• Online Stores

Dropshipping store: someone else's warehouse, your catalog

An online store for dropshipping is a storefront behind someone else's warehouse: the goods are with the supplier, and the order is handled by your website. We make such a store on OpenCart: the catalog is filled with prices according to the schedule, items with zero balance are hidden by themselves, the order goes to the supplier in the format he accepts. The scope of work is not determined by the design, but by the data — the price format and the frequency of its update. Therefore, first we look at the prices, and after that we name the amount and term.
See how it works
Price
after a free audit
Guarantee
30 days after project sign-off
The catalog of the supplier we measured
5,830 items, confirmed by two methods
after a free audit
Price
30
Guarantee

days after project sign-off

5,830
The catalog of the supplier we measured

items, confirmed by two methods

5,561
A store with an assortment of foreign brands

items, balances without automatic exchange

in 2 stores out of 3 sitemap.xml gives 200 and 0 bytes
Site map in this sample
from 506.9 to 801.2 ms, measurement on 07/31/2026
The first response from the server
20–35
Launch date

working days from approval of technical specifications

50%
Conditions

advance payment, 2 rounds of edits, 30-day warranty period

Who it's for

Situations where this service delivers results

Scenario 1 of 4

We made an agreement with the supplier, so far you are selling via messenger

The price is in the phone, you ask for availability before each order, and the buyer waits for an answer. The store transfers the price to the catalog with prices and availability, and the order to the checkout with payment and branch selection. The manager ceases to be an intermediary between the file and the client.

We'll review your situation in a free audit
What's included

Complete list of work and what you get as a result

  • An OpenCart store with a catalog that populates with prices on a schedule — without manually moving items
  • Mapping of fields separately for each provider: your file remains as it is, the import is adjusted
  • The rule of priority when crossing nomenclature is that the same position from two prices does not become two cards
  • Automatic hiding of items with a zero balance and the date of the last update is visible to the buyer
  • Markup by rules: percentage by category, by supplier or by individual items, without manual calculation
  • Sending the order to the supplier in the format he accepts: file upload, email or exchange via API
  • Import log: how many items are updated, how many are unmapped, how many are hidden - you can see when the provider changed the file structure
  • LiqPay, WayForPay, monobank and postpaid payment; delivery by Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta with the choice of branch at the checkout
  • Technical SEO: CNC, canonical, unique title, site map without duplicates — what is often not available in stores at foreign prices
  • Category structure and custom text on category pages instead of descriptions that twenty other stores sell
  • Analytics: GTM, GA4, cart and purchase events — so you can count which items are actually selling
  • Transfer: access, instructions for connecting a new supplier, 50% prepayment, warranty period of 30 calendar days
When this service isn't right

What's not included — so there are no surprises at delivery

  • Searching for suppliers and negotiating terms — come already with an agreement
  • Rewriting product descriptions for uniqueness: this is a separate service with its own scope
  • The supplier is responsible for the delivery time and quality
  • Post-launch advertising
  • Hosting, domain, acquiring

Free audit of suppliers' prices

Dropshipping depends on one thing: do you know in real time what is in stock. Everything else is secondary. The audit looks at your prices and tells you how reliable the catalog will be and how much work is actually in it.

What we measure

  • Format and frequency of pricesHow the data comes from each supplier and how often the balances are updated. This is the upper limit of the accuracy of your catalog: it will not become more frequent than the price.
  • Data completenessAre there photos, specifications and descriptions in the price list? If they are not, the filling turns into a separate project with its own deadline - and this is where the estimates are usually missed.
  • Intersection of nomenclaturesIs the same item available in several suppliers and by which field to compare it - manufacturer's article number, barcode. Without a common field, the directory will be filled with duplicates.
  • Content uniquenessHow many stores already sell this price with the same descriptions. This directly affects the chances of success, and it is better to know this before the launch, and not after six months of waiting for traffic.
  • Supplier terms and conditionsWho ships, on whose behalf, how are returns processed. The question is not technical, but it determines what can be written on the site in general.
  • Technical baseIf the store already exists - the first response from the server, the weight of HTML, the state of the site map and analytics. In two of the three stores we measured on someone else's assortment, the sitemap.xml returned 200 with an empty body.

