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In this post, we’ll be comparing SaleHoo and Doba as dropshipping solutions for your eCommerce business. You are at the right place if you are looking for a reliable and trustworthy supplier for your wholesale or dropshipping business.
Finding the best dropshipping company for your online store is paramount especially if you are a wholesaler or dropshipper. There are many dropshipping suppliers in the industry and choosing the right one can be a daunting task as it’s for Doba and SaleHoo.
In addition, finding the right supplier to suit your needs is equally challenging owing to the nature of dropshipping. There are factors you need to put into consideration before venturing into the dropshipping business even though it’s one of the most convenient and hassle-free way of doing online business.
Some of these factors include;
- Choosing a reliable and trustworthy supplier
- Choosing the right dropshipping products to sell
- Ensuring the supplier ships the products on time
- Maintaining a healthy relationship with the supplier
Fortunately, there are many different suppliers’ platforms that you can choose from. This is where SaleHoo and Doba come into play. They are among the most popular ones so let’s delve into the details to see where the scale tends to swing. Shall we?
However, before we get into the details, let’s have a clear understanding of some of the basic terms like dropshipping and wholesale.
Your presence on here means that you are either looking to venture into the dropshipping business or wholesale. However, some people don’t know how it works. Let’s break it down for the sake of newbies:
Difference between Dropshipping and Wholesale
The aspect of handling the inventory is the most significant difference between dropshipping and wholesale. Both of them are product acquisition businesses relating to retails.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is an eCommerce model that allows you to sell products without necessarily keeping an inventory. Instead, you sell and send the order to the supplier who in turn ships the product to the client for you.
However, the profit is usually the difference between what the customer pays and the amount you pay the supplier. See, easy peasy!
Wholesale
Wholesale is buying products in bulk from the supplier at a discount and then getting to resell them at a higher price. From the definition, you can see that the profit margins can be relatively high than in dropshipping. The only difference is that for the latter, you don’t need to keep an inventory of the products which is not the case with wholesale.
SaleHoo vs Doba: Which One Should You Use?
You need to choose a business between the two depending on your main objective. However, both dropshipping and wholesale require a reliable and trustworthy supplier for ease of supplying the items. That’s why we are comparing SaleHoo to Doba to help you make an informed decision. Let’s look at how these two business platforms work.
SaleHoo
SaleHoo is a dropshipping and wholesale directory service based in New Zealand and has bases in other different countries. If you are looking for some of the best suppliers to work with then SaleHoo comes in handy as it saves you the trouble.
SaleHoo allows you to link with the suppliers, build a healthy relationship and engage their services. All these are pretty hard especially when you use Google to look for the suppliers unaided. It’s equally comprehensive with more than 8,000 and 1,000 wholesale and dropshipping suppliers at their disposal respectively. What’s more, they have millions of products in the inventory which means you don’t have to worry about running out of stock.
Save for being a dropshipping tool, SaleHoo is a home for wholesale suppliers as well. It helps connect them with some of the businesses that buy bulk products at a retail price. SaleHoo was founded by Simon Slave to help solve any dropshipping problems and is slowly taking over the industry.
Doba
Doba was developed in the US and was specially designed to make dropshipping a lot easier. It takes pride in huge inventory containing millions of dropshipping products. What’s more, it integrates remarkably well with suppliers globally.
However, you don’t get the products directly from the supplier when using Doba. Doba will do that on your behalf once you place an order. Doba is not only the supplier’s directory but also doubles up as a marketplace almost similar to Spocket since you can always import dropshipping products to your website directly.
This means that you cannot neither have contact with the suppliers nor establish a relationship with them. The best thing about using Doba is that it comes with handy educational materials which makes it an ideal dropshipping solution especially for beginners.
That’s a brief overview of dropshipping and how it works to help run a successful eCommerce business. Let’s now dive deeper and look into their features.
Main Features of SaleHoo
Here’s a highlight of significant features of SaleHoo in comparison with its counterpart. By the end of this article, we’ll know which of the two platforms between SaleHoo and Doba has an edge over the other.
