Oberlo is maybe the single biggest reason behind the absolutely massive increase in the popularity of dropshipping. Combining Oberlo and Shopify has made it possible for practically everyone to launch a new online store quickly. And launch it in such a way that you can credibly compete against the much bigger e-commerce stores. However, there are maybe still some misconceptions about Oberlo and how it works with Shopify. So, in this article, I will explore a few of the common questions related to Oberlo.
Is Oberlo free to use? How much it costs?
Oberlo changed its pricing recently. Until a while back they were pricing the service in such a way that while it was initially free, you would have to start paying for the service once you sold more than 50 products in a month. And naturally 50 products is not very much – especially when selling the type of small, inexpensive, products that people usually sell when dropshipping.
However, the way Oberlo is priced now is that you can sell as many products as you want (or are able to) under their free plan. But the catch is that, if you want to have more than 500 products in your store or want to have access to some additional features, you need to pay for the service.
The free plan of Oberlo is called “Starter”. And the cheapest paid plan is called “Basic”. That Basic-plan costs $29.90/month. And if you want to have the ability to add multiple staff accounts or the ability to add even more products to your store, there is also a plan called “Pro”, which costs $79.90/month. Based on the features of Oberlo’s plans, it seems likely that the “Basic” plan will be more than enough for most entrepreneurs.
It is good to note that when using the combination of Oberlo and Shopify, one needs to pay for a Shopify plan, regardless of which Oberlo plan they choose. I.e. even if you decide to go with the free Oberlo plan, you still need to pay for Shopify. Shopify itself usually costs at least $29/month – although it is possible to get a discount on the listed monthly price.
Is connecting Oberlo and Shopify easy?
Yes. When I first got excited about the idea of using Oberlo and Shopify, I was quite worried that connecting them might be difficult for someone like me who doesn’t have a lot of technical experience. However, luckily it turned out that connecting Shopify and Oberlo is extremely easy and doing things like finding products from Oberlo, pricing them and adding them to your Shopify store is very fast.
What are some of the benefits of using Oberlo?
One of the great things about combining Oberlo and Shopify is that, it makes it possible to do a lot of experiments around new products and product categories. That as you don’t have to buy inventory and ship products to the customers yourself when using Oberlo. Additionally, Oberlo can also be a great asset, for example, when you find out that some new product is going “viral” and you know that the fad is not going to last very long.
Does Oberlo work with e-commerce platforms other than Shopify?
It is not possible to use Oberlo directly with ecommerce platforms other than Shopify, but Squarespace does make it possible to add products with Oberlo to a website that is built with their solution. Additionally, it might be possible to use Oberlo also at least with Wix.