Amazon
Requires the seller to remain the seller of record and keep any third-party name off the packaging, packing slip and invoice. Our Amazon dropshipping page quotes the policy directly.
Dropshipping
How does dropshipping work
One sentence covers the whole mechanic: a customer orders from a seller's storefront, the seller forwards that order and pays a supplier's wholesale price, and the supplier ships the item directly to the customer while the seller's inventory count never moves. Shopify's own explainer, read 2026-09-01, defines it the same way: dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where online stores sell products without keeping them in stock.
Shopify and Amazon wording, quotedRead 2026-09-01A supplier's own leg, priced live
Storefront, order, box
The seller owns the first step and the last. A supplier owns the box in between.
The order flow, in four hops
Every dropshipping arrangement, regardless of platform, reduces to the same handoff chain. Amazon's own guidance for sellers, read 2026-09-01, states you can generally use a dropshipping service to sell products as long as you're the seller of record — which only makes sense once the four hops below are laid out in order.
- The customer orders and pays retail. The transaction happens on the seller's storefront, at the seller's listed price, and the seller's payment processor settles the charge.
- The seller relays the order and pays wholesale. The seller forwards the order details to a supplier, either by hand or through an app connection, and pays that supplier's wholesale cost out of the retail amount just collected.
- The supplier packs and ships direct to the customer. Amazon's own sell.amazon.com explainer, read 2026-09-01, puts it plainly: you work with one or more third-party suppliers who ship products directly to customers on your behalf. The carrier account, the box and the label are the supplier's, not the seller's.
- The seller never holds the item. No warehouse, no shelf, no personal handling — the seller's part of the transaction is entirely digital, from the storefront to the payment to the order forwarded onward.
Where a package physically arrives from, whether it carries the seller's branding or the supplier's own, and who the buyer can reach for support all vary by platform. The four hops above do not: they are the definition, not a policy choice.
Where the margin actually comes from
A dropshipping seller's profit is the retail price minus the supplier's wholesale price, minus whatever the platform, the payment processor and advertising take out of the difference. There is no shipping line for the seller to price, because the supplier is the one buying the label — Shopify's own figures, read 2026-09-01, put typical margins from open marketplace suppliers at 10% to 15%, and from a vetted supplier network at 20% to 50%. Both ranges already assume the supplier is absorbing fulfillment, which is the entire structural reason those margins can stay that thin and still work.
That absorbed cost does not disappear — it is priced into the wholesale rate the supplier charges in the first place. A supplier who ships for free is not shipping for free; the number is folded into what the seller pays per unit before a single order comes in.
The leg a seller never sees a bill for
To make hop three concrete, we priced the shape of that supplier-to-customer leg on our own checkout on 2026-09-01: a kitchen gadget, 8 × 6 × 2 in and 0.6 lb, moving from a supplier near Ontario, CA to a customer in Miami, FL. A dropshipping seller running this exact order never sees this number — it is the supplier's cost, buried in the wholesale price — but it is worth seeing once, because it is the number that determines how thin a supplier can price the wholesale side and still turn a profit.
| Carrier | Service | Price | Quoted transit |
|---|---|---|---|
| USPS | Ground Advantage | $9.44 | 6-7 business days |
| FedEx | Ground Economy | $10.48 | 8-9 business days |
| USPS | Priority Mail | $14.40 | 2-3 business days |
| UPS | 3 Day Select | $16.40 | 2-3 business days |
| UPS | 2nd Day Air | $16.76 | 2-3 business days |
The cheapest option on this lane ran $9.44, the full amount a shipper would pay at checkout. Whichever service a supplier's own logistics team actually books, that figure — not zero — is what sits behind the phrase "the supplier handles shipping."
Where this page stops
This page covers the mechanic only. Three platforms attach three different rulebooks to it, and none of those rules belong here:
Shopify
Sets no dropshipping-specific rule of its own; the supplier relationship is entirely private. Our Shopify dropshipping page covers tracking, returns and Shop Promise eligibility.
eBay
Allows a standing wholesale-supplier arrangement but names retail arbitrage — buying from another retailer after a sale to cover it — as not allowed. Our eBay dropshipping page quotes the exact line.
And if the plan is to stop dropshipping and hold inventory yourself, the shipping costs that a supplier used to absorb become a line item on every order you fill — priced with live numbers on our starting a dropshipping business page.
Where these answers come from
- Amazon Selling Partner network, What is dropshipping? — the third-party-supplier definition. Read 2026-09-01.
- Shopify, What Is Dropshipping and How Does It Work? — the fulfillment-method definition and the two margin ranges. Read 2026-09-01.
- Prices: our own capture against production for the kitchen-gadget parcel above, Ontario, CA 91761 to Miami, FL 33101, run 2026-09-01.
Both source pages are marketing explainers rather than legal policy documents and are revised without notice; treat the wording above as what was published on the date shown.
Dropshipping, answered
How does dropshipping work?
A customer buys from a seller's storefront, the seller forwards that order to a supplier and pays the supplier's wholesale price, and the supplier packs and ships the item straight to the customer. The seller never receives, stores or personally handles the item at any point.
Does the seller ever touch the product?
In a clean dropshipping arrangement, no. The box moves from the supplier's shelf straight to the buyer's door, often carrying the seller's branding rather than the supplier's, which is why the practice is sometimes called blind shipping.
Where does the seller's profit actually come from?
The gap between what the customer pays at retail and what the seller pays the supplier at wholesale, after platform fees, payment processing and advertising come out. Shopify's own figures put typical margins from open marketplaces at 10% to 15%, and from vetted supplier networks at 20% to 50%.
Is dropshipping run the same way on every platform?
The mechanic is identical everywhere; the rules attached to it are not. Amazon requires the seller to remain the seller of record and keep any third-party name off the box. eBay allows a wholesale-supplier version but bans buying from a retailer to cover a sale after the fact. Shopify sets no platform rule of its own beyond ordinary consumer protection.
What changes if I hold my own inventory instead?
Every shipping cost that a supplier absorbed becomes the seller's own line item, paid on every outbound order and again on every return. Our separate page on starting a dropshipping business prices exactly that shift.