CJDropshipping Review [2024]: What Makes it Unique & Useful?

Long shipping times were always a great concern among the newbies in dropshipping business. But since COVID hit in January 2019, shipping times became an even bigger issue because most customers had nothing much to do besides sitting at home.

So naturally, their mind would keep thinking about the fact that they had placed an order from a website, and it has still not reached them. And even today, this concern stays still.

Now:

One obvious solution to this is working with a USA-based supplier. But the problem is that they just don’t work with any random dropshipper. Building a relationship with them may take time, and you may even need to show some sales proof to make them consider you.

That’s where CJDropshipping comes in!

For a long time, even though I had heard the name CJDropshipping, I still had no clue what it really was. The reason is I never bother to really look into it.

But now, when I did check it during my research for another article, I found CJDropshipping to be a fascinating Chinese eCommerce website that’s primarily for dropshippers.

Disclosure: This CJDropshipping review post contains affiliate links in the form of text and images. If you click through them and make a purchase, I’ll earn a commission at no additional cost to you, which will support the blog.

What is CJDropshipping?

Established in 2014, CJDropshipping is a Chinese eCommerce website where dropshippers can order products after receiving an order from their Shopify dropshipping stores.

Currently, it’s fulfilling orders for over 297,833 sellers worldwide, which may or may not be dropshippers. You can also check their about page.

Although an excellent sourcing platform for intermediate dropshippers due to its fast shipping time, CJDropshipping may not necessarily be a cakewalk or an almighty solution for beginners.

Does that mean a newbie shouldn’t use this website for sourcing their products? Well, let’s find out!

Who is the Owner of CJDropshipping?

CJDropshipping is owned by Andy Chou. He and his team launched their website primarily to sell jewelry.

One of their jewelry items, a Christian cross necklace, became their winner generating enough money to transition their jewelry-selling website into this dropship sourcing platform.

How to Use CJDropshipping?

Step 1 – After registering your free account at CJDropshipping, you can choose to source and/or sell your products in 4 ways:

1. sell the already listed products

2. source a product from 1688 or Taobao or AliExpress

3. sell their print-on-demand products using your custom/personalized designs

4. Send bulk inventory from your favorite sources (like Alibaba) to CJDropshipping’s warehouses, at which point you can also call them CJDropshipping fulfillment centers.

Step 2 – You can ask their team to provide you with custom pictures and/or images that you can then use on your Shopify store as well as in your marketing campaigns without fearing copyright infringements.

Step 3 – You can set up/request custom packaging and labels to properly Whitelabel your products to ensure that your customers get the best shopping experience and hence, remember you when they need to repurchase something or refer their friends to you.

Step 4 – After CJDropshipping receives your order, they’ll process/dispatch the product out of their warehouse within 1-4 days on average.

Note: Setting up CJDropshipping for the first time can be complicated. However, doing that initial setup, the order processing chain becomes a smooth air breeze.

How to Connect CJDropshipping to Shopify?

Follow the steps below to connect your Shopify store with your CJDropshipping account.

Step 1 – From the top bar menu or from the MyCJ dashboard, click on Shopify under the Authorization section.

Step 2 – On the next page, click on Add Stores, write your original, free Shopify store domain, and click Authorize.

Step 3 – This will install their app inside your Shopify store, in which you can easily modify all the settings according to your needs.

And if you have Oberlo installed on your store, remove it as you don’t need to use the Oberlo after installing the CJDropshipping app.

That’s it!

Oh, by the way, only after linking them together will you be able to push products to your Shopify store and set up an automatic order fulfillment process.

What Products can You Sell / Source From CJDropshipping?

You can sell pretty much anything starting from regular products to print-on-demand products, through CJDropshipping. But you can’t sell the products that aren’t allowed by your target country’s laws.

This also means that you can’t sell copyright-infringing products.

How to Find Winning Products on CJDropshipping?

There’s no magic bullet or section to find winning products on their website easily. If you want to rely solely on this website for product hunting, then your best choice is to go through the different categories on their homepage, some of which are – New Products, Hot Selling, Video Products, etc.

But I’d recommend getting either ShopInspect [ review ] or Intelligynce [ review ] to find your winning products to Avoid WASTING your advertising budget on the wrong products.

Cost of Using CJDropshipping

I hope you were thinking of this question because it’s not as simple as you may think of their pricing.

Is CJDropshipping free?

You can set up your CJDropshipping account and connect with your Shopify store for free.

But if you need to use their additional services (some of which you really should), like getting custom labels, logos, and packaging, then you’ll need to pay for it according to this structure.

