Are you a current AliExpress dropshipper fed up with slow delivery times and poor supplier communication?
Maybe you’re just starting out and looking for an alternative to AliExpress because you don’t trust them?
Or maybe you’re simply looking for a professional dropshipping fulfillment service?
Here is a free AliExpress alternative: CJDropshipping.
In this CJDropshipping review, I will take a close look at all the different features CJ offers and compare their service to classic AliExpress dropshipping.
What is CJDropshipping
CJDropshipping is a product sourcing and fulfillment service with warehouses located in China, Thailand, the US, Germany, Indonesia, Australia, and Japan.
They strive to offer great low pricing that competes with AliExpress’ pricing all the while providing a better and faster fulfillment method for drop shippers.
Basically, they are a dropshipping solution that aims to create a better platform than AliExpress, this CJDropshipping review will get to the bottom of whether or not they have accomplished exactly that.
CJDropshiping has a Shopify app and WooCommerce plugin that is completely free with no monthly fees ever.
So unlike Oberlo, DSers and other AliExpress dropshipping apps, there are no fees, ever.
You also get options to integrate CJDropshipping with Shipstation, eBay and Lazada.
How Does CJDropshipping Compare to AliExpress?
The CJDropshipping website looks almost identical to AliExpress with one key difference — there is no purchase button.
That’s because CJDropshipping is not a marketplace like AliExpress is, they are a dropshipping service.
On AliExpress, anyone can make an order, and being one of the largest international marketplaces out there, they get a lot of customers.
AliExpress also doesn’t provide any products of their own, every product found on AliExpress is being sold by an AliExpress seller.
CJDropshipping on the other hand, doesn’t have sellers offering products.
All products listed on CJDropshipping are intended to be drop shipped and stored in warehouses owned by CJDropshipping or partnered with them.
AliExpress’ dropshipping model has the following advantages:
- Super low pricing due to price competition
- Huge catalog of products
With AliExpress, you can dropship just about any product that comes to mind.
This means you can quickly profit from new fads and sell winning products.
But AliExpress also comes with some disadvantages such as:
- Unreliable suppliers
- Slow fulfillment (long processing times, slow delivery times)
- Little to no communication with suppliers
That’s where CJDropshipping comes into play and provides an all around better service.
The advantages of CJDropshipping are:
- Reliable suppliers
- International warehouses
- Fast fulfillment and shipping
- More dropship-friendly
- Far better support (live-chat) that knows about the ins and outs of dropshipping
- Premium features such as print on demand, custom packaging, product videos, and more
But you will of course have a limited amount of products available to you (even though they do allow you to request product sourcing) and the products, while still cheap, won’t be as cheap as they are on AliExpress’s marketplace.
Read Also: Complete Dropshipping Guide
What are CJDropshippings’ Features?
US/EU Warehouses
As I mentioned earlier, CJDropshipping has warehouses in the following locations:
- China
- Thailand
- United States
- Germany
- Australia
- Indonesia
This allows for you to offer faster worldwide shipping and even domestic shipping within some of these countries.
Free Product Sourcing Requests
When compared to AliExpress, of course, CJDropshipping has a more limited product catalog.
While they still have more products available than most competitors (and at better prices!) this can be a reason to not go for CJDropshipping for many drop shippers.
We love to try a wide variety of new products, and with CJDropshipping you will definitely be limited in this aspect.
But for this too, they have a solution: free product sourcing requests.
This is something other apps I’ve reviewed such as uDroppy and Zendrop also offer but they are usually tied to a paid monthly plan.
CJdropshipping offers this service free of charge.
If you see a product on AliExpress that’s not on CJdropshipping, you can request for this product to be sourced and CJDropshipping will try to comply within a reasonable amount of time.
Unlimited Product Import and Order Fulfillment
With CJDropshipping, you can import and fulfill an unlimited amount of products per month.
You will never pay for CJDropshipping as you would with AliExpress dropshipping apps such as Oberlo, where you are charged $29.90/mo once you reach over 50 orders per month.
Fast Shipping and CJPacket
CJDropshipping offers some of the fastest worldwide shipping options for any dropshipping service out there.
Order processing takes only between 1-3 days and products can arrive as soon as 7 days after ordering.
This is mainly thanks to CJpacket, CJdropshipping’s very own shipping line.
This shipping line functions in a similar fashion to ePacket, which uses commercial flights to get products delivered to many different countries worldwide.