What you get

  • Price analysis: what is imported automatically, what will have to be proven manually.
  • Estimate how many items will reach the site with normal photos and characteristics.
  • Proposal of priority rules, if there are several suppliers.
  • Talk for 30-40 minutes on this document.

Timeline: 2-4 business days from when we receive the quotes

Why is it free

Because the main risk here is not technical, but meaningful: a catalog with other people's descriptions and irregular balances does not work regardless of the quality of the site. Seeing the prices before the contract is fairer for both parties. The document remains with you even if we do not make the store.

What's next

After the audit — the amount and term by stages with dates, contract, invoice, report. If it is clear from the prices that the catalog will be uncompetitive, we will say so directly, and not after the launch.

Short form: your contact and site URL

  • Contract, act and 30-day warranty

    Every project gets a written contract: scope, deadlines, amount, acceptance procedure. After delivery — act and invoice, then 30 calendar days of warranty.

  • Sole proprietor & bank transfer

    The contractor is a registered sole proprietor. Payment by invoice with closing documents.

  • Rights & access — yours

    Code, design and materials transfer to you after full payment. Domain, hosting, repository and analytics are registered to you.

  • Client portal instead of email chains

    During the project you get access to a portal: contracts, invoices, acts and project status in one place.

  • European clients

    Among our work — projects for Norway, Bulgaria, Moldova and Spain.

  • Verifiable numbers

    Every case in the portfolio comes with a link to a live site and a technical measurement.

  • Audit first, then pricing

    There is no price list on the site intentionally: the scope of the same work differs multiples between clients.

  • We say "no" when unsure

    If the task isn't ours or the deadline is unrealistic — we tell you upfront.

What affects the price

Why two seemingly identical tasks are priced differently

  • Number of providers and formatsPrime factor. One provider with machine XML is one mapping and one layout. Four different Excels — four mappings, four sets of rules, and four sources of errors to be caught by the import log.
  • Completeness of the priceThe price with a photo, characteristics and categories is filled in automatically. Price, where there is only the name, article number and price, means the manual completion of the cards — and this is no longer an import, but the filling of the catalog with its own deadline.
  • Intersection of nomenclaturesIf items at different prices are compared by the manufacturer's article number or barcode, the priority rule is written for the day. If there is no common field, the mapping has to be built on names, and this is the riskiest part of the job.
  • Order transfer methodUploading a file or letter is a short job. Exchange through the provider's API is a separate integration with your testing, because each provider has its own and the documentation is verbal.
  • Work with uniquenessCategorical texts and the own structure of the catalog are included in the work. Rewriting product descriptions is a no: the volume here is counted in items, not pages, and it makes sense to plan it separately after launch.
Process steps

Transparent stages with approval at every step

Total duration:20–35 days

  1. Price audit and technical task

    2-5 working days

    We analyze the files of all suppliers, the conditions of work with each and the rules of mark-up. The output is a TK, which records what is imported automatically and what is not.

  2. Directory structure and data rules

    3-4 working days

    A tree of categories for real requests, a set of characteristics, a field for comparing items, a priority rule and a markup scheme. We agree with the design: it is expensive to redo it after import.

  3. Design and assembly of the store

    7-12 working days

    Home, category, card, cart, checkout. Here we display the date of the last update of the balance - the buyer should see how fresh the availability is.

  4. Import and mapping for each supplier

    4-7 working days

    We map the price fields to the OpenCart fields separately for each source, set the cron schedule, enable the import log and the rule to hide zero balances.

  5. Payment, delivery, transfer of orders, analytics

    2-4 working days

    LiqPay, WayForPay, monobank, cash on delivery, Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta in checkout. We set up the order transfer channel to the supplier, GTM and GA4 with cart and purchase events.

  6. Test cycle and transmission

    2-3 working days

    We run the order from the shopping cart to the supplier and back, compare the balances after import, measure the first response of the server and the weight of the page, go through the administration with your manager.

