11 Best AliExpress Alternatives For 2024 (Comparison)

Looking for a new platform to power your dropshipping business?

AliExpress is a popular option for both of these situations but it’s not the only option out there. Others do have faster shipping times and tighter quality control.

In this post, we’re comparing the best AliExpress alternatives that you need to know about. This covers both platforms that can be used as a store-front and those that can handle dropshipping product fulfilment.

Note: If you’re looking for an easier way to start dropshipping, check out Spocket. This powerful tool makes it easy to source products from top suppliers and sell them on platforms such as AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and more.

#1 – Banggood

Banggood is our top pick for the overall best AliExpress alternative. It’s a direct-to-consumer online retailer that also offers a specialist dropshipping program for trade-only buyers.

As with AliExpress, you’ll find a huge range of items on Banggood sold at super-low prices. All told, there are over a million products to choose from, from over 100,000 suppliers (mostly in China).

Those products are organized into around 30 different categories. In my experience, the best deals are to be found in the consumer electronics, tools, and toys categories.

Shipping seems to be a little quicker than AliExpress, but it depends on the vendor. 

Banggod has 37 global warehouses in key locations across the world to help with logistics. If the product you order is able to be dispatched from a warehouse near you, delivery can take as little as a couple of days. If it’s sent from a depot in China, expect to wait 1-2 weeks.

Another great thing about Banggood is that it offers a dropshipping program for sellers. You can sign up to access the Banggood Dropship Center and get discounted trade pricing, fulfillment automation tools, and other exclusive benefits.

Then, you can connect Banggood to your online store via native integrations with eBay, Shopify, etc. to import products and manage orders. 

Because Banggood is still a relatively unknown supplier compared to AliExpress, it’s possible to snag some really neat products that your competitors don’t know about

Pros

• Lage product selection
• Dropshipping program
• Global warehouses
• Low prices

Cons

• Some low-quality products
• Support could be better

#2 – Dhgate

Dhgate is another Chinese cross-border ecommerce marketplace that serves both consumers and retailers. In many ways, it’s almost a clone of AliExpress, but there are some important differences between the two.

The biggest difference between AliExpress and DHGate is their product catalogs. DHGate offers a huge selection, with lots of stuff you wouldn’t be able to find on AliExpress.

However, the reason for that is that DHGate’s policies about what can/can’t be sold on the platform are much laxer than AliExpress’s. For example, AliExpress doesn’t allow sellers to sell counterfeits or replicas. But you’ll find lots of fakes like these on DHGate.

And with those lax policies comes a degree of risk. There are definitely some shady vendors on DHGate, and you don’t get as high a level of buyer protection there as you do on AliExpress. But you can mitigate that risk by doing your research and only buying from trusted sellers with plenty of good reviews/ratings.

All told, there are over 32 million products to choose from on DHGate, including categories like electronics, health & beauty, outdoor equipment, computers, jewelry & watches, apparel, home & garden, etc. Prices are super low and most vendors ship worldwide

Pros

• Huge selection of products
• Competitive prices
• Worldwide shipping

Cons

• Lots of replicas/fakes
• Poor buyer protection

#3 – Wish

Wish is an online ecommerce marketplace and mobile shopping app that’s really taken off over the last few years, and now boasts an impressive 12 million users.

Like AliExpress, Wish is a direct-from-supplier store, and pretty much all the products sold there come from China. 

As such, the prices are super affordable, and you can source some really neat stuff you probably wouldn’t be able to find on the high street in the West.

However, the tradeoff is, of course, quality. Part of the reason Wish has become so popular in recent years is because of the massive influx of social media influencers making ‘expectations vs. reality’ posts in which they show off their Wish hauls.

Sometimes, the products received don’t live up to the images shown on the product pages—but often, they do. It’s definitely hit-and-miss, but you can occasionally snag some incredible stuff for bargain prices.

Regarding product selection, you’ll find a lot of trending fashion accessories on there, as well as health and beauty products, pet accessories, gadgets, and more.

And overall, the quality is at least somewhat better than AliExpress, as Wish has more stringent policies regarding who can sell on their platform. 