This is the primary line you’ll be using when dropshipping from CJDropshipping as they offer the fastest shipping for the cheapest possible price.
CJPacket promises delivery times between 7-15 days to the US.
CJPacket vs ePacket vs Yun Express vs Yanwen.
Product Photography and Video
Dropshippers tend to use competitor and supplier imagery for their product pages and advertisement campaigns.
This quickly leads to many of these Ads looking exactly the same.
For your winning Facebook Ads, you want to stand out from the competition.
And while you can create your own pictures and videos, this would require you to first purchase them (and wait for delivery) and then shoot them yourself, which could, for many of us, lead to unprofessional footage and disappointing results.
CJDropshipping has the solution for this: they can take product pictures and videos at your request.
This is of course not free and you should request a quote first.
Here’s an example of a product video made by CJDropshipping:
Custom Packaging
CJDropshipping has a catalog of packaging materials built into their dashboard that you can browse from.
You immediately get to view the options, pricing and you get to upload your designs on the spot.
Custom packaging is a feature found in most premium drop shipping services. However, they usually require high MOQs such as 200-1000 which is not accessible for most dropshippers.
CJDropshipping has far lower MOQs on most of their packaging, some requiring as little as 5MOQ.
Competitors also make the custom feature very secretive, not displaying options and making you request a quote instead.
With CJdropshipping, you can browse the custom packaging options, check the minimum order quantity, check the price and upload the designs directly in your dashboard.
CJ Dropshipping Agent
Every CJDropshipping user has access to their very own CJDropshipping agent once they start making sales.
These agents use Skype and can answer any questions you have about products, sourcing, shipping, and fulfillment.
This is your main point of contact and will help you 10x more than customer service.
Keep in mind, this agent is shared with others and is not the same as a private dropshipping agent.
Print on Demand
Print on demand dropshipping is a form of dropshipping where you dropship custom printed products to your customers.
The designs of these products are completely yours, making this a very good way to create your own branded dropshipping store.
Next to basic dropshipping needs, CJDropshipping also has print on demand options available!
These print on demand products are sourced in China and have very competitive prices compared to services such as Printful.
For more info on how print on demand drop shipping works, check out our complete print on demand guide.
CJDropshipping Review — Dashboard and UI
Getting started with CJDropshipping is easy.
You go to their website, sign up for account fill in the classic registration info (email – password) and boom you are in.
Next, you can download the CJDropshipping app from Shopify app store and you’re good to go.
The website, and product pages work in a similar fashion to AliExpress.
Once you find a product you want to import to your store, you press the ‘list’ button on the product page.
From there, you select the warehouse you want to ship from, the variants you want to import and the price you want to sell them for.
When you select ‘list it now’, the product will instantly be pushed to your Shopify store.
If you’ve worked with AliExpress before, this product import method is similar, if not easier as you don’t need an extra chrome extension.
Other features of the dashboard include:
- Request product sourcing
- Request photography
- Custom packaging
- Your imported products
- Order fulfillment
The layout of the dashboard is very simple and straight forward and navigating it should not be a problem.
If you do run into issues, you can talk to Alex, the CJDropshipping chatbot or you can contact them directly using their live chat function.
CJDropshipping Review — Product Pricing and availability
CJDropshipping has very cheap product pricing. Especially when you compare them to competitors such as Spocket, uDroppy, Zendrop and more.
They simple cannot compete.
Products on CJDropshipping are often even cheaper than you’ll find them on AliExpress.
Let’s look at some examples.
Selfie Ring with Mobile Clip
On AliExpress: $2.97 + Free shipping. $2.97 total.
On CJDropshipping: $1.28 + $5.85 shipping. $7.13 total.
LED Night Light Projector
On AliExpress: $4.99 + $3.02 shipping. $8.01 total.
On CJDropshipping: $8.57 total.
Posture corrector
On AliExpres: $4.68 + Free shipping. $4.68 total.
On CJDropshipping: $1.44 + $4.23 shipping. $5.67 total.
We see a recurring pattern here.
While the products are always cheaper on CJDropshipping, AliExpress suppliers often include free shipping, whereas CJDropshipping often charges more for shipping than for the product.
In a post on their blog, CJDropshipping explains why their shipping pricing is more expensive than AliExpress.
As you can see though, with AliExpress, some of these packages can take up to 50 days to be delivered.
Whereas CJDropshipping is promising 7-17 day delivery times.
