Is Salehoo Worth It? Not for Dropshipping!!

In the past I’ve recommended Salehoo as a good option for beginners to dropshipping but after a few complaints from my readers I’ve taken a deeper dive into Salehoo to decide if it’s worth it. I wouldn’t say Salehoo is a scam as I do believe it can be beneficial for some people, however, there are a few things you should be aware of first which I’ll discuss below.

I have a review of Salehoo which I have decided to remove from my website as I don’t want anyone to invest in Salehoo without being aware of everything first. I also have an article on the products I would sell from Salehoo if you decide to use their platform.

Just to be clear, I am an affiliate for Salehoo and I will receive a commission if you click this link and purchase anything from their website. I have no reason to criticize Salehoo, in fact giving you my honest and unbiased opinion will only harm my bank account. I want to see beginners succeed with dropshipping and I believe it’s unlikely in the long-term by using Salehoo.

Is Salehoo Worth it for Dropshipping?

Salehoo dropship is an integration tool connecting Shopify stores to AliExpress suppliers. Many people incorrectly assume Salehoo has multiple warehouses worldwide packed with products and they dropship directly from them.

Salehoo Dropship is simply a middleman between dropshippers and suppliers, so you may wonder why should you pay a monthly fee for an extra middleman. Good question!

Let’s go through what you actually receive for the $27 a month so you know whether it’s worth it:

• You can easily import products from AliExpress to your Shopify store.
• Salehoo vets its suppliers and you will have access to over 1,000 suppliers.
• You can use the profit control tool which basically allows you to set your profit margins.
• You have access to support if you have any questions.

Dropshipping with AliExpress can be problematic as there are some unreliable suppliers. If Salehoo does vet their suppliers like they claim, this would be helpful for beginner dropshippers.

For some people, paying $27 a month for this service is worth the money. However, there are a few things to be aware of first.

AliExpress has millions of products and by exclusively dropshipping on the Salehoo dropship platform you will have far fewer suppliers to work with and products to sell. In addition to using Salehoo Dropship, you can still add products to your Shopify store from AliExpress but then it may seem pointless to use Salehoo at all.

Salehoo states they have over 1,000 suppliers and 2.5 million products to dropship, which brings me to my next point. Are those numbers accurate? I don’t really know as they do not show supplier or product numbers. If the amount of suppliers they state on their supplier directory is incorrect it makes me dubious if the Salehoo Dropship numbers are correct.

Are the Products on Salehoo Worth Dropshipping?

Salehoo claims their team of experts have personally hand-picked trending and proven products with a profit margin of at least 3x the cost price, so let’s take a look…

I have gone through between 50 to 70 pages of various products from various price points on the Salehoo dropship platform. In my opinion, I believe at least 95% of the products I have seen would not meet my criteria for what makes a profitable dropshipping product.

It is very difficult to succeed dropshipping from AliExpress with everyday generic products that do not have some kind of unique qualities or have a passionate audience of buyers. Unfortunately, the majority of products on Salehoo are not products consumers will buy at 3x the product cost and wait long shipping times for.

I had trouble finding products which would be ideal for a niche or one-product dropshipping store. I am not a fan of general dropshipping stores but I feel as though it would be the best choice if you’re using Salehoo Dropship.

To be fair, there are thousands of products on Salehoo and I have not seen all of them and I am basing my opinion on the products I have seen. I took screenshots of the first page of products when I filtered all categories and all price ranges of products shipped to Australia to give you an idea of the types of products you can expect.

The product cost listed on the images does not include shipping and often the shipping costs are far higher than the product cost. This is not necessarily Salehoo’s fault as they may be simply listing what the supplier on AliExpress has listed.

For example, the first product shown in the images above is a portable USB adapter for 31c. But when you click on the product the shipping cost is $7.15, therefore the cost to ship the item comes to $7.41 USD which is over $11 (AUD) for me using “seller’s shipping method” which is 12 – 24 days.

This means, according to the Salehoo experts who have hand-picked this portable USB charger to be sold for $33 they expect customers to wait between 12 – 24 days for it. I am confused about how a beginner is supposed to be able to advertise and sell a generic product such as this profitably.

Another point to consider is the estimated delivery. If the product is being shipped from Australia as the product description claims, why is it taking 12 – 24 days? I inquired to Salehoo support if the “Delivery Estimate” are business days only and they said usually, I then asked if it includes processing times and they said you have to ask the AliExpress supplier.

To put it simply, customers may be waiting for over a month for products that are supposedly being shipped from Australia. I’ll explain what’s really happening.

On AliExpress you can choose to filter the results and only sell products that have warehouses based in specific countries. Many dropshippers assume they will receive fast shipping this way. Now I’ll explain what actually happens when suppliers have the product listed as it is being shipped from your country.

Let’s say a product has been listed on AliExpress as being shipped to the USA from the USA. The supplier will still ship the package from China but it will be delivered to a US shipping company who will then ship the product to your customer. The package also generates a US tracking number during it’s journey and it looks exactly like it is being shipped from a Warehouse located in the USA.

The vast majority of AliExpress suppliers who use this tactic have access to premium shipping lines such as, YunExpress to provide faster shipping times which gives the perception items are being shipped domestically.

