8 Best eCommerce Platforms for Dropshipping in 2023 (Pros & Cons)

The latest data from Oberlo reveals that the global dropshipping market is forecast to reach $196.78 billion in 2022, a 23.7 percent year-over-year increase from 2021. And this figure will continue to accelerate in the next 5 years, predicting that dropshipping business is going to be on fierce competition in the years ahead.

In this article, we will look at the best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping with detailed pros and cons to help you decide on the best one for your future dropship business.    

What is dropshipping business

Dropshipping is a fulfillment method where store owners don’t store products or maintain inventory on their own. Instead, they rely on a third-party supplier to fulfill the order once customers make a purchase. The product will be packed and shipped directly to customers by the supplier without your involvement. 

This business model has attracted a flock of aspiring business owners in recent years thanks to the fact that it requires low investment, and is easy to start. Though dropshipping business also comes with many disadvantages, namely low-profit margins and highly competitive, this business model is still tempting to independent business owners or full-time workers who are trying to build a side business.     

Key features of an eCommerce platform for dropshipping

In order to run a successful dropshipping business, the first and most crucial step is to decide on which platform to build your dropship store. Besides some general factors that all eCommerce platforms must have to ensure a smooth operation and secure a decent profit, you also need to look for dropshipping solutions/integration that this platform offers. 

• Ease of use

Ease of use should come as the first key feature when choosing your dropshipping platform. The platform should have an intuitive backend interface so that you could manage it with ease. Besides, you should be able to build your storefront without hectic coding involved.  

• Scalability

As your business grows, your website has to handle a larger amount of traffic. The platform you choose should be able to remain fast-loading page speed and perform smoothly under these situations.  

• Pricing

Some eCommerce platforms require you to pay transaction fees for each completed order. This could severely hurt your profits, as you can sell many items with your dropshipping business, but the product margin is pretty low.  

• Dropshipping integration 

This platform should help you integrate with reliable suppliers from China and/or the US & Europe so that you can find a good fulfillment service and provide high-quality products at your store.

• Built-in marketing tools 

Marketing tools and SEO features are essential to attract new visitors and promote your dropship brands. You might need to spend more money on apps and addons if the platform doesn’t provide the essential tools you need. 

• Customer support

Confusion, bugs, and errors may occur anytime, so it’s necessary to find a dropship platform that offers user guidelines, 24/7 support, and live chat. By that, you will be assured that you could contact them for support whenever a problem arises.  

Best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping

1. Magento

Magento is one of the best-known eCommerce platforms with a well-deserved reputation for its powerful built-in features and great customizability. This is also one of the best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping thanks to its strong scalability. As you might already know, dropshipping business can grow exponentially, thus relying on an eCommerce platform that gives you the ability to scale up fast is really necessary. 

Being an open-source platform, Magento requires some coding expertise to set up and configure essential features. However, its backend is pretty intuitive so you can get used to it in a short time. Plus, this feature-rich platform offers many powerful built-in tools and integration, so you could run your business with ease.    

Magento offers two available options: 

• Magento Open Source: This version is completely free for download and installation. You need to cover the cost of hosting, domain, extensions, and development fee if you have little coding knowledge.
• Magento Commerce (now Adobe Commerce): a premium version of Magento Open Source. Adobe Commerce suits enterprise-level businesses with full-featured eCommerce solutions.

If you want to know more about Magento, we have some insightful articles to help you get started with this popular platform:

• What is Magento?
• Magento 2 Platform Detailed Review

Pricing

• Magento Open Source: Free
• Magento Commerce: from $22,000/year

One worth-noted feature that makes Magento an ideal choice for a dropshipping eCommerce platform is that The Open Source version does not cost you any additional fee as your business grows and revenue goes up. In the long run, this will save you a high amount of money as many eCommerce platforms require a monthly fee based on your sales records.  

