Oberlo Reviews 432

I really wish them to start working with serious providers other than Aliexpress. Those days it's impossible to deal with Ali suppliers which keep scamming.

very bad import app , not recommendd guy seriously
they always give this error without any clue
Unfortunately, this product does not comply with Oberlo’s Terms of Service. Please find another product to sell.\

dont use oberlo ever

Is it advisable to open up a shopify store these days while oberlo delivers items from China? Im referring to NCOV widespread.
What is oberlo and aliexpress doing about this concern?

Is there any assurance that the items that clients receive will not be virus carriers? Or this will be the end of this drop shipping business?

I give 5 stars. Oberlo is very cleverly invented.This is new lifestyle who possibility for anyone who want to start new business.
I want to say thanks to the developer that give best ideas.

#1. The worst support in the world. No attention to detail. Do not bother answering all questions in the support tickets.

#2. Response to support tickets is WAY out of proportion. Takes more than a day to hear anything back. No urgency. They do not care.

#3. Complete lack of documentation. There no supporting document and I am not talking about videos, that will walk you through the process.

For example - extremely difficult to configure filters in the collection and there not a single document out there that describes how to do that. If you don't believe me, Google "Porto Filters Configuration Shopify" - you will not find a single resource that will guide you through the process!!! This is ridiculous!

The free version should have more features.

This is the perfect site for those who are starting their online business. I love how it is easy to upload products and manage its description and price. Everything is so easy to manage and monitor the products.

Works great, never had a problem

I bought a store that used the oberlo basic app. Because I was just starting out i changed the plan to the starter plan, which is supposed to be free. Well, it was not. For 10 months they have been charging me for the basic plan. I contacted them and told them there must be a mistake, i have had the free plan since i Bought the store. they are very good liars however and managed to gaslight me and are saying that their records are different. I havent seen these records. They are just frauds. THey refuse to refund these fraudulent charges .

We are extremely disappointed with their chat service, we were waiting since about 2 hours to get a problem solved but unfortunately no success!
Initially after 30 minutes we've got a chance to chat to Iveta, before we finish, she suddenly left without giving any sign, then we started a new chat with Kamila also after about 30 minutes, she did the same thing! then we get back to Iveta as it shows that she is online again assuming that there might be a technical problem and tried to continue the discussion to solve an unfulfilled order since 6 days, but also no response.

Please note that we are taking our business very seriously, giving it the highest priority, and expecting from you the same, if not then we will try to find another solution including lawsuit.

Since 12:42 till 15:12 this moment no response

As so many of the other reviewers have pointed out...

You have no exclusivity.
The products are low quality.
It costs money to properly market your store.
Shopify bills you regardless of your success.

Oberlo may not be a scam, but its definitely not a good idea. A few of their success stories have been debunked to be fabricated.

Making money with E-Commerce is hard. Don't be impulsive. Wait for the right thing to come along. Something you had a hard time finding or wish for. Dropshippnig cheap products creates no value at the end of the day. Wait for something that you can create value with.

I wonder why would somebody buy from my dropshipping store which would take too long to deliver a product compared to a customer going directly on ali express.

Oberlo is a scam. Plain and simple. Dropshipping on Shopify is a scam. If you look at the total orders placed for items on Oberlo, I estimate 99% have zero orders. No sales. Every item has thousands of store imports. (This means someone is trying to sell it on their own store.) There are a few items that take off, but the competition is stiff and if you do the math for overall sales, they’re just, at most, a few hundred thousand dollars in orders.

This sounds great until you divide that cost by the amount of stores selling those items that sell well, and find out on average you may make a $100 dollars tops.

Shopify and Oberlo charge you per month (at a minimum), don’t aid you with advertising, and you’re barely likely to turn over $50 dollars in a month dropshipping while your costs before advertising can be $25-$100+ dollars at a minimum.

We haven’t even talked advertising yet. To test a product with Google ads, common wisdom is to be ready to invest $1000 dollars PER PRODUCT; testing to see if ithe product will sell well with your specific audience set. Facebook ads is quite cheaper, but not a lot, however, you have to deal with their inaccurate impressions estimates, and draconian ad review process.

This is the dark little secret of the “dropshipping”
E-commerce model. You have to invest thousands of dollars in ad revenue. Even if you have the money to invest, do you really want to bet your money on a low quality product being dropshipped from China?

