One of the most common questions aspiring entrepreneurs ask is: What are the best dropshipping suppliers and wholesalers for my ecommerce store?
Supplier directories are a convenient way to quickly search for and/or browse a large number of dropshipping companies in one place and are great for brainstorming product ideas or niches to enter.
This post highlights some of the most well-known dropshipping supplier directories online. Please note, this is not an endorsement for any of these directories—it’s simply information to help you know your options.
Table of contents
- What is dropshipping?
- What are the best dropshipping suppliers?
- How to spot fake dropshipping wholesalers
- Tips for working with dropshipping wholesalers
- Start dropshipping today
- Dropshipping suppliers FAQ
What is dropshipping?
Dropshipping is an order fulfillment method where a business doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, the seller purchases inventory as needed from a third party—usually a wholesaler or manufacturer—to fulfill orders.
If you already know the product or dropshipping niche you want to sell, with a bit of digging and the techniques discussed above, you should be able to find the major wholesalers that offer dropshipping in your market.
Plus, once you start a dropshipping business, you likely won’t need to revisit the directory unless you need to find suppliers for other products.
1. AliExpress
AliExpress is an international wholesale and dropshipping site that connects ecommerce platforms to dropshipping providers and products. The majority of merchants selling through AliExpress are based in China and source their products from the region. It’s open to people around the world for free.
Locations and shipping information: AliExpress ships to 220 countries around the world, including the US. Packages sent with standard shipping can take between 15 and 45 business days to arrive. If you pay for premium shipping, the estimated delivery time is between seven and 15 business days.
Product types: There are more than 100 million products on AliExpress, in categories such as fashion, toys, consumer electronics, skin care products, jewelry, furniture, and even cars and motorcycles.
Recommended for: Both beginners and veteran dropshippers can use AliExpress to find trending products, do market research, build relationships with vendors, and order wholesale.
2. Alibaba
Alibaba is a B2B marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. The platform is more for wholesalers than single sellers, and facilitates transactions directly with manufacturers. Suppliers provide bulk items and can fulfill orders for your dropshipping store.
Locations and shipping information: Alibaba dropshipping can take time, depending on where you live. You can expect to wait as much as six weeks for deliveries. To cut back on costs, you can choose to ship by freight or air. However, you should do your research and plan accordingly.
Product types: Alibaba has more than 2.8 million suppliers and more than 5,900 categories.
Recommended for: Advanced dropshippers who prefer private label manufacturing and want to buy bulk goods at the distribution level to sell as consumer items.
3. SaleHoo
The SaleHoo supplier directory lists more than 8,000 wholesalers that offer dropshipping, and seems to cater heavily to merchants using eBay and Amazon dropshipping. Its $27 monthly price is one of the most compelling values among supplier directories and includes a 60-day money-back guarantee. You can also pay $97 per month for Premium, with multiple accounts and stores and one-click AliExpress integration.
Locations and shipping information: SaleHoo serves the US, UK, Australian, and New Zealand markets.
Product types: SaleHoo’s inventory source is AliExpress. You can find pre-vetted dropshipping providers from a variety of trending and profitable niches, then import items directly to your Shopify store.
Recommended for: If you’re comfortable paying an annual membership—or only need to use a directory and research tool temporarily—SaleHoo might be worth a look. You can get discounts by paying annually instead of monthly.
4. Worldwide Brands
Established in 1999, Worldwide Brands is one of the oldest and best-known supplier directories. It only includes suppliers that meet a set of guidelines, ensuring legitimate, quality wholesalers. You can use the vendor dropshipping directory to find wholesalers and to brainstorm niche ideas.
Location and shipping options: Worldwide Brands serves retailers around the world. The company is a supplier directory, so shipping costs and locations depend on the dropshipping wholesale supplier you find through the platform.
Product types: Though the directory is missing some vendors for dropshipping, it does include a large wholesale dropshippers list of legitimate options. There are over 16 million certified wholesale products to choose from, in niches like pet supplies, jewelry and watches, consumer electronics, home décor, apparel, and more.
Recommended for: If you want lifetime access to a quality wholesale supplier directory and are comfortable with a larger one-time payment, Worldwide Brands is a safe bet.
5. Doba
Instead of simply listing dropshipping vendors, Doba integrates with suppliers (hence why it only has 165 of them), allowing you to place orders with multiple warehouses using its centralized interface. Membership also includes a Push-to-Marketplace tool that automates the process of listing items on eBay.
