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How Much Does It Cost To Start A Dropshipping Business In 2024? [6 Options]

By Artemis K.

a cover of the article on how much does it cost to start a dropshipping business in 2021

Well, here is the #1 dropshipping FAQ: how much does it cost to start a dropshipping business in 2024? So let’s figure that out!

Time goes by, but starting your own business is still the most attractive and reliable option to get a stable source of high income. 

Are there any ways to start a business easily and with a small investment? In fact, there are a number of options that look really tempting. Due to the fact that ecommerce is growing rapidly, dropshipping is undoubtedly one of the surest and most promising ways to start your own venture.

So how much does it cost to start dropshipping in 2024? Do you really need thousands of dollars to get into dropshipping? In practice, how much funds should you have to start thinking of your own venture? And with whom is it better to build your business if you want to start dropshipping easily with a minimum budget?

AliDropship answers!

Is dropshipping still profitable in 2024?

profitable.jpg

You might be thinking that dropshipping has hit its peak, that it’s not reasonable to start a dropshipping business in 2024. However, let us convince you otherwise!

Dropshipping businesses are still thriving in 2024 simply because they offer a lot of advantages that other businesses do not.

First off, it doesn’t get easier than setting up a dropshipping business. All you need is an online store and a reliable supplier. Secondly, you can easily scale a dropshipping business. How is that? Well, since you don’t have to buy products in advance and store them, you can seamlessly add products to your store without having to worry about inventory or fulfillment.

For that same reason, since you’ll save money on not having to purchase anything in advance, you can put that money to good use and invest in your marketing and advertising.

With dropshipping, you can avoid the initial startup costs required to start a traditional business.

The future of ecommerce

Still not enough? Well, if you don’t trust the word, maybe you’ll trust the numbers? If we look at the numbers, it’s safe to say that dropshipping in ecommerce, in general, is thriving! The global retail e-commerce CAGR is estimated at 11.16% from until 2027.

statista graph ecommerce

Furthermore, small businesses are witnessing a 30% increase in conversion rates through smartphone devices. On top of that, according to Statista, by 2025, more than ten percent of all retail sales in the United States is expected to be generated via mobile commerce. These statistics show the importance of adopting your online store to be mobile-friendly to attract more potential customers.

What makes dropshipping especially great is that you’re not limited to your geographical location. You can target any market you like and sell to it. This means that with more Internet users you get more potential customers. Once your business starts growing, you should consider expanding it to broader markets.

How much does it cost to start a dropshipping business: a minimum budget

a picture for the article on how much does it cost to start dropshipping in 2021

How much does it cost to start a dropshipping business? Okay, let’s review a couple of options to get your dropshipping business started. What are the alternative ways to create an ecommerce business in this case? And how much will it cost you?

Let’s go step by step and work out the minimal budget you need to start dropshipping in 2024!

First, we should figure out what things are necessary to launch an online store.

Since dropshipping allows you to avoid the difficulties of any brick and mortar business, there essentially are only five steps to launching a store:

  • Choose a niche
  • Create a website
  • Find suppliers
  • Add products to your site
  • Come up with a marketing strategy

How much does it cost to start a dropshipping business? Well, let’s move on to the figures!

Niche research

Expenses — $0.

There is no need to pay money. Besides, if you don’t want to spend any time on carrying out research by yourself, there’s an easy solution. Our team offers you a free niche research tool that estimates the niche potential and even gives some recommendations on how to use it in your business most efficiently.

However, you should understand that choosing a niche for your business plays a crucial role in your future success. So if you have an opportunity to pay particular attention to this stage of your business launch, we recommend that you learn more about the service our marketing experts offer – it’s Deep Dropshipping Niche Research.

Website creation

Expenses — $134.

Now let’s take a closer look at creating your site. What do you need to get it? Here is the list of the must-haves:

  • Domain

 Expenses — $10.

