Best ecommerce platforms for dropshipping 2023

Based on our in-depth research and user testing, there are three clear winners standing on the podium for best ecommerce platforms for dropshipping:

1. Shopify – best for dropshipping beginners who want a simple and easy user experience, with expansive sales features
2. WooCommerce – the best choice for users wanting a free and easy-to-install plugin that will get them operating as quickly as possible
   
3. Wix – best for users that want an ecommerce platform offering high-level dropshipping product customisation and automatic inventory synchronisation

Each of these platform lets you integrate with a number of excellent dropshipping suppliers, letting you set up a complete dropshipping solution with surprisingly little effort.

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BEST ALL ROUND
Shopify	WooCommerce	Wix	Magento	BigCommerce	OpenCart
Best for Dropshipping beginners who want a simple and easy user experience, with expansive sales features	Best for Users wanting a free and easy-to-install ecommerce platform that will get them operating as quickly as possible	Best for Users that want an ecommerce platform offering high-level dropshipping product customisation and automatic inventory synchronisation	Best for Advanced users who already have experience using an ecommerce platform to run a dropshipping business	Best for Using multiple channels to promote the products in your dropshipping store	Best for Dropshipping business owners with experience in website building, who want to get going with minimal outgoing and support costs
Price from £19 per month £1/month for 3 months	Price from $6.59 per month (£5.33)	Price from £14 per month £13.50-£24.30 with code “GET10!”	Price from Varies – full breakdown in the pricing section	Price from $29 (around £23) per month	Price from Free

Shopify is our top choice for dropshipping, and you can try it risk-free Try Shopify for Dropshipping

What is a dropshipping platform?

Dropshipping is a method of business where you commission suppliers to ‘drop’ shipments to your customers' doorsteps on your behalf. No mess, no fuss, and no having to deal with tons of boxes and packages in your own garage at home. A dropshipping platform is the software you use to manage your dropshipping operation, giving you a bird's eye view of your orders, shipments, and analytics.

Since with dropshipping you don’t have to stock or keep track of inventory, which can make it a very alluring prospect (especially in these turbulent economic times) as a new revenue stream, whether that’s full-time or as a side hustle on the weekends.

1. Shopify

Best for: dropshipping beginners who want a simple and easy user experience, with expansive sales features

Pricing from: £19 per month

Features

Shopify takes the title of the most user-friendly platform, particularly for beginners. In our recent round of in-depth ecommerce product research, Shopify earned second place overall with an impressive score of 4.6 out of 5.

But why is Shopify the ideal ecommerce platform for dropshipping in particular? For starters, of the dropshipping-specific platforms, it is certainly the most user-friendly and easiest to navigate – especially compared to the more complex platforms like Magento.

Shopify was also designed specifically to help you build an online store – it even suggests specific add-ons and plugins from its app market depending on the type of template (AKA online store format) you select when creating your website.

Here are some of the top dropshipping features you’ll get with Shopify:

• Unlimited inventory allowance
• Stock management
• Revenue reports
• Multiple product variants
• Comprehensive fraud detection abilities
• An impressive library of dropshipping apps

Shopify also has some of the strongest sales features available for users, which is perfect since the basis of a dropshipping business is to make it as streamlined and simple as possible for consumers to purchase products from your website.

These features include multi-channel integration options for selling across a number of platforms, including Instagram, Amazon, and Facebook. There’s also customisable checkout, plus excellent sales analytics tools that provide granular data and actionable insights on your customers behaviour.

Shopify hosts your website for free, eliminating the need to purchase an expensive server. Instead, you’ll just pay a monthly fee to access and manage your site. After all, the whole point of running a dropshipping business is to minimise overheads.

It's important to note that Shopify's long-standing integration with dropshipping supplier Oberlo is no more (as of earlier this year). We recommend Shopify customers integrate their online store with DSers. For more information read our review of the best dropshipping suppliers.