Shopify dropshipping is a scam and Shopify wants to collect fees from you, while you think it is your own fault that your store isn’t taking off, but really it’s because Shopify and Oberlo dropshipping is an ecommerce model that does not work. Avoid at all costs!

The concept itself is a modern take of the old dropshipping catalogue sales model. I set up a shop after browsing through some of the products. As I built my shop on shopify and began populating my product portfolio and ofc.closely following the oberlo way of marketing, writing articles etc... and ofc. creating a digital marketing plan my store went live on eBay and on the web.

After a couple of months I decided to take it down. I noticed more and more of the similar products being offered on instagram (every 4th post) so I took down my site thinking of focusing on yet another niche until that too was all over instagram. A couple hundred bucks and lots of hours later I decided I needed to rethink my business.

Why? well Aliexpress and Oberlo have become so popular it is a very competitive arena. The only true success comes from direct advertising on social media, click rates are very low and expensive. The products are mostly chinese knock offs and some never heard of junk. T-shirts claiming to be from Jimmy Buffet and others are not official and have spelling mistakes. The risk reward to too great as one has to prepay for all orders and hope the chinese provider delivers and can communicate.

My thoughts... this type of model can succeed but needs to be worked on in order to become the go to dropship store model.

I give them two stars because the prices are way to high I sell watches and a watch from them it says $1100 for a Garmin watch and my customers are buying it from Gramin direct for $399.00 so my customers are not returning to my store anymore. Yes the app works but when every other online store sells it for $700.00 less then you can well do the math.

Crap, just a rip off over charging... absolutely no chance of a profit!!

I will be canceling the app after the first month! all too expensive!!

More and more features are working less and less. Tech support virtually does not exist. Once you add products to your store you cannot access the suppliers or source pages. Which means you're locked out of updating any products or making changes. None of the links to suppliers currently work. I made Oberlo tech support aware of this several time, eventually, I just gave up, and now even fewer functions work. To me, it seems like some kind of juvenile punishment for speaking out and leaving dissatisfied reviews. I'm not going to shut up - instead of being professional and fixing the functions and actually providing quality customer service - things only become worse, and they expect me to shut up!?! This is my business and I lose money when I cannot access products in my store. The thought of retaining customers and store owners apparently does not occur to Oberlo since there is always another eager and naive person falling for Oberlo's fantasy business format only to realize after spending a bunch of their money and time - Oberlo is only interested in supporting and growing Oberlo's business - the unsuspecting store owner is not apart of that business model so most of us end up closing our stores in order to avoid bankruptcy.
It's a win for Oberlo everytime someone starts a store and a slow failure for the store owner. Beware - do your research on how many stores actually close because of these and other slash and burn tactics. This is a slash-and-burn business model! With the store owners slashed and burned while Oberlo/Shopify make quick money then move on to the next eager to start an eCommerce store victim.

I closed my Shopify store after 4 months of failure from oberlo suppliers. I placed 3 test orders to check quality and delivery times and these were my findings:

1st product - backpack from an oberlo supplier called Worthfind: product got delivered to to wrong country. Went to Austria instead of Australia. I received an apology and a refund.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt so i decided to give them another try:

2nd product - same backpack from Worthfind: this time it got delivered correctly and even came earlier than expected. However, quality was average, there was chinese labelling everywhere and didnt look like a $50 bag that i was charging (in order to make a small $20 profit)

3rd product - another backpack this time from a different supplier (ironbotot or something like that). Ordered on the same day as product 2, but no sign of delivery yet. Been nearly 30 days. One product arrived, thr other hasnt.

Summary: completely unreliable, unpredictable, delivery times unacceptably long, no guarantees on quality and packaging is dissapointing.

I closed my store because i cant put my name to such shoddy and unpredictable products and services. And be forced to sell at high prices because oberlo products aren't exactly cheap tp begin with.

***continued from previous post***

Sure you can read Oberlo articles discussing how successful Oberlo users found success through quirky means and social media influencer marketing but the reality is, direct advertising will account for the majority of your sales and it is honestly the only reliable way to create a revenue stream using Oberlo products (if you can make it that far).

- Supplier & Customer Relations -

There are many suppliers in the Oberlo network that have poor/shady business practices or are completely unreliable altogether. That’s probably why Oberlo introduced the “Verified Supplier” badge to select suppliers that met their criteria. Despite this though, problems with suppliers translate into problems for your customers, which then translates into problems for you.

