In this SaleHoo review we are going to be looking at what SaleHoo is, how it works, is it any good, and are there any alternatives to SaleHoo. By the end of this review you will have all the information you need to know about SaleHoo and whether it is a good source of wholesale and drop shipped products.
What Is SaleHoo?
As you have searched for a SaleHoo review, you probably know that it has made big waves in the drop shipping world. If you don’t have any idea of what SaleHoo is, we have explained it in detail below.
SaleHoo is a New Zealand based organization that was founded in 2005 by Simon Slade and Mark Ling. Slade was an online seller on TradeMe (New Zealand’s version of eBay) before starting SaleHoo. His experiences led him to develop a product that made it easier for online sellers to find suppliers and products, and ship them to customers.
SaleHoo is a wholesale directory that connects individuals to 2.5 million plus products from over 8,000 trusted wholesalers, manufacturers and dropship suppliers. It acts solely as an intermediary and does not supply or exchange or merchandise.
Suppliers are listed from a range of different countries from around the world, but most are based in Canada, China, Australia, the USA, UK, and New Zealand.
The great thing about SaleHoo is that the staff screen suppliers before adding them to the SaleHoo database. This helps to prevent any scam suppliers and timewasters.
Is SaleHoo Legitimate?
SaleHoo has been in the business for over 17 years now and there are loads of positive reviews. An overview of reviews from the Better Business Bureau shows SaleHoo received an A+ accreditation from 47 customers and clients. This shows that SaleHoo is a completely legitimate business tool that can help online retailers and drop shippers find suitable suppliers.
While SaleHoo is an excellent tool for online retailers, it is not for everyone. We will be explaining the positives and negatives of SaleHoo throughout this article and by the end of it you will know if it is the tool for you.
As proper customers, we can tell you that SaleHoo is perfectly legitimate and is not a scam. It offers a perfectly usable and useful product for $67 a year. However, while we find it to be an excellent tool, the only way you can really decide if it is worth it is to sign up yourself.
How Does SaleHoo Work?
SaleHoo makes finding products to sell surprisingly easy. You can use SaleHoo’s inbuilt ‘Lab’ tool to find profitable products that you can sell. The Lab lets you discover new products, compare products, save ideas and see product trends.
The first thing you want to do is decide on an idea or product you want to sell. You need to research about the product or area of the market you want to occupy. With SaleHoo, you can research the sell rate, average price and competition for thousands of different products. You can an example of SaleHoo Labs in action below. Notice all the different filters you can change below.
If we click on the 4-Legger Healing Balm, we can see more details about the product. You will be greeted by a range of different suppliers you can choose from and their respective offers (minimum order, where they ship to, etc.)
Let’s take a look at a different product. The Hurricane Fur Wizard Fur Remover has a list of different suppliers and you can see that the sell rate is 100% for the product. Of course these are completely different products but it is great to be able to see which ones perform better at a glance.
Once you have selected a product that looks good, you can save that product idea to come back to later. When you click on a product, you can not only view any potential suppliers, but also any similar listings.
After you have selected a few different products, you can compare them against one another. SaleHoo provides a direct comparison between the sell rate, number of listings and average price of the products you are comparing. This is a great tool as you can quickly look at the best performing product and make a decision on what product you want to choose.
What Does the Sell Rate, Listings and Average Price Mean?
- Sell-Through Rate is based on the number of successful listings compared with the total listings for a product on eBay in the last month.
- The Average Price is pretty self-explanatory and it is the average price that a given product is sold for on eBay during the previous month.
- The Competition is based on analysis of the total number of listings and sellers for a given product. SaleHoo suggest that you avoid highly competitive products when first starting out.
How to Find a Supplier On SaleHoo
Once you have selected the product you want to start selling online, you need to choose a reliable supplier. As we wrote above, if you click on any given product you will be able to see a list of different suppliers you can choose from.
SaleHoo provides information on over 8,000 suppliers from all over the globe, including how long they have been on SaleHoo and how long they have been in business. You will also notice that SaleHoo provides their email, phone number, physical address and website, so that you can contact them.
It is recommended that you contact as many suppliers as possible to negotiate the best deal.
Start Selling!
Now that you have found a suitable supplier, you can start advertising your product. This could be on a website like eBay or Amazon, or you may even have your very own online store.
Additionally, you can decide whether you want to drop ship products directly to your customers or buy them in bulk and arrange your own shipping. Drop shipping is undoubtedly the easier method, but buying in bulk can yield larger profits.
If you decide to use drop shipping, your supplier will ship any products directly to your customer after a sale has been made. For example, if you sell a product for $80, but it only cost you $30, you keep the difference. However, you need to account for other fees such as credit card fees, eBay feels, PayPal and more.
