AliExpress and Banggood are two of the largest B2C (business to consumer) ecommerce websites in the world. Both of them are based in China, which is why many people confuse the two.
However, despite some similarities, they are very different. Today, I’ll be explaining how AliExpress and Banggood differ, and whether it’s smart to choose one over the other.
Whether you are looking for a site to use for your dropshipping business or want to buy some items for personal use, both AliExpress and Banggood have a lot to offer.
Let’s get into the comparison.
AliExpress vs Banggood: An Introduction
What Is AliExpress?
AliExpress is a gigantic online ecommerce store owned by Alibaba. It was launched in 2010, over a decade ago, and there are several versions of the website, in different languages.
It is the most popular ecommerce website in Russia, and one of the top ecommerce websites in many countries.
Alibaba is one of the largest corporations in the world. It operates a number of ecommerce platforms, such as Taobao, which is like AliExpress but geared towards the local Chinese market.
AliExpress, on the other hand, is geared towards international consumers. It is like Alibaba, but it sells directly to consumers buying in quantities of one or two, while Alibaba is a marketplace that sells in bulk to resellers.
What Is Banggood?
Banggood is a bit older than AliExpress; it was founded in 2006, and it is based in Guangzhou, China. According to Banggood, its app is the most downloaded mobile shopping app in all of Europe.
AliExpress vs Banggood: How It Works?
AliExpress
AliExpress is a marketplace open to private third party sellers. If you have used Amazon or eBay in the past, you will be familiar with how this works.
Sellers can sign up for a seller’s account, set up an online store, and sell products on the marketplace. Customers can then browse those products, look at reviews other customers have left for the seller, and buy a product.
The seller is then responsible for shipping the item to the customer. Customers can message sellers directly and talk out any issues, but AliExpress may step in when a seller is neglecting their duties.
AliExpress is more similar to eBay than Amazon. That is because Amazon, in addition to allowing third party sellers to sell on the site, also sells products to consumers directly.
eBay doesn’t do that, and neither does AliExpress — all products are sold by third party sellers.
Of course, this method of operation comes with several disadvantages. For one, some sellers may not be very reliable, and your product may arrive damaged, late, or not at all.
Other sellers may try to scam you outright. However, to make up for that, AliExpress is pretty good at stepping in and finding a resolution when those situations occur.
Banggood
What makes Banggood different from AliExpress is that all the products on the site are sold directly by Banggood. There are no third party sellers on the platform.
What does this mean for you? On the one hand, you won’t have to worry about dealing with shady sellers.
Banggood is a legitimate, reliable company, and you will be dealing with it only.
On the other hand, it may affect prices. Competition between sellers can help drive down prices; some sellers, in an effort to attract more sales, will offer the same products at lower prices.
On Banggood, you don’t have that, so prices for some things may be slightly more expensive.
Nevertheless, on the whole, Banggood products are pretty cheap and affordable.
Banggood vs AliExpress: Product Selection
AliExpress
AliExpress has a massive selection of products in categories such as:
- Fashion
- Phones
- Computers
- Jewelry
- Sports
- Bags
- Shoes
- Beauty
- Cars
- Motorcycles
- Home tools
- And many others
According to this blog post from Shopify, there are over 100 million products on AliExpress.
You can see the top selling products on AliExpress here.
Banggood
In general, the types of products on AliExpress and Banggood are similar. AliExpress has a lot of sellers, so some sellers may offer unique products.
Also, some small (and a few large) brands have official stores on AliExpress. If it’s a small brand, you may only be able to find its products on AliExpress.
According to Banggood, there are over one million products on the site, from over 100,000 suppliers. That’s only a small percentage of the number of products on AliExpress.
Nevertheless, Banggood is still a massive site — that number of products is nothing to laugh at.
If you browse the categories on both sites, you will find them pretty identical, with only minor differences.
You can see hot and best selling products on Banggood here.
AliExpress vs Banggood: Shipping Options
AliExpress
Many products on AliExpress come with free shipping. However, free shipping methods are usually extremely slow — it can take two months for a product to arrive!
If you’re dropshipping, that’s no good — none of your customers will want to wait that long for their products to arrive. Even if you are ordering a product for yourself, that’s an extremely long time to wait.
Usually, however, there are also faster shipping options available, depending on the product, your location, and the seller.
If you use AliExpress’s shipping service, delivery time depends on which tier you choose.
AliExpress Standard Shipping can take as little as 15 and as many as 45 days, sometimes longer. If you want the package to come in 7-15 business days (not including weekends), you can select AliExpress Premium Shipping (when available).
If you use AliExpress’s shipping, AliExpress will take care of all the logistics. The seller will first send the product to AliExpress’s shipping center, and AliExpress will take it from there.
Other shipping options may also be available, but they’re not always quicker than AliExpress’s shipping service.
