How to Link AliExpress to Shopify: Manual, CSV, or DSers

There are three ways to get AliExpress products into a Shopify store, and they behave very differently once the products are live. Below is a full step-by-step walkthrough of each one, plus what it costs and what stops happening after you walk away from it.

Once products are in your Shopify store — however they got there — connect it to StoreClaw to draft Shopify-specific titles, descriptions, and pricing for them, and keep that content current afterward.

3 Ways to Link AliExpress to Shopify

All three get AliExpress products onto a Shopify storefront. What differs is what keeps running once that's done — and that difference is what decides how much ongoing checking a catalog actually needs. The step-by-step walkthrough for each one is below.

None of the three methods are mutually exclusive, either. A store might start with a handful of manually added products while testing a niche, add a CSV batch once a supplier list is confirmed, and bring in an app later once order volume makes manual order placement impractical. The method that fits a given product usually depends on how many SKUs are involved and how often the supplier side is likely to change.

Method 1: Manual Import, Step by Step

Manual import works directly inside Shopify's own product editor, product by product, with no app involved.

1. Open the AliExpress listing you want to source. Note the product's full specs, variant list (size, color, material), and the supplier's asking price in your store's currency.

2. In Shopify admin, go to Products and click Add product. This opens a blank product page with fields for title, description, media, pricing, inventory, and variants.

3. Write the title and description yourself. Rather than pasting the supplier's text directly, rewrite it for your store's tone and remove any supplier branding, watermark references, or outside links.

4. Download the product images. Save each image from the AliExpress listing to your computer, then upload them into the Media section of the Shopify product page. Some supplier pages block a simple right-click save, which may require a browser's built-in image-save tool or a screenshot instead.

5. Set your price. Enter the AliExpress cost into Shopify's "Cost per item" field (for margin tracking), then set your own "Price" field with your markup applied — Shopify does not calculate this markup for you.

6. Add variants matching the supplier's options. In the Variants section, create an option (e.g., Size) and list each value from the AliExpress listing, repeating for a second or third option (e.g., Color) if the product has one.

7. Set weight and inventory tracking per variant. Weight affects shipping rate calculations at checkout; inventory tracking determines whether a variant shows as out of stock once quantity hits zero.

8. Save as a draft, review the live preview, then set the status to Active. Checking the preview before publishing catches formatting issues — broken image order, missing variant prices — before a customer sees them.

Every one of these steps repeats for the next product, with no shortcut for a second or third item. That repetition is the actual limit of manual import — not a lack of control, but a lack of scale.

Method 2: Bulk CSV Import, Step by Step

This method has two halves: building the CSV file from AliExpress product data, then uploading that file through Shopify's own importer.

Building the file:

1. Install a product-export browser extension or use a spreadsheet template built for AliExpress listings. Browse to each product page you want to source while the extension is active.

2. Select the products and run the export action. This generates a CSV with columns for title, description, images, price, and variants pulled from each listing.

3. Open the CSV in a spreadsheet program and check the column headers against Shopify's expected format. Shopify's importer looks for specific headers — Handle, Title, Body (HTML), Vendor, Type, Tags, Option1 Name, Option1 Value, Variant SKU, Variant Price, Image Src, and others — so a mismatched header can cause a column to be skipped or misread.

4. Apply your markup to the price column. Most export tools pull the supplier's cost price as-is; a formula across the price column applies your margin before upload.

5. Spot-check a handful of image URLs by opening them directly in a browser tab. A broken or expired link in the CSV becomes a blank product photo once imported.

Uploading to Shopify:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Products.

2. Click Import.

3. Click Add file and select the CSV file you prepared.

4. Click Upload and continue.

5. Review the import summary — how many products will be added or overwritten — then click Import products. Shopify processes larger files in the background and sends a confirmation email to your account's email address once it finishes.

New products from this import default to a draft or active status depending on the Published column in the CSV; checking a sample of the imported listings — variants, images, pricing — before setting the remainder live catches most formatting issues from the export step.

The speed advantage of this method is real for getting dozens or hundreds of products listed in one pass. The limit sits on the other side of that same speed: the CSV is a snapshot taken at the moment it was built. A price drop on the supplier side, a stockout, or a changed product photo doesn't reach the Shopify listing afterward unless the import is run again or someone checks the supplier page directly.

Method 3: App-Based Sync With DSers, Step by Step

DSers has been Shopify's primary AliExpress app since Oberlo was discontinued in 2022. Setting it up and running it day to day breaks into three stages.

Connecting the accounts:

1. Install DSers from the Shopify App Store and authorize it to connect to your store during onboarding.

2. Inside DSers, go to Settings, then AliExpress Account, and click Connect. This opens a login flow for your AliExpress account.

3. Log in and confirm the connection on the AliExpress Account page back inside DSers. Once confirmed, DSers can pull product data from AliExpress and later push orders to it.

Importing products:

1. Find a product using DSers' Product Research or Find Products tools, or browse AliExpress directly with the DSers browser extension active.

2. Click Add to Import List. The product is now saved inside DSers but not yet live on your Shopify store.

3. Open the Import List and edit the product's title, description, images, and variant mapping before it goes live. This is the point to rewrite supplier copy for your store's tone.

4. Set a pricing rule — a fixed markup percentage or a fixed dollar amount — either for this product or applied store-wide.

5. Push the product to your connected Shopify store. It appears on Shopify as a live listing using the title, description, and price set in the previous steps.

Handling an order once a customer buys:

1. Open the Orders tab in DSers. The Shopify order is already matched to its corresponding AliExpress supplier listing and variant.

2. Review the pre-filled supplier order — product, variant, quantity, and the customer's shipping address pulled from Shopify.