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

If you just start your dropshipping business with a handful of orders a day, you could drop ship your orders manually. That means when receiving a new order, you send an email to your vendor or place orders on their website yourself.

Ideally, you should rely on a dropshipping extension to set up and manage orders from one platform. There are various Magento dropshipping extensions that you can integrate with your store to set up a dropshipping business without any hassle. 

For most Magento extensions, you only have to purchase once and there is no recurring monthly fee. These dropshipping extensions will help you:

• Set up and manage dropshipping business.
• Add and auto-assign multiple warehouses/suppliers to dropship products.
• Import products from the marketplace (AliExpress, Amazon, etc.) with variations, descriptions, images, reviews to your store. 
• Configure shipping prices and methods based on warehouse locations.
• Assign products to a particular warehouse.

=> Read more: What is Magento dropshipping?

Recommended Magento dropshipping extensions: 

• Magento 2 Dropship Extension by Webkul
• Dropshipping for Magento 2 by Amasty
• Magestore Dropship Module
• Aliexpress Dropshipping by CedCommerce

Pros:

• Easy to scale up.
• Intuitive back-end interface.
• Advanced SEO features.
• Various built-in marketing features.
• Multiple dropshipping extensions.  

Cons: 

• Require coding knowledge to set up. 
• The majority of dropshipping extensions only support importing dropship products from AliExpress. 

2. Shopify

One of the most popular SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platforms nowadays is Shopify. This platform is acknowledged as a comprehensive solution that offers non tech-savvy all the tools they need to build an online store. 

Though Shopify is fairly simple and straightforward to use, this is a powerful platform that comes with many built-in marketing tools, such as email marketing, abandoned cart recovery functionality, gift card promotion, etc. This helps set up a seamless shopping experience at your store without having many apps installed.    

Shopify is also praised for its ability to scale up while still maintaining a lightning-fast speed and outstanding performance. Upgrading to a higher plan when your store exceeds the current plan capacity and most of your problems will be resolved.  

Pricing

After a 14-day free trial, you can continue with 3 different plans. Note to yourself that Shopify pricing includes both monthly fees and transaction fees for each completed order if you don’t use Shopify Payments. See the full Shopify pricing plan here. 

• Basic: $29/month
• Shopify: $79/month
• Advanced: $299/month

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping thanks to a variety of dropshipping apps on its app store. These apps help you connect with both US/UK and Chinese suppliers, so you could easily find a reliable supplier for your store. This platform by far supports the most comprehensive list of dropshipping suppliers compared to all other platforms we examined today.   

You can check out 10 best Shopify apps for dropshipping that we have selected carefully based on Shopify merchant’s reviews and the app’s core features.

Pros:

• Easy to start. No learning curve. 
• Feature-rich: Built-in marketing and CMS tools. 
• Support major dropshipping suppliers. 
• Fast-loading speed. 
• 24/7 support team. 

Cons: 

• Limited SEO functions.
• The checkout page is non-customizable.  

=> Read more: Magento 2 vs Shopify comparison

3. WooCommerce

Natively, WooCommerce is not an independent platform, but it is a free WordPress plugin that enables eCommerce features to your WordPress website and turns it into an online store. 

WooCommerce is an open-source solution, meaning that it gives you the capability to scale up as well as open the door to endless flexibility and customizable ability. Besides, it inherited many robust SEO features from WordPress, which you can easily utilize to strengthen the marketing plans at your dropship store.  

As WooCommerce is built on WordPress, the dashboard is a familiar interface for store owners to set up and manage, compared to other open-source platforms such as Magento. Plus, WooCommerce can be easily integrated with your existing WordPress site, so this is a great eCommerce platform for dropshipping for newbies trying to start a side hustle. 

Pricing

WooCommerce is totally free to download and install, but you have to take care of hosting & domain, themes, and extensions costs. Similar to Magento, WooCommerce doesn’t take any portion of your sales, no matter how high your revenue is getting.  

