Dropshipping has emerged as a business model that enables entrepreneurs to enter the industry with minimal upfront investment and significant profit potential.
In essence, dropshipping allows individuals to act as intermediaries connecting customers with the products they desire without the complexities of managing inventory or purchasing in bulk.
In this article, I explore Doba, one of the top platforms for locating dropshipping suppliers, and review how well it is performing in 2023. As a dropshipping entrepreneur, the information you will find in this article can help you decide whether or not Doba will be a good fit for your online store.
What Is Doba Dropshipping?
Doba functions as a middleman connecting dropshipping providers with retailers like yourself. One of the standout advantages of opting for Doba is its range of huge product selection reaching over 2 million items. To ensure quality sourcing of these items, a network of reliable vendors is employed.
As a retailer, you have the freedom to explore this selection and choose the goods you want to offer without the hassle of managing inventory or logistics.
What makes Doba unique is its range of features and integrations that seamlessly facilitate listing and selling these products on e-commerce platforms. By integrating Doba into your existing store you can effortlessly start selling products without the challenges associated with inventory management.
Now let’s dive into how Doba works.
What Doba Dropshipping Offers?
The Doba platform offers a number of user tools that can help you find the products and suppliers for your company, one of which is the product feed, which prominently displays products.
This feed functions as a chosen collection of items that can jumpstart your search by presenting products right from the beginning. It also offers a comprehensive browsing catalogue.
This catalogue gives you the ability to customise your search parameters allowing for fine-tuning of your product and supplier hunt based on criteria.
Doba also offers features that can help you find trustworthy suppliers quickly. The platform evaluates each of its vendors based on their prior output and puts that info on a scoreboard for you and other sellers to see.
From this card, you can quickly verify the fulfillment rate, refund policy, processing time, and shipment origin of any potential supplier you may work with.
When you do this, you prevent your precious clients from having a bad experience due to untrustworthy providers. Any of the suppliers can be clicked to uncover more information that will help you decide on your sourcing strategy.
The Doba site also provides a section that contains a series of short lessons that can quickly teach you the basics of dropshipping if you’re a newbie. You’ll find this in their blog. These lessons will guide you through choosing the appropriate niche for your brand.
Benefits And Downsides Of Dropshipping With Doba
At this point, you now know the basics of what Doba is used for, it is time to make a Pros and Cons list that can help you decide on whether you’ll be using Doba.
First, the Pros:
A User-friendly Site
One notable advantage of Doba is its commitment to providing users with an easy-to-use platform. It caters to basic needs by offering simple ways to find products and refine search results.
The site comes with the ability to customise and filter searches which simplifies the process whether you’re searching for suppliers or specific products. Moreover, Doba goes the mile by providing resources that equip users with the necessary knowledge to rapidly and effectively grow their businesses on the platform.
An Extensive Catalogue of Products
A key component of Doba’s appeal to dropshippers is its huge product selection. Doba has a broad assortment that includes almost every category and boasts an astounding inventory of over 2 million products.
From electronics and fashion to home decor and more, the extensive catalogue serves a wide range of market groups. Regardless of your industry or target market, Doba’s catalogue will definitely have the product choices you desire to sell.
This huge assortment provides another benefit in that it allows you to quickly adjust to shifting market trends and customer preferences. That way you will not be limited to a certain market or product category, allowing you the freedom to test various growth opportunities.
Easy integration With Various E-commerce Platforms
Doba’s ability to seamlessly integrate with various e-commerce platforms means that whichever platform you are currently using, they are more than likely to be compatible with it.
This integration comes with a set of advantages such as quick, precise, and error-free transfer of product details such as prices, descriptions, and images from Doba to your store.
By integrating with your store, Doba is also able to provide tracking information on your orders.
Now, for the Cons.
1. It’s Expensive
As of September 2023, a Doba membership will cost you $24.99 per month with limited features, $49.99 per month with full access, or $249.99 per month for larger businesses, so yeah, it’s definitely one of the most expensive options to use.
Although it also has quarterly or annual plans, they require a considerable amount as upfront investments.
Not only that, the products sold by Doba have been reported to be more expensive. Even though they claim that their products are at a fairly low price, it’s quite difficult to find these products and when you do, they are usually in low amounts or out of stock.
In addition to this, as a dropshipper, you will likely pay “dropshipping fees” and other shipping fees on most items provided by Doba and if you’d like a refund, you will have issues with that as the site has no clear money-back policy.
2. Customer Service Issues: Some of the dropshipping suppliers provided by Doba have been reported by users to have poor customer service .