Shopify dropshipping: pros and cons

Pricing

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	GET 3 MONTHS FOR £1/MO
Starter	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced
Price £5 per month	Price £1 per month for 3 months Then £19 per month	Price £49 per month	Price £259 per month
Features A simple, instant storefront Unlimited product pages Fast and secure checkout	Features Unlimited products Abandoned cart recovery	Features Professional reports and analytics 5 staff accounts	Features Advanced reports Calculated shipping rates
Online card processing fees 2.9% + 30p for online sales	Online card processing fees 2% + 25p for online purchases	Online card processing fees 1.7% + 25p for online purchases	Online card processing fees 1.5% + 25p for online purchases

Visit Shopify to learn more about its pricing plans Visit Shopify

2. WooCommerce

Best for: Users wanting a free and easy-to-install ecommerce platform that will get them operating as quickly as possible

Pricing from: £5.33 per month

Features

WooCommerce is one of the most commonly used dropshipping ecommerce platforms worldwide. This is largely due to how easy it is to install the plugin and begin selling entirely for free. It has definitely carved its name in the dropshipping arena, with almost a 23% market share in overall ecommerce stores.

It uses a simple GUI (graphical user interface) that adds real value to a user’s experience. In other words, you don’t have to be a programming expert to make changes and add elements to your site. Because it’s built on WordPress, it’s also a solid choice for bloggers who want to become dropshipping entrepreneurs.

A huge bonus of WooCommerce is that it's pretty affordable compared to Shopify, whose lowest plan for ecommerce businesses starts at £19. WooCommerce saves you £14 per month, which is a great alternative if you're tight on a budget.

Keep in mind that, although the platform is affordable, WooCommerce is self-hosted. This means you’ll have to either be a tech whizz and set up your own server, or purchase a hosting account from the likes of Bluehost or HostGator. You can expect to pay £2.44 to £3.17 per month. So don’t put your credit card away just yet…

Here are some of the top dropshipping features you’ll get with WooCommerce:

• Flexibility: you’ll have the freedom to tweak everything on your site and set it exactly how you want it, from product catalogues to the payment details section.
• Mobile app: this allows you to run your store from anywhere. You can process orders, monitor real-time stats and create products on the go.
• Dropshipping-specific extensions: these are available in WooCommerce’s extension store. There’s even an integration with AliExpress (a major and popular dropshipping supplier) to help make dropshipping easy and hassle free.

What are dropshipping extensions?

Dropshipping extensions are store management tools. They make selling easier by adding several tailored features to your ecommerce site, which help you manage your online store and improve sales. Check out Shopify's ultimate guide to Dropshipping for more info on extensions.

WooCommerce pros and cons:

Pricing

• WooCommerce platform = £5.33 per month
• Hosting costs = £90 annally (on average)
• Domain = £11 annually

3. Wix

Best for: Users that want an ecommerce platform offering high-level dropshipping product customisation and automatic inventory synchronisation

Pricing from: £14 per month

Features

In our most recent round of in-depth research and testing, we gave Wix the title of best ecommerce platform for small businesses, scoring it an impressive score of 4.8 out of 5. But how does the platform fare in terms of its dropshipping functionality?

The answer is: relatively well… although not quite as well as Shopify. Out of all the ecommerce platforms designed with dropshipping in mind, you’ll find Wix is the easiest to set up, especially compared to the complexities presented by Magento and WooCommerce.

Wix’s automatic inventory synchronisation is one of its standout features. The function keeps close tabs on your inventory so that you don’t accidentally oversell on any sales channels – including your online store, marketplaces (such as Facebook Marketplace), and even on social media.

You’ll also be able to integrate your Wix store with one of the UK’s top dropshipping suppliers, Modalyst. Boasting unrivalled dropshipping features, even on its free plan, with Modalyst Wix users can:

• Add products to their store in one click
• Receive real-time product updates
• Set automated markups

Importing products from Modalyst into your Wix store is as easy as pie, and once it's done you have full capacity to customise product pages, easily setting prices, product descriptions, payment options, and shipping policies all directly from Wix. For users, this means that you don't have to worry about migrating back and forth between software and potentially missing out on key pieces of information about your dropshipping operation.

Here are some of the top dropshipping features you’ll get with Wix:

• Automatic inventory synchronisation
• Integration with a top dropshipping supplier and one click product inclusion
• Option to add print-on-demand products
• Great SEO features and email marketing to reach your target market

Another of the many things which make Wix a great dropshipping ecommerce platform is the outreach tools at your disposal. Wix’s SEO features are easily the best available compared to other platforms on this list, and they have even partnered with SEMrush to help push your content further up the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) rankings for relevant search terms – gaining more traffic and turning more visitors into customers.