Perhaps one of the most common issues you’ll hear from Oberlo merchants is that they literally can’t get a hold of their supplier. Their customer’s order is missing, late or damaged and you can’t speak with your supplier to understand what the hell happened.

What does this mean?

You as the merchant have to eat any losses that come as a result of any fault of your supplier. If your supplier sends the wrong product, a damaged product or a cheap product and your customer wants a refund - that is all on you. Your suppliers will ultimately reflect back to you the QUALITY OF YOUR BUSINESS and your customers will see that clearly.

As a dropshipper using Oberlo, you are essentially at the mercy of the suppliers. You will only be able to communicate with your customer as often as your supplier is able to communicate with you. Obviously if you can’t reach your supplier, then you’re pretty much screwed. Also keep in mind the language barrier between Chinese manufactures and English-speaking merchants. It is often difficult to communicate with suppliers as a result and can leave room for plenty of misunderstandings and miscommunication.

At the end of the day, your ecommerce business is only as good as it’s suppliers. It is without a doubt, a make or break point for your enterprise.

- The Fulfillment Process -

From a technical standpoint, the fulfillment process using Oberlo is straightforward, mostly automatic and pretty user-friendly. Honestly though, that means nothing when it comes down to accepting payment from your customers and getting their product shipped out to them in a timely manner.

First of all when a customer buys a product on your store, the funds will typically go into your Shopify account (or whatever connected merchant tool you have - i.e. Shopify Payments, PayPal etc.). Then what you’ll need to do is head over to Oberlo to fulfill the order. If you are using Oberlo’s own fulfillment service this process is a little easier and less complicated than Aliexpress. If you have the Oberlo extension in your web browser, it will automatically fill in most of the required information based on the information your customer provided.

Once the information is filled in, you will need to PAY FOR THE PRODUCT your customer ordered and have it shipped out to them. So you may not have known this at first, but you will need some working capital to get started with Oberlo dropshipping. Just because a customer made a purchase on your store, doesn’t mean those same funds will instantly cover the purchasing and shipping costs from the supplier. You will need to front the money to pay for your customers purchase and then recover those funds by withdrawing from your Shopify account into your bank or whatever you use. Keep in mind your payouts are not instant but rather at set points throughout the month. You will need to factor this in when budgeting your cash flow and expenses.

Fulfillment by Oberlo is generally hassle-free in terms of actually placing the order (shipping times, product quality etc. are the headaches that come after that). If you’re selling Aliexpress products however and have to fill orders using them, buckle up.

The Oberlo web browser extension will still automatically fill in the order information for you once you log into your Aliexpress account however, you are now working outside Oberlo which means any issues that arise means you’ll have to deal with Aliexpress for assistance.

Here’s the thing Oberlo doesn’t tell you when you fulfill using Aliexpress:

Aliexpress does not recognize you as a merchant. They recognize you as a consumer.

This can cause of a wealth of problems when you are trying to fulfill your orders through them. The first is that they have a ton of automatic security measures in place to prevent fraudulent activity so if you have to suddenly make several purchases after no account activity through Aliexpress at once or are one day shipping your purchase to the UK and the next to Brazil, your account can be automatically flagged which means you won’t be able to complete your purchase. This is always great when your customer has already paid you and is awaiting their product to be shipped. Well let the fun begin because you can’t even buy this product now, let alone get it shipped, until you resolve things with Aliexpress.

Basically this entails that you contact their customer service department, explain you are using Oberlo blah blah blah. Eventually they should get back to you. They will likely require proof of your ID and credit card, which you will have to submit to them in order to use your Aliexpress account again. Once you finally get verified and your account becomes active again (sometimes a several week long process), you can finally ship out your product to your customer. So now on top of the ridiculous wait time they already had, you can now add 1-3 more weeks depending on how quickly your Aliexpress account was recovered.

Something else to keep in mind is that because this is an automatic process in terms of your Aliexpress account getting flagged, this CAN BE A RECURRING PROBLEM where your account may get locked out again. In my last days using Oberlo, I stopped using Aliexpress altogether. I had to refund more than half of all my customers orders because of delayed shipping times as a result of my Aliexpress account getting flagged for purchases.

