Good morning to all our readers. Today I want to talk about AliExpress, a Marketplace that you have surely heard of and even already use.
Our article will be focused on how we can make the most of this platform and our purchases to ensure the minimum possible economic expenditure in our engineering projects.
If you are interested in this topic and want to learn about this site, I invite you to continue reading this article and be very attentive to some surprises that you will find during the reading.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
AliExpress, do you know this Marketplace?
AliExpress is an online sales platform founded in China in 2010 with the aim of offering products to international buyers.
Like the eBay portal or some products from stores such as El Corte Inglés, Aliexpress sellers can be companies or individuals.
AliExpress offers a large number of top brands with very interesting discounts, hence the amount of sales volume is very large. It should be noted that many of these brands also appear on Amazon, but we will see this comparison later.
This company is mainly distributed in East Asia, especially in China. Its deliveries are to almost every country in the world, hence we can already find one of its main advantages. To give you an idea of the volume of purchases it generates, during Singles’ Day (11-11) 2020, they processed more than half a million products per second.
As previously mentioned, the first of the surprises we have for you in our article is a coupon for New Users who register. This coupon has three redemption options. You can choose between: buy an item for 0.01 cents, 3 euros off your purchase or an exclusive price on premium products. Just click on the coupon below, register and enjoy the benefits we have provided you with.
AliExpress vs Amazon
While it is true that Amazon is a much better known and globalized company than its Chinese competitor, it has some shortcomings and disadvantages that we will proceed to analyze below so that you can take away our direct experience with each one. Keep in mind that we base our comparison on points that we consider to be the most objective for our practical projects and the main scoop, which is, to save you money!
Remember that if you are on our website and reading this article is because you like electronics, programming and automation or you want to learn about it. Either way you are in the right place. We emphasize this because the articles you will see in this comparison will be exclusively of the subject of Our Project and that surely you already know.
Availability of Products for Makers
In this first section we have to clarify that it is very difficult not to find any of the products that we are going to put in the search engine. Both Amazon and AliExpress comply perfectly in this section. Although we have to emphasize that in the Chinese seller we can find much more variety in the offers of the same product with respect to its American competitor.
In the images below, you can see the results of both search engines with the keyword “arduino”.
Delivery times
We are entering a section where we believe that Amazon wins by a landslide. But we believe that if you know how to organize yourself well and set your goals in a staggered and unhurried way, this negative section should not be an impediment for you.
In this case we have to take into account that the Chinese seller makes its shipments from the Asian country so it takes its time, although we must take into account that they have taken measures to improve these deliveries. Unlike Amazon, which has its own warehouses in many regions and is able to improve these dates with up to weeks of advantage.
We can find in AliExpress products that arrive from 3 to 12 days and others up to 4 weeks. Keep in mind that many times the longer terms give surprises and you receive before the date originally planned.
In the case of Amazon deliveries can vary from 3 to 7 days unless stock is out of stock and if you have contracted Amazon Prime you can have it from the same day to 48 hours depending on the product.
Product Quality and Returns
Many users are reluctant to use AliExpress because they think that Chinese manufacturing = poor quality and scams. Eye, we must also know what we buy, but if we refer to electronic devices ranging from passive and active components such as resistors, capacitors, LEDs, diodes, among others, to development boards such as Arduino, Raspberry, ESP32 and even PICs we have no complaints and come with the quality and optimal performance that is as expected at the beginning. Their return and consumer protection system works well and in the case of a product not arriving or doing so in a defective state or not being what we bought we can return it. The particular conditions of each product will depend on the store where we purchased it.
In the case of Amazon the quality is also what is expected of this type of products and its customer service system is one of the best in the world.
But in the case of the devices that we acquire for our projects, they usually do not present problems that we have to claim and request a refund, but we repeat, this is our personal experience. If you have had bad experiences in both cases buying any of the products we deal with on our website, we would love you to leave us your experience in the comments.
Here is another surprise, but this time for our readers in Spain. We have got you a coupon where you can find 5 days delivery and discounts up to 90%. Just by clicking on the image you will have access to all the offers. If you haven’t registered yet you can take the first coupon and link it with the offers below to get a super combo of discounts. Don’t miss out!
Prices🤯
We come to the section that most interests all those who read us. If you have come this far we invite you to leave us your Like and share the article with your family and friends to support our work.
In this section you will see the exact price difference of each of these Marketplaces. We will compare from basic and loose elements to more complete development kits for your projects. We will select the ones we consider most interesting and that we know you may need for the realization of your inventions.
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As you have been able to observe the difference in price between one and the other often leads us to more than 50% difference in the investment that we would have to make, and these elements are only for beginners. If we go to instrumentation with higher performance and potential, the price will go up, so our project will increase its budget.
We also have to emphasize that AliExpress has a system of discounts and coupons that further lower the price of their products, and compensate the waiting times for delivery with very attractive prices.
At this point is where you should make the assessment corresponding to your pocket and needs and decide where it is more worth buying.
Our opinion
In our practical experience we consider that if you do not need to do things in a hurry, you organize yourself well and control the times in a correct way, AliExpress is certainly the option to consider. We have already seen that despite its delivery times it knows how to compensate in the price-quality of the products. Making our projects more competitive in order to make an income assessment, save and give our customers a much more competitive price.
On the other hand, if you need something urgently, Amazon is the option to take into account, because if there is something they are good at is short term deliveries. But be prepared to disburse a much larger sum than what you had planned in the longer term.
In any case, let us know your opinion and your experiences with these two stores in the comments. If you found this article useful, be sure to share it and give us a like to let us know.
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