Dropshipping Suppliers
For starters, SaleHoo has more than one thousand suppliers that you can choose from. They screen and vet the suppliers to provide you with a trustworthy eCommerce business community.
In addition, they let you in on relevant details that you should know about them including:
- Company details
- Shipping locations and methods
- Customer reviews
- Their dropshipping product scope
Wholesale Suppliers
SaleHoo provides its users with a huge list of verified wholesale suppliers save for the suppliers’ directory. You can order the products in bulk from the wholesale suppliers and also ship them globally. The best thing about it is that you get the products at discounted wholesale prices.
SaleHoo has more than 8,000 verified wholesale suppliers and the number is on an upward spiral. You can easily find the right supplier using the search box with some advanced filters. Besides, the advanced search filter allows you to narrow down the search basing on the location of the dropshipping suppliers.
In addition, the dashboard is specially customized to accommodate some of your favorite suppliers. That make communicating with the suppliers you plan on working with or are already working with a lot easier. At the time of writing, SaleHoo had more than 1.5 million products at their disposal.
Market Research
You should do in-depth market research to see what it dictates before stocking up the products. It goes without saying that SaleHoo does it best even though all sales directory services have the feature. SaleHoo usually gives a more detailed analysis of the trending products on the market.
For instance, SaleHoo will inform you of the best-selling products and those with low rates in terms of competition. This helps save you the hassle of struggling with visibility which includes both time and money. What’s more, the monthly sales report will send a notification of the products expected to trend in the next season to give you a head start.
You can also narrow down your search based on the product’s unit price thanks to the price filter option. This feature works exceptionally well for beginners.
Dashboard
SaleHoo has a user-friendly dashboard without compromising on design. You can easily access relevant information to scale your online store at a glance through supplier, product and training sessions as per the products division.
For instance, you can learn how to make your products along with the online store stand out thanks to the information provided on the training session. The product session, on the other hand, let’s you know how you are handling sales. You can see your progress thanks to the training courses.
What’s more, you can easily find your favorite suppliers and communicate with them right on the dashboard. To cut the long story short, SaleHoo has an easy-to-use and navigate interface.
Directory
The directory is very important. The system automatically generates a huge list of best-selling products when you search, along with their suppliers and contact details. You can also filter the search results based on:
- Worldwide shipping
- Location
- Product category
- Tax ID requirements
- Minimum Order Quantity – MOQ
Resources
SaleHoo has a number of useful resources. They put more focus on assisting its users. For starters, they usually provide online courses at no cost with video sessions that explain the essence of starting and running a successful eCommerce and dropshipping business. The courses are topnotch since the founder is well versed with eCommerce business.
The courses include case studies sharing how entrepreneurs build successful dropshipping businesses. Here are some of the best features in the resource toolbox that might come in handy:
- Free guides – It contains information on how to promote products, use the platform and also sell on different sites among others.
- Community – SaleHoo allows you to connect with other different users to learn from them as in the norm with most online communities.
- Customer Support – SaleHoo offers support in form of contact, email, live chat and phone. They offer a 24-hour live chat support on weekends and 12 hours on weekdays.
Shopify Integration
Integration with Shopify is one of the latest features that SaleHoo offers. The feature allows you to automatically import products to your Shopify store with ease. That means that no additional tools re required to get the job done.
SaleHoo also allows users to link their online stores and start importing products from AliExpress directly to Shopify. The only limitation is that the feature comes at an extra cost in addition to the original price.
Main Features of Doba
Here’s a highlight of Doba’s main features in comparison to SaleHoo. Let’s delve into the details to see if they have an edge over its counterparts.
Product Data
Doba offers lots of dropshipping products on their large catalog. They have more than two million products available on their fully functional database. The product catalog is arranged according to the niche of the product. Plus, you can narrow down your search when looking for a particular product on your niche.
The products fall under eight different categories including:
- Sports
- Pets
- Automotive
- Electronics
- Beauty and Health
- Home, Garden and Tools
- Computer and Office Supplies
- Clothing, Shoes and Jewelry
That’s right, you’ll find a significant number of dropshipping products on this platform. What’s more, getting hold of the products based on your niche is equally easy. They have a reliable team of experts that help source and compile a list of some of the best suppliers along with best-selling products.