By the way, the warehouse fee only applies if you send the products to their USA warehouse/fulfillment center from anywhere else, like Alibaba.

How to Pay CJDropshipping?

They allow you 8 ways to pay for your orders and services, among which PayPal and credit cards would be the best choice. However, you can check all their currently accepted payment modes over here.

CJDropshipping Return Policy

They haven’t mentioned a clear refund period, but you can open a dispute as long as your order status shows as ‘open’ on your CJDropshipping orders page.

I’d also recommend you notify your customers through an email to record pictures and videos of the product unboxing. This will be needed as proof while opening any order disputes with CJDropshipping.

Note: ‘Opening a Dispute’ with CJDropshipping simply means being able to open a request for a refund or a replacement.

Check their detailed return policy to avoid any unwanted chargebacks from your customers.

Is CJDropshipping Good, Legit, and Reliable?

In one way, CJDropshipping is just another China-based eCommerce platform with the difference that it’s available for dropshippers.

Based on a high number of their customers, most of whom are happy, this platform is as legit as possible. This means that CJDropshipping is not a scam.

The most significant reliability factors about them are:

• their fast shipping at low prices
• their fantastic integration with Shopify and a few other top eCommerce platforms
• warehouses in 30 countries, ensuring that fast delivery.

And they don’t just allow any random seller to sell their products on the CJDropshipping platform. Every seller has to go through a review process to get approved for selling through their platform.

Another point:

CJDropshipping staff also do a free quality inspection for every single unit of the products before it leaves their warehouse.

They also offer quality inspection for the products you source and send them to their warehouse from other supplier websites like Alibaba. But they offer this service at a fee.

Branding with CJDropshipping

To make higher profit margins in dropshipping, you need to add branding to your online store and your product.

CJDropshipping is a one-stop platform that can help your store look branded because it lets you private/white label your products by adding your logo to the products, custom notes inside your packages, and custom labels over your packages.

FYI:

You see such private labeled products being consistently sold on Amazon every day. That’s why you see carbon copies of the same product, but with different brand names printed over them.

For better private labeling:

You can even send custom photography requests to the CJDropshipping team once you’ve found your winning product. Until you find your winning product, you can just use the product images available for free on CJDropshipping and AliExpress.

CJDropshipping Processing Time, Shipping, and Delivery Time

Like most eCommerce platforms, CJDropshipping takes 1-4 days to process their orders and dispatch them out of their warehouses.

The real benefit, however, is in their shipping methods. Basically, what ePacket is for AliExpress, CJpacket is for CJDropshipping. This means that CJpacket is the best solution for dropshippers as a combination of fast shipping and lower price.

But they also offer you many other shipping methods you can choose if you feel so. But make sure only to use trackable shipping methods; otherwise, CJDropshipping won’t accept your order dispute requests.

And yes, CJPacket is a trackable shipping method.

CJDropshipping Warehouses

They have their warehouse(s) in 30 countries, including the USA. And you can see the complete list of their warehouses by hovering your mouse over the ‘Warehouses’ link in the top bar menu of their website.

User Interface and Navigation

It’s quite an expansive and complicated user interface, I must say. There wasn’t any easier way for me to cover all the aspects of the CJDropshipping interface.

Now, I’m not saying that you won’t be able to use it as a newbie. Instead, You can actually get it set up and learn how to navigate through it if you spend some good hours understanding it. Once everything is set up, you won’t need to waste your time every day managing and fulfilling your orders.

In the end, that’s what matters.

CJDropshipping API

As I told you that CJDropshipping also fulfills your orders from your Shopify stores for you. And to do this, you need to use their API. You need to use CJDropshipping API to connect the platform to your Shopify store, for which you may wanna look up this page from their website.

But it doesn’t stop there. You also need to install the CJDropsipping chrome extension to benefit the platform fully.

CJDropshipping Support Quality

The customer support team of CJDropshipping is pretty impressive, according to most of their customers. However, you can only submit tickets as a way to contact their team to get answers to your queries.

But you must understand as English is not their first language, so there may be some difficulties in having conversations.

By the way, you can also go to their Help Center to get access to their free tutorials on how to use the CJDropshipping platform.

How does CJDropshipping deal with the Chinese New Year?

Although Chinese new year celebrations continue for one month, the actual holiday period lasts 7 days. CjDropshipping has arranged for a small amount of staff to work on those days.

The only day, or the evening nobody works over there, is during the evening of Chinese new year’s day.

Now, you can understand that one evening can’t affect your business’s operations. So, you can keep running your marketing campaigns throughout the year without fear.

