AliExpress is highly popular among dropshippers, while Banggood, though less well-known, offers many noteworthy advantages.
The main difference between AliExpress and Banggood is that AliExpress offers a broader selection and cheaper products, but the quality and shipping times are worse. In contrast, Banggood emphasizes product quality and more reliable shipping, but their products tend to be more expensive and have a smaller selection.
So, which one of the two is better for dropshipping?
Let’s compare the two in more detail to find the best option for you!
Overview: AliExpress vs. Banggood
If you’re looking for a quick answer, we have created an overview table highlighting the main differences between AliExpress and Banggood:
| AliExpress | Banggood | ||
| Pros | Cons | Pros | Cons |
| A wider range of products available | Quality control is worse | Better quality control for the products | Less products available |
| Good integrations with ecommerce platforms | Shipping is slower and unreliable | Shipping is reliable and quicker | Higher product prices |
| More winning products available | High competition | Less competition as with AliExpress | Lacks integrations with ecommerce platforms |
| Product discovery tools that help with product research | Lack of customer support | 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support | Less winning products available |
| Lower product prices | Return/refund process is long and complicated | More straightforward return/refund process | No product research tools for finding winning products |
Note: Both AliExpress and Banggood have no minimum order quantities (MOQs). That means both support dropshipping!
What is AliExpress?
AliExpress is one of the leading Chinese online retail platforms targeted at international buyers. It’s especially popular among dropshippers due to its cheap prices and large product catalog.
The platform offers products across various categories, including:
- Home & Garden
- Consumer Electronics
- Home Improvement & Lighting
- Women’s Clothing
- Sports & Entertainment
- Babies & Kids
AliExpress was launched in 2010 as a part of the Alibaba group.
According to them, AliExpress has 150+ million active buyers and is available in 220 countries and regions.
It’s estimated that AliExpress has over 100 million products, which is 100 times more than Banggood.
What is Banggood?
Banggood is a direct-to-consumer retail platform that offers over a million products from vetted suppliers, mostly from China.
While it may not be as popular among dropshippers as AliExpress, some still use it to find products.
Banggood’s most popular product categories are:
- Sports & Outdoor
- Automobiles & Motorcycles
- Toys & Hobbies
- Home Appliances
- Home & Garden
- Computers & Office
Banggood, founded in 2006 and based in China, claims to have over one million products. They source these from 100,000 suppliers across 30 different categories.
Although Banggood’s product range doesn’t match AliExpress’s scale, it’s still impressive!
Plus, Banggood has other standout points over AliExpress, which we’ll explore in this article.
The pros and cons of AliExpress vs. Banggood
Next, let’s check the pros and cons of AliExpress vs. Banggood:
Pros of AliExpress (or cons of Banggood)
We’ll start with the pros of AliExpress (or cons of Banggood).
1. Large selection of products available
AliExpress is known for its large selection of over 100+ million products across dozens of categories and subcategories.
Here is an example of some of the main categories:
As a dropshipper, this extensive selection gives you a lot to choose from.
AliExpress also showcases its products in various catalogs, such as bundle deals and super deals, as seen here:
The wide range of listings on AliExpress can help you with product research and inspire you to explore different options.
In contrast, Banggood’s catalog is more limited. Their website shows one million products in 30 different categories.
Here is a screenshot of some popular Banggood categories:
Looking into Banggood’s home page, it’s clear they don’t pay as much attention to creating appealing categories as AliExpress does.
Here are some examples from Banggood:
As you can see, while Banggood does have categories, they are not as extensive as those on AliExpress.
2. Low product prices
AliExpress is known for offering some of the lowest prices in the retail industry.
As part of Alibaba, sellers on AliExpress are often manufacturers, exporters, and wholesalers who can offer products at very low wholesale prices.
There are many reasons why AliExpress is so cheap, but a few additional reasons are that it has low overhead costs and can sell in high volume.
In contrast, Banggood’s product prices are higher.
That is because they ship from their own warehouse, invest more resources into customer support, ensure their suppliers are well vetted, and have overall higher operational costs.
Let’s compare the price differences between AliExpress and Banggood with an example.
Here is a night lamp projector from AliExpress:
As you can see, the product is priced at around $18, and shipping costs $2, for a total cost of $20.