Did not find your case?

Describe how it works on your side — we will tell you whether “Online store for dropshipping” fits and what it means in your situation. No brief and no call: one question, one answer.

Technologies & integrations

What we build on and what it connects to

Stack

  • OpenCart 4.x - set by default; limit: some of the Ukrainian modules are still compiled only under 3.x, so we go through the list of integrations before the start
  • PHP and MySQL - the box calmly holds several thousand items; for tens of thousands, a separate engineering of imports and indexes begins
  • cron for scheduled import — the limit is hard: the catalog is not fresher than the supplier's price
  • the mapping of fields for each source is a limit: the provider has changed the file structure, and the mapping must be corrected by hand
  • import log with errors — shows what was not mapped and what was hidden; but it won't tell if the price in the price list is correct
  • nginx, HTTP/2, HTTPS — encrypt the channel and accelerate the return; the certificate does not save from an outdated version of PHP

Integrations

  • import of XML and CSV prices
  • LiqPay
  • WayForPay
  • monobank
  • postpaid
  • Nova Poshta
  • Ukrposhta
  • XML feeds to marketplaces
  • Google Tag Manager
  • GA4
  • Google Ads
  • Meta Pixel
  • Telegram
Your store at the supplier's price versus a storefront on the site

How this option differs from the alternative

Who owns the catalogcards, prices and display rules in your database
Update balancesimport on schedule, zero items hide themselves
Sales commissionno — only hosting, domain and acquiring
Demand dataGA4 and internal search show what they want from you
Chance of search trafficthere is, if the categorical texts and structure are their own
Cases

Tasks and results in numbers — all metrics measured by us

wholesale supplier of goods from China, B2B directory

Task
Show business customers the assortment that goes directly from manufacturers and shorten the path from finding a position to an application.
Solution
OpenCart 3 by nginx, two language versions with separate sitemaps. FAQPage, BreadcrumbList and WebSite micro-markup with SearchAction. COD and cash on delivery, Nova Poshta, Ukrposhta, Meest, pickup. GTM and GA4, Crisp chat.
Result
5,830 products, confirmed by two independent methods: the standard search yielded 58 pages of 100 items plus 30, the sitemap yielded 6,234 addresses in each of the two languages, a total of 12,468. TTFB 506.9 ms at 333.1 KB HTML. Measured on 07/31/2026. The question we asked the client separately: how many of the 5,830 items are actually in stock — without this answer, the catalog number is not an assortment number.

a retail store of professional cosmetics with an assortment of foreign brands

Task
Collect more than five thousand items of different manufacturers in one catalog with navigation by brand and type of tool.
Solution
OpenCart 3 on nginx, catalog by brands and types, Organization and PostalAddress micromarking, payment to the FOP account or postpaid with a deposit.
Result
5,561 products in the live catalog — calculated by standard search: 55 pages of 100 items and 61 for the last one. Main HTML 153.8 KB, TTFB 801.2 ms. Measured on 07/31/2026. Defects found: /sitemap.xml and the feed give HTTP 200 with a body of 0 bytes - the bot does not receive a list of 5.5 thousand pages; HTML does not have any analytics counter; no carrier is listed on the shipping page.

a retail garden tool store of one third-party brand

Task
Sell ​​a line of equipment that is not produced by the seller, with a selection of kits for various tasks.
Solution
OpenCart 3.x with nginx and HTTP/2. Five payment methods and four carriers in the checkout, including Rozetka Delivery. The layout is made according to the weight of the page.
Result
252.6KB HTML - lightest page of the lot, TTFB 547.2ms, 66 out of 69 images loading slowly. Measured on 07/31/2026. The main thing for this page is different: it was not possible to measure the size of the directory at all - sitemap.xml gives 200 with zero body, feed 404, search returns an empty output. A store with someone else's assortment, in which it is impossible to count even the number of items from the outside.
What we need from you

We can't start without this — best to prepare in advance

  1. All supplier prices are as you receive them - no manual combing before shipping.
  2. Terms of work with everyone: who sends, on whose behalf, how orders are transferred.
  3. Markup rules by category or by supplier.
  4. Decision of what to do with items that do not exist: hide or show as unavailable.
  5. Access to hosting and domain or agree to choose hosting for you.
  6. One person with the right to make decisions on the assortment.