However, importing more inventory could be problematic during that period if the stock inventory gets empty.

Hence, you should probably pre-order more inventory or talk with their customer support regarding this as soon as you sign up to ensure a smooth order flow during their new year.

CJDropshipping Alternatives

China has many eCom product suppliers, and you must be curious whether CJDropshipping is best for you or if you should pick another supplier. However, not all of these are literally suppliers.

Now, What do I mean by that?

Let’s check out.

1. CJDropshipping vs AliExpress

AliExpress is the first Chinese eCommerce store you hear about while learning the dropshipping business model. You can almost consider it the Amazon of China.

Until the end of 2018, AliExpress was doing fine as it had cheaper rates and fast enough shipping (of course, it was not 1-week delivery fast, but acceptable). You could find anything and everything over there to sell on your Shopify store.

But then Covid hit the world in 2019, and the US govt. Also, some of their policies changed, causing the shipping prices to hike a lot.

Today, using AliExpress is just not viable enough for a growing dropshipping business. The only time you could possibly use it is for the product testing phase.

On the other hand:

CJDropshipping has warehouses in all your top target countries, resulting in cheaper and faster delivery. And they also do product quality inspections resulting in a much lower rate of chargebacks and disputes from your customers.

And unlike AliExpress, CJDropshipping does integrate with your online store, making the order fulfillment run on automation.

now that:

AliExpress will send separate packages for the products if their sellers are different. Still, CJDropshipping sends all the products in one package to your customers regardless of whether the seller is the same or separate for each product in your customer’s order receipt.

Also, CJDropshipping puts only your details over the packages, whereas AliExpress packages have the seller’s details on them.

2. CJDropshipping vs EPROLO

At most points, CJDropshipping and EPROLO are pretty much similar in features and quality.

But their differences lie in that EPROLO can offer you a faster, almost half shipping time. However, they don’t provide fulfillment centers like CJDropshipping, where you could send bulk inventory even from other suppliers. 

3. CJDropshipping vs Chinabrands

Chinabrands provides products and caters to both customers as well as to other sellers like you. You can say that Chinabrands is a combination of AliExpress and Alibaba, but with around 200 shipping methods and warehouses in over 50 countries.

That being said, they offer you wholesale prices and process your orders within 24 hours, whereas CJDDropshipping takes 1-4 days to process and dispatch the products.

Chinabrands has one problem, though, which is a low stock inventory in their USA warehouses. This can quickly become a problem within a week of starting your marketing campaigns. But you won’t have to face any stock shortage with CJDropshipping.

4. CJDropshipping vs Spocket

CJDropshipping sources all the products directly from China and may also fill up its warehouses abroad.

But Spocket sources its products from vetted local suppliers and Etsy artisans. Most of these suppliers are from the USA or UK, making their delivery fast.

Unlike CJDropshipping, Spocket is not free, and the cheapest best plan is their Pro plan. I think you should get 5 months free by paying yearly instead of monthly.

5. CJDropshipping vs SaleHoo

CJDropshipping is sourcing and providing you with the products directly through their platform, whereas SaleHoo is a directory of wholesale suppliers, many of which are based in the USA.

Finding such local wholesale suppliers through Google search may or may not be easy for you because they don’t know search engine optimization stuff.

Using one of the suppliers from their directory lets you source products for lower prices and guarantees super-fast shipping prices.

Using SaleHoo, you could even transition to selling high-ticket products like Bicycles on your Shopify dropshipping store.

But the best part about them is their highly affordable lifetime plan. Check it out if you’re considering using the SaleHoo directory.

CJDropshipping Review: Conclusion

CJDropshipping has better rates, faster shipping, and integrated order fulfillment. But their inventory is relatively small; hence, you may not necessarily find the same products over there that you may see on Alibaba or Aliexpress.

Many products on CJDropshipping don’t have product descriptions, images, or reviews to work with. The reason is that all of their platform’s products are managed directly by their staff and not by the separate product sellers.

However, you can submit a request to their team to provide you with custom images, videos, and maybe even product descriptions.

But this is possible only if and when you start getting a good number of daily orders on your Shopify store.

Until then, you have to source this marketing data from Aliexpress and from other Shopify stores.

Overall, I’d say you should use the CJDropshipping platform from the beginning, especially if you’re selling to USA customers, to ensure faster shipping and to provide your customers with a much better shopping experience.

Now, tell me in the comments below if this post helped you make an informed decision about CJDropshipping or not.

Let’s see what can be improved over here!