3. There have been cases of delayed Shipping.
4. Poor return process as there is no return policy outlined on the site.
How Doba Stacks Against Other Dropshipping Suppliers?
Doba Or Oberlo
When compared, Doba and Oberlo are both major players in the dropshipping industry, but they each have unique features and benefits that meet various demands and preferences.
Doba boasts a vast catalogue with more than 2 million items gathered from numerous vendors across the world. This means you get to have a wide range of alternatives.
On the other hand, Oberlo works with the Shopify platform and provides access to items sold on Aliexpress exclusively. Despite AliExpress having a huge assortment of items, Oberlo’s restriction to Aliexpress is limiting.
Oberlo’s feature set is also simple in comparison to Doba, especially if you have expanding business needs. Here’s a side-by-side comparison if you need it.
Doba Or Spocket
Thanks to its extensive catalogue that covers numerous areas. Doba makes it simple to access a wide variety of products for your online store, whether you’re just getting started or have an established firm.
Spocket meanwhile prioritises the quality of its products. To guarantee that every product is satisfactory, they painstakingly curate their marketplace. Spocket offers sample product orders to provide customers with more assurance.
This function will grant you the ability to directly evaluate and confirm the calibre of the goods you intend to sell, giving customers more faith in your product offerings.
In terms of pricing, Doba provides packages with a 30-day trial for a start-up-level plan. This will allow you to test out the platform and see what to expect before you go full in and the basic membership (the Doba Start-up plan) costs $19.99/Month or $239.88 if you choose the annual plan.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison if you need it.
What People Say
From the Doba review page Trustpilot, Doba is rated 4.5 stars out of 5 with 69% 5-star ratings and 23% 1-star ratings.
Going into individual comments for a closer look, I found some mixed reviews with some absolutely loving the platform and leaving behind comments like;
“I can’t say enough good things about Doba as a supplier. The quality of their products is exceptional, and my customers have been thrilled with their purchases. Doba’s commitment to delivering top-notch quality has earned them my trust and loyalty.”
But there were also some bad reviews like one customer who said ” Fulfillment rate for my orders for Doba has dropped from about 80pct to 60pct which is horrible for my company.
I started off with 100 orders per month and now down to about 10 per month. Which is why I have moved on from Doba and their suppliers, only using them when a great deal is available for certain products.”
To get a clearer view, I also went through the Better Business Bureau ratings and comments and poorer ratings with Doba getting only 1.2 stars out of 5.
Getting Started With Doba Dropshipping
After taking into consideration all that has been said, if you decide to use Doba to connect with dropshipping suppliers, here’s a quick guide on how to get started:
1. It All Starts With A Search
The moment you enter the Doba site, you’re taken to the dashboard. From here, you can use the search bar to begin looking for the products that fit your store’s needs. Doing this doesn’t require an account.
2. Create An Account and Start Building Your Inventory
The next step will be to register. Just follow the process and create an account. Once you are logged in, you can continue your search for your niche products and suppliers.
Once you have gotten the products you want to sell, you can then create your own inventory list of the products. Your inventory list can be compared to a wishlist.
Adding items to this list is pretty easy; simply click on a relevant item to examine its information. Then click the ‘Add to Inventory List’ button next to the product image to create your inventory list.
This gives you an easy method to keep track of, browse, and handle goods you might be interested in dropshipping.
3. Export, Upload & Sell
Once you have the products you want, you can now export the product information from your inventory list into a zip file so you can access it offline, or add it to a spreadsheet.
It’s easy to do this by selecting each product you want to download individually.
Otherwise, you can check ‘select all’ and then download a zip file containing information about all the products in your inventory list.
You can then upload the products onto your own online store or website. Once a customer places an order and pays, you can then place the order to the supplier on Doba who handles the packaging and shipping.
4. Track Your Orders
Relying on a dropshipping supplier means entrusting them with your entire delivery process. But, to ensure your products are delivered on time and that your customers are satisfied, tracking their orders and deliveries is essential.
To do this, Doba also provides the feature of keeping track of the details of your orders, including the order status, dates, suppliers, buyers, locations, and amounts.
Conclusion
Doba is a great platform with top-level features that can help any dropshipping retailer manage their inventory. But, I will not recommend the site for a beginner due to the high cost of membership. Although, for an expert dropshipper who requires the benefits Doba offers and is confident in making profits on the platform, Doba is perfect.
If you’re looking to start dropshipping, I’d recommend you go straight to looking for a supplier that focuses specifically on your product niche. For example, if you’re a clothing store, a dropshipping supplier like Globallyfulfill, a company that specializes in clothing and apparel management and delivery will be ideal for your store.