• Hosting: $5 – $110/month
• Theme cost: $0 – $100/ year
• Extension cost: $0 – $299

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

Though it’s easy to find many dropshipping plugins on the WooCommerce marketplace, these plugins seem to be expensive while offering a limited number of dropship features. Besides, there are a lot of complaints about their customer service for their late reply. Therefore, it’s better that you integrate a third-party dropshipping plugin on your WooCommerce store for better product management and customer support.  

There are many WooCommerce dropshipping plugins that import thousands of products from dropshipping market, such as AliExpress or help you connect with other supplies from all over the world. The pricing of these plugins will vary according to the plugin provider and the plan you choose. 

• One-click to import products via Chrome extension.
• Easy to manage dropship products.
• Tracking shipment & set up flat rate shipping. 
• Quick product search.
• Real-time inventory updates.
• Automated order tracking. 
• Advanced customer support. 

Recommended WooCommerce dropshipping plugins: 

• DropshipMe, AliDropship, WooDropship for China suppliers. 
• Spocket and Spreadr for US & Europe suppliers. 

Pros:

• Easy to start and use.
• Affordable pricing for newbies.
• Powerful built-in SEO features inherited from WordPress platform.
• Multiple reliable dropshipping plugins. 
• Several forums and a large community to seek support. 

Cons: 

• Take efforts to optimize your website if your business scales up.
• Requires many plugins to perform smoothly. 
• Expensive hosting. 

=> Read more: Magento vs WooCommerce comparison

4. BigCommerce

Another prominent SaaS eCommerce platform along with Shopify is BigCommerce. BigCommerce aims at providing mid-market and enterprise-level commerce solutions with built-in top commerce features. 

Being a feature-rich hosted platform, BigCommerce already covers advanced SEO tools, abandoned cart recovery systems, and email marketing integration to help you run your business with ease. As this platform is suitable for stores selling hundreds to thousands of products, BigCommerce is one of the best eCommerce platforms for dropshipping aiming at growing fast. 

Pricing: There is no transaction fee for all plans. 

• Standard: $29.95/month
• Plus: $79.95/month
• Pro: $299.95/month
• Enterprise: Contact

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

Being a popular SaaS platform, BigCommerce definitely supports multiple dropshipping apps with various pricing, products, and suppliers for you to consider. These apps offer quite the same features as WooCommerce plugins:

• Manage and control dropship products. 
• Have access to thousands of reliable dropshipping suppliers.
• Receive discounts on dropship products.
• Customize listings: handpick product photos and edit product descriptions. 
• Unique brand invoice.
• Fast-shipping based on suppliers’ locations. 
• 24/7 premium customer support.

Recommended BigCommerce dropshipping apps:

• Printful for POD dropshipping products.
• Webkul AliExpress Dropshipping App for AliExpress products. 
• Spocket, Modalyst, InventorySource for the US & Europe suppliers.

Pros:

• Ready-to-use platform. No learning curve. 
• Affordable pricing. 
• Advanced SEO features. Multiple marketing tools ready. 
• Integrate with multiple reliable dropshipping apps for both AliExpress & US/UK suppliers.
• Have the ability to scale up. 

Cons: 

• The cost will increase if you reach a specific sales amount.

=> Read more: Magento vs BigCommerce comparison

5. WIX

Wix started as a user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder to create a professional and eye-pleasing website. In order to catch up with the growing eCommerce trend, Wix has released Wix eCommerce to help anyone build their eCommerce store without any coding or design expertise required. 

As Wix eCommerce aims at delivering an easy-to-start commerce package for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses, it offers a hosted solution with every eCommerce feature needed to start an online store with ease. Wix has more than 80 ready-made available templates, along with an intuitive drag and drop interface and many automated marketing features to boost your dropship business growth.  

The aesthetic available theme designs and various design tools make Wix a good dropship eCommerce platform for small businesses who are keen to establish a strong and attractive brand.