- CONCLUSION -

So at the end of the day, Oberlo in my opinion is a fleeting dream. It may be possible to find success with this platform but it will not come to the majority of users. The most successful Oberlo users are already established and selling. It’s probably going to be too late to get in on selling hot items like watches, sunglasses or artwork, that made these Oberlo users successful, as most of your target audience has been bombarded with these ads already. To have success using Oberlo in my opinion at this point in time you’d need the following:

A niche market mostly untouched by other Oberlo users
Plenty of working capital to get started ($5000+)
A refined and highly detailed marketing plan
Verified suppliers using only Oberlo fulfillment
Test/purchase all the products you want to sell beforehand to inspect quality/shipping times
Otherworldly ambition
A decent amount of luck

I wish I had all the information I’ve provided you when I started. I would’ve saved thousands. Hopefully this information will be useful to you if you are just getting started. If you can find a way to overcome the barriers I’ve discussed using Oberlo, best of luck. Ultimately though, I do not recommend this platform. It is unfortunately just not a viable means of starting an ecommerce business. It does not provide the tools for success. My advice = look for something else.

When I first discovered Oberlo, I was beyond excited to begin using this app in combination with Shopify to try my hand at dropshipping, especially after reading all the success stories using Oberlo. Now three stores later, I can tell you what I've learned.

The Oberlo App & Company

The app itself is a well designed and functioning service with a good user interface. Oberlo makes it easy to browse and import products into your Shopify store. The main problems with Oberlo doesn't have as much to do with the app itself but rather, the inner workings of its network of suppliers, products and what I would call "hidden" information.

The company has good resources in place for you (although I think many of them are a little biased as they are all directed in favor of Oberlo obviously). They have videos and blogs for how to get started as well as tips and tricks for dropshippers using Oberlo. Their customer service is decent in terms of professionalism however, this doesn’t always translate the same in regards to problem resolution.

Hidden Information

Check the Oberlo blog or look around online and you'll find Oberlo has some really positive reviews. Check out their blog and "case studies" and you'll see plenty of success stories for dropshippers using Oberlo. Dig a little deeper though and you'll see many of the blog articles that discuss the success of Oberlo users were written by Oberlo staff, so obviously they are going to promote their service. Look even closer and you'll see that the success stories are for a very small percentage of Oberlo users. You also don’t have to dig too far to see negative feedback and reviews from many Oberlo users.

Here are some things Oberlo doesn't tell you when you get started that are crucial for your success:

- Illegal Products -

Even though all the products in the Oberlo catalog are available to import into your store, many of these products are brand-name knockoffs or counterfeit products, that if you import into your store and sell, SHOPIFY WILL WITHHOLD YOUR PAYMENTS because it is illegal to sell these types of products on the Shopify platform (this actually happened to me).

For example, search in Oberlo for products from popular video games like Super Mario or The Legend of Zelda. You'll find tons of products under these categories. Even though these are available to import into your store, these products cannot be sold on Shopify. This is an example of "hidden" information that you do not know going into the Oberlo experience. Oberlo says: "Oh yeah browse our massive catalog of products and import anything into your store. It's easy with just a few clicks!" When in reality they should mention, "Oh by the way, there is a TON of products that technically can't be sold on Shopify but you'll figure that out eventually..."

The reason these video games products (for example), can't be sold on Shopify, is because they are counterfeit or knockoff products. For Super Mario, these suppliers are not licensed by Nintendo to sell these products. That is why you won't see the Nintendo logo on any of them. China has some very relaxed laws around copyright infringement and trademarks and so these suppliers in China are able to produce these counterfeit and knockoff products with relative immunity while operating in China. As a merchant outside of China however, as soon as you start shipping to the West where copyright and trademark laws are heavily enforced, you'll be hit with the full weight of the law. This means it is ILLEGAL for you to be selling counterfeit or knockoff products such as these and you could possibly be sued into bankruptcy. Don't worry though, Shopify will likely close your store down and withhold your payment before that happens. This was a fun introduction into the Oberlo experience.

- Product Quality -

The Oberlo team will rebuttal this by saying you should always order the products you want to sell first, to review the shipping times and product quality (although you likely won't find that information for a while) however, the reality is essentially all of the products in the Oberlo catalog are incredibly cheap and disappointing once they arrive.