To launch your dropshipping business, you need to buy a domain name. Simply speaking, your domain name is the address of your website. It’s unique and it lets customers find your site on the Internet. On GoDaddy.com, you can buy a decent domain name for about $10 for the first year.

an image showing the prices of domain names

  • Hosting

Expenses — $48.

The next step is hosting. In other words, you need a server for your website. You can search for one on your own or use our service. Please pay attention to hosting from AliDropship. It suits dropshipping perfectly and costs only $69 per year.

hosting-solution-1-2-1280x932.png

  • WordPress content management system (CMS)

Expenses — $0.

Now, you’ve got a domain name and a hosting provider. What’s next? It’s time to build your website now!

Go to WordPress.org and download its software to your server.

The beauty of this software is that it’s absolutely free. You spend $0 again.

a screenshot of the WordPress website

  • AliDropship plugin

Expenses — $89.

The next thing you need is the AliDropship plugin. It’s going to wrap up the process of creating and running your online store.

By the way, the AliDropship Plugin price hasn’t changed for many years!

a picture showing the AliDropship Plugin price

But, we’ve got a surprise for you. A little lifehack: just use the ‘STARTER15’ coupon code as it’s shown in the picture below. This way, you save $13, and pay less than $76!

a picture showing how to get 15% off AliDropship plugin

Here, on the same page, you can also put a tick and add hosting for 1 year, which we’ve already mentioned.

Now when you’ve done it, there is one last thing left. Customize your website as you’d like to. Naturally, you don’t need to pay yourself for your own efforts 🙂

Let’s sum it up! Your domain name is going to cost you about $10. Plus, you’ll spend $145 on hosting and the  AliDropship plugin combined. The rest is available for free.

So the total price for your website is $155.

Suppliers and products

Expenses — $0.

The next step is to find a reliable supplier you are going to deal with.

But the question is, how to do that? How can you find such a partner that will provide your clients with high-quality products?

All you need to do is go to AliExpress and make your choice. Please pay attention to our guide on how to find a dropshipping supplier. What we’re interested in is the price. And you don’t need to pay any fees to anyone.

When you’ve chosen your business partners, you can add products to your online store.

You’ve already got the AliDropship plugin. This means you can import as many dropshipping products from AliExpress as you want. You pay nothing for this.

However, if you’re eager to make the most of your business, you should consider your product strategy completely. The fact is that you need to have several extremely popular products in your online store that you’ll advertise. These products are supposed to bring you most of the profits.

So if you want to find a really promising product for your business and not make a mistake at this essential step, let our dropshipping experts find a winning product and consider an ad strategy for you!

Marketing

Expenses — $0.

In fact, you can reduce your marketing costs to a minimum and promote your online store yourself with $0. In this case, it’s a great idea to learn about SEO as much as you can. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most powerful free marketing tools you could have under your belt. If you properly optimize your website in general and product pages in particular, people will naturally come across your online store.

Websites such as Quora.com could be great sources of free traffic to your store.

People post all sorts of questions there. Reply to those that your target audience might be interested in. Don’t forget to include links leading to your site in to your answers.

Another must-do thing is your activity on social networks. Depending on the niche you’re dealing with, you can successfully promote your store on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

You need to create accounts on these platforms, find communities related to your niche, post comments, and so on. In other words, you should manually promote your store there.

Yes, it takes quite a lot of time. If you want to save it, we recommend you pay attention to the Social Rabbit add-on and pass the torch to it.

The best news here? You can start with the Rabbit’s FREE 7-day trial before making your final decision! And of course, you are more than welcome to rely on useful marketing tips in the special section in the AliDropship blog.

Well, we’ve found out that at least for the first time, there is an opportunity to get along without any marketing expenses.

It means you can spend only $155 to start your dropshipping business in 2024! Sounds tempting, doesn’t it?

