What caught me off guard was…
What caught me off guard was discovering that AliDropship actually lets you build your store on WordPress instead of being locked into their own platform - you get real ownership of what you're building, which feels pretty different from the usual hosted solution approach. The integration between their plugin and WordPress works smoothly enough that you're not jumping between tabs constantly, though I did notice the product catalog updates can lag a bit behind when you're making bulk changes. Honestly, having control over your store's backend and knowing you're not dependent on one company's infrastructure was worth the learning curve for me.