Payoneer: is a cross-border payments platform for online sellers, and freelancers to pay and get paid globally.
- eWallet: an internal Yakkyofy system that acts as a wallet and can automate the payments for your orders, so that the processing can start as soon as they are placed;
- Bank Transfer: Yakkyofy also supports bank transfers;
PARCELS AND SHIPPING OPTIONS
While Yakkyofy in fact acts as your sole partner, AliExpress hosts on its website a collection of suppliers and resellers. This means that shipping options can vary greatly, depending from whom you decide to buy. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why so many dropshippers decide to move away from AliExpress resellers to private suppliers such as Yakkyofy.
But let’s analyse our shipping options with both platforms more in depth.
ALIEXPRESS
“AliExpress Standard Shipping” is probably the only shipping option that all resellers on AliExpress share:
- FREE SHIPPING, which is essentially the sending of your parcels via China Post, often without a tracking number, and therefore impossible to track.
Other options that AliExpress resellers offer, depending on the reseller and products, are:
- UPS Expedited;
- Fedex IP;
- DHL;
- UPS Express.
These shipping options are usually fully traceable but also incredibly expensive, arriving to cost as much as 5-7 times more than the product itself.
The downside of choosing to dropship with AliExpress is that you do not have any power on the shipping method used for your products. It can also happen that, even if you paid for a tracked shipping, the reseller arbitrarily decided to ship your parcels with the cheapest shipping method available. Moreover if you sourced your products from different resellers, it would mean that you would have to pay 2 shipping fees and that customers will receive 2 different parcels.
YAKKYOFY
As we have already mentioned, Yakkyofy can source for your over 12 million products. Which means that it can essentially act as the only supplier for all of your items. Yakkyofy offers a shipping method called Special Line, the ideal mix between fast shipping at a reasonable price, which can deliver in several countries around the world in a handful of days.
Other shipping options that Yakkyofy offers to its clients include:
- Premium Special Line, which can deliver even faster than Special Line;
- Registered Post Mail;
- ePacket;
But the best thing is that if your clients order more than one product in the same order, Yakkyofy will bundle the products, up to 5 SKUs in the same parcel and ship them together, in such way helping your save money on shipping costs and making your clients happy, because they will get all their goodies in one go!
Do you want fast shipping with Special Line?
WAREHOUSE AND INVENTORY SPACE
As you start scaling the market and selling increasing quantities of your products, you might want to start buying some inventory in advance, so that you can decrease the processing time of your orders and get them to your clients faster.
AliExpress dropshipping does not offer a warehouse where you could store your goodies, and resellers simply do not offer physical space for your products. Moreover, whether you buy 10 pcs of the same product or a 1000, you still pay the B2C price. This would make it almost impossible for you to scale the market and increase your profits.
Yakkyofy, on the other hand, offers:
- Free Inventory Space in its warehouse in Shenzhen;
- B2B prices for you, as we buy directly from producers. This means that the more items you buy, the less you pay per single item;
- No limits or MOQs on the pcs you decide to purchase, you can buy 10, or you can buy 10000, we will still store them for you and run QC check before shipping;
- Private Label for your products and Packaging, you tell us what you want and we’ll get it sorted for you.