Doba’s centralized system offers more convenience than the other dropshipping websites, and its $24.99 per month fee for the Start-up plan makes it an affordable option as well. You can also upgrade to Business for $49.99 per month or Enterprise for $299.99 per month. If you place a high value on convenience and can find the products you want among its suppliers, Doba’s interface may be worth a look.
Locations and shipping information: Ships globally; rates depend on individual dropshipping wholesalers and the prices you set.
Product types: Over two million products with decent profit margins.
Recommended for: If there are only a few key suppliers in your niche—reducing the number of parties you have to coordinate with—Doba may be the way to go.
6. Sunrise Wholesale
Sunrise Wholesale offers more than 10,000 dropshipping products and ships directly to your customers. In addition, Sunrise offers sales reporting tools, product data, inventory updates delivered via email, and automatic price adjustments to ensure your profit remains consistent, even when suppliers change their prices.
Location and shipping information: Sunrise Wholesale ships to customers in the US and Canada, with shipping times averaging at about one to two days.
Product types: Sunrise Wholesale offers a wide range of items, like bath products, candles, electronics, garden supplies, home décor, kitchen tools, toys and games, and jewelry and other accessories.
Recommended for: Merchants in the US and Canada looking for fast shipping times.
7. Wholesale2b
Wholesale2b offers real-time inventory automation, so orders and tracking updates are easily imported into your Shopify store. With more than a million dropship-ready products from multiple niches, it’s easy to create unique product collections.
Location and shipping options: Wholesale2b ships products throughout Canada and the United States. Shipping times vary based on the product and supplier, but Wholesale2b provides a shipping time report, letting you see the average number of days taken by each supplier to ship products.
Product types: Anything, including apparel, kitchenware, toys, accessories, and more.
Recommended for: Dropshippers who plan to sell in North America and want quick shipping.
8. Megagoods
Megagoods is a wholesale distributor of a wide variety of products, but with a focus on consumer electronics. Despite being a wholesaler, Megagoods offers dropshipping services without any minimum purchase requirements, meaning you can ship products directly to your customers without any risk of overstocking.
Locations and shipping information: Megagoods is based in Santa Clarita, California, and ships internationally.
Product types: Megagoods has a wide variety of consumer electronics, including Bluetooth accessories, audio equipment, televisions, kitchen appliances, office tools, and more.
Recommended for: Businesses with a focus on electronic equipment that want to ship internationally.
9. Wholesale Central
Unlike many other directories, there’s no charge to search Wholesale Central for vendor dropshipping options, because it charges suppliers a fee to be listed and displays ads on its site. It also says it reviews and screens all suppliers to ensure they’re legitimate and trustworthy.
Locations and shipping information: US-based vendors for dropshipping; shipping depends on which supplier you work with.
Product types: There are over 1,400 dropshippers on the wholesale dropshippers list, and more than 700,000 products.
Recommended for: It’s difficult to argue with free, and there’s no harm in browsing the listings at Wholesale Central, but you’ll need to be a bit more discerning. A number of the wholesalers that offer dropshipping appear to be retailers selling to the public at “wholesale” prices—not something a dropshipping supplier would do when offering real wholesale pricing. So while there are surely genuine wholesale opportunities listed, you may want to be a little more thorough with your due diligence.
10. Modalyst
Modalyst is an automated vendor dropshipping app for online stores. It’s known for offering products from brand names like Calvin Klein, Dolce & Gabbana, and more well-known brands that shoppers love. Modalyst also offers a curated list of independent and trendy brands for every target audience.
The platform has an official API partnership with AliExpress Dropshipping, giving you access to millions of new products you can add to your store with one click through a Google Chrome extension.
Location and shipping options: Modalyst is a great place to find the right supplier for your business, because it has its own marketplace of US suppliers and brands that can ship domestic orders in five to eight days under its free plan. UK dropshipping suppliers and Australian dropshippers are also available. Businesses can ship to more than 80 countries worldwide, excluding those in South America and Africa.
Product types: General, with a focus on luxury and trendy brands. Modalyst is also a part of the AliExpress Booster Program, which gives dropshippers access to an endless catalog of products.
Recommended for: Shopify users who want to add unique or high-ticket products to their stores. You can also sell products with your own branding using the Modalyst Private Label Program. If you choose the Pro plan, you can take advantage of all the premium brands and suppliers Modalyst has to offer.