Many sellers now also offer ePacket as a delivery option. ePacket is a shipping method that many merchants in China use for ecommerce sales (hence the “e” in the name).
ePacket started out as an agreement between USPS and Hong Kong Post. It allows merchants to send products by plane instead of shipping them in cargo boats, allowing products to reach their destinations within a few weeks rather than a few months.
ePacket now operates in more than 40 countries through agreements with local carriers.
ePacket doesn’t deliver packages itself. Rather, it works with local carriers, like USPS, which handles the final stage of the delivery process.
Banggood
Shipping for Banggood products also varies based on factors such as where you are located. However, Banggood’s express shipping option is a bit quicker than AliExpress’s.
According to Banggood, if you select express shipping to Europe or the United States, your package should arrive within 6-10 business days. Banggood will take care of every step of the shipping process.
If you need shipping within a week, there is an entire section of products with one week shipping. Those products vary based on your location — the reason they come so fast is that they come from local warehouses not far from you.
Also, you can get free Priority Direct Mail shipping to the United States with any order of $49.99 and up.
When it comes to shipping speed, Banggood has a slight edge over AliExpress.
Banggood vs AliExpress: First Time Coupon
AliExpress
If you have never used AliExpress before, you can get a $2 coupon off your first purchase of any product that costs $3 or up. This discount applies to any item on the website, not just selected items.
Banggood
Banggood also gives new users a $2 coupon for their first purchase.
AliExpress vs Banggood: Refunds & Money Back
AliExpress
AliExpress offers a full money back guarantee if your product does not come within 60 days or within the date guaranteed by the seller. However, it’s 90 days for items shipped to Russia and 120 days for those shipped to Brazil.
You can also get a refund if the item came broken, not as described, or was a counterfeit despite the buyer promising a genuine product.
You can open a dispute and try to get the seller to give you a refund. If they aren’t refunding you, AliExpress can step in, but you must open your dispute within 15 days of your order being completed.
If the item you got was counterfeit, you may be able to get 3x your money back, depending on the type of product you ordered and the seller.
Sellers who participate in the 3x money back scheme will give you a refund, and AliExpress will also give you 2x your money back, for a total of 3x your money back.
Also, some products fall under the “Domestic Returns” category. Such products can be returned to a local warehouse, as long as you have not used them, and they are in perfect condition.
For Domestic Returns, you don’t need a specific reason to return the item — just send it back, no questions asked.
As you can see, AliExpress has a pretty great return policy. However, since you will be dealing with third party sellers, returning products can sometimes be a hassle, and you may have to navigate scams that some sellers try to pull.
For example, some sellers will try to get you to close a dispute by promising a refund via PayPal. The way this scam works is pretty brilliant.
Since you didn’t pay for the product with PayPal, PayPal will think that the seller is sending you money in exchange for a product you are sending them.
PayPal has no way of knowing that the money they are sending you is a refund; they have no record of any prior exchange between you two.
Once the dispute is closed and your buyer’s protection has expired, the seller can then issue a chargeback with PayPal and dispute the money they sent you. They’ll say they sent it for a product you were supposed to send them, but which you never sent.
In PayPal’s eyes, if you have no proof of sending them a product, the other party has a legitimate claim, and they will take the money away from you and give it back to the other party.
Banggood
In some ways, Banggood’s return policies are more flexible than AliExpress’s, but they are more limited in other ways. For example, you only get seven days after the completion of an order to return a product that is incomplete, damaged, or not as described, instead of 15 days.
However, you can return all products with no reason within 30 days, as long as you did not use the product, and it is still in perfect condition. This does not apply to swimwear, underwear, and similar products, due to hygiene concerns.
There is also a 180 day warranty for most products — you can return them if there is a quality issue within that time period. There are some exceptions, such as clothing, home decorations, and phone accessories — view all the exceptions on the Banggood return policy page.
Those are the official rules for getting a refund from Banggood — but does Banggood deliver on its promises?
There are mixed reports about this from Redditors. Some say they had problems getting a refund (see here and here), while others say that getting a refund from Banggood was quite easy (see the comments on this thread).
Overall, it seems that most people were able to get refunds from both AliExpress and Banggood, although the process sometimes takes a while, so have patience. Nevertheless, it seems like it can be a hit and miss on both platforms.
Banggood vs AliExpress: Dropshipping
In this section, I will compare the two platforms for dropshipping. As a dropshipper, it is crucial that you choose the right suppliers, so your customers stay satisfied, so which of the two is a better choice?
AliExpress
AliExpress isn’t the best dropshipping source, due to the long shipping times. Nevertheless, it can be a great place to source your products, as long as you find products that have quicker shipping times and sellers who are reliable and who will send quality products on time.
The good part about AliExpress is that many sellers encourage dropshipping. These sellers will avoid putting any of their own branding in the packaging, so your customer won’t know that you used AliExpress.
This lack of branding is also known as white label. All you have to do is enter your customer’s information in the order form when checking out, and the seller will send it right to the customer.
Finding sellers that support dropshipping is not hard. Some sellers will put the keyword “dropshipping” in the product title.
Even if they don’t do that, they will usually specify in the product or store description if they support dropshipping, as shown in the screenshot above.
You can also join the AliExpress Dropshipper Center, which allows you to find top products for dropshipping, track your earnings, and more.
