DHgate vs. AliExpress vs. Alibaba vs. Wish: Which to Choose for Dropshipping?

DHgate vs. AliExpress vs. Alibaba vs. Wish: Overview

DHgate

Dhgate is a Chinese eCommerce platform that sells products to international buyers. Diane Wang, an entrepreneur from China, founded DHgate in 2004. It began as a business-to-business (B2B) wholesale platform but has since expanded to include retail customers. With offices in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, DHgate is head quartered in Beijing.  DHgate hosts over 30 million products in a wide range of categories including Apparel & Accessories, Computers & Networking, Consumer Electronics, Toys & Hobbies, Health & Beauty, Bags & Jewelry, Home, Auto, and more.

You can get low prices on top-selling products such as but not limited to wedding dresses, tablet pc, and cell phones. DHgate provides a buyer protection plan, a secure refund policy, express delivery, and shipment tracking, and is committed to providing a fast, easy, and safe buying experience to businesses and consumers worldwide. suitable for dropshipping. If you’re looking for dropshipping suppliers, DHGate is a good choice with much better prices than you’d expect.

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AliExpress

Owned by Alibaba and launched in 2010, AliExpress is one of the most popular eCommerce marketplaces. It started as a business-to-business portal then later ventured into business-to-consumer (B2C) services and consumer-to-consumer services, and even cloud computing and payment services. Even though AliExpress is head quartered in Hangzhou, China, it has a prominent market share in other countries too like Singapore, Russia, Brazil, and the United States.

The platform is similar to Dhgate, but focuses on retail customers. Most of the sellers in AliExpress are from China, providing a wide range of products in domains like electronics, clothing, outdoor gears, kitchenware, utensils, and other utility products. Besides that, AliExpress also offers a Buyer Protection feature to protect its customers from scams. For dropshipping, you can take the assistance of DSers, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool, listing thousands of sellers in one place.

Alibaba

Alibaba is the precursor to AliExpress, founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and a large team of co-founders. Whereas AliExpress is focused on business-to-consumer sales, Alibaba is focused on wholesale, business-to-business transactions. This platform brings you hundreds of millions of products in over 40 different major categories, including consumer electronics, machinery, and apparel.  Buyers for these products are located in 190+ countries and regions and exchange hundreds of thousands of messages with suppliers on the platform each day.

One of the main reasons why Alibaba is many dropshippers’ go-to platform is because of the effective Buyer Safety policies it practices. Before finalizing any deal, buyers can ensure the credibility of the suppliers by checking company profile metrics and availing of the quality inspection service. If you are looking to move up from small orders, then Alibaba can be a good option.

Wish

Founded in 2010 by two former Google employees, Wish is an American eCommerce platform that facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers. It is a subsidiary of a California-based company ContextLogic Inc. Wish was initially an affiliate site enabling users to purchase from third-party sellers. But today millions of high-quality products are sold on Wish at discounted prices.

The site has over 300 million items available and boasts an impressive 100 million+ active users each month. It should be noted that most of the products on Wish are from Chinese manufacturers, but some are sourced locally. Just like AliExpress, Wish also offers a dedicated dropshipping feature, letting you list various products in domains like technology, clothing, toys, utensils, and more.

DHgate vs. AliExpress vs. Alibaba vs. Wish: A Detailed Comparison

Product Prices

If you are planning to start a dropshipping business, then the pricing of a product can be a dealbreaker. All the four platforms sell affordable items, but in terms of price,  Alibaba dropshipping is a clear winner. Alibaba allows you to bargain with the seller. This means you can get better profit margins in this case. What’s more, you can get multiple quotations from different sellers and pick which fits your budget. But you will have to buy in large quantities to enjoy lower prices on Alibaba. On AliExpress, there’s a fixed price, which is also low. But isn’t as cheap as Alibaba. But the advantage of AliExpress is that you are not required to buy in large quantities. The products price on DHgate and Wish are slightly high compare to Alibaba and AliExpress.

Product Availability

Alibaba and AliExpress are both equivalent in this case. You can find millions of products in different niches on AliExpress as well as Alibaba. These products are from Hong Kong or China.

DHgate does not offer as a wide range of products as Aliexpress and Alibaba.  But there is one area that AliExpress and Alibaba cannot compete with DHgate, and that is replica products. If you need to purchase replica products, DHgate is your best option. They have all your replica products, including jerseys, sneakers, watches, jewelry, and so forth.
Most of the sellers on Wish are related to clothing and electronics, making it harder for users to find a diverse range of products.

