Many online entrepreneurs flock to AliExpress as if it is the only market place out there. There are many other sites where you can find thousands of suppliers and millions of products, that you can sell on your dropshipping website.
One of these marketplaces is Doba. It's a marketplace that was made specifically for dropshippers that will help you grow your online empire.
In this Doba review, We will break this platform down and see if it's right for you,
In this review, we will dive deep into Doba, what it has to offer, and decide if this is a great place to start your online business.
If you are already working with other suppliers, it would be a good idea to take a look and see if Doba has more to offer than your current marketplace.
What is Doba?
Doba is a place where you can find suppliers. It lists more than 2 million products, and you can easily import these products into your store.
Since it was made specifically for the dropshipping business model, you don't have to buy a single item. All you have to do is to choose products, upload them to your store, and start selling.
Want to know how to create a store? Click here to start one in 12 minutes!
Once you receive an order from your store, you have to go to the Doba control panel to place the order. The supplier from Doba will package and ship the order not to your house, but to your customer.
The good news is that it is not just focused on retail, you can also buy on wholesale pricing. But before you can do that, you have to be a member and pay a monthly subscription fee. We will discuss the pricing later on.
Doba is compatible with many website platforms. It's also home to a lot of products that do attract not only your average customers but also those who own a brick-and-mortar business such as restaurants.
Here are some examples of the products you will find in Doba.
- Bags
- Wristwatches
- Products from cooking and grilling
- Electronics
- Books
- Beds and accessories
- Colognes
- Shoes
There are so many products to choose from, and they come from different suppliers. Doba allows you to compare prices and pick the one that is offered at the lowest value so you can get more profit.
Doba is only available in 13 countries. This Doba review list them below.
- US
- Canada
- Australia
- Barbados
- Ireland
- Malaysia
- Singapore
- UK
- Germany
- Puerto Rico
- New Zealand
- India
- China
Doba is a platform where you can find qualified droshipping suppliers for you ecommerce store. This Doba review is going to show you what you can expect from Doba. You can see if it's right for you online dropshipping business.
Doba Review: Main Features
Doba was built for sellers, and so you will find a lot of features here that you will typically not find on other online marketplaces.
Doba Integration
This is a feature that allows you to put the Doba system into your store. The Doba app or integration system works in over 100+ platforms like Shopify.
Doba calls these partners as shopping carts.
What happens is you can choose Doba as your supplier, so when you process the orders, you do not have to log out from your online store. Doba will become part of your control panel, and you will have a one-stop shop where you can process the orders.
Examples of integrations
- Amazon
- Big Commerce
- Push to Cart
- Pinnacle Cart
- Volusion
Search and Filtering
Sometimes, it can be very difficult to find a product that you want to sell. This happens a lot when you are browsing millions of products from thousands of suppliers.
It can waste your time, and you will be spending days analyzing and sorting which products are the best picks.
With Doba, you can take advantage of the advanced filtering and search system. You can filter the price, the shipping type, and product availability.
What this means is if you want to search for a product for a particular price range, the Doba system will only show results that match your filters.
Doba Risk Alerts
Doba has something that is called Risk Alert where you will receive a notification if a product from your store seems to be high-risk.
Usually, you will get notified if one of your selected products are low on volume, or out of stock. The benefit of this feature is that you will be able to avoid refunds. One common problem that you will face as a seller is that you will receive an order, only to find out that the product is no longer available.
If this happens, you have to apologize to the customer, issue a refund, and then the customer has to wait for the refund to show in his financial account. Most of the time, refunds can take 30 days.
This is a bad customer experience, and you can prevent it from happening by de-listing your product if you received a risk alert that it is out of stock.
Doba Custom Data Exporting
This is an important feature for sellers using platforms like Amazon, eBay, Volusion, Magento, and others. Typically, people who sell on these platforms keep a spreadsheet that they manually fill out.
In a manual spreadsheet, you have to type the product name, where it is listed, the price you are buying it for, the price you are selling it for, and more.
This is a waste of time, or a waste of money if you are paying someone to do it.
With Doba, all you have to do is to click buttons to download these files. Make the necessary changes, and then re-upload them to your store to reflect the updates.
However, the custom data reporting is not available on all memberships. They are only available in higher tiers starting from the Advanced Plan.
Curated Product Lists
Some sellers do not have the time to research for products to sell. What Doba does for these busy people is to have a ready-made list of products to sell on specific niches.
Not only are the products ready, but the Doba support team also has its in-house experts who will help create your own product listings complete with the suggested prices. These are carefully researched prices that are currently trending and are all related to the specific area of your business.
Supplier Scorecard
Doba ensures that the sellers who buy from their site are protected and well-informed. One of the ways this is done is through the supplier scorecard. In here, you will see important numbers that show how a supplier is performing. In this Doba review, we want to list some of these.
Here are some examples.
- Item count – shows how many of the products are available and how many different products a supplier listed on the site.
- Shipping Options – this area will tell you the different carriers that the supplier uses such as DHL, government postal services, FedEx, and more.
- Processing time – this one will tell you how long a supplier looks for your product. This also shows the time it takes to complete the packaging.
- Shipping Time – find out how long it takes to get the products to your customer’s doorstep in various countries.
- Fulfillment – this one measures how many times a supplier shipped the item against the order count. If a seller has low fulfillment rate, it means that you are very likely to issue refunds to your customers because the product is not available.
- Return Policies – read this part to understand id the supplier issues refunds, and what the conditions are. This part is important because this is what you will tell your customers, too.
- Product Feed – this one is a measurement of how often a supplier uploads new products.
Once you see these scores, you can tell yourself if you still want to do business with this supplier. Commons sense will tell you that a supplier who has long shipping times, long handling times, will drag your business down instead of help it succeed.