Dropshipping startup costs: a medium budget

a picture for the article on how much do you need to start dropshipping in 2021

It may seem to you that despite the fact that it’s extremely cheap to start a dropshipping business, there are a number of tasks that require you to have special skills and a lot of time. This is exactly why AliDropship is happy to provide you with different options to launch your dropshipping venture.

Would you like our highly qualified personnel to take over technically complex and time-consuming tasks?

It means if you are ready to expand your budget a little bit, you can avoid some difficulties. And in dropshipping, you don’t really need much to get around many obstacles.

Let’s be honest. Getting a complete ready-to-go business for $500 is a good deal.

Yet, it could be cheaper if it’s the dropshipping business.

Here are two main options to get a ready-made online business AliDropship is happy to offer.

Get your own dropshipping store for free

How much does it cost to start a dropshipping business? The answer is: nothing! In fact, you can get your own dropshipping store from AliDropship FOR FREE. And within a moment, you’re going to be an owner of an online store built for you by a team of professionals according to your preferences only. Let’s look closer at what you actually get when you get a free store.

  • 100% hassle-free start
    Your business launch is organized by us from A to Z. Just let us know your preferences!
  • No experience needed
    Your store brings profits on autopilot and the management is totally beginner friendly
  • Financial independence
    You get an additional source of income and a brilliant opportunity to change your life for the better

Not bad, right?

free dropshipping stores

But there’s more good news. AliDropship offers you thousands of best-selling products. We do the market research, you do the earning!

free store what can you sell banner

And what’s even better — after your free trial expires, it only costs you $39/month. That’s a steal!

So why pay for building your store, when that money can be invested in your PPC (pay per click) campaign, Instagram shoutouts, paid Facebook ads, Google ads, etc. This is going to drive more traffic to your site. These are the people which are highly likely to make a purchase in your online store.

Premium dropshipping store

start-for-0-dollars.jpg

Besides free dropshipping stores, AliDropship has developed one more option for you to get a quick and easy start in dropshipping. It’s all about dropshipping high-ticket premium products.

screenshot high ticket stores banner

But what are high-ticket products, you ask?

Picture this: High-ticket products are like the rock stars of the shopping world. They’re glamorous sports cars, dazzling designer outfits, or cutting-edge gadgets.

high ticket product picture

But here’s the deal, these goodies don’t come cheap. And that’s exactly why they are so profitable to dropship. And we’ve got them all ready for you to grab and dropship!

Here is why high-ticket dropshipping is the best way to do ecommerce in 2024 and beyond:

  • Huge profit margins
    You sell products that give maximum profit potential possible, with margins of up to $5,000 per 1 sale
  • Less competition
    Dive into the premium dropshipping business model only available for the chosen ones — the high-ticket niche implies lowest competition possible
  • Total freedom
    You can put high prices on products and be sure they’ll sell, you also don’t need high sales volumes: 2-4 monthly sales to make an average wage of an office worker
  • Easier promotion
    The better the product, the less promotion is needed. You’re going to sell top quality products that people have already been searching for
  • High-end customers
    They are ready to pay you a lot: you’re going to sell to the richest audience segment, which means they don’t care if your prices are high
  • High purchase intent
    High-ticket customers are already searching for the specific products you’re going to sell, which means they are ready to buy right now

How much do such dropshipping stores cost?

High ticket store pricing

Here is great news again: prices of the basic package is only $290.

What to get: free or high-ticket stores?

Free Dropshipping Stores suit those entrepreneurs best who are eager to start from the bottom: they will get to become an online entrepreneur completely for free, with zero risks or investments. However, you low risks means low rewards. And that’s where High-Ticket Stores come into play.

High-Ticket Dropshipping Stores suit those entrepreneurs best who want to make it big in the ecommerce industry. After completing a purchase of a high-ticket store, you will get the exclusive high-ticket products you can to import to your catalog.

Summing it up: how much does it cost to start a dropshipping business in 2024?