For those looking to qualify for wholesale pricing, you need to purchase the products yourself and get them shipped in bulk to your own warehouse. Once you make a sale, you ship them items directly to your customers. This method is riskier because you have to front up the cash for the products before you can start selling. You also need to have enough storage space, which can be an added cost. Still, buying in bulk and shipping them out yourself usually results in larger profit margins than drop shipping.
What Is Drop shipping?
If you are wondering what drop shipping is all about, we have put together a bit of information about it below.
Drop shipping is a retail method where a store does not keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a sale happens, it purchases the item from a third party and then sends it directly to the customer. This means that the store or merchant never touches the product.
The main difference between a normal retail model and drop shipping is that the seller does not own any inventory. The seller purchases stock as needed from a third party supplier, who is usually a manufacturer or wholesaler.
Is It Better?
Probably the biggest benefit of drop shipping is that less capital is required to launch a business. You don’t have to invest thousands of dollars up front and the risk is much lower. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about managing a warehouse, shipping orders, handling returns and managing stock level.
Drop shipping also lets you work from pretty much anywhere in the world and you have a wide selection of products to choose from.
How Fast Can I Start Selling with SaleHoo?
The great thing with SaleHoo is as soon as you create and login to your account, you can start contacting suppliers. The drop shipping suppliers do not require you to make an initial investment and can start shipping straight away. In addition to this, over 80% of the suppliers on SaleHoo ship products internationally, so you can start selling immediately.
Can I Make Money with SaleHoo?
By now, you are probably wondering how much money you can make using SaleHoo’s wholesale and drop shipping directory. The simple answer is that you can make money, but the amount will depend on how much effort and research you put in. It is not as easy as listing your products on eBay and watching the money role in while you sip on Pina Coladas by the beach.
This is because there is a large number of people who want to do the same thing as you and the competition is high. The market is over-saturated with thousands of different sellers selling the same items. However, do not let this put you off as there is still an enormous amount of money to be made and more and more people are purchasing their products online.
Profit will also depend on what sort of products you are selling and the market you are in. Are you looking to sell pet products, or do you want to sell clothes or electronics? These are completely different markets and profits will vary depending on which one you go for.
Additionally, you need to consider what platform you are selling on. Do you own a website with thousands of visitors a day, or are you looking to start a small eBay business? How and where you sell your products will have a large impact on how much money you can make.
In essence, making money online is not a get rich scheme and it will take hard work. Nobody can accurately predict how much money you will make with SaleHoo, but understand that you definitely can make money with the service.
We recommend that you use Google AdWords and Google’s Keyword Planner tool (don’t worry it’s free!) to do your own research on competition levels, number of searches and other statistics.
Is SaleHoo Safe?
If you have ever purchased or imported anything from China, you will probably already know how unsecure the process is. Most of the time you have no idea where the product is coming from and who the supplier is. It can be a gamble purchasing products online and sometimes you can get burnt. There are loads of counterfeit products that come out of China and you may not even release you are selling fake products.
The great thing with SaleHoo is that you know who you are dealing with and every supplier has to undergo a strict verification process. This eliminates any fraudulent activity, scammers and counterfeiters. SaleHoo ensures that all their suppliers are an actual company and will supply genuine, authentic products.
How Much Does SaleHoo Cost?
Access to SaleHoo’s directory of 8,000 verified suppliers and 2.5+ million products will set you back $67 a year. There are no other fees to worry about and PayPal, along with all major credit cards are accepted as forms of payment.
The $67 a year will also give you access to SaleHoo’s extensive range of training tools, tutorials, market research tools, forums and blogs. SaleHoo does not offer a free trial of their service, but they do have a 60-day money back guarantee.
What About SaleHoo Stores?
In addition to SaleHoo’s directory of suppliers, the company also offers an online store builder for those looking to get away from online market places like eBay. SaleHoo Stores cost $27 a month for the basic version, $47 a month for the regular and $97 a month for the premium version. Let’s take a look at how these different options stack up:
Basic | Standard | Premium | |
Number of Products | 200 | 5,000 | Unlimited |
Monthly Bandwidth | 200MB | 400MB | Unlimited |
Image Storage | 600 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Email Accounts | 1 | 3 | 20 |
There are other benefits to the standard and premium options as well, such as coupons and discounts, wholesale supplier directory access, market research lab access and more. We recommend that you check out the different options for yourself here.