The product images can be very misleading which can set high expectations for your customers and then truly damage your customers experience when they receive their product. As you might've have guessed, that is not a good strategy for a successful business. Your relationship with your customers is vital to your success and selling them cheap products is not only misleading, it's ultimately bad for business.

Have you ever heard of Wish? If not, download the app on your mobile device to see what I mean. Wish shows you lots of interesting products and many seem to be of decent quality. Once you receive your order from them (if it ever arrives), you'll understand how poor the quality is. The same products you'd find in the Wish store, are the same type of products you'll find in the Oberlo catalog and honestly, if you have any kind of desire for ethical business practices, you won't be able to, in good conscience, stand behind these products.

- Shipping Times -

Searching products in Oberlo, you can see the estimated shipping times of the products you want to import. Already they are quite high ranging from 12-50 days which in this day and age, is unacceptable as far as consumers are concerned. The only way your customer would be okay with waiting that long is if the price they paid for the product was highly affordable (which it can’t be or you’ll make no profit on your markup), or if the product was good quality and therefore worth the wait.
Unfortunately neither of these are true most of the time. Your product won’t be highly affordable because you need to make a profit and the product quality is so poor that your customer will not only be upset for the long shipping time, but they’ll be upset at the quality of their product when it arrives. After ordering off Oberlo, my quickest shipping time to Canada and the US was just over 3 weeks. That was the QUICKEST.

Poor Product Quality + Long Shipping Times = Angry customers

Oberlo claims you can have faster shipping with epacket or their US warehouses however, I never saw a faster shipping time than 3 weeks.

- Insane Competition -

Pretty much all the items available to sell in the Oberlo catalog are from Aliexpress or Alibaba (or available on those platforms). For those of you who don’t know, these are a massive network of Chinese manufacturers. Oberlo Supply is also available and this means you don’t have to go through Aliexpress however, the Oberlo Supply products only account for a small percentage of the Oberlo catalog limiting your selection.

Basically all the products or types of products you can sell using Oberlo are already available and being sold on Aliexpress, Alibaba, Wish, Amazon and others (not to mention the thousands of other Oberlo users selling the same products in their store), and they are selling these products MUCH CHEAPER than you could ever afford to. Why? Because they are huge companies and they generate enough sales where they don’t have to markup the product as much as you’ll have to when starting your ecommerce store in order to generate a profit. Basically, you’ll be selling the same products as these major outlets but for more money. If anyone was to Google search a product on your store that you imported from Aliexpress, the search results would always turn up Aliexpress first. Always. So consumers looking for these products can go directly to Aliexpress, Alibaba or Wish and find all the products that you have available to sell but for less money.

One of the reasons why Wish is so successful despite their poor product quality is because they can literally afford to sell these items for super cheap. I’ve bought $6 shoes from Wish and a $14 winter jacket. Were they great quality? Hell no. Were they cheap enough that they were worth the price? Pretty much. That’s why I was okay with these purchases because I felt I got what I paid for. If I had paid $40 for the shoes and $65 for the winter jacket and I saw the quality, I’d be furious and demand a refund, especially after these insane shipping times (sometimes 3+ months). My point is, if the customer doesn’t have to pay much, they might not complain however, if you sell a cheap product for a higher price, your customers will complain.

- AMAZON! AMAZON! AMAZON! -

What you may not know as a new ecommerce entrepreneur is that Amazon DOMINATES the ecommerce world. Seriously. Whatever you can do or sell, they can do or sell the same thing better, cheaper and faster.

Why would a customer wait 15+ days for shipping from your store when they can buy from Amazon and have it delivered in 2 days with Amazon Prime for less money? Exactly. They won’t. When consumers search online for products to buy, Amazon is almost always the first result they see. This means that customers will never find you (unless you sell unique one-of-a-kind products), through search engines because Amazon will always display first, and likely for a lower price.

What this ultimately translates into is that, you’ll need to rely almost entirely on direct advertising to reach your potential customers. This means your product markup has to be high enough to get an acceptable ROI (return on investment). Additionally, your ad campaigns will need to be flawless and refined in order to reach your exact target audience. This can only come with trial and error which costs a fair amount of money. So don’t be fooled by what anyone else says, the absolute minimum you would need for marketing your store using Oberlo products to begin generating sales is around $1000 (and I mean sales, not profit).

***can't post the rest of my review for 24 hours due to word maximum reached on this post***