Home > Resources > Chinabrands Review - Is It a Good Dropshipping Platform?

Chinabrands Review - Is It a Good Dropshipping Platform?

Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

Drive 20-40% of your revenue with Avada
avada email marketing

One of the most popular options online sellers often choose when not wanting to work with warehouses is dropshipping. Dropshipping is a form of retail business in which sellers take responsibility for promoting products and sell them.

Unlike traditional businesses where sellers only sell what they have, sellers still accept orders when their products are not in stock with dropshipping. Instead, they send the order and shipment details to other parties such as manufacturers, wholesalers, or other sellers. They, then, will straightforwardly deliver the products to customers. Thus, sellers no longer have to spend money and time renting warehouses, managing inventory, or refilling stock.

Famous as the supplier of thousands of items all over the world, Chinabrands is considered a preferable choice for dropshipping service providers. Yet, do you understand clearly about Chinabrands? Is it perfect as what we see in the advertisements? Let’s explore this article, and you will find out the answer to your queries.

What is Chinabrands? How does it work?

Developed by a subsidiary of the Chinese top Cross-border Commerce Group Company in 2011, Chinabrands is a helpful platform for drop shipping and wholesale, which is regarded as the greatest option for wholesalers. This B2B website is a great place to connect different companies, which helps small and medium sized businesses boost sales with ease. Moreover, this platform has a close integration with multiple quality suppliers from China - the world’s factory.

By using Chinabrands, you are given plenty of international payment services, logistics, security, warehousing, escrow safety, and more. To help users communicate with each other easily, Chinabrands also supports various popular languages like English, Spain, French, Chinese, German, Italian, and Russian.

Similar to many other dropshipping brands, there are 4 main stages in the way Chinabrands works, which are:

  1. Sellers post the items of Chinabrands on their store or website.
  2. Buyers purchase these items from Chinabrands.
  3. Sellers send order and payment details to Chinabrands.
  4. Chinabrands receives the detailed information and ships the product to buyers
What is Chinabrands?

The very first step for you to start your dropshipping business in Chinabrands is registering. When completing the registration process, don’t forget to read these following steps for beginners to help you get a clear overview of working with Chinabrands on this platform.

Moreover, it is crucial that you find and check the key and the URL of the suppliers when the Chinabrands’ connection made from API is done.

  • Import a job and write clearly about your plan
  • Turn on the API and cite the API credentials that Chinabrands provides you.
  • Provide detailed information about the necessary attributes for your items and the rate you want to increase in terms of the product price
  • Start conducting the job

Are you having all the data in mind? It is time for you to get started integrating Chinabrands with your Magento 2 store.

Chinabrands is a powerful dropshipping extension for Magento 2 stores. It is created to support online sellers in approaching as many customers as possible and effectively maintaining a great relationship with suppliers. Thus, if you are dreaming of a tool to help you succeed in selling products without too much endeavor, let’s take a look at Chinabrands.

Read more:

Chinabrands reviews: What you need to know?

Chinabrands reviews

Nothing is perfect and so do Chinabrands, so keep reading this post to find out the good and bad points of Chinabrands as well as its features.

First of all, let’s begin with the good points or advantages of Chinabrands.

Advantages of using Chinabrands

When using Chinabrands, you must not pay any fees for registering, using, sourcing, packaging, processing, and minimum order. Thus, you can start your dropshipping business right after signing up. However, you have to pay a little amount of money for a VIP membership. In return, you will receive special discounts.

Chinabrands provide you millions of products from different categories such as clothing, motorbike, home, garden, jewelry, and more. It also generates the product description for each product, so that you will have a clear understanding of the items you care about.

In fact, not every product from every manufacturer can be sold on Chinabrands. They have to meet all the requirements set up by Chinabrands to ensure that the quality of the products is great. This means even when you don’t have a chance to see and check the product physically, you still comfortably order what you want to sell. More than that, this platform can help dropshippers add their store’s logo on the product and package with POD services.

In terms of delivery, Chinabrands can send your items to your customer’ addresses wherever they live so that you can expand your business outside of your countries. When there is a new order, Chinabrands will process it within a day and give you the tracking number. Depending on the weight and size, each product will have different shipping fees.

There are three types of shipping methods, which are Flat Rate Shipping (shipped by post office), Standard rate Shipping (shipped by an express mail service), or Expedite Shipping (can be sent by DHL). You can then analyze your condition and desire to choose the most suitable way to be the fastest but expensive or cheaper but longer time for shipment. Especially if you purchase the shipping insurance, Chinabrands will be in charge of protecting your package and provide you with the after-sales services.

In Chinabrands, you are given multiple ways to get support from customer service 24/7, via the contact channel, message, social media, or FAQ. Although the contact channel method doesn’t work all 24 hours per day, you are recommended to use this method to contact the customer services first. By connecting with them, you can easily get helpful advice for the staff.