Shipping

Shipping is an important aspect of eCommerce, and it can make or mar your business. AliExpress also offers different shipping methods: ePacket, USPS, China Post Registered Air Mail, AliExpress standard shipping, etc. You can get free shipping by using AliExpress standard shipping. Delivery times for these methods are around 15-60 days. If you can’t wait that long, you can opt for ePacket or UPS shipping. They typically take one to two weeks. Shipping costs on Aliexpress depend largely on your shipping destination and the seller. It’s hardly ever fixed.

In terms of shipping time and costs, Wish are quite similar to AliExpress because the products are usually shipped from China. It usually take 15-30 days to deliver a product and also offer free shipping to some countries. However, there are also faster shipping methods like FedEx and DHL offered by Wish. The cost of these shipping methods mainly depends on the location of the order.

Dhgate offers several shipping methods: ePacket, DHL, China Post Registered Air Mail, Fed Ex, etc. ePacket is the fastest shipping method. China Post Registered Air Mail is slower, with delivery times of around 30-60 days. DHgate has free and paid shipping options too, depending on the location and the product itself.

On Alibaba, the shipping options are not free, plus there is no facility to track your orders. You need to contact the seller to get details of the shipment from the seller directly. This means many times you don’t know how your order is shipped and when it will reach its destination.

Payment Options

DHgate is more flexible in its payment structure than other three dropshipping suppliers. It accepts a large range of payment methods including Visa, UnionPay, MasterCard, Skrill Bank Transfer, American Express, Diners, Maestro card, Discover, and many other international means of payment.

The AliExpress offers more conservat payment methods because they want to offer full security on all transactions done with their platform, and that is why they introduced Alipay. Although AliExpress does accept other payment methods like credit cards, Visa, Mastercard, and the rest, you might be restricted to using Alipay in some transactions.

Wish and Alibaba, in comparison, also support standard payment methods, but obviously, your payment options aren’t as diverse as DHgate.

Buyer Protection

Online shopping can become very risky if there is no buyer protection plan. Thankfully, all the four dropshipping suppliers offer buyer protection to guard against this.

Alibaba calls this feature Trade Assurance. However, you are only eligible for this protection when you buy from a Trade Assurance supplier and make payment via Alibaba. Trade Assurance on Alibaba costs absolutely nothing. Under the Trade Assurance protection, you can request a refund up to 30 days after receiving a faulty product.

Aliexpress offers several buyer protection guarantees, including a returns and refunds policy and a genuineness guarantee. If you don’t receive your order, or if it’s not as described, you can get a full refund.On Aliexpress, you are eligible to apply for a refund if a seller ships defective products to you. The refund request can be submitted up to 15 days after receiving the product. If the product has what Aliexpress calls Guaranteed Genuine protection, you will also get back what you spent on shipping.
 Dhgate offers a buyer protection plan  too that will save you from losing your money. Here you can find an escrow system where the supplier can receive the payment through different Dhgate payment options just after the buyer gets the order. These buyer protection plans help the global audience get a full or partial refund.

Wish has a 30 days refund and return policy for customers who aren’t satisfied with their orders. Although the customer service of Wish requires drastic improvement as it has left most customers generally dissatisfied.

Customer Service

Customer service should be another factor for deciding which marketplace to work with.Alibaba has a dispute resolution center where you can submit and have your trade disputes resolved. In addition to that, the eCommerce giant also allows you to send an in-mail to suppliers or chat with them.

Dhagte has an active team of professionals available 24/7 operating operations from around the world. Toll-free telephone service message via Dhgate or chat with a call agent via Dhgate.

AliExpress provides customer care services for buyers who may not have been able to resolve their problem with a seller through the platform.Both of them also offer their customers direct communication options, so you can reach out if there are any issues on your end!

Wish does not offer phone support. The best way to get in touch with it is through its Get Help page, your order history, or through our chat feature (available in select markets only).  Most buyers have had a dissatisfactory experience with the customer service of Wish.

Dropshipping Tool

AliExpress offers  a leading dropshipping tool —— DSers which has a multitude of inbuilt features to help you execute every sale smoothly. You can integrate more than one platform with the tool. For example, Wix, Shopify, and WooCommerce. From Supplier Optimizer to Bulk Orders, there are tons of advanced options that DSers provide to manage your dropshipping business seamlessly. Such automation is currently not possible with a DHgate, Alibaba and Wish based dropshipping store.

Verdict

DHgate vs. AliExpress vs. Alibaba vs. Wish: Which to Choose for Dropshipping?

With no doubt, DHgate, AliExpress, Alibaba and Wish are all good  dropshipping suppliers. But I will highly recommend AliExpress to starters dropshippper. The reason is that you are not constrained to buy in bulk on Aliexpress. Additionally, Aliexpress comes with lots of marketing tools specially designed for dropshippers to make your daily business operations easier. For veteran dropshippers, Alibaba is a much more viable option in that the prices there are lower.  But the dropshipping features on Alibaba are relatively limited.

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