Unfortunately for sellers, they recently shifted to an invite-only model. So you’ll have to get an invite if you want to set up shop and sell your items on the Wish marketplace (but you could probably still source products from there to sell through your dropshipping store).

Pros

• Nice UI
• Great for trending items
• Good mobile app
• Fantastic deals

Cons

• Hit-and-miss quality
• Invite-only for sellers

#4 – Amazon

Amazon is a platform that we don’t need to introduce—you’ve almost certainly heard of it already. But as AliExpress’s biggest competitor and the largest ecommerce marketplace in the world, we had to include it on this list.

AliExpress might be cheaper than Amazon and make it easier to source products from the Far East, but that’s pretty much all it has going for it. In every other way, Amazon comes out on top.

The products you’ll find on Amazon are better quality, buyer protection is stronger, and shipping is much, much faster to customers outside of China.

With Amazon Prime, you can place an order and have it delivered to your door the very next day. In contrast, you’ll usually be waiting at least a week or two for your AliExpress orders.

It’s great for sellers too. Over 300 million people shop on Amazon, and the platform gets billions of visitors every year, so it has a huge reach.

Plus, Amazon’s brand name is about as strong as it gets. It’s a trusted, reliable platform, so customers are more willing to enter their payment details, and conversion rates are higher.

You can dropship on Amazon too, provided that you follow their guidelines and dropshipping policy. For example, you’ll need to include your branding on the packaging and shipping materials (not the dropshipping suppliers).

Pros

• Rapid shipping
• Higher quality
• Better buyer (and seller) protection
• Huge reach

Cons

• Higher prices than AliExpress
• Competitive for sellers

#5 – Taobao

Taobao is the most popular shopping app in China. Like AliExpress, it’s owned by the Alibaba Group. But unlike AliExpress, it primarily caters to the domestic Chinese market.

There are lots of reasons you might prefer to shop on Taobao over AliExpress, but it also has a few huge, glaring downsides.

The best thing about Taobao is its prices. Because it caters to the domestic market, you can often find the same products on Taobao as AliExpress but at much lower prices. 

If you’re a shopper, that means you can get more bang for your buck. And if you’re a seller, lower supplier prices mean higher profit margins when you resell those products in your own store.

The other great thing about it is its product selection and quality. Over a billion products are listed on Taobao, and most of them are of higher quality than the stuff you find on AliExpress because vendors are competing for business amongst the discerning local Chinese population.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room. Yes, Taobao’s website is completely written in Chinese. There’s no international portal that caters to English speakers.

Obviously, this makes it tough to browse the site and find the products you’re looking for if you’re a non-Chinese speaker. But it’s possible to get around that by installing a translation extension on Google Chrome.

The other big issue is shipping. Right now, Taobao only ships to 15 different countries outside of China, including the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And while product prices are low, shipping tends to be fairly expensive.

The easiest way to get around the shipping issues and the language barrier is to go through an agent. This is something you’ll need to do if you want to dropship from Taobao.

The agent is a third-party company that acts as a middleman. They source the products for you, collect them from the supplier, store them in a warehouse, and package and ship them to your customers when you make a sale through your dropshipping store. 

Pros

• Super low prices
• Huge product selection
• Product quality may be better than AliExpress

Cons

• Chinese-language website
• Limited international shipping
• Requires agent for dropshipping

#6 – Gearbest

Gearbest used to be one of the best AliExpress alternatives for electronics and gadgets like phones, cameras, printers, laptops, etc. It’s fallen off the radar somewhat over the last few years, but it remains one of AliExpress’s top competitors.

Gearbest works with over 5,000 leading Chinese brands and suppliers—including big names like Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Huawei—and sells over a million products, so there’s plenty of selection.

Quality seems to be better than AliExpress, particularly for consumer electronics, as they have reasonably comprehensive quality control in place. They check their suppliers, inspect production lines, review test samples, spot-check products, and track supplier performance after sales to ensure they’re up to scratch.

They also have much better delivery options, shipping to over 200+ regions. It still often takes a week or two for Gearbest orders to arrive, but you shouldn’t be waiting months like you occasionally do with sellers on AliExpress.