Actually, there are 10 popular languages supported in Chinabrands so that you can overcome the barrier of languages. Chinabrands also promise that your message sent to their customer support team will be replied to you in just one day, which will help you solve your problem more quickly. In case you think you are facing a common problem, let’s visit the FAQ where Chinabrands post a lot of common questions and their answers.

Disadvantages of using Chinabrands

Chinabrands is a powerful platform for dropshipping. However, there still exist several problems that you need to acknowledge.

The product is the most crucial element in the drop shipping procedure. Unfortunately, the majority of criticisms in Chinabrands are related to products. From time to time, they set the irrelevant description of the goods on the web, which makes sellers misunderstand the products and choose the ones they don’t need and lose customers and money even when it is not their fault. More than that, although there are more than 400,000 products on Chinabrands, their quantity is pretty modest. This even happens to several bestsellers.

Delivery is another problem that regularly receives complaints, which can be the wrong or no products shipped, and delayed delivery time. Imagine that after a week or even a month waiting for your order, the shippers give you an item different from what you purchased or there is nothing inside your box; what would you feel? Terrible, angry, right? It is exactly what the buyers feel. The product’s value is never written clearly in the waybill document, making it more challenging to approve customs. And that is also the root why customers often get their items so late.

Besides, Customer Service here also receives lots of complaints about the delay and complicated procedure. When dropshippers are in trouble and then send messages to ask for the Customer Service’ help, what they receive is the automatic response. The responses made by customer service staff are so few that what people desire is a humanmade answer. Additionally, there is no tool for you to track data; everything can be done without notifying you.

Besides, Customer Service here also receives lots of complaints about the delay and complex procedure. When dropshippers are in trouble and then send messages to ask for the Customer Service’ help but what they receive all the time is the automatic response. The responses made by customer service staff are so few that what people desire is a manmade answer. Additionally, there is no tool for you to track data, everything can be done without notifying you.

Consequently, sellers usually don’t know exactly what happens to their orders. When buyers don’t get the items they order or evidence showing that it is damaged, Chinabrands even don’t either refund or replace the product with a new one like in its policy. Beyond all this, the worst point here is that junk mails are instantly sent to dropshippers, making some dropshippers switch to other dropshipping platforms.

What can you do on Chinabrands?

In the top bar of the website, you will be able to use several most crucial features that are logging in, adding products to cart, and switching to another money unit. For instance, by choosing the supplier button on the top of the web, you can log in as a supplier or add more items to your shopping cart by clicking the cart on the top right. Moreover, there is also a button for you to connect with the Chinabrands customer service, which works offline and online. Thus, whenever you are in trouble, their customer staff will help you deal with your problem.

The second feature of Chinabrands is the search bar, which will offer you the most recent search and the most popular search there. This is extremely useful for keeping up with the newest trends and exploring new items from specific keywords or attributes.

To become a member of Chinabrands, you need to register first. When accessing the User Centre, the registration screen will be displayed for you to sign up. However, when you already have a Chinabrands account, just logging in from the User Centre. In case you want to get more detailed information related to Users Centre, let’s visit the Account Guide.

In Chinabrands, there exist nearly 500,000 items for purchasing so dividing them into separate categories is undeniable. You can see a variety of different item groups on the red bar on the Chinabrands home screen. These categories are sufficient for every field which is ranging from traditional goods like Men’s Clothing, Toys & Hobbies, Watches, Bags, Shoes to such modern ones as Computer & Office, Home & Garden, Consumer Electronics.

To help users increase the transaction easily, banners are displayed in the middle of the screen, which visitors will immediately see they access the web. These banners will be about new promotions, arrivals, deals, discounts, or events, and they will be renewed whenever new ones are generated.

Also, Chinabrands creates a short collection of the lowest price products, which they think will bring buyers significant revenue when purchasing the product and selling them at their stores. As a buyer, you can access this roster, track your competitors’ price, and then come back to check your acquisition price to calculate the profit you may get from these goods. This is an efficient source to help you be determined whether to buy or not.

Since all the products that people like most are displayed on Chinabrands, the sole necessary step for you to have a look at them is scrolling down. They are shown inside a small box with the subtitle and the price. Moreover, when scrolling down, you will also see the featured brand for each category and the flash deals.

Finally, the website’s end is the footer, which includes data about company information, customer service, and CB university. By clicking them, you will be delivered to post, giving you detailed answers like the policies for returning products, payment methods, guaranteeing, and more.

How much does it cost to use Chinabrands?

Price of Chinabrands
Price of Chinabrands

When using Chinabrands, you are allowed to access plentiful amazing products there. You don’t have to pay any fee for seeing the product details or registration. Yet, if you intend to become a VIP member on this platform, you will be told to pay a little amount of money for this package service.