If something is missing — let us know, we'll help you gather it or do it as a separate task.

FAQ

Most frequently asked questions — with concrete answers

How not to sell what the supplier no longer has?

Regular import of balances and automatic hiding of zero items. The frequency of import should correspond to the speed of the supplier's turnover: if he updates the price once a day, your catalog will not become more accurate in a day, and you cannot promise the buyer real-time availability. We display the date of the last update on the page and set a hiding rule. This is the most honest thing possible - it will not be possible to remove completely canceled orders while the goods are not in your possession.

I have three suppliers with the same products - how do I avoid getting duplicates?

A common field for mapping is required: manufacturer's article number or barcode. Behind it, the items stick together into one card, and the priority rule decides whose balance and whose price wins - by availability, by price or by source reliability. If there is no common field and we have to match by name, this is the riskiest part of the project, and it is this part that we check first during the price audit.

Will such a store be in the search, if the descriptions are different?

On competitive requests with other people's descriptions - hardly. The same price is sold by dozens of stores, and a copy of the description does not give an advantage to any of them. What works: the structure of the catalog for real requests, own texts on category pages and a narrow assortment instead of "everything from everyone". We close the technical base — CNC, canonical, site map without duplicates. But a sitemap doesn't raise items and doesn't guarantee indexing: it just makes the page exist for the bot. We do not promise items.

How does the order get to the supplier?

The channel it accepts: file upload, order letter, or exchange via API if the provider has one. Most often, this is the first option — and that's normal. It is only important that the transfer is automatic, and not rewriting the items in the messenger by hand: it is during the manual transfer that errors in the quantity and address occur, for which you are then responsible, not the supplier.

How long does the launch take and what does the deadline depend on?

20-35 business days from TOR approval: Price and TOR audit 2-5 days, Catalog structure 3-4, Design and build 7-12, Import and mapping 4-7, Integrations 2-4, Test cycle and transfer 2-3. The main variable is the number of suppliers: each new price adds its own mapping and rules. One provider with machine XML starts fast, four disparate Excel takes a long time.

How many items to fill at the start?

Our recommendation is to start with one supplier and a narrow group of products, and add a second one after the first cycle of orders has passed. The reason is simple: until there has been no shipment, you do not know how the supplier behaves with terms and returns, and a catalog of 5 thousand items from three sources already needs to be maintained. For reference: the niche store we measured has 48 products and 18 categories — and that's enough to sell without a consultation.

How to make a markup if the prices of the suppliers are different?

By rules, not hands. The percentage is set per category, per supplier, or per specific items, and recalculation occurs during import. Separately, we set a minimum margin: if, after the price update, the position becomes zero or negative, it is not published at the new price, but enters the import log for viewing. Without this fuse, price increases at the supplier reach the site quietly.

Is it possible to switch to your own warehouse later?

Yes, and the store will survive it: the logic of the catalog remains, the source of the stock changes. Therefore, we do not build the directory to work only on imports - the category structure, characteristics and addresses are preserved, and the data source is replaced. This is one of the arguments against the cheapest solutions out of the box: with them, switching usually means a new site and the loss of addresses that are already indexed.

Send suppliers' prices - we'll look at them for free.

In response, you will receive an analysis: what is imported automatically, how many items will reach the site with photos and characteristics, how to compare intersections. After that - the amount and term by stages. If it is clear from the prices that the catalog will be uncompetitive, you will hear about it in the first email.

From measured cases5,561 products in the live catalog

View cases
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  • No commitment
  • We work under a contract

There is no price list on the site on purpose: the same work differs several times over between two clients, and a “from” figure explains nothing in that case. First a free audit — we count your pages, duplicates and speed — then we name the sum and the deadline and fix both in the contract.