3. Click to place the order, then pay for it through your connected AliExpress account. This is the step that actually sends the order and payment to the supplier — nothing before it does that automatically.

Once the supplier ships, the tracking number syncs back to the Shopify order automatically. Turning on auto-sync settings inside DSers also keeps price and stock checked against AliExpress on an ongoing schedule, rather than only at the moment of import — this is the setting that makes the "sync" in app-based import actually continuous rather than one-time.

DSers' Basic plan is free, covering up to 3,000 products across up to 3 stores, with order limits that scale with sales volume. The Advanced plan runs $19.90/month and adds automatic price syncing and bulk pricing changes across a store. The Pro plan runs $49.90/month and adds supplier-selection tools and multi-supplier management for sellers running more than one sourcing relationship per product.

What a Successful Import Doesn't Finish

A product landing on Shopify with its title, images, and price in place counts as a successful import, following any of the three walkthroughs above. That milestone is about the data arriving intact — it isn't the same thing as the listing being set up for how Shopify itself, or any other channel, actually surfaces products to shoppers.

Shopify reads a product through several fields an import doesn't always fill in with care: the meta title and meta description that show up in Google search results, the URL handle that becomes part of the page's address, alt text on each image, and the product type or collection assignment that controls where it appears in on-site navigation and filters. A CSV or app import brings over the core fields — title, body, price, images — but these supporting fields are often left blank, auto-generated from the title, or copied over in a format that doesn't match Shopify's own structure.

Selling on more than one channel adds another layer. A description formatted for how AliExpress displays bullet points and specs doesn't read the same way inside a Shopify product page, and if the same product is later listed on Amazon, Walmart, or TikTok Shop, each of those has its own field lengths, category structure, and formatting rules. The same raw product data needs separate formatting for each place it's sold, not one version reused everywhere.

Selling into more than one country raises the same point from a different angle. An import carries over whatever language, measurement units, and currency formatting the supplier used — which may not match the language a shopper reads in, the units they expect (centimeters versus inches, kilograms versus pounds), or the currency display a storefront's market requires. None of the three import methods translate or localize this on their own.

A listing is ready to go live formally once these platform- and market-specific details are set, not simply once the import finishes without an error. The import moves the raw product data across; this stage decides whether that data actually functions on the page where it's published.

The Best Tools for Linking AliExpress to Shopify

DSers, AutoDS, Zendrop, Spocket, and CJ Dropshipping each handle the sourcing and supplier connection itself — finding products, syncing stock, moving orders. StoreClaw sits on the Shopify side of that: once products land in the store through any of them, it drafts the listing content and pricing those products actually show to shoppers.

Picking between the supplier-side tools usually comes down to where the products are sourced from. AliExpress-focused catalogs fit DSers or AutoDS. A preference for US-based shipping times points toward Zendrop or Spocket. A pay-as-you-go model without a monthly subscription points toward CJ Dropshipping.

Draft Shopify-Ready Listings as You Import

A product coming in through a CSV file or a DSers push arrives with whatever title and description the supplier wrote — built for a different storefront, in a different tone, sometimes machine-translated. Connecting a Shopify store to StoreClaw adds a step at that point: for each imported product, StoreClaw drafts a title, a description, and a suggested price built for that specific store, ready for a quick review before it goes live.

The import tool — DSers, a CSV, or anything else — moves the raw product data. The listing a shopper actually reads is a separate piece of work, and that's the part StoreClaw drafts.

Is AliExpress Dropshipping Allowed?

AliExpress allows dropshipping as a sourcing model. What a seller still has to manage is everything around that: following each marketplace's own sourcing policy, respecting intellectual property on branded or trademarked items, meeting consumer protection requirements in the markets being sold into, and keeping a store's own return and shipping policy consistent with what customers actually experience from the supplier.

Intellectual property is the one that catches sellers off guard most often. A listing photo showing a recognizable logo, character, or brand name on an unlicensed product is a sourcing problem the import step doesn't filter for — it's a product-by-product check before anything goes live, not an automatic safeguard built into any importer.

None of that is enforced by the import method itself — manual, CSV, or app-based all bring in whatever product data exists on the supplier listing, trademark issues and all. Checking a product before it goes live is a separate step from importing it.

Keep Optimizing After the Import Is Done

An imported listing doesn't need to stay exactly as it arrived. Once a product is live, StoreClaw continues working on it for the connected Shopify store specifically — restructuring descriptions, adjusting titles for search, and suggesting pricing changes as conditions shift, rather than leaving every listing frozen at whatever the original import brought over.

This runs on an ongoing basis, which matters more as a catalog grows — a handful of imported products are easy to revisit by hand; a few hundred are not.

Common Mistakes

• Treating a successful import as the same thing as a launch-ready listing. The data arriving intact doesn't mean the meta fields, URL handle, or alt text are set up.

• Treating a CSV import as a one-time task with no follow-up. Supplier prices and stock move after the import; nothing checks that automatically unless an app does the syncing.

• Looking for Oberlo. It's been discontinued since 2022; DSers is the app that took over its role.

• Assuming an app places and pays for every order with no review. DSers and similar apps fill in the order details; a person still confirms and pays each one.

• Publishing supplier descriptions without reading them first. Machine-translated or template text written for a different storefront often needs a rewrite before it fits a store's own tone.

• Skipping intellectual property checks on branded-looking products. Nothing in the import process filters those out on its own.

• Reusing one listing format across every sales channel. Field lengths, category rules, and language or unit expectations differ by platform and by market.

• Setting a markup rule once and never revisiting it. A sync keeps the price current with the supplier; it doesn't check whether the resulting margin still makes sense.