Top 3 Best Tools to Automate Your Dropshipping Business

If you’re wondering about entering the world of e-commerce, you can hardly find a better way than starting a dropshipping store. Traditional stores require more time on buying products, storing and managing goods. But building a dropshipping store on various web-services is a great way to develop your business without much effort and even having a product in stock.

Besides, dropshipping is a flexible business model supported by most of the largest e-commerce platforms. In this article, we’re going to discuss in detail the brightest features of dropshipping and describe the top 3 best tools that will help you automate your dropshipping algorithms.

What Is Dropshipping and How Does It Work?

Though the majority of you have already got a pretty clear (and perhaps much more professional) understanding of what dropshipping is, let us briefly highlight the essential moments for beginners.

So, to put it simply, dropshipping is a type of up-to-date business when you sell real-life products without having them in stock. In other words, you don’t need to hire or buy spacious warehouses, care about rent, conduct physical inventory, and ship goods yourself.

You simply add the suppliers’ goods to your store, launch ads, and receive online orders. As soon as the customer chose a product and paid the order, you transfer a part of the sum to suppliers and leave and the rest of the proceeds. All shipping goes directly from the suppliers’ warehouses to the customer.

Types of Dropshipping Tools

Now, when you’ve decided to run your business, some preparations are necessary. There is a list of traditional decisions like studying the market, evaluating competence, targeting your audience. But when it comes to e-commerce and dropshipping, you should also decide on the platform you’d like to develop your online store with. The platforms may vary hugely in basic characteristics, so we usually divide them into several types:

Large platforms like Amazon and eBay offer a wide set of ready-made solutions. Beginners can hardly find a more suitable tool for automation. All you need is to log in and start selling. The main Amazon and eBay pluses are that such giants offer ready traffic, so you will have to make a minimum effort to attract customers.

However, with this option, there are many limits imposed by the platform. For example, the range of products is limited, you will need to pay a commission (usually 10-15% of the order value), and there is also high competition among drop shippers. Your own platform. This solution provides complete freedom for flexibility and independence in taking your own decisions. Besides, by working on yourself, you earn more.

But please mind that the development of such a platform will require a decent investment and time. One needs significant skills and knowledge in the sphere. Also, be ready to attract traffic on your own, hire designers, developers, marketers. In general, this is a long-term and expensive project.

Third-party hosting platforms or CMS platforms. In our opinion, this is a golden mean that will suit everyone – people with any technical background, different financial capabilities and preferences in sales.

CMS (Content Management System) is a system for managing content and filling the site. In other words, it’s something like a template or an empty container that you fill with goods and then host them. Most CMS have built-in templates for dropshipping stores and special plugins that allow you to activate the necessary sales, payments, and analytics functions.

What to Look for in Your Perfect Dropshipping Tool?

If you decided to run a ready-made platform, we recommend paying attention to the following aspects:

• The quality of the platform technical support. Look through the users’ reviews or contact the platform itself as a potential client and then estimate the speed and quality of the response. Good sources with significant experience usually have detailed instructions on how to work with the system, like blogs and even web workshops.
• Choose a platform that will make the interface as convenient and understandable as possible for your users. Check the design templates and plugins available. If you’d like to understand how your store will look like, we also recommend searching for dropshipping stores developed on this platform.
• If you have several suppliers, check whether your dropshipping tool allows for the management of multiple partners.
• Check whether your platform supports integration with side resources like email services, payment systems, apps, plugins. Payment systems are perhaps the most important as you’d better provide your customers with multiple payment options.
• Many customers now do shopping through their smartphones. So, you’ll gain a huge advantage if your dropshipping store provides the mobile app version.

Let us also mention such essential platform characteristics as opportunities for SEO-optimization, blog running, and, of course, the cost of its services.

Best Dropshipping Tools 2024

If you tried to look through the list of platforms for dropshipping businesses, you might have been surprised by such diversity. Though your choice is affluent, it’s complicated to the same extent. Almost all sources recommend well-known platforms like BigCommerce, Oberlo, Easync.io, OpenCart, Spocket, and so on. All the fully deserve our attention and appreciation, but we’d like to focus on the following giants.

Shopify

Shopify is one of the most famous and high-rated platforms. This is a great source for beginners that boasts over 200 000 active users. The prime reasons for respect are the CMS that is easy to work with, even for those not familiar with programming intricacies. The platform ensures a two-week trial period. Then the cost starts from $29 per month.

 Pros:

• easy to use;
• lots of design templates;
• dozens of integrated plugins;
• own blog with useful information and tips;
• possibility to communicate with other users and share experience;
• full-scale tech support;
• excellent adaptation for mobile gadgets;

Cons:

• the necessity to buy a domain;
• only 10 templates are available for free;
• many extra plugins are pretty expensive;
• all stores started through Shopify are quite similar, so your opportunity for individualizing your online shop is limited;
• Shopify is rather a constructer than a complete solution for a unique shop;

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a platform with the greatest number of users. The tool is suitable for stores of different sizes, with different assortments, selling in different industries. The platform is sometimes referred to as plugins, but we still consider it as a complete source for building an online store.

 Pros:

• free operation;
• works on the basis of the CMS WordPress. Consequently, one can start various shops there;
• variety of plugins;

• straightforward technical algorithms simple for everyone;
• responsive support;
• great SEO optimization;

Cons:

• once again, the necessity to buy a domain and templates;
• almost all additional features are paid;
• some users may find WordPress admin confusing;

Magento

Magento is an open platform that allows for various changes. Each user can change Magento according to the current needs and greatly customize the online shop. Apart from the flexibility, the tool is free. You only pay for extra services like the assistance of Magento developers and support tools for large businesses. Prices for plugins and templates start from $1.

Pros:

• the greatest options for your dropshipping store customization;
• free usage;
• numerous educational courses on how to work with the platform;
• traditionally, lots of plugins and templates;

Cons:

• one has to buy hosting;
• manual setting;
• not for beginners;
• the necessity for thorough coding skills;
• no free tech support;

Conclusion

Nowadays, dropshipping is considered one of the easiest online business models that require a minimum of entrance investments. You just need your own online platform, a bit of advertising, and a reliable dropshipping tool that will automate and optimize your actions.

In this article, we tried to discuss the most trusted and tested tools with the highest users’ scores. Certainly, they are not the only available on the market, but in our opinion, they suit all types of users with various experience and skills. So, pick up your perfect option and start your own business!