So let’s make a conclusion. How much does it cost to start a dropshipping business? Now you know the answer. The cost of a ready-made free FOR FREE with a 14-day trial, and the cost of your promotional activities is up to you. The cost of a high-ticket dropshipping store with 200 high profit margin products you can pick from, as well as 30 unique promo articles, is only a one-time $890 payment.

Actually, these dropshipping costs are not much for your own fully-functioning ecommerce business that has all chances to become your stable source of high income, is it? Fortunately, there is an option to get a prebuilt dropshipping store absolutely for free!

So how much does it cost to start a dropshipping business? ZERO. You can start dropshipping for free today and become rich tomorrow!

Are you eager to try your hand at dropshipping and grow a venture you’ll always be proud of? No big deal, actually — get a high-ticket dropshipping business now and build your own profitable ecommerce platform you’ve always dreamed of as soon as possible. So wait no more!

avatar
By Artemis K.
Artemis is a senior copywriter at AliDropship. Having received a BA degree in International Communication and MA degree in Advertising, he started his career working in a multinational petrochemical enterprise as a marketing specialist. To date, for a number of years, Artemis has been sharing the latest ecommerce trends with you, creating guides on how to start an online business from scratch, and keeping you updated on new IT solutions that help you optimize your venture.
41 Comments
Kate 5 years ago

Hi. May i have the contact details of Chanong, the one you featured in one of your interviews. He said he’s from Baguio City, Philippines. I’m from the same area. Thanks much

Boris 5 years ago

Hello Andrey!
Is it possible for somebody living in Cameroon to do dropshipping?
I am interested but i don’t no which payment gateway are available in my country.
Can somebody helps me please?

Andrey Y. 5 years ago

Hello, Boris!
Year, it’s definitely possible.
As far as I remember 2CHECKOUT is available in your country. If you want to learn more about available gateways, go to this link https://help.alidropship.com/payment-gateways/available-payment-gateways
Good luck!

Rodolfo 5 years ago

Does your plugin takes care of the whole order process?

Andrey Y. 5 years ago

Hi, Rodolfo!
Year, that’s exactly what the plugin does

Victor Oyeks 5 years ago

Thank you for the post. But please can I get a detailed explanation on the hosting image that contains “silver, 3gb disc space, control panel, etc.”. Thank you.

Andrey Y. 5 years ago

Hi, Victor!
I’m afraid the detailed explanation is quite lengthy for a comment section. But, our help center contains all the necessary info about hosting. So, you can pin it down if you click on this link https://help.alidropship.com/hosting

Boris 5 years ago

Hello Andrey Y.
Thank you for your nice contribution.
In Cameroon, you can send money by Paypal but you can not receive money trought Paypal.
Since Paypal is well known, how can I do with customers who like Paypal?
Is there a way through Paypal so that I can receive payments?
Thank you again for your help.

Andrey Y. 5 years ago

Hi, Boris!
I think, it’s not a big problem to get along without PayPal. Our own experience even shows an increase in conversion after we stopped using PayPal for our stores.

New to the game 5 years ago

Hello! I am totally interested but I have no idea what all these terms mean especially plugin. What does a plugin do ?

Yaroslav Nevsky 5 years ago

Hello, I recommend that you check our guide first to learn how it works: https://alidropship.com/guide/

Bliss 5 years ago

I’m in Nigeria, can I do a dropshipping business successfully

Andrey Y. 5 years ago

Hi!
Of course, you can. Here is the story about a guy from Nigeria who makes money with drophipping and affilaiate marketing https://alidropship.com/ecommerce-affiliate-success-story-nigeria/

Akinbolade Samson 5 years ago

Wow. This very cool am interested what is next step for Me to start.