All that said, Gearbest went through a bit of a rough patch when the pandemic hit. Prices seemed to increase, and shipping options were much more limited. This naturally led them to lose customers, and they were allegedly placed under bankruptcy review.

Eventually, the Gearbest.com site went completely offline. The website is now back online, but it’s on a backup.net domain instead.

Pros

• Great for electronics & gadgets
• Reasonable quality control
• Includes worldwide brands

Cons

• Poor website design
• Prices seem to have gone up over the last couple of years

#7 – LightInTheBox

LightInTheBox is another great alternative to AliExpress, particularly if you’re looking for apparel or lifestyle products. 

LightInTheBox is a global apparel ecommerce retailer that delivers products straight from the manufacturer, directly to consumers all around the world. It was founded in 2007 and has headquarters in Singapore.

Most of the best products you’ll find on LightInTheBox are in the apparel categories. We’re talking dresses, sweaters, T-shirts, tank tops, shoes, skirts, trousers, and the like.

In addition, you’ll also find other general merchandise like home & garden products, phones & accessories, beauty products, lighting, toys, etc. There’s a good selection to choose from, and they add 1000+ new items every day, so there are always fresh new deals to find.

They ship to nearly every country across the globe, and delivery times are generally much faster than AliExpress. To calculate the delivery time for a given product/vendor, you need to add the processing time to the shipping time. Both of these details should be provided on the product page.

A lot of the products offer next-day processing (these are marked with a ‘processed within 24 hours’ label in the store), and it usually takes 3-5 business days for shipping to countries like the US and the UK. So all told, you can usually expect your LightInTheBox orders to arrive in around a week. 

LightInTheBox also offers lots of supported payment methods, including the option to pay by PayPal, which is great as you should be protected by PayPal’s buyer protection and eligible for reimbursement if your purchase doesn’t arrive or match the seller’s description.

Pros

• Ships worldwide
• Transparent shipping times
• Supports PayPal
• Nice website

Cons

• Limited product categories

#8 – Geekbuying

Geekbuying is another AliExpress alternative that specializes in consumer electronics. It’s a great place to shop for high-ticket items like game consoles, kitchen appliances, 3D printers, electric scooters, and laptops.

Geekbuying doesn’t just offer a ton of cheap, under-$5 items that no one really wants, like many other AliExpress alternatives. The products you’ll find here tend to have higher price tags, but because they’re sourced from suppliers in China, you still get unbeatable value for money.

Geekbuying has local warehouses spread throughout Europe and the US. Any orders that are shipped from local warehouses tend to be delivered pretty quickly (2-5 working days, usually). 

However, if they’re shipped from warehouses in HK or China, expect to wait much longer than that.

Geekbuying is great for dropshippers too as they have their own dropshipping program. You can apply on their website—you’ll just need to submit your URL and some contact information. There are no minimum order quantities and Geekbuying provides you with product images and specifications.

Dropshippers that perform well can even get access to exclusive discounts on orders to further boost their profit margins. For example, if you order over $5,000 USD worth of products on Geekbuying per month, you may be eligible for a VIP 5 badge that entitles you to a 5% discount rate.

Pros

• Good value on electronics
• Lots of high-quality items
• Decent worldwide shipping
• Dropshipping program

Cons

• Limited product categories
• Not as cheap as some other platforms

#9 – Temu

Temu is a relatively new shopping app that’s taken the internet by storm. It was only launched late last year, and it’s already become the number one free shopping app on Google Play and Apple App Store.

The main factor driving Temu’s meteoric growth is its too-good-to-be-true prices. Like AliExpress, it offers extremely cheap pricing on a range of cheap goods sourced and shipped directly from manufacturers and suppliers in China.

It’s often compared to sites like Wish and Shein, but while those two apps focus primarily on fashion and apparel items, you can buy almost anything you can think of on Temu.

It’s basically an online shopping megastore. And some shoppers find it offers better quality, faster shipping times, and longer return windows than AliExpress to boot.

I also really like Temu’s shopping app. All too often, Chinese ecommerce sites are poorly made and offer a poor user experience, but Temu’s different. It’s well laid out 

The site looks great and products are clearly organized into categories that make sense. All the copy is written in clear English, and each product page has all the information you need, like payment options, specifications, shipping costs and delivery estimations, returns policy, etc. 