AliExpress suppliers do this all the time, consumers don’t know the difference and often dropshippers don’t know it’s happening. It simply wouldn’t make sense for AliExpress to have warehouses worldwide filled with products and staff just so you can save a few days on delivery times.

This is why on Salehoo you can filter products to be shipped from various countries when really they are most likely all being shipped from China. At the end of the day does it really matter if the products are being shipped from China if your customers are receiving reasonable shipping times?

To be fair this is not Salehoo’s fault as they are relaying the information from the AliExpress supplier onto their platform. Salehoo is an integration tool to connect the merchant to the supplier, however, they do hand-pick these suppliers.

Are the Products on Salehoo the Same Price as AliExpress?

Initially, I assumed that Salehoo would markup all the product prices listed on AliExpress and make a small profit margin on each product as well as the monthly fees they charge users. I think I may be wrong in making this assumption.

I went through various products on Salehoo Dropship and compared the price with the actual supplier price and found some of the prices were a little lower and others were a little higher than the actual AliExpress cost.

I inquired about the discrepancy and was told that the prices fluctuate regularly and they can’t guarantee the prices listed on Salehoo will match the AliExpress supplier. I was told the supplier prices are often tailored to your order and will vary depending on the number of stock you’re ordering.

You can’t really expect Salehoo to constantly update each product’s pricing information every time a supplier makes a small change to their pricing structure.

Is the Salehoo Directory Worth it?

The Salehoo Directory is a massive list of suppliers from all over the world. It’s not only a list of dropshipping suppliers but also wholesalers, liquidators and manufacturers. You can filter the results by the category of products they sell, the type of supplier, their location and whether they ship worldwide.

According to Salehoo, they have over 8,000 suppliers selling 1.6 million products on their platform, however, when I clear the filters to all categories, all suppliers, all locations and all shipping types, I am left with 2,062 suppliers who stock over 472,000 products as shown in the screenshot below. Still, an impressive directory to access but much fewer than stated.

I emailed Salehoo in late 2020 about the large disparity in supplier numbers compared to the 8,000 stated. I was informed it was because they were moving them over to Salehoo Dropship which is why the numbers were much lower.

Two years later Salehoo have a similar number of suppliers in their directory and claim they have over 1,000 suppliers in their dropship section. This leaves almost 5,000 missing suppliers yet it’s still stated on their website they have over 8,000 suppliers.

Salehoo provide some useful information on each supplier, including an overview of their business, a catalog of products, shipping information, location and more. All the information provided to vet each supplier yourself is an effective way of finding the right supplier for your business.

If you’re looking for dropshipping suppliers only, be aware just over 700 of the suppliers in the list offer dropshipping. Below is the current list of suppliers, dropshipping suppliers and product numbers in some of the major countries on the Salehoo Directory.

Country	Suppliers	Dropshipping Suppliers	Products
China	382	44	47,000
USA	1,002	399	259,000
Australia	124	51	60,000
UK	159	50	26,000
Canada	112	37	2,200
India	33	8	10,000
Italy	13	5	39,000
Germany	6	3	7,000

Summary – Should You Use Salehoo for your Dropshipping Business?

I think we’ve established that overall I do not think Salehoo is the right platform for the majority of people. Obviously, they use sales tactics and play on the aspirations of beginners trying to make money online which is an effective way of selling their service. I have no problem with that if they are selling a quality service and being honest, unfortunately, I don’t believe either to be true.

So who should use Salehoo? If you’re a complete beginner to dropshipping and simply want to learn the ropes for a couple of months before working directly with a supplier, you could try Salehoo Dropship. Salehoo is a middleman between yourself and suppliers to make the entire process more streamlined and such an option may be beneficial in the short-term.

If you are looking for a list of wholesale and dropshipping suppliers you could also use Salehoo. They do have a reasonably large selection of suppliers with valuable information which could really assist you. If you want to look for your own suppliers, I have an article on how to find dropshipping suppliers as well as large lists of dropshipping suppliers based in Australia and the UK.

Personally, if you want to dropship from China I believe you are better off using AliExpress, USAdrop or CJ Dropshipping as an alternative.

With CJ you won’t have any monthly fees and they have their own shipping lines which will give you faster shipping as well as a ton of branding options. They won’t have the same product range as AliExpress although you can do product requests where items can be sourced if they are not currently stocked.

AliExpress, on the other hand, has millions of products but you may face some unreliable suppliers which is one advantage of Salehoo. My advice would be to only work with experienced suppliers and NEVER scale your business on AliExpress.

On AliExpress, once you start getting consistent sales you can request a VIP link from your supplier for lower product costs and priority shipping (I have more info on VIP links here). I am unsure if this is something you can do through Salehoo Dropship.

I will say, Salehoo has the best support out of any of the dropshipping platforms in my experience. Other platforms such as Spocket and Zendrop have been a nightmare to receive any kind of response and do everything in their power to avoid assisting their users.

I have a detailed analysis of Spocket if you want more information.

Salehoo has always responded fast and has been extremely helpful. If you have used Salehoo, I would love to hear about your experience good or bad. I am open to criticism and am more than happy to edit my article if I am wrong about any of the information and it can be verified.

I doubt I’ll be receiving any Salehoo commissions from now on but if you decide to use Salehoo I would appreciate you using the link below.

Click here to check out Salehoo!