Elite Seller List
As a dropshipper, wanting to get notified of top-notch sellers, best-selling products, latest trends and deals is not subject to debate. Doba offers all that and more. You’ll get an email notification with all the necessary information you need every month to help you run a successful dropshipping and eCommerce business.
Supplier Scorecard
Suppliers can’t risk to disappoint their customers thanks to the scorecard. Doba does all the background check before verifying their suppliers and also shows customers how each one of them performed. Don’t worry O ye of little faith, Doba got you covered!
Inventory Management
Inventory management falls more on the supplier’s side. This is because they set the inventory to show the current status to serve as some form of buyer protection especially for dropshippers. This is to say, it allows merchants to set up notifications when the inventory of the supplier approaches the preset limit. Suppliers, on the other hand, can set up the inventory to avoid selling dead stock.
Integration
Doba supports most eCommerce platforms including Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce and Big Commerce among others.
Supplier Friendly
Doba strikes a perfect balance of friendliness when it comes to suppliers and sellers. The feature mainly focuses on seller protection. However, you should know that Doba doesn’t at any point neglect their suppliers as they see to it that all their needs are met. This is because the supplier can also decide how to sell the products and who to sell them to.
The suppliers can also:
- Decide if they want to be featured in their monthly newsletter
- Make use of Doba’s customer support, enjoy fraud prevention and in-house order management
Pricing – SaleHoo vs Doba
SaleHoo offers an annual subscription at $67 inclusive of all its features while Doba charge a monthly subscription fee ranging from $29 monthly. The latter offer more for the price unlike its counterpart. With Doba, the user has to unlock dropshipping educational resources only when they subscribe to their services.
The thought of paying $0.99 for every order you make in Doba can make you cringe.
SaleHoo Pricing
SaleHoo offers an annual subscription fee of $67 and $127 for lifetime access with all benefits in both packages. The monthly subscription fees are best suited for eCommerce stores ranging from $27 for the basic plan, $47 standard and $97 premium plan.
The best thing about SaleHoo is that they also offer a 30-day free trial period.
Doba Pricing
Doba has four different subscription plans including:
- The basic plan at $29 monthly
- Advanced plan at $69 monthly
- Pro Plan at $249 monthly
- Enterprise – has a custom quote (Account manager, API integration and Sandbox Dev Environment)
A 30-day free trial period that you can only use once.
Differences Between SaleHoo and Doba
Let’s explore the differences between SaleHoo and Doba to see which among the two has an edge over the other. Shall we?
Access to Suppliers
SaleHoo has an edge over Doba when it comes to access to suppliers. The latter serves as a middleman between the supplier and the dropshipper. The dropshipper should be the link between the customer and the dropshipping supplier. In this case, you can’t access the supplier directly meaning establishing a healthy relationship is not possible which is one of its major limitations.
Customer Support
Doba lags behind when it comes to customer support. SaleHoo has an almost perfect customer support. You can easily access phone calls, email, and live chat regardless of the plan you choose. You need a significant amount of money to enjoy live chat support and dig deeper into your pockets if you prefer phone calls. Email supports is relatively cheap but not quite reliable which is a major drawback.
Customer Reviews
For Doba, this is a no-go zone which makes SaleHoo stand out again. There are more positive reviews about SaleHoo as compared to those on Doba.
Profit Margin
The products are costly on Doba which means the profit margins are a bit low.
Shipping Locations
Doba is based in the US which means it ships within the country only. The positive side of it is that products get delivered faster. SaleHoo, on the other hand, has global dropshippers and suppliers.
Dropshipping and Wholesale
Another thumbs-up for SaleHoo. This is because it’s a platform for dropshippers and wholesalers looking for each other. Doba, on the other hand, is entirely a wholesaler directory – totally one-sided.
Conclusion
Good to know you made it this far, congratulations!
At this point, it’s safe to say that SaleHoo has an edge over Doba on a lot of things which makes it the better option. However, they both come with their own advantages and disadvantages so choose a platform that suits your needs.
