Not a fan of nine-to-five workdays, long commutes, or bossy bosses? If so, e-commerce has your name all over it. Dropshipping is one of the easiest e-commerce business models for new entrepreneurs, eliminating inventory management and large startup expenses. That said, you still need to create a website and attract customers to your store. Find out if Shopify is good for dropshipping websites and learn how to make your store stand out.
Is Shopify a Good Choice for Dropshipping Stores?
Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms for creating dropshipping sites. More than 3 million online stores in the United States are powered by Shopify, including 38,000 of the top one million websites worldwide. In terms of processing online payments, Shopify is in the big three, right after Stripe and PayPal.
It’s no coincidence that so many store owners keep using Shopify. The platform’s tools keep improving over the years, making it easier than ever for dropshippers to manage a store from the comfort of their own homes.
There are other web hosting platforms, but few let you hit the ground running like Shopify. For example, WooCommerce only integrates with WordPress websites, so technical experience is practically a must to add e-commerce functionality. And compared to Wix, Shopify is miles ahead in customization, flexibility, scalability, and long-term support.
Is It Hard To Dropship on Shopify?
If you’re new to the whole “business owner” thing or you’ve never created a website before, Shopify comes highly recommended. One of its strongest features is how user-friendly Shopify makes building an online store. You can follow tutorials practically every step of the way:
- Choosing a store theme
- Adding products
- Creating collections
- Setting up payments and sales tax info
- Customizing text, images, and layouts
- Editing pricing and shipping
With Shopify, it doesn’t matter how much experience you have with web design (including none). The plug-and-play functionality lets you drag and drop videos, create buy-one-get-one-free promotions, and easily improve the customer experience.
Dropshipping Apps for Shopify
One thing to keep in mind when kickstarting your dropshipping career on Shopify — apps make life much easier. They help you:
- Find vetted suppliers that have an excellent reputation.
- Upload products directly to Shopify from a large catalog.
- Connect with the supplier’s platform to send shipping info instantly when customers make a purchase.
- Get access to print-on-demand and other customization options.
- Let the automated process take care of orders, reducing the chance of mistakes.
Can you dropship on Shopify without an app? Yes, but it requires more of your time, takes money (to order samples), and complicates the process.
Without an app, you have to select and connect with your suppliers personally. Finding trustworthy suppliers that produce high-quality goods and always deliver to your customers on time can be a challenge.
No app also means no automation. It’s up to you to send the client’s shipping info to the supplier for every order. Manually fulfilling orders can get old quickly.
What Makes Shopify Good for Dropshipping?
One of the biggest draws of dropshipping for e-commerce is the way this business model simplifies your journey from concept to commerce. Shopify helps you reach your destination even faster.
1. Effortless Selling
Building an e-commerce site for dropshipping from scratch is a daunting proposition. You need software to accept online payments, keep track of customers, organize products, design website content, and coordinate shipping.
Shopify includes all of these essentials out of the box, including tracking metrics such as site visitors and sales percentages. You can have a professional-quality website even if you’ve never launched an online store before. Thanks to the smooth setup process, it doesn’t take long until you’re ready to start selling.
2. Excellent Customer Support
All Shopify plans (starting with Basic) offer 24/7 customer support to help you set up your store, troubleshoot issues, or find the answers you need. Some Shopify dropshipping apps also have a dedicated customer support team to walk you through the process of connecting with supplier platforms and product catalogs.
3. Huge App Store
Shopify’s App Store has over 8,000 integrations that you can use to customize your site and boost its capabilities. There are Shopify apps for every type of store need:
- Sales: Upsells and cross-sells, bundles, store promotions, customer rewards, and tiered discounts
- Store design: Countdown timers, pre-orders, size charts, currency converters, customer reviews, and product ratings
- Business management: Event ticketing and merch, customer support/live chat, and store automation tools
- Marketing: Email marketing, search engine optimization, social media integrations, and lead generation tools
- Shipping: Dropshipping, wholesale pricing, invoices, free shipping incentives, and order tracking
Adding Shopify integrations to your store is as easy as downloading apps for your smartphone. Once you find the perfect app solution, click “Install.” That’s it.
4. Powerful Dropshipping Features With Expansion Support
Shopify has a fantastic blend of front-end design and back-end code support. You can get started dropshipping quickly without worrying about future needs. When your sales really take off, it’s not complicated to scale your site with more pages, products, or features. Zero coding is required, but you still have the option to edit behind-the-scenes settings.
5. Store Integrations
Struggling to choose between Shopify and Amazon for dropshipping? Shopify has a Fulfilled by Amazon app integration, so you can have your cake and eat it, too.
6. Your Own Business
Another important difference between Shopify and Amazon (or Etsy, Mercari, Poshmark, etc.) is that Shopify gives you a store to call your own. True, you have to build traffic from scratch, but what you earn is all your own. With other sites, you’re always competing directly against hundreds or thousands of similar merchants.
How Much Does It Cost To Dropship With Shopify?
Shopify’s pricing is comfortable for small businesses. The cost of creating a dropshipping store mainly depends on:
- Shopify plans
- App subscriptions
- Premium themes
- Payment processing
Shopify includes free hosting, but you may want to pay the $20 or so a year to register a unique domain instead of a “myshopify.com” address.
See How Good Shopify Is for Dropshipping
Taking Shopify for a test drive is free, and so are high-quality dropshipping apps like ZenDrop. You don’t have to take our word for it. Discover how good Shopify can be for your dropshipping dreams.