Andrey Y. 5 years ago

Hi!
Glad to know you are in! Here are the guidelines for dropshipping newcomers https://alidropship.com/drop-shipping-for-dummies/

Leonard 5 years ago

I have a dropship website https://shopunderwears.com setup and ready and want to sell it

Igor 5 years ago

Where can I find more info. on the process of when customer make a purchase from the store…?
Thanks

Yaroslav Nevsky 5 years ago
Shafic lubulwa 5 years ago

I don’t have a laptop now, can I start dropshipping using my phone?!

Yaroslav Nevsky 5 years ago

No, it is not possible to build and manage such stores with a phone.

Ugochukwu Okere 5 years ago

Hello, i must confess how insightful your teaching is.. Moreso, i’d like to if i can have a direct conversation with you on some things which i think requires more clarity.. kindly indicate b sending via email any other direct means of contacting you.. Thanks

Andrey Y. 5 years ago

Hi!
First of all, thank you for your comment!
I’m really sorry, but I’ve got my hands full with my work. If you want to clear something up, these guys from Dropship club know the issue inside out and can explain it to you better than me. So, click on this link https://dropship.club/ and get in touch with them.

Robert 5 years ago

Hi,
I’m already hosting my site on Bluehost. I have Alidropshipwoo installed and a Flatsome theme. The site is not developed yet since I just completed the first couple stages of getting the hosting and stuff.

My question is that do you also develop custom sites hosted on other platforms other than alidropship?
Thanks

Yaroslav Nevsky 5 years ago

Yes, can use any other hosting and we can place your site there.

Ibrahim 5 years ago

Pls am in Ghana, can I have a dropship and the product are they customized according to your country

Olga L. 5 years ago

Hi, thank you for your question!

Yes, you can start dropshipping if you live in Ghana. You can sell products to buyers in your country, or in any other destination in the world, there are no limits. For example, here is the real-life experience of Godfred, our client from Ghana: https://alidropship.com/ghana-dropshipping-experience/

victor aina 5 years ago

From my experience in dropshipping to Philippines, Africa and some few countries , one crucial method left out is when you start your dropshipping you need to first advertise to your friends, families and those close to you, as this will surely bring in your first sales.

Going by Seo and other methods it takes a bit of time, but once you get going then for sure you are in for weekly sales in profit .

Tochi 4 years ago

Am a newbie in this field,
Please I have a friend who got your plug-in. Now he wants to sell his store, please can you help is with tips on how to sell his (our) webstore.

I’ll be grateful.
Thanks

Olga L. 4 years ago

Hi, thanks for your interest! Please, read this article: https://alidropship.com/sold-6-month-old-aliexpress-dropshipping-store-15000-flippa-com/

Emma 4 years ago

Please am from Nigeria,
Is there anyway it’s possible for me to get along with this business?
And also, is there any success stories from anybody in Nigeria?

Olga L. 4 years ago

Hi, thank you for your interest!

Our dedicated team member will get in touch with you soon. Here’s a success story from Nigeria to keep you inspired! https://alidropship.com/ecommerce-affiliate-success-story-nigeria/

Marco 4 years ago

Hi, I just found this site, it’s not long since I found this type of business. Now reading this article I have cleared many unknowns. But I keep wondering, if this would work from Ecuador? What areas do potential suppliers come from? Assuming they are from Asia, are there extra shipping costs to this part of the world?

Olga L. 4 years ago

Hi, thank you for your interest!

Yes, you can run this business from Ecuador.
And yes, mostly, potential suppliers come from China. Still, sometimes, they place their warehouses not in Asia, but in some European countries instead. In these cases, the delivery can be quicker and less costly. Please, read more details here https://alidropship.com/aliexpress-ship-from-europe-or-usa/

Ginika Oyeka 4 years ago

Please I Will like to know more about drop shipping. How it works and how I can make money from it.
What is the cost implication and how can I start?

Olga L. 4 years ago

Hi, thank you for your interest!
The costs are explained in detail in the video: please watch it, there are many options with different prices.
Our dedicated manager will get in touch with you soon via email!