Pricing

• Business Basic: $17/month
• Business Unlimited: $25/month
• Business VIP: $35/month

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

Natively, Wix has connected with the Modalyst marketplace, a major suppliers marketplace, to help you easily find dropshipping products. After creating your Wix website, you only need to connect your store to the Modalyst marketplace, find products, and start selling on Wix. Your dropshipping suppliers will handle fulfillment and ship straight to your customers.

Wix and Modalyst integration can help you: 

• Source products to sell from the Modalyst marketplace. 
• Explore items by categories, name brands, trending items, etc.
• Connect with reliable suppliers for high-quality products and order fulfillment.
• Import products to your Wix store. 
• Set default price markups. Control your profit margins.
• Customize product details to fit your brand identity. Automatically update products with the supplier’s pricing and inventory. 
• Manage all orders from the Wix dashboard. 

Pros:

• Easy to set up and use. Intuitive drag and drop interface. 
• Stunning free themes available. 
• Easy to manage and control dropship products. 
• Marketing automation included. 
• Affordable price plans. No additional fee.

Cons: 

• Limited dropshipping marketplace integration. 
• Poor SEO performance. 
• Limited sales functions. 

6. Shift4Shop

You might know the Shift4Shop platform as its original name 3dcart before it was acquired by Shift4Shop. This is another SaaS-based eCommerce platform focusing on ease of use so that even novices having no coding skills can build their dream online store without any difficulty. 

Similar to other hosted eCommerce solutions, it’s no surprise that Shift4Shop handles all the complicated tasks for you. From setting up to customizing your store, everything could be achieved easily with its intuitive dashboard. Besides, Shift4Shop also offers a built-in CRM for better customer management. 

Pricing: 

• Basic store: $29/month 
• Plus store: $79/month
• Pro store: $229/month

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

Shift4Shop is one of the best SaaS eCommerce platforms for dropshipping thanks to its native features to support dropshipping, such as automatic emails to suppliers when you receive orders. You also have various popular dropshipping suppliers you can integrate with for the best product quality and product fulfillment process. 

• Easy to manage products with an intuitive dashboard. 
• Add multiple distributors and dropshippers to your store. 
• Update product information from the marketplace.  
• Send emails to distributors automatically.
• Calculate shipping based on suppliers’ addresses.
• Automatically send emails to suppliers about new orders and cancellations. 

If you are new to dropshipping, Shift4Shop offers a free course, Understanding Dropshipping, to walk you through the process and get started using Shift4Shop as your dropshipping eCommerce platform.  

Pros:

• Affordable pricing plans. 
• Excellent business management and customer management tools. 
• Integrate with many popular dropshipping suppliers.
• Built-in features to support dropshipping business.  

Cons: 

• Limited theme templates.
• There are some complaints about their customer support. 

7. PrestaShop

Another good open-source eCommerce platform for dropshipping is PrestaShop. This eCommerce solution is famous for its ease of use, while still maintaining all the customization abilities of an open-source solution.   

PrestaShop offers a demo online store, so you can easily explore all its core functions and how your online store will perform in real life. The dashboard is really intuitive, and the daily operation with product and customer management is fairly simple. Though you don’t need to be a technical expert to launch and set up, it’s better that you equip yourself with some coding to make your store perform to its maximum capability. 

Being a popular open-source platform, PrestaShop surely provides various built-in marketing & SEO tools to help leverage your store performance. There are also many ready-to-use stunning theme designs that you can import to your store in a click, so starting a dropshipping business with PrestaShop does not require a lot of time.   

Pricing: 

As PrestaShop is an open-source platform, it is free to download and install. However, you still need to pay for hosting, extension, and developer cost:

• Hosting cost: $4 – $14 per month.
• Developer cost: $50 – $80 per hour.
• Extension cost: from $35.
• Theme cost: $50-$699 (one-time purchase).  

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

On the PrestaShop modules store, there are many dropshipping modules that you can integrate with your store. Simply choose reliable dropshipping suppliers, organize the product catalog, and you can start selling right away. 