Here is the same product on Banggood:
As you can see, the product price is around $24, and the standard shipping cost worldwide is $4, so the total total cost is $28.
That’s $8 more than with AliExpress, which is quite huge!
Although not all products have this significant price difference, it is still quite notable if you compare the two platforms.
Banggood also offers discounts of 5-20% for dropshippers as part of their dropshipping program:
The more you dropship with them, the higher the discount is.
3. Excellent integrations with ecommerce platforms
There are more solutions for automating dropshipping with AliExpress than with Banggood, thanks to various amazing third-party tools.
For example, different dropshipping automation software, including DSers, AutoDS, and Spocket, offer solutions for importing products from AliExpress into your online store:
There are also many AliExpress product discovery tools that can help you find winning products for your dropshipping store.
Compared to AliExpress, Banggood has fewer third-party tools for automating product importing, shipping, and fulfillment.
However, one cool thing about Banggood is that they have their own dropshipping program, which is great if you own a Shopify store.
To get access to the dropshipping program, you need to apply for it first.
If you don’t want to use the dropshipping program, there are still a few third-party solutions that allow you to dropship Banggood products through Shopify.
AutoDS is one such solution. Using their app, you can import products from Banggood to Shopify and fulfill orders when they come in.
You can download AutoDS for Banggood from the Shopify App Store:
As you can see, Banggood does offer some integration solutions, but significantly fewer than AliExpress.
That’s largely because Banggood is not as famous for dropshipping.
4. More ‘trendy’ products available
When browsing AliExpress and Banggood, you’ll notice that AliExpress has more ‘trendy’ products.
Unlike Banggood, many AliExpress products will leave you with that ‘wow’ feeling and have winning product characteristics.
If you scroll through the best-selling products of Banggood, you’ll find many general products, such as flashlights, fans, solar panels, chargers, and garden tools.
This is a clear trend with Banggood.
Sure, they do have some popular dropshipping products, but many of them are quite standard dropshipping products, such as the ones here:
With AliExpress, you have a higher chance of finding less saturated products since there are many more to select from.
5. Tools for finding winning products
What’s great about AliExpress is that there are a bunch of tools that help find winning products.
The most popular (and free) tool is the AliExpress Dropshipping Center, created by the AliExpress team.
There are also many third-party AliExpress product discovery tools for finding products.
For example, Ali Insider is a Chrome extension that gives you access to various useful features for finding products:
Another tool is Dropshipping Copilot, which is a more comprehensive tool for finding winning AliExpress products:
In comparison, Banggood offers some reports on best-selling products once you sign up for their dropshipping program.
However, the tools aren’t nearly as extensive as those you’d find on AliExpress.
Cons of AliExpress (or pros of Banggood)
Next, let’s move into the cons of AliExpress (or the pros of Banggood).
1. Lacking quality control
One of the main problems with AliExpress is the lack of quality control.
AliExpress suppliers are often the manufacturers of the product, and the regulations around quality control are less strict.
This can result in inconsistent product quality.
With Banggood, all products are shipped from their warehouses, and quality control is higher.
Banggood is also much more transparent about its operations, and you can even find a warehouse tour on its YouTube channel.
2. Unreliable shipping
AliExpress is sometimes known for unreliable shipping.
The average delivery time is 15 to 30 days, but it can take longer due to unforeseen circumstances or delays from suppliers.
Although AliExpress provides ways to find suppliers with faster shipping times, these strategies may not work for all products.
That’s why we recommend testing the supplier and shipping time before working with AliExpress suppliers.
In comparison, Banggood offers more reliable shipping options.
While it operates from Guangzhou, China, Banggood has 37 warehouses worldwide, including in the US, Europe, and Australia.
Here is more information about the warehouses:
Thanks to the warehouses, you can ship products much more quickly worldwide.
AliExpress doesn’t offer a warehouse network, so it’s definitely a strong point of Banggood!
Even if you don’t use the international warehouses, all products shipped from Banggood’s main China warehouse undergo efficient order processing, resulting in quicker shipping.
3. AliExpress has more competition than Banggood
AliExpress dropshipping is way more popular than Banggood dropshipping.
This can be seen just by checking Google Trends and comparing the two:
As you can see, Banggood dropshipping is almost unheard of compared to AliExpress dropshipping.
