Anyone who has inquired about getting into the drop shipping arena has probably asked themselves about Doba vs Shopster. Many of you may remember the four-part series I did on Doba not long ago.
Both companies aggregate hundreds of wholesalers and allow you (as the entrepreneur) to sell products of your choosing. So let’s jump right in and see the fundamental differences I uncovered.
Shopster has an amazing backend interface with an intuitive web 2.0 feel. The web newbies and less web savvy will find solace in Shopster’s 5-step program on getting started. Literally within 15 minutes you can be online and selling products with the sitebuilder.
The sitebuilder is huge for the average joe without web skills. Doba does not offer a sitebuilder and is partnered with a company called 3XP web solutions that will cost you more money on top of your monthly subscription to get up and running.
I created two sites to see where the rubber meets the road in terms of usability. I created Dealflicker.com (Doba) and trimslimusa.com (shopster). I built dealflicker with open source Creloaded 6.2 and shopster with the built-in sitebuilder tool.
Because of the custom nature of building Dealflicker, I immediately faced product distribution problems (not Doba’s fault….but lack of sitebuilder is). I had to do csv exports and custom formatting to get products out to 3rd party distribution channels like google base, pricegrabber, bizrate etc…Shopster on the other hand was a joy, I clicked on the 3rd party export channel and had 7 preformatted exports for various distribution channels.
Inventory management was the other shortfall I saw in custom building a site for Doba. Again, it would have been easy to build a custom module or add some code to facilitate inventory management, but that limits the average entrepreneur for an out-of-the-box solution. The inventory quantity seamlessly intergrates into the website to montior out-of-stock etc…
The one drawback I saw with Shopster compared to Doba was the breadth and range of products available for sale. Doba has an impressive inventory of products available to drop ship compared to Shopster’s smaller inventory. A relatively easy solution to solve for Shopster I’m guessing, as products are continually being added.
Ebay Features
Both sites had the push to ebay features where products are selected and formatted on the fly and sent to ebay for live auction. Again, the Shopster really shined in terms of interface here, although both sites were effective in terms of functionality.
Education features
Both sites had ample education resources, with Doba having more educational resources than Shopster but not necessarily presented as effectively as Shopster.
Support
Shopster was genuinely interested in making sure I had the resources needed and solving my problems. Doba was helpful as well, but leaned more toward online resources and upselling my account and 3XPservices.
Overall UI (user interface) and usability was obviously a big design choice for the folks at Shopster where as Doba was about functionality and content and large inventory, both valid approaches. I think Doba could benefit tremendously with the addition of a sitebuilder (acquisition of 3XP maybe?). Shopster could benefit from a larger inventory. In the end both are formidable drop shipping solutions but I think Shopster gets my vote in the end with the ease of use, comfort level and affordability.
Word to the Wise
Profit margin and shipping costs and fees remain to be a problem with the “drop-shipping clearing-house” space in general. It remains a challenge to turn a profit with so many mark-ups before the end user. Reason 101 of ecommerce tactics…don’t compete soley on price.
Although the ebay features are nice to haves, ebay has proven time and time again to fail as a money maker for the average drop-shipper.
Is there any opensource way to build a doba or shopster. I have been looking everywhere.
You could extend a platform like wordpress or drupal to handle something like that.
Get Selling Today do have many suppliers but they do not offer paypal even thou they have the icon on their store front templates and website but in the payment check out page paypal is no where to be found, as a customer i wan to pay using paypal and for an ecommerce to not have this as big as Get Selling Today is some thing is not write………I think Get Selling Today is a fraud, implement paypal as one form of payment on your store front along with visa and master card and you have more of a legitimacy.
Hey Mark
I have been with Get Selling Today for almost a year now – They are great for me, and I have been making alot of money – They recently took Paypal Down (they sent out an email about a month ago) because paypal changed there system, and had 2 days of downtime. So this caused Conflict for all websites. So they took it down quick and in a hurry – I verified this on another site I tried to buy from the same day MonoPrice.com and they used paypal, and it screwed there whole accounting system up when paypal was flaking out.
I know Get Selling Today will bring it back on board just as soon as they confirm paypal has sorted out there issues.
It does suck, but its not there fault, its Paypal’s
Justin
Paypal is now back I see – Just wanted to update the post
Hey
I agree – Get Selling Today is Awesome – I use them as well for the past 6 months. Decent products to choose from, there templates are very well optimized for search engines as I recieved my first website sale within 1 week of setting up my store from an organic google search. Easy 35.00 profit on that one sale.
and best of all Get Selling Today took care of the order from start to finish! Only thing I had to do was request my funds to be relased, and Wammo!
5 Stars for Get Selling Today
Hello,
I have tried Get Selling Today http://www.GetSellingToday.com they have a very good solution that i find to be way better then Shopster or Doba. Think of the best of Shopster, and the Best of Doba put into a new single solution with additional features. I think as of right now Get Selling Today has over 1.2 million products to choose from.
I recommend this to anyone looking to start and online store.
Hey,
Im with Get Selling Today as well – These guys have there act together! Really enjoy there service and support!
What is the name of your retail store
Wholesale-Sports.com
I used http://inventorysource.com/ doba was just a middleman…i liked shopsters store…but I already had a 3D Cart and Inventory Source was fully automated with my platform AND 2 of my current wholesale supplier sources.
Thanks for contributing Mr. M, I just checked out inventorysource and it looks like a worth while platform. I will consider it in future posts.
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Nice Comparison!
What is important is your sales profit, It doesn’t matter whether it is built from Doba or Shopters.
Honestly sometimes it does not matter who your dropshipper is.Yet i will advice anyone to find a dropshipper who is able to dropship products at the lowest price,you add more to your pocket. Even the hardest market can be defeated by an amateur, but it takes time and knowledge. I’ve been doing this for over a year now,using Doba and Prostores. Both ends are easily intergrated. It takes money to make money. You sell little things you make little money,you sell big things you make big money, but the fine line is that too expensive means little or no customers, too cheap means almost no money as long as your using a dropshipper. You have to do research,look for the dropshipper that offers more for your buck. FOR ALL THE NEWBIES OUT THERE, (excuse the caps but i want to make a point) YOU MUST MARKET TO GET CUSTOMERS (internet marketting is a whole new dimention to discover by a beginner) . A good marketting company will charge you monthly and if your store (not talking about ebay) is set up right, accepting credit cards (important) and various payment options, your chance of sucess is higher. Marketting can cost thousands and thousands, but there are companies that’ll charge you below a $100.00. I advice you chose something above $100.00/month. Sell products that will return what you spend and more. Make sure you budget and plan well, find out all the information you need to know about your dropshipper and the store you want to create.What i have said here is to advice those who are wondering how to put it all together.I’m still working on mine. I learn everyday and have hope that there are bigger things coming my way. Hope i have helped someone out there.
I have been interested in dropshipping for some time. I have mainly focused on doba because I’m an affiliate of theirs. I have only resently been looking into other dripshipping companys. How much cheaper is shopster then doba? and if you do not recomend selling dropshipped products on ebay then where DO you recomend selling them???
I’ve never used Shopster, but bought into Doba last fall thinking I would be able to spend a couple hours a night listing eBay auctions for an extra few bucks a month. After putting up several ‘tester’ auctions, I found that it wasn’t a very good eBay wholesale choice, because the companies who are selling to Doba are already putting their own stuff on eBay at lower prices! I might try my own site with Doba as my distribution source, but would not recommend using it for an eBay sales source.
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