Ursula 3 years ago

This seems very deceitful, and as a matter of fact, I doubt this post will even be shown due to your filters.
This article looks like it was post 7 days ago, but the comments are from years ago.
More importantly, setting up is the easy part, what you’re not told is that you need a large advertising budget to actually get results using FB ads and Google Ads.
The recommended price to ‘test’ according to one of the premium product plugins is $50 per adset per day (x5) to see which one is worth pursuing.
The premium product plugin is not that good anyway, because its 2 products a week and if it is not in your niche, then you have to wait several weeks. At this stage, it has been a car product every week for the last 4 weeks.
Also, when you ask for support, you are directed to a premade video, not very helpful, so prepare to do a lot of the work yourself.
With that said, the pages are setup nicely, the plugins work, and you have control over everything.

Artyom Kopylov 3 years ago

Dear Ursula,
We appreciate your detailed insights and would love to go through them one by one:
1. You are absolutely right! The article was first published about a year ago (hence the older comments), and we update it on a regular basis to cover all the pricing and market changes and
provide you with up-to-date information on starting an online business. Right now, you’re seeing the freshest update of this year!
2. Your calculations are to the point, indeed. But as you can notice, this article is about the business startup costs exclusively. Here, we’re answering a very popular question of how much savings a person needs to launch their online store, and we’re showing several options for different budgets. We’re mentioning it multiple times that the promotional/managerial expenses are out of the scope of this specific review, but we’re reviewing them in detail in other thematic articles, for example, this one: https://alidropship.com/facebook-ad-optimization-examples/
3. The idea behind the Premium Products Subscription is the following: our marketing team is searching for the most lucrative ecommerce products, spending thousands of dollars on testing and research. When the team finds the products that are selling well enough right now, they recommend them to you so that you could skip the costly and lengthy experimental stage and go straight to selling.
That’s why you can be sure: if an item appears in your weekly recommendation, it’s worthy of your attention. There, indeed, have been several car products in the recent recommendations, but there were baby products, household items, and pet products as well to give every store owner plenty of choice.
4. How-to videos have proven to be the most illustrative way to guide a new service user through the installation and setup procedures. However, we’re also happy to provide you with textual guidelines (kindly go to
https://help.alidropship.com/en/collections/2381308-guides-for-premium-products), and of course, you are always welcome to ask us any specific business question that’s not covered in the guides: https://alidropship.com/contact/
Thank you for choosing our services and taking your time to share your valuable feedback!

Merveille 3 years ago

Hello,
firstly I would like to thank the team for this detail. I was actually looking for the price because I plan to invest in dropshipping this year. But the problem is, I know absolutely nothing. secondly if it is possible to put a translation in French that will help a lot of French speakers who read you. And in which country our products will be sold from the launch of the store. i have many question about that . i don’t know if i can talk to somebody to help me because want realy start . thank’s

Artyom Kopylov 3 years ago

Hello, thank you for your feedback and questions!
Our business advisers will contact you soon.

Steven Jones 3 years ago

SO the total cost is 2500? or does the 899 package cover everything
plugins, domain, products, site setup, automation, branding, marketing?

etc

Artyom Kopylov 3 years ago

Hello, thank you for your questions!
In case you want to learn more on what an ultimate package of custom dropshipping stores includes, please turn to this page – https://alidropship.com/start-new-business/
Please note that in terms of marketing you will get the most valuable social network accounts – it’s FB, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. It will remain for you only to run ad campaigns and benefit from them. However, you have an opportunity to order the marketing service bundle from our team and you won’t have to do almost anything regarding marketing – https://alidropship.com/services/dropshipping-marketing-services-bundle/
By the way, AliDropship Plugin is included in your ultimate custom store. Nevertheless, we are still happy to provide you with other IT solutions to automate your business completely. For example, pay attention to Social Rabbit that will take care of your social media accounts and make the most of them – https://alidropship.com/addons/social-rabbit/

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