One of the best dropshipping product research tools, Dropship, recently launched its new Chrome extension.
Their team created the new Chrome extension to help ecommerce stores boost their product research efforts.
The question is: Is it actually useful and worth using?
Our goal with this article is to answer those questions!
While we have already reviewed Dropship as a platform, this article focuses on the new Dropship Chrome extension and whether the available features benefit ecommerce store owners.
Ready to get started? Let's dive in!
What is the Dropship Chrome extension?
Dropship Chrome extension is a product research and store analysis extension made by the team at Dropship.io.
The Chrome extension works right inside your Chrome browser, and you can access it from the extensions tab.
Additionally, it appears on the page whenever you visit a Shopify ecommerce website.
Just by clicking on the 'Overview' button from the extension, you get access to all the data the tool offers.
The extension works hand in hand with Dropship's existing product research tool and requires a paid Dropship plan if you want access to all of its features.
However, what's a big bonus of it is that there is a free version available.
The free version has limitations, but you can still access beneficial features like product analysis.
Overall, Dropship's Chrome extension makes product research effortless, even though it was launched in 2023.
Features of the Dropship Chrome extension
Next, let's focus on how the Dropship Chrome extension works and its features.
What can the tool do, and what is it good for?
Many of these features require the paid plan of Dropship to operate, but for each one, we will highlight whether they're available with the free plan.
Let's start!
1. Store analysis
Even with the free plan of the extension, you can do some basic store analysis.
You can see:
- When the store was created
- What theme does the store use
- The store language
- How many products the store has
As for store analysis, the most significant benefit of the paid plan is the store tracking feature.
Let's say you go to another ecommerce website, open up the extension, and click on the 'Start Tracking' button:
When you do this, the store will appear inside the Dropship app, and you can see extra information, such as the store's order history for the past year.
2. Product information
With both the free and the paid plans of the extension, you can see the following product information for every store:
- Best sellers. You can see all the top products the store has, with the price, latest order, and the date the product was created.
- Latest sold. This acts more as real-time data of what is working for the store.
- Newest products. If you want to see all the latest products a specific Shopify store has, you can see them from here.
- All products. From this section, you can see a list of all the products a specific store has.
It's impressive that this feature is available in the free version, as it's one of the most beneficial features of the Dropship Chrome extension.
3. Live sales tracker
When you're on the paid plan of Dropship, you can track the sales of other Shopify stores in real-time.
For example, if you go to another Shopify website, and open the Dropship extension, you can see what products are selling the best currently.
In our opinion, this is one of the most valuable features of the Chrome extension, as it can help a lot with product research and store analysis.
Note: Dropship does not have exact sales data for a product or website; these are merely estimates. (Learn more from here)
4. Historical sales data
On top of the live sales data, you can see historical sales data.
You can filter the sales by today, yesterday, and last seven days and the Dropship extension gives an estimation of the amount of sales.
You can also see the total sales and how many unique products have been sold.
Historical data is another feature that is only available with the paid plan.
We see it as being helpful in finding successful ecommerce stores to inspire your own store and product ideas.
For example, if you see a store doing well, you can go to their Facebook Ad library from the extension.
You can then see how they drive traffic to get these sales and potentially find new winning products.
5. App discovery
Inside the Dropship Chrome extension, you can find a section that tells you the exact Shopify apps a specific store uses. This feature is also available in the free version.
For example, looking at an ecommerce site called Meowingtons, we can see that they are using the following Shopify apps:
As you can see from the image, you also have a direct link to the Shopify App pages.
Even though this is a cool feature, it's not unique to this extension. Competitors like Shine Commerce offer it too, and you can also access this information on free websites like BuiltWith.
We think the benefit is the saved time (it's fast just to open the extension and see the apps used).
6. Import products to your store
For Dropship users with a paid plan and a Shopify store integrated, you can import products from other Shopify stores to your own store.
For example, let's go to an ecommerce website called Fanjoy.
Once there, you can open the Dropship extension and go to the 'Products' section.
To import products to our own Shopify store, you just click on the 'Import' button.
After this, you just need to confirm that you want to import the product, and it will appear in your Shopify store!
The import process is surprisingly quick.
7. Facebook Ads collection
In our opinion, one of the strong points of the extension is the Facebook Ads collection feature, which allows you to spy and collect Facebook Ads.
It's available even with the free version.
To use the tool, go inside Facebook, open up the Dropship Chrome extension, and click 'Show Only Ads.'
The tool shows you ads only when you scroll through the Facebook feed.
At the same time, it saves all of the ads you see.
This is a nice feature, as you can later inspect your collected ads. To do this, click the 'See Collected Ads' button.
From here, you can see all of your collected ads!
Cool, right?
How do you get started using the Dropship Chrome extension?
Now that you're familiar with the features of the Dropship Chrome extension and how it works, let's go through how you can get started using it.
1. Add the Dropship extension to Chrome
The first step is adding the extension to your Chrome.
The easiest way to do this is to head into Dropship's home page and click on one of the buttons that mention the Chrome extension.
This leads you to the Chrome extension page, where you can click 'Add to Chrome.'
Dropship asks you to let them read your data on all websites so their Chrome extension can work.
Then click on 'Add extension.'
After clicking, Chrome installs the extension, and it appears in your extensions tab.
Now, as you visit any ecommerce store website, you should see the Dropship tab open at the bottom of the page.
If this happens, you've successfully installed the extension!
2. Sign up for Dropship to get full access to the features
Even though the Dropship Chrome extension is free to download and use, the free version is quite limited.
Because of that, we will show you how to fully access the available features.
This will require you to sign up for one of Dropship's paid plans. But they do have a seven-day free trial if you're interested in trying the platform out.
If you want that, head to Dropship's home page and click on one of the 'Start Free Trial' buttons.