Wix is also more affordable than Shopify, with its basic ecommerce plan already £5 cheaper. Plus, despite Magento being free to start with, if you factor in the cost of all the extensions you’ll need to get up and running and compare this to Wix, you'll find that Wix is arguably the best value ecommerce platform for dropshipping.

Wix dropshipping: pros and cons

Pricing

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Core	Business	Business Elite
Price £14 per month £12.60 with code ‘GET 10!'	Price £20 per month £18 with code ‘GET 10!'	Price £119 per month £107.10 with code ‘GET 10!'
Features Basic ecommerce Accept payments Basic site analytics Abandoned cart recovery	Features Standard site analytics Standard eCommerce Automated sales tax for 100 transactions per month Accept pre-orders	Features Advanced eCommerce Advanced developer platform Advanced site analytics Loyalty program by Smile.io
Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?
Claim Deal	Claim Deal	Claim Deal

Check out our Wix ecommerce review for more information about the platform.

4. Magento

Best for: advanced users who already have experience using an ecommerce platform to run a dropshipping business

Pricing from: Varies – full breakdown in the pricing section

Features

It is safe to say that out of all the top ecommerce platforms for dropshipping stores, Magento is the most sophisticated and professional. Like WooCommerce, Magento is an open source ecommerce system.

This means that it is constantly being improved by a community of developers, and can employ more advanced technical solutions compared to hosted ecommerce platforms that are updated a lot less frequently.

This makes Magento great for creating a professional, slick online store with immaculate design functionality. If you want the flexibility to add practically any type of feature to your site, look no further than Magento OpenSource. It is the perfect platform for dropshipping businesses that are in it for the long run, and is certainly the most scalable platform on the market. This is pretty impressive considering it is free to download.

Just keep in mind that, despite the platform itself being free to download, the costs of getting set up are very high compared to other platforms. Moreover, it might not be as user friendly for amateur dropshippers due to the sophisticated technical tools it offers.

This is because, even when selecting a ready-made Magento template for your website, you still need to give the team of Magento developers time to tailor the web pages to your preferences.

You have to pay them by the hour, and on average, they’ll need to spend at least 40 hours adjusting the main pages – which will cost you a hefty £1,300.

Here are some of the top dropshipping features you’ll get with Magento Open Source:

• A huge number of payment gateway integration options. This means customers are never hampered by a lack of payment options
• An impressive set of order management features, including assisted shopping and customised order status
• Impressive catalogue management for your products. You can create different price points for different customer groups, such as wholesalers and retailers.

Magento pros and cons

Pricing

Magento pricing is hard to calculate accurately, as the costs can vary when it comes to website design and development. But we have summarised the costs as well as we can.

• Hosting – £75–£350 annually
• Web design – £0 if applying a ready-made Magento theme. A custom theme can cost up to £3,600, depending on how long it takes Magento’s developers to create it.
• Minimum website development cost – £1,300

5. BigCommerce

Best for: using multiple channels to promote the products in your dropshipping store

Pricing from: $29 (around £23) per month (billed annually)

Features

Like Shopify, BigCommerce is a hosted ecommerce platform that excels in the sales features department. In our latest round of ecommerce research, it achieved an overall score of 4.2 out of 5, largely due to its multi-channel selling capabilities.

When using BigCommerce, you can look forward to no transaction fees (depending on the plan you select). It also has the most advanced SEO tools available in the ecommerce platform space, which is ideal if you want to get your dropshipping store featured high up in consumer’s search engine results.

Keep in mind that the plan you choose will determine your sales allowance. This may not be a problem when you start out, as the standard plan gives you a substantial limit of $50,000.

But if you are planning to scale and want to sell higher-end products through dropshipping suppliers, then you’ll need to change your BigCommerce plan, which can become very expensive – unlike Shopify, which has no product limit regardless of the plan you choose.

