Best Automated Dropshipping Software in 2024

Automated dropshipping can become an additional source of income, or a full replacement for a nine-to-five job. No matter, what strategy you choose, operating a store creates a significant workload, especially if it is your first project in this sector. The number of tasks at hand can make you wonder, how to automate a dropshipping store in 2024. There are a handful of issues you need to manage: fulfilling customers’ orders, finding out reliable suppliers, marketing your shop, and attracting new customers. For your shop to stay afloat, you need to work on these tasks continuously, which can be hard if you have a job that consumes your time.

But you have probably heard the stories of dropshippers, who make their dropshipping business a source of stable income while spending very little time on running it. As in many other areas of business, modern digital tools play a great role here. There are many tasks you do not have to do manually, using automated dropshipping tools instead. Such means of automation allow to spend less time, leaving you more resources for defining the strategy and other more creative tasks.

Below we describe some advice on using various means of automation to start dropshipping business, grow it and keep it profitable no matter how the market changes.

Table of contents

• What is Drop Shipping Software?
• The Purpose Of Dropshipping Automation
• Types Of Dropshipping Automation Software
• Downsides Of Dropshipping Automation
• Examples of Dropshipping Automation Tools

What is Drop Shipping Software?

Drop shipping software is an essential tool for businesses looking to streamline their operations by connecting with a network of drop shipping suppliers via a single platform. This software model allows e-commerce businesses to offer a diverse range of products without needing to establish their own extensive supply chain. Instead, the drop shipper – who holds and manages inventory – takes care of production, storage, and shipping, while the software user focuses on curating products for their online store.

Many drop shipping solutions seamlessly integrate with popular e-commerce platforms, enabling users to build their stores on platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce with ease. For example, plugins such as the AliExpress Dropshipping plugin for WordPress leverage this integration by allowing users to directly import products from AliExpress to their online stores.

The Purpose Of Dropshipping Automation

One of the difficulties faced by beginner dropshippers is managing inventory. Although you do not have to keep stock in a traditional way, storing goods at the physical space in the warehouse, you still need to determine, which goods you will offer and how to change your catalog according to seasonal shifts in demand, and other important trends.

When dropshipping was in its initial stage, all these tasks were done manually. The owner of an eCommerce store had to follow the following scheme:

• Find out reliable suppliers in the chosen niche. 
• Get from them the information about the product, such as its description and price. 
• Create a new page on their website with all the information. 
• Start marketing this product to customers. 
• When someone makes an order, contact the supplier and pass the data to them, so they can provide the end client with the desired goods.

All information exchange between the dropshipper and the supplier happened manually, via Excel spreadsheets or similar means used to keep track of orders. Checking the order status was also done individually. Such a system is applicable for a smaller store, but after you obtain more customers, the process gets overcomplicated and time-wasting. For this reason, eCommerce automation tools were created. They simplify the tasks described above, freeing more resources for more creative aspects of running a business.

Types Of Dropshipping Automation Software

To create your own online store, several types of automation tools are used to simplify various components of establishing and running an eCommerce project. Before we describe examples of paid and free dropshipping automation software, let’s describe the main groups they can be divided into. The variety of digital dropshipping tools consists of certain categories, each solving different business goals:

• Keeping track of vendors. Tools from this category give you knowledge, what happens with all your products at each moment of time, what suppliers you work with and what are their prices. Such tools can also be used to find information about new potential suppliers and establish contact with them. These functions can seem redundant for a small store, but with your business growing, you will find them increasingly useful, especially if you aim for a broader niche and multiple suppliers. 
• Tracking product data. It is useful to store data of all your goods within a single database. Automated dropshipping tools keep and update information about all your items, so you know, what you sell, in what quantities, and for what price. It makes it easier to analyze the profitability of various categories and plan your ad campaigns in advance. You can also set a price multiplier to automatically set all prices with a certain margin in relation to the supplier’s pricing.  
• Creating your website. You might think, that programming skills are necessary to create the website for your store, but with automated dropshipping, it is not the case. You can choose from premade templates, adjust them to suit your needs, and establish the working store in several days or even hours. In most cases, you do not need any coding experience to create a functional website that will look appealing to your customers. If you are willing to pay a bit more, you can even skip this stage and buy a pre-made dropshipping store for your chosen niche. 
• Processing orders. Each order goes through several stages, from the moment the customer adds something to their basket to the moment they get their package delivered. With automation tools, you don’t need to manually check the status of each order and notify a customer about its changes. 
• Marketing. Automation tools are important, especially if you are using several marketing platforms simultaneously. With them, you can run an ad campaign and analyze their results, schedule posts on social media, and improve communication with customers.

As you see, the answer to the question, can you automate dropshipping or not, is absolutely positive. There are multiple digital tools simplifying various aspects of managing an eCommerce website. Some of these solutions are universal, while others are developed for working with particular platforms, such as automated dropshipping aliexpress.

Downsides Of Dropshipping Automation 

Even with the best dropshipping automation tools, there are some downsides to using them. Keep them in mind when deciding, what tools you actually want to use. Some beginner dropshippers make the mistake of getting overly excited about automation and using too much of various software simultaneously. This can cause conflicts between various tools and also make the store website less responsive. To avoid that, carefully analyze, for which particular purpose you need a certain tool even if it is a free one. Here are some more potential issues you need to consider:

• You will have a smaller profit margin. Although some automation tools are free, most of them aren’t. Basically, you are outsourcing some tasks to a third party for a certain amount of money. If your store is effective, this is not a problem, but we advise you to plan your finances carefully, taking additional costs into account. 
• Learning how to use will take time. Although automation tools are usually well-documented, learning how to get the best out of them may require additional effort. Still, you do not need any programming experience, and mastering new tools pays off in the long term. 
• In some cases, you may have less flexibility, especially if you face some exceptional circumstances. Most automation tools are designed with the most commonly occurring scenarios in mind. Generally, it simplifies establishing your online store, but sometimes it means additional work to adjust to something non-typical. Anyway, such cases are rare, and usually automated dropshipping websites work smoothly. 

As you see, the approach described in this article can have some downsides, but they are not difficult to deal with. Dropshipping is currently on the rise, which means, you can find lots of advice, tutorial, and step-by-step breakdowns even for specific cases. This makes learning how to make dropshipping automated pretty easy while circumventing the issues mentioned above.

Examples of Dropshipping Automation Tools

Below we mention some examples of dropshipping. Currently, you can choose from a multitude of services and platforms. As an example, you can set up a WordPress store, use one of the other major dropshipping apps or combine several tools to establish a store on your own. In each case, the list of tools available to you may vary, but it is a matter of your choice, which tasks will you delegate to third parties, and which will remain under your control. Here are some ideas of tools that can be used to automate various routine tasks:

• WordPress is, by definition, of the most famous products in this area of business. There are multiple ways to automate Shopify store, using third-party tools and features added by WordPress developers. To dropship from Aliexpress, use Woocommerce in combination with AliNext dropshipping plugin, as this service allows you to easily import products and their descriptions from the most famous Chinese platform. 
• If you do not like the above-mentioned option for some reason, you can use the WooCommerce store with the AliNext Lite plugin (free version of the AliNext), which allows similar automation functionality but with some constraints. 
• If you are still in search of your niche, SaleHoo is a service whose main purpose is to find potentially beneficial product ideas and connect the dropshippers with suppliers and manufacturers. You can sort offers by location, minimum order value, and other parameters to find, what is the most suitable option for your store. 

There are many other tools besides those mentioned above. Start exploring them, and you will definitely find the solution that works for you and makes your dropshipping project profitable.