SaleHoo Stores does not require any previous experience to set up and you get 15 professional templates to choose from. In addition to this, you can also use built-in marketing tools to improve your store’s performance. While there are better alternatives out there, SaleHoo Stores is an excellent option for those looking to build a store quickly. We would certainly recommend this for first time store builders as no technical skills are required.
Can I Cancel My SaleHoo Membership?
You can cancel your SaleHoo membership for any reason at any time. If you fail to find the products you are looking for, or it simply doesn’t meet your expectations you can send an email or call SaleHoo’s customers service department to cancel your membership.
For those who cancel within 60 days of creating their account, SaleHoo will refund you the full amount you paid for the service. However, those that go over 60 days are out of luck and are not eligible for a refund. If you request a refund, SaleHoo will ask for you receipt number that you got when you purchased your membership.
What Is Good About SaleHoo?
SaleHoo gives you access to over 8,000 verified suppliers and more than 1.6 million genuine products, which makes it one of the largest databases of its kind. If you are looking for a product to sell, you can probably find it on SaleHoo.
Another great benefit of SaleHoo is the security and safety of the tool, which is especially useful for those who want to dip their toes into the world of online retail. The strict verification process ensures that any fraudulent companies or counterfeiters are weeded out.
It is really difficult to find suppliers of genuine products or brands that are licensed. SaleHoo gives you some peace of mind that whatever product you are looking at will be what it claims to be. Fake and counterfeit products are a real issue because if you end up selling them as genuine products, you could be opening yourself up to legal ramifications down the track.
We also like how easy and simple it is to find and compare products. The ability to search based on product type, sell rate, average price and competition is handy, and you can also search directly for suppliers or products.
As SaleHoo is so simple to use, we definitely recommend it for newcomers to the industry. If you are just starting out, you don’t want too many options to choose from and SaleHoo gives you this simplicity. SaleHoo removes the frustration of trying to find the right supplier, which makes it much better and safer for newcomers.
SaleHoo offers so many different tools and tutorials that can really help you get better results, which is what we like to see. The active community is really helpful and can be great when you want a question answered.
The marketing labs tool is particularly useful as it gives you all the information you need to know about a product. It helps to remove any doubt you might have about a product and will speed up the product selection process.
We like that there are no additional fees attached and that you don’t have to worry about any start-up costs. The 60-day money back guarantee is excellent and protects you if you feel that SaleHoo has not lived up to your expectations.
What Is Bad About SaleHoo?
SaleHoo may be an excellent directory and it comes with some great tools, but as with everything there are some downsides as well.
- SaleHoo does not list as many products as some of the other services out there. For example, Wordwide Brands offers 16 million products compared with SaleHoo’s 2.5+ million.
- There are lots of big brands, but it can be harder to find products from smaller brands.
- Some of the products listed in the directory are cheaper elsewhere and some have very low margins.
- Customer support is excellent, but they do not offer to find suppliers for products that are not currently listed (Worldwide Brands offers this).
- You are paying $67 for a list of products and suppliers that you can find on your own. However, going it alone will be much more difficult for inexperienced people and it will be more of a hassle.
How to Get Better Results on SaleHoo
Now that we have talked about why you should or shouldn’t purchase SaleHoo, let’s look at what you can do to get better results with the service.
The first thing you should do is get an idea of what drop shipping is and how it works. We have explained a bit about it in this article, but there is loads more information out there. SaleHoo has a vast array of guides and tutorials that help you get familiar with how things work, so we suggest you check out those.
Once you have learnt about drop shipping and its benefits and weaknesses, we recommend that you write down all of your product ideas and the suppliers that you want to use. Contact as many suppliers as possible to find the best ones for you. You want to find at least two or three suppliers for every product that you want to sell and then compare the price.
We then recommend that you try to see what other users think about your products and suppliers by asking for feedback on both SaleHoo’s forums and on other ecommerce websites.
You need to remember that while someone may be having success with their product, you may not have the same success. However, this also goes the other way as well. Just because someone has had no success with a product, doesn’t mean you will be the same (it may just require a different approach).
Additionally, we also recommend that you learn how to market your products and yourself as a seller. You need to be inviting to customers and you need to make them want to buy from you rather than your competitor.
SaleHoo Alternatives and Competitors?
We know that SaleHoo is a good product, but you are probably wondering if it has any competitors. The answer to that is yes, there are a number of different competitors and alternatives to SaleHoo. The most notable of these is Worldwide Brands which features many more products than SaleHoo. Let’s take a look at how SaleHoo stacks up against its competition below.