Plus, product reviews are clearly displayed on the page, which helps you to figure out which products actually live up to expectations, and which ones to avoid. You can instantly see the star rating and scroll down to read real reviews from previous customers, which often include real images of the products taken by buyers.

Pros

• Huge product selection
• Great mobile app
• Lots of very cheap products (under $2)
• Solid ratings system

Cons

• Hit-and-miss quality
• Support could be better

#10 – Shein

Shein is a great AliExpress alternative for regular shoppers who want to buy inexpensive, trendy apparel products. But I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for dropshippers.

Shein is a lot like Temu in that it’s a hugely popular mobile app that caters primarily to Gen Z consumers, and owes its success to its aggressive social media marketing strategy. The main difference between the two is that while you can get all sorts of products on Temu, Shein focuses mostly on trendy clothing.

In May 2021, Shein had more app downloads than Amazon. And it became the most downloaded shopping app in the world in May 2022. It’s since been knocked off that post by Temu, but it remains hugely popular thanks to its low prices that attract teenage shoppers.

Like AliExpress, pretty much all the products on Shein are incredibly cheap and come from China.

Initially, Shein functioned more like a dropshipping business as it didn’t design or manufacture its own stuff—-it just sourced them from Chinese wholesalers. But it’s now established its own supply chain system and has transformed into a fully integrated retailer.

One unique thing about Shein is that it ‘gamifies’ the shopping experience. Customers can earn reward points for completing tasks like adding items to their cart, joining contest shows, watching live streams, etc. Then, they can redeem these points later against purchases.

Shein also rewards you with discounts on your next purchase when you spend to keep you coming back for more.

While Shein is great for consumer shoppers, it’s not the best option for dropshippers as you’re not allowed to use their product photos. 

Pros

• Nice mobile app
• Gamified shopping experiences
• Trending products
• Good for apparel

Cons

• Not ideal for dropshipping
• Aggressive notifications/promotional messages
• Limited product categories (mostly apparel)

#11 – Alibaba

Alibaba is the B2B arm of AliExpress. Both websites are owned by the Alibaba Group, but each serves different types of customers.

AliExpress and Alibaba have a lot in common. They’re both huge marketplaces featuring over 200 million products, they both ship internationally, and they both serve hundreds of thousands of suppliers, mostly from China.

The difference between them is that whereas AliExpress serves both customers and small businesses, Alibaba is exclusively for business-to-business transactions.

As such, it’s not a good alternative for regular shoppers. But if you’re a seller who wants to source products directly from Chinese manufacturers or wholesalers at the lowest possible prices, it’s perfect.

Prices are generally lower on Alibaba than on AliExpress, and you have more customization options.

For example, you can communicate with the wholesale suppliers you’re buying from to request modifications or have them put your branding on the packaging and shipping materials. These are things you can’t generally do on AliExpress.

Most sellers on Alibaba have minimum order requirements. So you may have to purchase 50+ products at a time.

If you plan on dropshipping, this is obviously going to be a problem. But if you’re willing to shift your business model slightly, you could buy in bulk, then have the products shipped to a fulfillment center and sell from there. That way, you’d get better prices and be able to offer faster shipping to your customers.

Pros

• Great for ecommerce businesses
• Better customization options
• Lowest wholesale prices
• Huge product and supplier selection

Cons 

• Minimum order requirements
• B2B-only (not suitable for regular consumers)

Final thoughts

There you have it—11 of the best AliExpress alternatives for dropshipping and general shopping.

All of these marketplaces and ecommerce websites are great places to find awesome dropshipping products at inexpensive prices. 

But if you’re specifically looking for a website where you can source products to dropship, your best option is still to use a dedicated dropshipping platform like Spocket. Its ecommerce integrations and fulfillment features make things much easier.

Want more help starting your dropshipping or ecommerce store? Check out these posts:

• Is Dropshipping Worth It? Pros And Cons You Should Know
• 28 Best Dropshipping Products To Sell
• 12 Best Print-On-Demand Sites: Sell Merch + More
• 11 Best Ecommerce Platforms (Comparison + Top Picks)

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