Start selling with AliDrop today

You type "Oberlo" into Google because some YouTube video told you it was the secret to starting a dropshipping store. Then you see forum threads calling it a scam. Others say it shut down. Some people say they lost money. You just want a straight answer. Was this thing real, or was it some elaborate scheme to steal subscription fees from hopeful entrepreneurs?

The short version is that Oberlo was a completely legitimate dropshipping app. It was not a scam. It was also shut down permanently in June 2022 and no longer exists. The confusion you are running into is old content still ranking in search results, mixed with frustration from people who used the tool and did not make money. This article separates fact from noise and explains what to use now that Oberlo is gone.

What is Oberlo?

Oberlo started in 2015 in Vilnius, Lithuania. A small team built a Shopify app that let store owners import products from AliExpress with a few clicks. No inventory. No warehouse. No packing boxes in your living room. You browsed AliExpress inside the Oberlo dashboard, picked products you liked, and pushed them to your Shopify store. When a customer bought something, Oberlo forwarded the order to the AliExpress supplier, and that supplier shipped the item directly to your customer.

The model was simple. You never touched the product. You made money on the difference between what the customer paid you and what you paid the supplier. Oberlo handled the import, the order routing, and the tracking sync. The app grew fast. By 2017, Shopify saw the traction and acquired Oberlo for roughly $15 million. For a few years after that, Oberlo was the default recommendation for anyone starting a Shopify dropshipping store. At its peak, over 100,000 stores actively used it, and the platform helped process more than 85 million product orders during its lifetime.

Is Oberlo Legit?

Oberlo is doing bad and has a 1.2-star rating on Trustpilot. But besides that, it has a 100,000 active stores online. An acquisition by Shopify itself. Those are not the metrics of a scam. A scam would not get acquired by a publicly traded company for millions of dollars. A scam would not operate transparently for seven years inside a tightly controlled app ecosystem.

The accusations that Oberlo was a scam typically came from two places. The first was people who signed up for expensive courses that overpromised results. The course sold them on Oberlo as the magic key. When they did not make money, they blamed the tool instead of the course or their own execution. The second group was people who had an Oberlo account, went inactive for a while, and came back to find the app gone. They assumed they had been defrauded when they could no longer access their data.

Neither case points to Oberlo being a scam. Oberlo itself did not charge merchants for product costs or take a cut of sales beyond the app subscription. The money people lost came from ad spend, Shopify fees, and the learning curve of running an ecommerce business. That is the cost of starting something, not a sign of fraud.

Why Did Oberlo Shut Down?

This is where a lot of the confusion starts. Oberlo did not shut down because it was caught doing something shady. Shopify described the closure as a routine product deprecation. The app was delisted in May 2022 and permanently shut down on June 15, 2022. Merchants got about 35 days of notice to migrate their data.

The real reasons are more practical. Shopify acquired Oberlo in 2017 and then largely let it stagnate. Competitors like DSers came along with better features, bulk ordering, and closer relationships with AliExpress. Oberlo fell behind. At the same time, Shopify was shifting focus toward its own fulfillment network, including a $2.1 billion acquisition of Deliverr in 2022. Maintaining an AliExpress-focused app that was losing users to competitors no longer made strategic sense.

There was also a technical factor. Oberlo and AliExpress had an increasingly strained relationship around API access. Oberlo kept hitting throttling limits, and the service degraded over time. Users reported timeouts, failed order placements, and tracking sync issues. Rather than rebuild the infrastructure, Shopify pulled the plug.

The Real Complaints Oberlo Users Had

Calling Oberlo legitimate does not mean it was perfect. The most common complaint, by far, was shipping time. AliExpress suppliers shipped from China, and delivery windows ranged from 15 to 45 days. Customers got impatient. Refund requests piled up. Store owners had to constantly manage expectations and apologize for delays they could not control.

Product quality was the second headache. A listing photo on AliExpress did not always match what arrived. Oberlo had no quality control because it was just the connector between your store and the supplier. If the supplier shipped a cheap knockoff, you took the hit, not Oberlo.

Then there was the shutdown itself. A 35-day migration window is tight. Many merchants lost product descriptions, order histories, and customer data because they did not act fast enough or did not see the notice in time. That left a sour taste. People felt abandoned by Shopify and Oberlo, even if the platform itself was not fraudulent.

Finally, there was the expectation gap. Oberlo handled product importing and order routing. It did not build your store. It did not do your product research. It did not write your ads. A lot of beginners thought buying the Oberlo subscription meant they had a business. When they realized they still needed a Shopify store, a theme, product descriptions, marketing skills, and an ad budget, they felt misled.