Here are some of the top dropshipping features you’ll get with BigCommerce:

• A wide range of product sourcing apps that can connect you with some of the top dropshipping suppliers in the UK, including AliExpress and Spocket
• Access to the Modalyst app, one of the most popular and highly regarded dropshipping apps available. Keep in mind that this can only be used for European and US marketplaces (which isn’t a problem, seeing as BigCommerce itself is so great for international selling)

BigCommerce pros and cons

Read our full BigCommerce review here

Pricing

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	Best plan for small businesses
Standard Plan	Plus Plan	Pro Plan	Enterprise Plan
Price $29 per month (around £23)	Price $79 per month (around £64)	Price $299 per month (around £240)	Price Custom
Features Coupons and discounts Reporting tools Multi-channel selling	Features Customer groups and segmentation Abandoned cart recovery Stores credit card details	Features Google customer reviews Product filtering Custom product filtering	Features Express routing, priority support, and customer success management API (application programming interface) support Custom sales limit

See what BigCommerce could offer your small business Try BigCommerce for free

6. OpenCart

Best for: dropshipping business owners with experience in website building, who want to get going with minimal outgoing and support costs

Price from: free

Features

OpenCart is another ecommerce platform that is part of the open-source, self-hosted gang. A complete ecommerce solution, OpenCart provides all the features you’ll need to create a successful online store. These include the ability to add and manage products, leave product reviews and ratings, and pay via more than 20 payment gateways.

There are no limits on the number of products you can sell or manufacturers you can work with, which is great if you have lots of stock available from your dropshipping suppliers.

Again, because it’s a self-hosted platform, OpenCart gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of website design and features – although you’ll need some coding skills and experience to get any new elements up onto your site. We know that Magento also is free, but the key and very important different here is that OpenCart is free so you're saving lots.

Out of all the ecommerce platforms we’ve reviewed today, OpenCart is the only solution that doesn’t come with any specific design templates. Instead a generic – and basic – store template is given to you when you install the platform.

Managing products in the back end of your OpenCart store is very straightforward and user-friendly, so you can confidently keep track of sales, total orders and your total number of customers.

Here are some of the top dropshipping features you’ll get with OpenCart:

• A solid range of dropshipping apps that can help you optimise your dropshipping store and connect with some of the top dropshipping suppliers in the UK
• Unlimited products, unlimited categories and the ability to sell digital products. In other words, you’ll have full control over items and quantities
• A large number of payment gateways and multi currency capabilities. This means customers can make payments with zero hassle

OpenCart pros and cons:

Pricing

OpenCart software – free
Hosting plan – around £2–£10 per month
A custom design/template – £80+

How to choose an ecommerce platform for dropshipping

It’s all well and good knowing the pros and cons of ecommerce platforms, but the most important thing you need to do is make sure the solution you choose will bring the best out of your dropshipping store.

There are a number of criteria you will want to consider when selecting an ecommerce platform for dropshipping:

Ability to support dropshipping plugins

Dropshipping plugins (product sourcing apps) are incredibly useful and will make your life much easier. These applications have been designed to enhance your store’s dropshipping capabilities and make the whole process more streamlined.

Choosing an ecommerce platform that doesn’t offer any dropshipping-specific apps will hinder your business's growth.

Affordability

One of the primary reasons to start a dropshipping business is to keep costs down. If you are paying for an expensive subscription or web development fees, you will struggle to make much profit.

Dropshipping typically has low profit margins – so make sure you either use a free ecommerce platform, or one that costs very little but still offers all the functionality needed to scale and grow your business.

Ease of use

This one is important for businesses that don’t have any experience in coding or web design. The last thing you want to do is to try to build a dropshipping store using complex software with no prior experience.

Be sure to check what level of skills are required for each ecommerce platform. Typically, hosted platforms like Shopify are far easier to use, especially for ecommerce beginners.

Efficient customer support

24/7 support and multiple contact channels are what you want to aim for. You don’t want to be missing out on vital sales because you don’t have the support necessary to fix a problem.

Next steps: choosing the best ecommerce platform for dropshipping

Your dropshipping store vision will determine what ecommerce platform is best for you. If you want an all-in-one ecommerce solution that does a lot of the hard work for you, look no further than Shopify. Not only does it have excellent sales features and functionality, but it also has dedicated dropshipping apps and extensions to help you get the most out of your new business venture.

WooCommerce is the ideal platform if you want to get going right now with minimal costs. It is simple to install and has great dropshipping extensions and sales capabilities.

Regardless of our opinion, you should always compare ecommerce platforms before making a decision. This where our quick and free comparison tool comes in – simply provide us with a few details and we'll connect you with the best providers for your dropshipping business.

Dropshipping for eCommerce is what flexible working is to traditional work – a more dynamic, easy way to make your business venture a success. With the right tools and research, dropshipping could evolve from your side hustle into your full time job.