This can be good or bad, depending on your goals and strategy.
If you want to find untapped products, you may find some unique opportunities from Banggood that AliExpress doesn’t have.
Conversely, because AliExpress is so popular, it may have more winning products that other dropshippers have been able to sell successfully.
Especially if you don’t have much previous experience, selling proven winning products can be better.
4. Lacking customer support
One of the weakest points of AliExpress is its lack of customer support.
If you need help with something, you’ll often end up talking to a chatbot.
Should you decide to speak with an agent, they typically refer you back to the seller directly.
Then, if you try to contact the seller, the customer service usually isn’t very good, and the waiting times are long.
While this lack of customer support can be a downside, it’s one of the reasons AliExpress can maintain such low prices.
On the other hand, Banggood has much better customer support.
Their About Us page mentions that they offer 24/7 customer service, which can be accessed through live chat, email, and phone. It is also available in multiple languages!
Once you create a Banggood account, you can access customer support from the admin dashboard.
The process is much more straightforward compared to AliExpress, and you can see Banggood has clearly invested more effort into responding to customer inquiries efficiently.
5. Complicated return and refund process
AliExpress is known for its complicated return and refund process, which can take up to three months in the worst-case scenario.
Before using an AliExpress supplier for dropshipping, we recommend that you chat with the supplier directly and ask about their return and refund policy.
In comparison, Banggood offers a more streamlined process. They promise to process all refund requests within 24 to 48 hours.
There is a separate page that outlines the different options for returning products.
Plus, Banggood offers a ‘fast refund’ option as part of its VIP program, promising to process refund requests within three hours.
However, you can’t join the dropshipping and VIP programs simultaneously, so dropshippers within the program can’t take advantage of this.
Which platform is right for you?
In the end, the right platform for you will depend on your personal goals.
AliExpress might offer a larger selection of cheaper products, while Banggood focuses on higher-quality products, which can be more expensive.
With that said, here is a summary of when each platform may be ideal for you.
AliExpress is the right platform for you if:
- You want the industry’s lowest product prices.
- You want a wide selection of products (100+ million).
- Fast shipping isn’t your number one priority.
- You prefer a platform with good integration options.
- You want to take advantage of AliExpress product research tools.
Banggood is the right platform for you if:
- You’re ready to pay more for products than with AliExpress.
- You prefer a platform with vetted suppliers.
- You want to take advantage of the available 37 warehouses.
- You want reliable shipping.
- You want to take advantage of the dropshipping program that offers product discounts.
Compare other platforms
Not sure yet if AliExpress or Banggood is the right fit for you? Check out our other supplier comparison articles below:
Summary
Reading and absorbing information and knowledge is great (definitely if it’s’ free!), but do you know what’s even better?
Taking action!
So, to help you with taking action with what you have learned in this article, take a look at the bullet points:
- Determine your goals. To know which of the two platforms is better for you, you should determine your goals and needs. Is fast shipping important for you? Do you prefer a wider selection of products or higher quality?
- Compare the available shipping options. While AliExpress offers cheaper shipping options to more countries, it might be less reliable. Banggood has faster shipping and warehouses in multiple countries, but at the same time, the product cost is often higher.
- Do product research. Browse both AliExpress and Banggood and use third-party tools for product research. For AliExpress, there are free options like the AliExpress Dropshipping Center.
- Choose between AliExpress and Banggood. Once you’ve compared the two platforms and their pros and cons, you need to make a decision. If you’re still not sure, you can even import products into your online store from both platforms using AutoDS.
- Select a third-party tool. Third-party tools, such as DSers, help automate the process of fulfilling orders when you get them. These tools are essential since otherwise, you need to perform many manual tasks, which take a lot of your time.
Conclusion
We hope our comparison of AliExpress and Banggood has been helpful to you!
If you’re still unsure which platform is right for you, remember that you’re not limited to choosing just one.
In fact, it might even be best to test out both platforms before deciding.
If you’re looking to simplify your operations, you can use a tool like AutoDS which lets you import products from AliExpress and Banggood into your online store.
And when the orders come in, you can automatically fulfill them through the app!
Want to learn more about dropshipping?
Ready to move your dropshipping store to the next level? Check out the articles below:
Plus, don’t forget to check out our in-depth guide on how to start dropshipping here!