At first, Chinabrands enables signed up dropshippers to download 300 product information with no fees. With a VIP member, this number is higher, and the higher level they are, the lower price they will get to buy the product.

So how to be a VIP member?

You can never use the money to change your level from normal to VIP. Instead, you should boost your sales as much as possible because Chinabrands will take sales performance as a criterion to put you in a normal group or the VIP one. Like many other VIP members, you will be prioritized to download more information and obtain more beneficial discounts.

However, if you don’t meet VIP members’ requirements, you still get a discount another way, which is Chinabrands point.

There are five levels for you in terms of membership, which are arranged from lowest to highest: registered member, VIP member, VIP Bronze member, VIP Silver member, and finally VIP Gold member. These types of members also represent the level of rights dropshipper have. Based on your VIP level, you will be able to have 1%, 2%, or 3% discount. However, with 3C products, the discount is the same among all the VIP levels.

Being a VIP member is great when you can purchase items at a lower price than usual. On the other hand, you will be charged to pay the amount of $US 3.99 each month to maintain your status while with normal registered members, it is free.

Not only VIP members but also wholesalers will be discounted when buying goods in bulk on Chinabrands. They will base on the number of products and their price per product to estimate the wholesalers’ discount rate. There are no specific criteria for the quantity, but with a single price, they are divided into five levels, which are:

  • Under $1
  • $1 to $5
  • $5 to $20
  • $20 to $100
  • Over $100

Pros and Cons of Chinabrands

Pros and Cons of Chinabrands
Pros and Cons of Chinabrands

Let’s explore what are pros and cons of Chinabrands!

Pros of Chinabrands

The volume of available items is enormous, with nearly 500,000 products, which are various in categories such as phone, motorbike, clothing for men, clothing for women, jewelry, etc. If you are a supplier, you will be able to list numerous merchandise in just several minutes. More than that, the quality of the products displayed on the website is also outstanding. They hire a QC team that will evaluate the items according to rigid rules.

When becoming a member of Chinabrands, you are given the ability to download the high qualified images and product descriptions without worrying about copyright violations. It is incredibly convenient and useful for fresh merchants who have no experience in dropshipping and selling virtually.

Equipped with the API linking technology, you can be updated with the latest news in real-time. Apart from news, you also get important data in your store in the shortest time so that you will never miss any crucial information or the golden time to fix the problems in your online shop. When your orders are delivered, they will be approved and processed automatically, saving time efficiently. Perhaps you don’t see it explicitly now, but when you expand your business or have thousands of orders per day, it will rapidly become your excellent assistant.

Since this platform integrates with both manufacturers and sellers, it creates a place for manufacturers and merchants to directly work with each other. This will remove the appearance of the intermediary so that the price will remain the same as in the factory. What is more, registered users don’t need to pay anything to start using this marketplace and the VIP one even buys the goods with lower price than the listed one thanks to special discounts. That is the reason why almost all products are cheaper than the ones in other dropshipping marketplaces.

When becoming a dropshipper, you will no longer spend a lot of money on renting warehouses to store your products. You, consequently, will have more time and money for concentrating on advertising and selling your products. That is exactly what Chinabrands provide you. They have a large system of warehouses in the world which is located in such places as the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Russia, Hong Kong, etc.

Therefore, when receiving your order details, they will immediately send the product to the nearest warehouse. And as they promise, 95% items will be delivered to their owners within 24 hours and you also receive its track number. You will also be offered the after sales service supposing that you purchase the shipping insurance.

Besides the huge system of warehouses, Chinabrands is also a partner of multiple famous couriers in the world like DHL, special express, and EMS to guarantee that the goods will be delivered to your doorstep of your customers on time. With the ability to approach more than 200 countries, it is inevitable that Chinabrands possess wonderful logistic service.

With the aim of supporting new merchants, Chinabrands set very strict regulations about budget constraints and untrustworthy suppliers. The fresh entrepreneurs, hence, can start their online business with lower budget and fewer risks.

Before having Chinabrands ship products, an important task is selecting items and putting them in lists of your store. Based on different sales platforms, your product statistics will be exported in different templates. After that, you can upload it to the responsive software in seconds without inputting the product information again. With this functionality, you will be able to deal with thousands of item lists in just one day.

Cons of Chinabrands

From the dropshippers’ point of view, there are still some problems that Chinabrands should improve soon. They should handle three main issues as quickly as possible: the tough clash among manufacturers, too few famous brands, and insufficient information introducing this platform.