• Import bulk products from the marketplace to your online store. 
• Fulfill the order on the AliExpress website with one click.
• No limit on the number of products to import. 
• Automatically apply updates on products at your store. 
• Control product price by applying the global pricing rule. 
• Offer discounts to attract customers.

Pros:

• Open-source platform. Free to download and use. No monthly fee.
• Solid built-in SEO features.
• Multiple addons modules to enhance store performance. 

Cons: 

• Limited suppliers integration. Most suppliers are from AliExpress. 
• Page-load speed is not impressive compared to other platforms. 

=> Read more: Magento vs PrestaShop comparison

8. Squarespace

Similar to Wix, Squarespace is initially one of the most popular CMS platforms, then it added advanced eCommerce features to introduce Squarespace Commerce. This eCommerce solution is built for small businesses focusing on creating visually appealing sites as it offers many aesthetic templates to start with and an advanced website builder.    

Squarespace is a SaaS platform, so it takes care of all the hosting and domain costs for you. All you need to do is sign up, select one template from their professional-looking designs, and start customizing your store with ease.              

Besides strong building options, Squarespace also offers various SEO features, marketing tools, and site analytics to help you run your business for the best business growth.       

Dropshipping extensions & plugins

Squarespace currently supports seven third-party fulfillment services to connect with your online store. Some of them help you find and import winning products from the dropshipping market, while others offer POD dropshipping & warehousing. The list of suppliers will continue to be updated in the future.  

Pricing: 

• Personal: $12/month
• Business: $18/month
• Basic Commerce: $26/month
• Advanced Commerce: $40/month

Pros:

• Affordable pricing plans. 
• Various eye-pleasing and professional website templates ready to use.
• Easy to set up. 
• No additional fees. 

Cons: 

• The number of dropshipping suppliers is still limited.
• Limited payment gateways. 
• Lack of sales features. 

Successful dropshipping eCommerce examples

1. Viesso

Viesso is a dropshipping store specializing in furniture built with eco-friendly material. With the aim of transforming the way consumers shop for furniture, they decided to start an online store using Magento as their eCommerce platform for dropshipping. Thanks to the flexibility that Magento was able to offer, Viesso could deliver a seamless shopping experience that people would love when shopping for furniture online.  Plus, the impressive and professional store look leverages their brand identity and makes visitors have trust in them.  

Despite being a start-up business, they have partnered with lots of eco-friendly furniture companies to become their suppliers. Viesso has reached million-dollar sales during the first two years of operation.  

2. Notebook Therapy

One of the most successful Shopify-based dropshipping stores is Notebook Therapy, an online business selling Japanese-inspired stationery, gadgets, and tote bags. By focusing on storefront customization, they have built a stunning and eye-pleasing store look using bright colors and lovely visualizations that can attract their visitors, especially young teenagers and women. They dropship all their products from AliExpress and offer free shipping for all orders worldwide.   

It’s estimated that their monthly sales can reach between $350,000 and $700,000 per month. A huge traffic to Notebook Therapy website is from their Instagram account when this social media platform has reached 1 million followers.      

Find your ideal dropshipping platform

There isn’t one single eCommerce platform that fits every dropshipping niche out there. What works best for others might not be a good fit for your business ideas and requirements, so it’s essential that you examine all the potential eCommerce platforms for dropshipping in our list to find the most suitable solution. You can use these below questions as a guide to finding the dropshipping solution of your dream:

• How good are your technical skills? How familiar are you with the platform technology?
• Can you afford to hire developers to help you set up the store?
• What is your budget?
• Do you plan to scale and grow fast?
• Where do you plan to dropship products? 
• How many SKUs will you list on your store? 

We hope that this article can help you find the best dropshipping platform for your store. Don’t hesitate to leave us a comment, or questions (if you have any) about dropshipping business! We are here and we are happy to talk with you. 

FAQs