What Real Users Experienced With Oberlo

The experience depended heavily on how the user approached the tool. One store owner ran a home decor shop with Oberlo from 2019 to 2022. He found the product import process fast and got his first orders within two weeks. The recurring problem was shipping complaints. He adjusted by writing explicit delivery estimates on every product page. That reduced refund requests noticeably. When Oberlo shut down, he had to scramble, but he had already built a customer base that trusted his store, so the transition was survivable.

Another user tried Oberlo in 2021 after watching a tutorial that made it look effortless. She spent about $400 on Facebook ads with a low return, got frustrated, and shut down her store within two months. Her takeaway was that Oberlo handled the logistics piece but gave zero help with store design, product selection, or advertising. She was not wrong. Oberlo was a tool, not a business system. The gap between what people expected and what Oberlo actually did was wide, and that gap is what fueled a lot of the negative sentiment.

The Misconceptions That Keep the "Scam" Rumor Alive

A common belief is that Oberlo stole money or that the shutdown was forced by regulators. Neither is true. Oberlo did not charge merchants for product costs. It only collected its subscription fee. If a merchant lost money, it was from a combination of Shopify fees, ad spend, and poor product-market fit.

Another misconception is that Oberlo accounts can still be accessed or that there is some recovery option. Every account was permanently deactivated in June 2022. All data was deleted. If you still have an Oberlo login saved somewhere, it will not work.

The third misconception is that Oberlo was the only way to dropship from AliExpress, so its shutdown meant dropshipping itself was dead. Plenty of tools picked up where Oberlo left off, and some of them do far more than Oberlo ever did.

What Should You Use Instead of Oberlo in 2026?

The market did not freeze when Oberlo shut down. Several platforms stepped in, each taking a slightly different approach. Which one fits you depends on what kind of dropshipping business you are trying to run.

If you want the closest possible match to what Oberlo did—import AliExpress products, push them to your Shopify store, and automate order fulfillment—the most direct replacement is a tool that handles AliExpress integration with bulk ordering and synced tracking. The official recommendation from Shopify after the shutdown was DSers, which is free on the basic plan and remains the most popular Oberlo successor. It does what Oberlo did, but faster, with fewer API issues.

If shipping speed is your priority and you are willing to pay slightly higher product costs, you want a platform that connects you to US and EU suppliers. Products ship from domestic warehouses in three to seven days instead of three to seven weeks. That solves the biggest Oberlo complaint overnight.

If you do not have a Shopify store yet and you are starting from absolute zero, you need something that handles more than Oberlo ever did. A platform that builds the store for you, loads it with products, and gives you automation for fulfillment and tracking. That way you are not spending weeks on setup before you can even test a product.

For sourcing specifically, you want access to a wide supplier network. The AliDrop marketplace aggregates trending products from AliExpress, Alibaba, and Temu, so you are not locked into one supplier type. If you want faster shipping, you can tap into best US and EU suppliers and offer domestic delivery times. If you want to scale past AliExpress, you can pull from Alibaba suppliers and Temu suppliers in the same dashboard.

The automation side matters too. AliExpress dropshipping still works in 2026, but doing it manually burns hours you do not have. A tool that forwards orders, syncs tracking, and updates inventory keeps you focused on marketing instead of logistics. If you need a store built from scratch, the AI Shopify store builder generates a complete storefront based on your niche. The AI product description writer handles product copy so you do not have to rewrite supplier descriptions.

For specific markets, you might need regional suppliers. If you are targeting India, you can find reliable Indian dropshipping suppliers here. If groceries or specialty food is your angle, there is a list of top grocery dropshipping suppliers to explore.

Does Oberlo’s Dropshipping Model Still Work?

The underlying model Oberlo popularized has not changed. You list products from a supplier. A customer orders. The supplier ships. You keep the margin. The difference in 2026 is that the tools have improved. Where Oberlo left product research, store design, and marketing entirely to you, modern platforms bundle more of the business into a single workflow.

You still need to pick the right products. You still need to set realistic shipping expectations. You still need to drive traffic. But the parts that Oberlo handled—importing, order routing, tracking—are now table stakes. The platforms worth using go beyond that. They help you find products that are already selling, set pricing rules automatically, and connect you to warehouses closer to your customers so shipping is not the constant fire drill it was in the Oberlo days.

Conclusion

Oberlo was never a scam. It was a legitimate app that helped thousands of people start their first store. It also had real limitations that frustrated users and left many feeling misled when they realized how much of the business was still on their shoulders. The app is gone now. The approach it pioneered is not. The tools that replaced it are better, and if you are starting fresh, you are actually in a stronger position than anyone who used Oberlo back in 2019.

If you want a platform that handles more of the full picture—sourcing, store building, order automation, and supplier diversity—AliDrop is built for that. You get the marketplace, the AI tools, and the supplier connections without having to stitch together five different apps like the old days required.