And as a drop shipper, I would gladly pay a couple of dollars more for a product when I know that CJ will deliver it up to 3x faster, I’ll have better communication and don’t have to worry about possibly encountering a fraudulent seller.
Faster shipping is necessary to avoid angry customers and chargebacks.
That’s something you should be willing to pay for.
And in the case of CJDropshipping vs AliExpress, the pricing difference is often so small, you will barely notice a difference in your profits.
One minor point about CJdropshipping I’ve found is that some of the more popular products can be low in stock.
And when you’re using AliExpress, you barely ever encounter this issue because so many different suppliers stock the exact same product.
CJDropshipping Review — Fulfillment
CJDropshipping offers bulk product fulfillment.
This means you can fulfill all your products at the click of just one button.
No annoying AliExpress checkout pages and other hassles when fulfilling orders.
And with fast shipping options such as 7-17 day delivery times from China to US and 3-6 day delivery times from their US warehouses, CJDropshipping proves to be an amazing dropshipping partner.
Compared to other services I’ve reviewed such as uDroppy, Zendrop and Spocket CJdropshipping beats them in both delivery times AND product pricing.
All the while NOT asking for a monthly fee.
CJDropshipping vs Competitors
CJDropshipping vs AliExpress
Is CJDropshipping better than AliExpress? Yes. CJdropshipping beats AliExpress any day of the week.
While pricing is slightly better on AliExpress, CJDropshipping can deliver products up to 3X faster, has international warehouses, and premium options such as custom packaging available to high-volume sellers.
The only real advantage AliExpress has over CJDropshipping is product availability.
You will always find the product you want on AliExpress, you will always be able to find the cheapest supplier and you will always find another one if your product is not in stock.
I would only recommend using AliExpress over CJdropshipping if your product is not available on CJDropshipping.
CJDropshipping vs uDroppy
uDroppy is a premium dropshipping service.
Compared to CJDropshipping, they are not free and only have paid plans starting at $19/mo with plans going up to $249/mo.
To get the same kind of features with uDroppy as you would with CJDropshipping you would have to get the $49 per month plan.
Within uDroppy’s Pro plan for $149 per month, you will gain access to features such as Cash on Delivery, Virtual Warehousing, Private Labeling, Custom packaging, support calls and a merchant success manager.
Clearly, uDroppy targets a different kind of dropshipper.
While CJdropshipping focusses on your classic AliExpress drop shippers, uDroppy provides more professional features geared towards intermediate and advanced drop shippers looking for custom solutions such as private labeling.
Both are good dropshipping services but for your basic needs you will be better off with CJDropshipping.
While a high volume seller looking to invest in branding would benefit more from uDroppy as they offer a more complete, professional service, at a premium price.
My Review of CJDropshipping
I hope this review made it clear that CJDropshipping offers a really good dropshipping service.
With fast order fulfillment and shipping, international warehouses, affordable products and many premium add-ons it would be very dumb not to consider them for your dropshipping store.
They are the perfect alternative to AliExpress dropshipping, beating them in almost every way possible.
All the while remaining completely free to use, no matter how many products you import or fulfill per month.
I would encourage you to get a free account and check them out for sure.
Since the app is free, I like to use it next to Oberlo on my AliExpress dropshipping stores.
For example, I use CJdropshipping as my main supplier but I also use AliExpress suppliers in case CJdropshipping runs out of stock or while I wait for them to source a product for me.
You can perfectly use both at the same time and only refer to AliExpress when you have no other choice.
This concludes my CJDropshipping review.
FAQ
Is CJDropshipping Legit?
CJDropshipping is a legit dropshipping service.
So far I have very few orders that end up getting messed up, and my overall experience has been great.
EDIT: While my experience with CJdropshipping has been good, complaints have been racking up on dropshipping facebook groups about products getting lost, taking ages to get delivered and their customer service being really bad.
As always, you should never fully put your trust in a service and test them out first before committing big time.
What Should I do When CJDropshipping Doesn’t Deliver My Package?
Sometimes, deliveries will fail.
This could be CJ’s fault, the couriers fault or just bad luck.
Either way, you should file a dispute when this happens. You can do this by going to your dropshipping center in your CJ Dashboard > Dropshipping Orders > Order no > Dispute.
Or follow this tutorial if you need more info on how to file a dispute.
Do not contact their live chat with this, they won’t help you properly and this often wrongly leads to customers believing CJDropshipping is scamming them.