My Inventory
This is a feature where you can sort through all the products you have chosen in the Doba system. With this, you can select which one goes to Amazon, which ones go to eBay, or which ones go to Shopify. You can upload all products on all platforms you wan to sell on if you want.
All you need to do is to check some boxes and click the buttons to upload the products. This is also where you can delete products that you do not want to sell anymore.
You can change product prices, see how many are in stock, or if the products were updated and when they were updated.
Doba Review: Compare Pricing
Doba isn't free.
There is a 14-day free trial, but you need to start paying your monthly fee right after this expires.
Below is a list of the different packages, and the benefits that come with them. Keep reading this Doba review so you can see how much it will cost you.
Basic at $29 per Month
If you choose this package, here are the benefits and features.
Order fee
Doba will charge $0.99 as a transaction fee for each order you complete on the marketplace. No matter what the cost of the product, you will be paying this fee. What this means is that you have to add this fee on top of your product cost.
Product Access
You will have access to all the products and suppliers on the site. For $29 per month, you will be able to choose from millions of product listings and hundreds of suppliers who can help you make your business grow.
Q & A
This is a question and answer forum where you can communicate with other Doba members. You can ask for advice and techniques from other dropshippers like you who have more experience than you do.
Doba Deals
Doba Deals are weekly emails sent to the members where they can enjoy discounts for many products. Use this to your advantage by purchasing them during the offer period to make more profits.
Email Support
As a member of the Basic Plan, you can only receive email support. Live chat and phone support are reserved for members in the higher tiers.
Advanced at $69 per Month
In the advanced plan, you will get everything that a Basic Plan member gets, plus some other features.
eBay Data Export
This is a useful feature if you are selling on eBay. This will make things easier for you if you want to change the prices of your eBay items in bulk. What happens is that you will be downloading a spreadsheet file, then you can add your PayPal account and change the prices.
Once you are done doing this, the eBay store will show the changes you made automatically. You can only do this with the Doba products that you are selling on eBay.
Elite Seller Report
An Elite Seller report is a list of products that you can use as a reference to make decisions. As an advanced user, Doba will give you a report of the 30 top-selling products in the Doba marketplace.
With this report, you can carefully think if you want to add these products to your store.
Live Chat
This customer feature support is great since you do not have to wait for an email response. The chat is live so you will be talking to a real agent who can understand your problems and give you the answers you need.
PRO at $249 per Month
This type of plan is best for huge businesses that need more juice from the Doba system.
Apart from the benefits and features of the first two plans, you will get the following:
Amazon Data Export
Similar to the eBay export, you can download your product files from your Amazon store, and then change the contents of the listings from a spreadsheet, then re-upload in Amazon to reflect the changes.
Doba Prepay
The Doba prepay is a payment method where you can send money to Doba. Once the money is there, it will show on your balance. Once you make a purchase from a supplier, you no longer need to use a credit card, and the purchase will be deducted from that Doba balance.
The Prepay feature is a great alternative to credit cards if you do not have one. You can send money to Doba by using a check or a bank transfer.
Phone Support
Only the PRO members can access the phone number to Doba customer support. Here, you can ask questions about how to use the site, or get solutions if you have issues on your account. You do not have to wait for responses to be typed as you do in chat. This will save you time, and you can get better responses.
Doba Enterprise at Customized Prices
This is a plan that is best used by huge companies. The price of this plan will vary according to what you need, but you will get high-quality technological and customer support. I wasn't going to add this into the Doba review. But, I think it's important that I do.
Here are some of the features of this plan.
- API – an API refers to an Application Programming Interface. This is used by web developers so they can combine the feature of one website with another. Basically, it lets your website communicate with the Doba system, and this is best used by big companies that work together.
- Shared FTP – FTP means file transfer protocol. This is a process where your files from your website are shared with another website or server. It lets different computers talk and function together as one.
- Discount on the order fee – as an Enterprise member, you will pay less than $0.99 per purchase, which can save you money if you are selling at high volume.
- No limitation on the exports – the other plans can only let you export a specific number of reports, but with the Enterprise plan, you can export as many as you want.
- Dedicated manager – there will be someone from the Doba team to help you with the things you need to keep your store run smoothly. This manager will understand the different technical problems you may face and will work with other members of the Doba team to solve your issues.
Doba Review: Pros and Cons
To help you decide, here are the pros and cons of using Doba.
Pros
- A huge list of products; the site has millions of products and thousands of sellers
- You can export data from other platforms and make the changes automatically
- Built for dropshipping; all suppliers ship on retail
- The supplier scorecard allows you to make important business decisions based on real data; you no longer have to second-guess whether the supplier will perform or not
- There are many shipping options that different suppliers use; this gives you more flexibility
- Doba has different pricing plans so you can choose the features that fit your business size; the basic plan will give you everything you need to be able to start selling online
- The system works with many platforms
Cons
- There is a monthly cost; not a good choice for those who are just starting out in the online selling business who have low capital
- You have to pay a fee of $0.99 per transaction; this means that Doba is also making money for the things you sell on top of the monthly fee that you are paying
- Customer support not equal. As a paying member, you must have access to all customer support channels.
Doba has a huge list of successful seller so thats a great positive!
Is Doba Right For You?
Doba is a great marketplace reserved for those who want to sell physical products online. All of its features make your selling experience seamless, and all you need is $29 per month to get started.
The 14-day free trial is a great offer so you can test the system before making a commitment to pay. The site operators offer support so you can ask questions at any given time, or you can also rely on the help of other users should there be something you do not understand.
I hope this Doba review helped you understand that this is a powerful dropshipping platform.