This will lead you to their registration page, where you must fill in basic information, such as your name and email.
After this, you need to select your Dropship plan.
If you're not familiar with the plans, here is what they look like:
As you can see, the plans range from $29 to $79 per month.
If you already have an established ecommerce store, you may need to select one of the more expensive plans, but if you're just starting out, you will be okay with the cheapest plan.
For the Chrome extension, the difference is the number of stores you can analyze daily.
Consider how many store searches you need every day, and click on one of the 'Try Free For 7 Days' buttons.
After this, you only have to fill in your credit card details to access the Dropship platform!
At this stage, you've created your Dropship account and downloaded the Chrome extension. Only one step remains.
Next, sign in through the Chrome extension to access all its features.
To do this, head to any Shopify website and click the 'Sign in' button from the Dropship tab.
If you already have an account with Dropship, you should get automatically signed in.
3. Integrate your Shopify store to Dropship
Like the second step, this third step is also optional.
If you have the paid plan of Dropship and want access to the product importing feature, you must integrate your Shopify store with Dropship.
To do this, head to Dropship's admin dashboard, and from the left side tab, click on 'Settings.'
From here, you will find a section where you can connect your Shopify store with Dropship.
When you add your Shopify URL, you will be directed to Shopify, where you can complete the installation process.
Once this is done, you will see your Shopify store connected inside of Dropship!
After this, you will have access to all of the features of the Dropship Chrome extension.
Note: If you don't have a Shopify store set up yet, you can take advantage of our special deal with Shopify and get a 3-day free trial for Shopify and the first three months for just $1 per month.
The pros and cons of using the Dropship Chrome extension
So, what are the pros and cons of the Dropship Chrome extension?
Having examined its features thoroughly, we now understand its strengths and weaknesses.
The pros
Some of the most notable pros of the Dropship Chrome extension we noticed are:
- Free version available. Downloading and using the most basic version of Dropship's Chrome extension is free! With it, you get access to essential product and store information, a list of the store's best sellers, and the Shopify apps they use.
- Standout features. For example, some of the information about the latest products sold is unique, and we couldn't find it from any competitor.
- Quick access to Facebook Ad library. When you install the Dropship Chrome extension, you get immediate access to your competitor's Facebook Ads page. However, the Chrome extension wasn't always able to connect the store to the correct Facebook Ads library, which was a slight disadvantage.
- Easy product importing option. If you have Dropship's paid plan and have integrated it with Shopify, you can import products directly from your competitors' stores to your own.
The cons
And these were the cons of the extension:
- The free version is limited. While Dropship has a free plan for their Chrome extension, it's a bit limited, especially compared to some competitors like Shine Commerce.
- The Dropship's extension is new. Because the Chrome extension is still relatively new, there are some bugs involved, which can cause the tool to not work. For example, during our review, the live sales tracker was under maintenance because of some problems in the tool.
- Occasional inaccurate data. Even Dropship states that some of the available data may sometimes be inaccurate. After all, they are just estimates based on different factors, such as the number of visitors.
Are there Dropship Chrome extension alternatives?
Let's look into three Dropship Chrome extension alternatives.
All of these have some different features, so we will do our best to highlight the differences and what each tool is good for.
Let's start.
1. Ecomhunt
Ecomhunt's Chrome extension is designed to help you track down competitors and spy on their Shopify stores.
It's a great extension, especially for those using Facebook Ads, as you can filter your Facebook feed to show you sponsored posts only.
This is beneficial for finding your competitors' ads and getting inspiration.
If you're interested in learning more about Ecomhunt, we recommend that you check out our review of the platform:
2. Shine Commerce (previously Commerce Inspector)
A popular alternative to Dropship's Chrome extension is Shine Commerce (a tool previously known as Commerce Inspector).
Shine Commerce's Chrome extension gives you access to data about Shopify stores.
You can see their best-selling products, revenue, units sold, number of visitors, Facebook Ads, and similar shops.
For Shopify store owners, we see it as a good alternative.
3. DSers
If you want a Chrome extension that can specifically help with importing winning products into your Shopify store, DSers has a great extension available.
DSers' Chrome extension enables you to import products from AliExpress into your Shopify store and is actually free to use.
We have a detailed article on DSers' Chrome extension if you're interested in learning more about it:
Note: On top of the three alternatives above, we have a long list of different Chrome extensions that are beneficial for ecommerce store owners. If you're interested, you can find that article here!
Taking action
Reading and absorbing information and knowledge is great (definitely if it's' free!), but do you know what's even better?
Taking action!
So, to help you with taking action with what you have learned in this article, take a look at the bullet points:
- Consider your own needs. Are you in a place where you're doing product research and want to make the process more efficient? Depending on your situation, you may want to use the Dropship Chrome extension.
- Installing the Chrome extension. Installing the Dropship Chrome extension is quite quick, and we went over the steps above in the 'how to get started' section, so check that out if you still need help!
- Get access to all features. If you want full access to Drophip's Chrome extension, you must opt for one of their paid plans. The plans have a seven-day free trial.
- Sign in to the Dropship Chrome extension. If you opt for one of the paid plans of Dropship, you still have to sign in to the Chrome extension to get full access to the features.
- Integrate your Shopify store to Dropship. You must also integrate your Shopify store into the platform if you want to import products from other ecommerce stores with the Chrome extension.
Conclusion
That's it! Our review on the Dropship Chrome extension.
Overall, we think it can be an extremely useful tool for ecommerce store owners who want to find winning products.
Not only are the features beneficial, but quite unique to the market.
If you want to make your product research more efficient, give it a try. If you only want to import new products to your Shopify store, DSers' Chrome extension can be a great alternative.
Both Chrome extensions have free plans, so you don't have much to lose.
Good luck!
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