In the Dropshipper Center, you can search for products by keyword or image and filter by delivery time, price, shipping origin, ePacket delivery, and more. There is also the option to search for products that come with exclusive discounts for dropshippers.
Also, some sellers will give lower prices to dropshippers who bring in a lot of orders per month. The more orders you bring in per month on AliExpress, the better prices will be for you.
In the search results, you can see the rating for each product, how many orders were placed for it, and how many dropshipping orders were placed.
Using the Dropshipper Center, you can perform a quick product analysis on any product on AliExpress by copying and pasting the product URL into a box. AliExpress will then show you a graph displaying orders over time and give you a logistics reliability score.
This logistics reliability score can help you determine whether you can rely on the product to arrive on time, or whether there may be delays.
In your dashboard, you can track your daily earnings and orders, see how many orders are pending, and more.
There is also a large Facebook group for AliExpress dropshippers, where you can ask questions and get help with issues you encounter while dropshipping with AliExpress. You can join this group from the Dropshipper Center.
In addition to all that, there are many third party plugins that make dropshipping with AliExpress easier. These plugins, which exist for WooCommerce and Shopify, allow you to quickly pull and import products from AliExpress to your ecommerce store.
Many of these plugins also make fulfilling orders a breeze. With just a few clicks, you can fulfill orders in the plugin instead of manually copying and pasting your customer’s details in the AliExpress checkout form.
Another advantage of using such a plugin is that many will scan AliExpress for stock availability and update your store accordingly. The plugin might also update the price on your store when the price changes on AliExpress.
An example of such a plugin is AliDropship. You can even hire AliDropship to create a custom ecommerce dropshipping store from scratch, using products from AliExpress.
Banggood
Banggood also features a dropshipping program and encourages dropshippers to source their products from its marketplace. Like AliExpress, Banggood offers dropshippers a discount on many products, starting from 5 percent and going up to 25 percent, depending on the product and your tier in the dropshipping program.
Banggood’s API and eBay management center allow you to connect to Banggood for updated stock availability and better order management. Banggood also supports bulk CSV order uploads, and it will provide you with product images without the Banggood watermark for your online store.
Finally, Banggood offers dropshippers white label shipping solutions, so your customers won’t know that you ordered the product from Banggood.
There are a number of plugins that will allow you to connect your WooCommerce or Shopify store to Banggood for dropshipping, though you will enjoy a much wider selection of plugins if you use AliExpress.
AliExpress vs Banggood: Affiliate Marketing
AliExpress
If you don’t want to go down the dropshipping route, you can make money by promoting AliExpress products in exchange for a commission. According to AliExpress, some products offer commissions of as high as 50 percent, and the top affiliates earn $20,000/month.
Generally, however, commissions will be under 10 percent for most products.
Banggood
The Banggood Affiliate Program allows you to earn up to 12 percent commissions on most products, with specific categories qualifying for commissions of up to 25 percent. However, the higher commissions are for affiliates who bring in a lot of sales.
All in all, I wouldn’t really recommend affiliate marketing with either AliExpress or Banggood unless you promote high priced items. Most items are too cheap to make much money from promoting them as an affiliate.
Pros & Cons
AliExpress Pros
- There are more products available.
- There is a Dropshipping Center.
- You can see a seller’s reviews before buying to ensure they are reliable.
AliExpress Cons
- Some sellers are shady and try to pull scams.
- Shipping can take longer than Banggood.
- Affiliate commission rates tend to be low.
Banggood Pros
- All products are sold by Banggood, so you won’t have to deal with individual sellers.
- Customer support is generally good.
- The dropshipping program provides dropshippers with discounts and other perks.
- You can return almost all products within 30 days as long as they are unused.
Banggood Cons
- Shipping is still slow.
- There aren’t as many products as on AliExpress.
- You only have seven days after an order’s completion to get a refund for a bad product.
Similarities & Differences
| AliExpress | Banggood | |
| Products Sold By Third Party Sellers | ✓ | ✗ |
| Products Sold By The Platform Itself | ✗ | ✓ |
| Buy From Local Warehouses | ✗ (But You Can Filter For Sellers In A Specific Country) | ✓ |
| Dropshipping Program With Discounts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Affiliate Program | ✓ | ✓ |
| Express Shipping Available | ✓ | ✓ |
| Wide Selection Of Products | ✓ | ✓ |
| Good Refund Policy | ✓ | ✓ |
Wrapping It Up: Which Is Better, AliExpress Or Banggood?
It’s a close call here, but I’d go with Banggood, especially for dropshipping. The nature of AliExpress means that you have to rely on the seller to provide the right product, ship the product out in time, provide good customer service, and issue a refund when you need one.
Since each seller is different, you may get very different results in terms of product quality, delivery time accuracy, and more. Also, Banggood is a bit quicker in terms of shipping, especially if you only order products from local warehouses.
Finally, Banggood has less competition — most dropshippers know about AliExpress, but not as many know about and use Banggood, despite its great dropshipping program.
