How do you connect DSers to Shopify?

Before you start

Three things, and the setup takes ten minutes only if all three already exist:

• A live Shopify store, on any plan including the trial
• An AliExpress account you can log into, ideally the one you placed sample orders with
• Chrome, for the DSers extension. The importer works without it, but the extension is faster

The six steps

1. Install DSers from the Shopify App Store. Search “DSers”, not “AliExpress” — there are imitations.

2. Authorise the app on the Shopify permission screen. It needs read and write access to products and orders, which is exactly what it says it does.

3. Link AliExpress. In DSers, go to Settings and connect your AliExpress account. This is the step people postpone and then forget, and without it nothing pushes.

4. Import the product. Either use the Chrome extension on the AliExpress listing page, or paste the URL into the DSers importer. It lands in your import list, not in your store, so you can edit the title and delete the supplier’s watermarked images first.

5. Map every variant. Each Shopify variant has to point at a specific supplier SKU. This is the step that matters.

6. Set the shipping line per product before you publish.

The variant mapping trap

A half-mapped product does not throw an error. It works, quietly, and ships the wrong item.

The common failure: you import a product with six colours, DSers maps the default variant, and every order for the other five colours either fails to push or buys the default. You find out from a customer photo two weeks later, by which point 40 parcels are in transit.

Check three things after mapping:

• Every variant has a supplier SKU next to it, with no blanks
• The colour and size names match the supplier’s, not just yours
• The supplier price shown per variant is the one you calculated with

Place one real test order on yourself before you spend anything on ads. It costs the price of the product and it is the only way to see the whole chain work.

Set the shipping line before you launch

The default is whatever the supplier prefers, which is frequently the slowest option on the listing. That is the difference between 8-20 days and 6-12 days on the same order, decided by a dropdown you never opened.

Pick the line deliberately, then state the resulting window on your product page. The real delivery times per line are in AliExpress shipping time to the USA.

What the free plan covers

3,000 products and unlimited orders, which is more than a first store will use. The details of what is free and what is not are in is DSers free.

Run on it until something specific costs you time. The upgrade that actually matters is not a DSers tier — it is moving fulfilment to a supplier with local warehouse stock once a product passes five to ten orders a day, which is covered in CJdropshipping vs DSers.

If you are not on Shopify

DSers supports WooCommerce and Wix as well, and the sequence is the same: install, authorise, link AliExpress, import, map, set the shipping line. What differs is how much of it is one click.

On WooCommerce you are installing a plugin and managing its updates alongside every other plugin, which is the general trade covered in Shopify vs WooCommerce. Budget an hour rather than ten minutes for a first connection, and test the order push twice.

After it is connected

Set a weekly ten-minute check: supplier stock on anything behind paid traffic, the price on each mapped variant, and the shipping line still set to what you chose. All three change without notifying you, and all three change what your customer receives.

Platform-side, the fees that apply to every one of those orders are on the platform comparison.