Oberlo Review 2018

By Milo Cruz | Last Updated: September 29, 2019
Oberlo

Table of Contents

Oberlo Overview

Oberlo is a drop shipping service that started in 2015. While relatively young to the business, it has quickly built a large following thanks to its ease of use and seamless integration with Shopify – one of the most popular platforms for independent eCommerce stores. It became so successful with users that Shopify decided to buy it from its original creators. Since then, the service has only gotten better.

Want to know more? Read our review below!

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Oberlo?

Pros

  • Free Plan Available: You can sign up for Oberlo and use most of the service’s features indefinitely.
  • Built-In Shipment Tracking: Oberlo lets you track where your products are.
  • Comprehensive, Intuitive, and Fast: Oberlo fully integrates with your Shopify store, so you can focus on making your business grow.
  • Plenty of Helpful Resources: The Oberlo website gives you a wealth of information that can help bring your Shopify store greater success.

Cons

  • Only Works with Shopify: The Oberlo service is limited to Shopify alone. If you want to sell on eBay or other similar platforms, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
  • Limited to Oberlo Supply and AliExpress: This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since AliExpress has a very large selection of products available. But if you want to work with other suppliers, then you’re out of luck.

How much is Oberlo? What services does it provide?

Pricing and Plans

The most important thing to know about Oberlo is that it only works with Shopify – which is a paid service.

Oberlo’s Starter plan comes at no cost, and has all the essential features you’ll need to run a drop shipping business.

More advanced users can opt for paid monthly plans that have more functionality. Payment for these premium plans is charged to the credit card associated with your linked Shopify account.

Here is a comparison between the different plans:

Oberlo pricing and plans

Most first-time users will find that the free Starter plan works for their needs. It’s an excellent way to test the service while you’re still getting the hang of things. But once your business starts to grow, a maximum of 50 orders per month can be severely limiting.

By that time, you should ideally be making enough money to cover the cost of the Basic plan. This bumps up your order limit to 500 and lets you track your shipments in real time.

The Pro plan is geared towards power sellers who already have a large customer base and probably employs a few people in their business.

Shopify Integration

Oberlo is designed to work specifically with Shopify, so a lot of the functions involved in running your store can be performed with just a few simple clicks via the Oberlo dashboard. These include, but are not limited to:

  • Product Importation: Find products on Oberlo and instantly publish them to your store.
  • Automatic Order Fulfillment: Ship products to your customers in one click. Oberlo handles the rest.
  • Inventory and Price Auto-Updates: Oberlo updates price and stock levels, so you don’t sell an item that’s out of stock or priced higher than how much you’re selling it for.
  • Product Customization: Edit any product’s description, image, and titles.
  • Pricing Automation: Create pricing rules and set bulk pricing.
  • Shipment Tracking: Know where your orders are at any time.
  • Sales Tracking: Get instant overviews of your sales and costs.
  • Product Wish Lists: Create wishlists for items you want to sell and import them directly to your store.
  • Change Product Suppliers: Easily switch between suppliers with the best price.

Oberlo Chrome Extension

This free automation tool makes running your Shopify store more efficient. It simplifies order fulfillment and supplier management on AliExpress. With the extension, you simply click on the Oberlo icon below an AliExpress product to add it to your import list. Then you can go to your import list on the Oberlo dashboard to add the products to your store.

The extension is required if you source your products from AliExpress. It only works on your computer and not on tablet or mobile.

What products can I sell with Oberlo?

Oberlo users can easily add any product found on AliExpress to their store. You can browse AliExpress’s millions of products and easily publish the ones you like to your Shopify store. You can do this with a few clicks on your computer’s internet browser. However, not all products on AliExpress can work with Oberlo.

You can also choose products from Oberlo Supply, Oberlo’s own directory of suppliers. This is basically a list of AliExpress suppliers handpicked by Oberlo because of their experience and readiness to work with drop shippers like you. These suppliers don’t package their products with promotional materials and have automated order fulfilment services.