These issues are all real. Nevertheless, Chinabrands is now trying their best to improve and satisfy the client’s requirements. Many updates can be seen on their homepage like Xiaomi, Beelink, and Smartlife as top brands. They also post more information about Chinabrands so that people can effortlessly search for the latest news in minutes. Also, they streamline the supply chain to support suppliers and dropshippers.

Top 9 alternatives to Chinabrands for dropshipping

You are interested in dropshipping but after reading these paragraphs above, you find out that it is not for you? Don’t leave, keep reading and you will be introduced top 9 dropshipping platforms to Chinabrands that can replace Chinabrands.

Made in China

Made in China
Made in China

As the name suggests, this B2B platform is run by a Chinese company - Focus Technology Co. Limited. On Made in China, there are over 25 item categories and around 3,600 item subcategories. Thus, when accessing it, you will see multiple products without any limit. Moreover, it enables you to see the hot products on the homepage as well as personalize the goods by adding your store’s logo. Although providing users various features, Made in China doesn’t take any money for registration fees.

Go Ten

Go Ten
Go Ten

With over 20,000 SKUs of high standard from 14 separated categories, Go Ten is definitely your ideal option for starting your dropshipping career. On Go Ten, you can find anything from different categories such as beauty, sport, garden, pet supplies, customer electronics, art & craft, and more. When you place an order on Go Ten, it will be directly shipped to your customers within 2 - 7 days. It is also willing to help you 24/7 via the support system, offers you the after-sales service, and consulted transactions.

Global Sources

Global Sources
Global Sources

Another Chinabrands is Global Sources where you can find anything ranging from gifts, accessories, fashion to hardware, mobile electronics and machinery. In addition to this, in no more than two days, the quotes of items in verified suppliers will be delivered to you. Particularly, you can also receive the product sample of plentiful suppliers in this dropshipping marketplace.

DHGate

DHGate
DHGate

Created by Dianne Wang, DHGate is a powerful place for dropshipper do business. On it, you will be able to purchase every product of China. With no fewer than 30 million items, DHGate can be considered an attractive marketplace for merchants to run their dropshipping business and sell goods. When customers complete the order process, shippers will send them their box in between 2 and 7 days. More than that, you don’t need to establish the requirement for your items on DHGate. Not only owning multiple types of products, the number of people accessing its homepage is approximately 30 million browsers.

Learn more How to use DHgate dropshipping in Shopify

LightInTheBox

LightInTheBox
LightInTheBox

Trusted by a large number of dropshippers, LightInTheBoxis the Chinabrands alternative we would like to introduce to you. Similar to other dropshipping platforms, a lot of categories are displayed which are about shoes, baby products, home, toys, beauty products, bags, basic collection, wedding & event, etc. What is more, you can get the items you want at a much lower price than usual without being anxious about the quality via the Flash Sale program. Then, these products will be sent in just 2 or 3 days.

AliExpress

Aliexpress
Aliexpress

AliExpress is one of the most famous places for dropshipping in the world market recently. You can sign up for it free - no upfront fee, no price. When successfully becoming its member, you can easily buy what you want and sync it with your eCommerce store flawlessly. Besides, plenty of suppliers on AliExpress give dropshippers the permission to download the product images, description, and other details with no fee and upload on your online shop.

Read more:

Banggood

Banggood
Banggood

Having the advantage of over 200,000 available SKUs, Banggood is regarded as an appealing choice for online merchants. This platform offers products at a highly reasonable price, which makes it a popular platform for wholesalers. In terms of shipping cost, Banggood takes little or even no money with all customers. There is also no minimum number of orders required when purchasing to buy as many as you can. Besides, it allows you to select your preferred payment method among several ones like a credit card, PayPal, or Boleto.

Worldwide Brands

Worldwide Brands
Worldwide Brands

Worldwide Brand is a useful platform for wholesaling. On Worldwide Brands, you can find more than 16 million certified wholesale products which are appreciated by lots of merchants. These products are also classified into different categories so that you can more easily. To access these items, what you need to do is just sign up without paying any fee for membership. Moreover, the order processing system there runs without breaching your personal information, so you can freely purchase.

Doba

Doba
Doba

Using Doba means that you are having an effective tool to connect with hundreds of manufacturers and millions of products. Like other dropshipping platforms, Doba will directly ship the items to your customers’ address. On Doba, there is a score card which will give you a brief overview of each supplier about the processing time in average, fulfillment, shipping times, shipping cost, and more. You can take advantage of it to find out the suitable suppliers.

Related posts:

Conclusion

Overall, Chinabrands is a powerful platform for you to start your business in a different way from the traditional one - dropshipping. With it, you can save a large amount of time and money by selling products without managing the warehouse and inventory. From this article, you will know everything about Chinabrands from its advantages, features to its advantages and alternatives.

If you want to ask any questions or share the latest news about Chinabrands, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below this post.


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.