SaleHoo vs Worldwide Brands
Worldwide Brands is probably SaleHoo’s biggest competitor and it is one of the most well known in the business. Much like SaleHoo, Worldwide Brands offers a wholesale directory that can be used to find products to sell. The main difference is that Worldwide Brands offers a much larger range of products and more suppliers are willing to work with them. Worldwide Brands is also more active at adding products to their directory, which is a major bonus.
Another benefit of Worldwide Brands is that they go more in depth when verifying suppliers. They go out and visit supplier’s warehouses and make test orders to make sure they are legit before adding them to the directory.
As Worldwide Brands has so many suppliers and products competing for your business, you are more likely to get a cheaper price than with SaleHoo. They also have more light bulk wholesalers that have lower minimum order levels.
The worst thing about Worldwide Brands is the price. At $299, Worldwide Brands is significantly more expensive than a year’s membership to SaleHoo. However, Worldwide Brands is a one-time cost, so you need to weigh up how long you will be using the service.
SaleHoo vs Doba
Doba is another option to choose from, but it does have its limitations. Like SaleHoo, Doba is essentially a middleman that makes it easy to find products that can be drop shipped to your customers. However, unlike SaleHoo, Doba handles the negotiations with the suppliers so you don’t have to do it.
Doba gives you access to over 2 million products from more than 200 suppliers. It uses a similar platform to SaleHoo that lets you browse products and add them to your inventory.
The main drawbacks of Doba seem to be the cost of the goods and the hefty price tag for a membership. Doba offers four plans that are billed monthly: Basic ($29), Advanced ($69), Pro ($249) and Enterprise. Compared to SaleHoo, Doba is significantly more expensive and you are really just paying for the simplicity. Still, if you want to try out Doba they do offer a 14-day trial.
SaleHoo vs Oberlo
Oberlo was founded in 2015 and has some key differences to SaleHoo. It is essentially a drop shipping app that lets you export products from Aliexpress and import them directly into your Shopify store. Once a customer buys something from your store it is shipped to them directly. The biggest downside to Oberlo is that it only works on Shopify stores, but it does that beautifully.
Oberlo is completely free for the starter pack, while $29.90 a month will get you access to the basic version, and $79.90 a month will give you all the features available in the Pro version. If you don’t need the extra features and sell a small number of products per month, the free version is a great option to try.
Compared to SaleHoo, Oberlo is very limited. SaleHoo gives you access to more suppliers and is much better if you are dealing with larger numbers of sales. You also have the option to bulk ship items to your own warehouse, whereas Oberlo only lets you drop ship items. If you are serious about starting an online retail business we definitely recommend SaleHoo over Oberlo.
SaleHoo vs Alibaba
Alibaba has become a giant of the online retail world, but how does it compare to SaleHoo. Well, the answer to that is poorly. Alibaba does have a list of drop shipping suppliers and you can buy products in bulk, but the risks are much higher.
There are hundreds of negative reviews left on SiteJabber and BBB.org about Alibaba. Many people have had less than stellar experiences with suppliers listed in Alibaba’s directory, and some suppliers have even provided false information or cheated customers out of thousands of dollars.
“Purchased $10,000 of marble urns… After nearly two years and dozens of emails to lots of different people, we finally received a shipment of product that we did not order. I am not the only one.”
We definitely recommend using SaleHoo over Alibaba, especially if you are a newcomer to the industry. SaleHoo’s verification process and great customer service will keep you safe and will protect you from getting scammed.
SaleHoo vs Wholesale Central
Another option is Wholesale Central, which is a company based in Bethel Connecticut and has been operating since 1996. The great thing about Wholesale Central is that it is completely free to use and is fairly simple to operate. However, Wholesale Central has a much smaller directory and only 84 suppliers out of 1,000 offer a drop shipping service. Overall, we feel that SaleHoo offers much more than Wholesale Central, but as it is free we really can’t complain.
SaleHoo Review Conclusion
SaleHoo is an excellent tool for those who are just starting out in the online retail world. It will protect you from being scammed and losing lots of money, which will give you peace of mind. We feel it is an excellent alternative to importing from Chinese suppliers (or any suppliers for that matter) that you do not trust.
While SaleHoo is a good directory, we feel it would be even better with a slightly larger range of products. A bigger range of products would give you more choice as your online store grows.
We love how much information SaleHoo provides to help you start up and grow your online retail business. The tools to find products are excellent and we like how easy it is to compare products.
Knowing that you are dealing with verified suppliers and a great customer service team will help you get better results. The SaleHoo team want to help your online retail business get up and running and with all the resources they provide it really shows.
We definitely recommend SaleHoo for those starting out in online retail, but it can also be a great tool for more experienced people as well. There are other alternatives, but we feel that SaleHoo provides the best customer experience of them all.