Dropshipping From Original USA Suppliers with Spocket

For more options when it comes to products you can dropship, go ahead and install Spocket into your existing drop shipping store. It’s a separate app that will work fine with Oberlo, and the best part is that’s absolutely free to try!

Spocket product directory catalog

You can get all the details in our review, but basically, Spocket gives you access to a large base of US dropshipping suppliers at no cost to you. It’s dummy-proof and so easy to use, and the customer support is impressive, to say the least. We give it two thumbs up and there’s really no reason not to you use it if you already plan on working with Oberlo.

How do I sell products with Oberlo?

Order Placement and Fulfillment

When a customer makes a purchase on your store, their order is automatically uploaded to your Oberlo account. Fulfill orders with one click and Oberlo will do the rest for you.

Delivery and Product Tracking

Oberlo integrates product tracking directly into their service. However, this feature is only available to paid users. But it’s a huge convenience that saves you time. More importantly, it lets you inform your buyers of where their orders are, translating to happier customers.

You can track your orders directly from the Oberlo dashboard. You’ll see the status of all your orders – whether they’ve been fulfilled by the supplier, in transit to the customer, delayed, or ready for pick up. You’ll also get alerts about unusual conditions that need your attention, like lost shipments or incorrect addresses.

Returns and Refunds

Oberlo suppliers generally don’t accept returns. Refunds are given in certain situations. These include items that arrive damaged, in the wrong variant, in extremely poor quality, or past the expected delivery date. Orders that have gone missing are also covered.

For items sourced from AliExpress, you will have to abide by AliExpress’ Buyer Protection program or check with the supplier directly.

How do I contact Oberlo?

Customer Support

The Oberlo Help Center and community forum are also excellent resources for most of your drop shipping-related questions. You can get in touch directly with customer representatives or other users to get answers to any specific issues you might have.

The Oberlo website also has a chat feature which claims to respond to your queries within a few hours. Strangely, though, there are no email or phone details listed. That’s pretty odd, so you might want to try your luck with Shopify support instead – which is available 24/7 and on more channels.

Self-Help Sections

For those unfamiliar with Oberlo or drop shipping in general, the Oberlo website has tons of helpful material that can help guide you to success. You can visit the Oberlo blog to read drop shipping case studies, success stories, market trend analyses, store management guides, and plenty of other topics that offer valuable insight into the business. You’ll also find several free eCommerce eBooks and useful business tools like a logo designer and slogan generator.

Oberlo blog

Oberlo Alternatives

Spocket

If you’re looking for products originating closer to your customers, check out Spocket, available on Shopify and WooCommerce. They offer unique products from vetted US and European suppliers so your customers can receive their order fast. The one drawback is they don’t yet have millions of products available but there were plenty in the categories we browsed. As a bonus, you can have your customers receive your personalized branded invoice with their order and their customer success team is world class.

Is there anything else I should know about Oberlo?

The products you find via Oberlo can only be sold on Shopify stores. The service is not compatible with other platforms like eBay, Amazon, or Etsy. If your store is hosted on other eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, then Oberlo is also out of the question.

The good news, however, is that this restriction allows Oberlo to integrate seamlessly with your Shopify store. Most of the processes involved in running your business can be performed with just a few clicks.

In other words, choosing to work with Oberlo means you’ll be sacrificing flexibility for efficiency – and it’s up to you if that tradeoff is worth it.

Conclusion

It’s easy to see why Oberlo has become one of the best companies for drop shippers. It packs a complete set of features that take a lot of the work out of drop shipping. Its seamless integration with your Shopify store makes running your business efficient and hassle-free.

While Oberlo is platform-specific on both ends of the product chain, it more than makes up for this by offering a ton of features that simplify the entire drop shipping process. If you weren’t planning on selling on eBay or the likes anyway, then Oberlo just might be the perfect fit. Best of all, the Oberlo free plan lets you try it at no cost!

The bottom line: Oberlo is an excellent choice if you only plan to source products from AliExpress and sell them on your Shopify store.