11. Spocket
Spocket is a Shopify dropshipping app that allows users to quickly and easily import products from a number of dropshipping suppliers (including AliExpress) into their Shopify store. The Spocket app automatically pulls orders from your Shopify store for smooth order processing. It even adjusts your Shopify inventory levels automatically, so you can be sure products are in stock when your customers make a purchase.
Locations and shipping information: Spocket is located in Vancouver, Canada, and works with suppliers all over the world, including in the US, Europe, Australia, and Brazil.
Product types: Spocket offers a wide range of product categories, such as clothing, jewelry, beauty products, tech accessories, and pet products.
Recommended for: Spocket has a user-friendly interface and a frictionless purchase experience that’s great for first-time dropshippers looking to offer a variety of fashion and beauty products.
12. CJDropshipping
CJDropshipping is a marketplace and wholesale dropshippers list that enables retailers to scale their dropshipping business in an affordable way. You can easily import products into your Shopify store, normally at a price lower than on AliExpress, sourced directly from 1688 and Taobao marketplaces. It’s also a free Shopify app you can add to your store alongside other dropshipping apps.
Location and shipping options: CJDropshipping uses US-based warehouses to execute same-day processing for your store. It works with USPS, UPS, DHL, and FedEx. If you are shipping from China, it has its own shipping line called CJPacket, which can deliver products to the US in about eight days.
Product types: The 1668 and Taobao marketplaces are home to independent designers and small-business owners in China. There are hundreds of millions of listings you can access through CJDropshipping, and products range from mainstream items to hard-to-find items and even virtual products.
If a product doesn’t exist in the CJDropshipping app, you can put in a request and CJDropshipping will list it once it finds the best source.
Recommended for: Retailers who want a one-stop place for all things dropshipping, including product sourcing, order processing, order fulfillment, and quick shipping to the United States.
13. CROV
CROV connects retailers to a wide range of products from a vetted list of US dropshipping wholesalers covering a wide range of industries. A unique feature of CROV is its product request feature, wherein merchants can reach out to CROV’s professional sourcing team, who can help make supplier recommendations based on your business’s unique needs.
Location and shipping options: Shipping is available in 42 countries. Costs depend on the product suppliers for dropshipping and their shipping methods, which you can find on each product-details page in the directory. CROV has a US warehouse to ship domestic orders faster.
Product types: CROV offers more than 35,000 products in over 20 different trending categories from select suppliers.
Recommended for: Ecommerce sellers who want to sell unique products on Shopify, Amazon, and eBay.
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How to spot fake dropshipping wholesalers
Depending on where you’re searching, you’ll likely come across a large number of “fake” product suppliers for dropshipping. Here are some dropshipping tips to help you discern whether a wholesale supplier is legitimate.
They want ongoing fees
Real wholesalers don’t charge their customers a monthly fee for vendor dropshipping and the privilege of doing business and ordering from them. If a supplier asks for a monthly membership or service fee, it’s likely not legitimate.
It’s important to differentiate here between suppliers and supplier directories. Supplier directories are directories of wholesale suppliers organized by product types or market and screened to ensure the suppliers are legitimate. Most directories will charge a fee, either one time or ongoing, so you shouldn’t take this as a sign the directory itself is illegitimate.
They sell to the public
To get genuine wholesale pricing you’ll need to apply for a wholesale account, prove you’re a legitimate business, and be approved before placing your first order. Vendors for dropshipping that offer products to the general public at “wholesale” are just retailers offering items at inflated prices.
But here are some legitimate dropshipping fees you’ll likely encounter:
Per-order fees
Many wholesalers that offer dropshipping will charge a per-order dropshipping fee upfront that can range from $2 to $5 or more, depending on the size and complexity of the items being shipped. This is standard in the industry, as the costs of packing and shipping individual orders are much higher than shipping a bulk order.
Minimum order sizes
Some dropshipping providers will have a minimum initial order size, which is the lowest amount you have to purchase for your first order. They do this in order to filter out window-shopping merchants that will waste their time with questions and small orders that won’t translate into meaningful business.
If you’re dropshipping, this could cause some complications. For example, what do you do if a supplier has a $500 minimum order but your average order size is around $100? You don’t want to pre-order $500 worth of product just for the privilege of opening a dropshipping account.
In this situation, it’s best to offer to pre-pay the supplier $500 to build a credit with them to apply against your dropshipping orders. This allows you to meet the supplier’s minimum purchase requirement (as you’re committing to buy at least $500 in product) without having to place a single large order when you don’t have the corresponding customer orders.
Learn more: Make Dropshipping a Success: Tips and Stories to Inspire Your Dropshipping Venture
Tips for working with dropshipping wholesalers
Now that you can spot a fraud from the real deal, it’s time to start searching for dropshipping vendors. You can use a number of different strategies, some more effective than others. The methods below are listed in order of effectiveness and preference, with the top ones listed first.
Contact the manufacturer
This is our favorite way to easily locate legitimate dropshipping wholesalers. If you know the product(s) you want to dropship, call the manufacturer and ask for its wholesale dropshippers list. You can then contact these wholesalers to see if they dropship and inquire about setting up an account.
Since most wholesalers that offer dropshipping carry products from a variety of manufacturers, this strategy will allow you to quickly source a selection of products within the niche you’re exploring. After making a couple of calls to the leading manufacturers in a niche, you’ll quickly be able to identify the leading dropshipping providers in that market.
Search using Google
Using Google to find high-quality dropshipping wholesalers may seem obvious, but there are a few rules to keep in mind:
- You have to search extensively. Wholesalers are terrible at marketing and promotion, and they’re definitely not going to top the search results for “wholesale suppliers for product X.” This means you’ll likely have to dig through lots of search results—possibly hundreds—to find the wholesaler’s website way down the list.
- Don’t judge by their website. Wholesalers are also notorious for having poorly designed ’90s-style websites. So while a quality site may indicate a good supplier in some cases, many legitimate wholesalers have cringe-worthy homepages. Don’t let the poor design scare you off.
- Use lots of keyword modifiers. Wholesalers aren’t doing extensive SEO to ensure you find their websites, so you might need to try various search queries. Don’t stop at just “[product] wholesaler.” Try using modifiers such as “distributor,” “reseller,” “bulk,” “warehouse,” and “supplier.”
Order from the competition
If you’re having a hard time locating product suppliers for dropshipping, you can always use the old order-from-the-competition trick. Here’s how it works: Find a competitor you think is dropshipping and place a small order with that company. When you receive the package, Google the return address to find out who the original shipper was. In some cases, it will be a supplier you can contact.
This is an often-discussed tactic. And if you haven’t been able to find a supplier using the other techniques discussed above, there might be a good reason (for example, the market is too small, there’s not enough demand to justify a supplier, etc.). So keep this technique in mind, but don’t rely too heavily on it.
Attend a trade show
A trade show allows you to connect with all the major manufacturers and wholesalers in a niche. It’s a great way to make contacts and research your products and suppliers all in one spot. This only works if you’ve already selected your niche and/or product, and it isn’t feasible for everyone. But if you have the time and money to attend, it’s a great way to get to know the manufacturers and suppliers in a market.
Start dropshipping today
Whether you’re a newer ecommerce business owner or a pro dropshipper, knowing your vendor dropshipping options can help source high-quality products at a low cost and increase profitability.
With the rise of global online sales and shipping efficiencies, it’s no longer a challenge to dropship online and get products to your customers fast.
Using this dropshipping guide to further improve your online business and create a path to financial freedom, you can live the life you’ve always wanted and make money online doing it.
Ready to create your first business? Start your free trial of Shopify—no credit card required.
Dropshipping suppliers FAQ
How do I find dropshipping suppliers?
You can find dropshipping suppliers and wholesalers on a vetted directory, via recommendations from colleagues, or by looking at the suppliers for products of brands you love. You can also find many great options listed in this blog post. Get started with Shopify
What are the best dropshipping companies in 2023?
Some of the best dropshipping suppliers are listed in this blog post. Popular suppliers include AliExpress, Alibaba, and more. Get started with Shopify
Is dropshipping legal in the US?
Yes, dropshipping is legal in the US. Dropshipping is a legitimate method of order fulfillment. Be sure to check the terms and conditions for the suppliers you choose to work with.
Is dropshipping still profitable in 2023?
Dropshipping is still a viable business opportunity in 2023. It’s a profitable business model because you don’t need to invest in inventory or pay holding costs.
Which platform is best for dropshipping?
Shopify combined with a dropshipping app makes for a seamless dropshipping setup. You can search for suppliers and make products available for sale on your branded Shopify site. You make sales, and your dropshipping supplier will handle the rest.
What are the best dropshipping wholesalers?
- AliExpress
- Alibaba
- SaleHoo
- Worldwide Brands
- Doba
- Sunrise Wholesale
- Wholesale2b
- Megagoods
- Modalyst
- Wholesale Central
- Spocket
- CJDropshipping
- CROV