Complete Guide to Buy Directly from Taobao Internationally

taobao internationally - pigoutyvr

If you have followed me long enough on Instagram, you would know that I love shopping on Taobao. It is a famous online shopping platform based in China with everything you need but at a cheaper price. I’ve got many of you asking me questions about ordering directly from Taobao internationally. Therefore, I decided to start with a complete guide on how to set up a Taobao and Alipay account, as well as step-to-step instructions on how to get the parcels shipped to your door in a foreign country.

Please note that this guide is based on my experience, as well as information found on the Taobao website. Feel free to comment below if you have any additional questions.


Part 1: Introduction

Can I order directly from Taobao internationally?

Yes. Taobao supports shipping to 10 areas outside of mainland China. As long as you reside in these 10 areas, you can register for a Taobao account and order directly from it.

  • Taiwan
  • Hong Kong
  • Macau
  • Japan
  • Singapore
  • Malaysia
  • USA
  • Canada
  • New Zealand
  • Australia

which app should I download?

There are many websites and apps under Taobao, mainly targeting different audiences. To prevent confusion, I recommend downloading just the Taobao app. This is where I usually order my products from. Here is the link to download the app:

Apple | Android

Or you can simply search “Taobao” in your app store and look for this icon:

Taobao Logo - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

For making payments on Taobao orders, you will have to download the Alipay app. This will allow you to add your international credit cards, as well as track all transactions made on Taobao and check the daily currency rate. Here is the link to download the app:

Apple | Android

Or you can simply search “Alipay” in your app store and look for this icon:

Alipay logo - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

What items are forbidden to order internationally?

Each area has its own list of forbidden items. For example in Canada, some of the common categories include food, liquid, knife & guns, counterfeit items, and candles, etc. Here is a link that entails a detailed list of what items are forbidden in your area.

In case you missed some items, you will be notified on the checkout screen that the item cannot be shipped to your area. However, just to be safe, I usually only buy clothes, bakeware, and photography props from Taobao.

Does Taobao have an English App?

Unfortunately not. Taobao is all in Chinese. Though many websites and guides may recommend using Google Translate to translate the website, that would only work if you are simply navigating the website. However, most of the time, buying on Taobao requires you to communicate with sellers in Chinese, whether it’s for order inquiries or complaints about defective items. Therefore, if you don’t know how to read and communicate in Chinese fluently, I would not recommend shopping in Taobao.


Part 2: Create a Taobao Account

You can register a Taobao account on a PC or through the app. I strongly recommend registering through the Taobao app, as it is easier and safer. If you register through the app, you can get some coupons for your first few purchases. The registration itself is pretty self-explanatory, so I am not going to do a step-by-step here.


Part 3: Set up your Taobao Account

add your mailing address

The first thing you wanted to do is to add your mailing address. You can add up to 20 mailing addresses to an account, as well as set the default address.

  1. Click on the top-right corner for the “setting” icon.
add address on taobao - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)
  1. Click on “My Mailing Address” to add your mailing address.
add address on taobao - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

set up your region

It is important to update your region that matches your mailing address. It will help to provide all the features available to the specific region, such as promotions and information on the international shipping fees.

  1. On the main page, you can change your region ?? on the top left corner.
set up area - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)
  1. You can then update your region based on your mailing address. For example, as I wish to deliver the parcel to Canada, I picked “Canada” as my region.
set up region - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Part 4: Create an Alipay Account

Alipay is a secure platform for making payments through your phone. Its concept is quite similar to Paypal. Once you have a Taobao account, you do not have to sign up for an Alipay account. You can simply log in via your Taobao app or via SMS. I prefer logging in via the Taobao app, so it links both accounts together.


Part 5: Add a Bank Card to your Alipay Account

Go to the “Me” page and click on “Bank Cards”. You can then add your credit cards to the account.

add bank cards on alipay - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Part 6: Choose the Right Product

You can search the products using keywords or product images. The Product Image function works well if you are looking for an identical product in the market, perhaps with a different seller or price.

search product on taobao - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Always check Seller Rating and buyer RevieWS

Before you decide to buy a product, don’t forget to always check the seller rating and buyer reviews. You can directly click on “Rating” to read the reviews. It is just like buying products from Amazon, except with no returns. Therefore, I recommend being more cautious and reading both good and bad reviews, as many of the short “good” reviews are fake.

buyer review - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

I always look for the button “Review with Photos and/or Videos”, so you can view the product quality more closely.

buyer review - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Never buy products or from a seller with zero or few ratings

If you saw a product with only a few ratings, I would not recommend buying it. You can screenshot the page and search it using the product image feature to look for identical ones with better reviews.


Part 7: Place an Order

Clicking “Buy Now” will take it out directly to checkout. If you want to review your shopping cart, click “Add to Cart” instead.

Once you submit the order, you will be taken to the “Confirm Order” page. Here you can confirm your mailing address, shipping & payment method, and the order itself. For the shipping method, you would always want to pick the first option “Taobao Consolidated Shipping – Air Freight”. This option is available for all 10 regions, and they are the only shipping method for the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Japan. For other areas, sea freight and direct shipping are also available. You can also check this link for full details on the shipping fee in each area.

place a taobao order - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Part 8: Make the First Payment (Order Value + Domestic Shipping Fee)

After submitting your order, you will be redirected to the Alipay account to make the first payment. You will be able to choose your preferred payment method. If you set up your credit card previously (see Part 5), you can just pay directly. Alipay supports VISA, MasterCard, and JCB credit cards, with a service fee of 3%. Occasionally, Taobao offers promotions and events with free service fees.


Part 9: Manage your Order

After making the first payment, you can check the order status on “My Orders”. You will get a notification once the items are shipped and delivered to the warehouse. You can also track each order and obtain its estimated delivery date.

my orders - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Part 10: Make the Second Payment (International Shipping Fee)

Once your items have arrived at the warehouse, you can see them on the “Cross-Border Logistics”, ready for you to consolidate the parcel.

cross-border logistics - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Choose all the parcels that you want to consolidate. The system will automatically calculate the total international shipping fee. You can then submit the consolidated order and make the payment.

consolidate parcel - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

You can get up to 20 days of free storage time in the warehouse. If your parcel stays in the warehouse for more than 20 days, it will be charged a storage fee of 1 RMB per day per package.

How is the International Shipping Fee Calculated?

The shipping fee varies in different areas. You can check how it is calculated by clicking “Estimated Delivery Time and Fee” under “Cross-Border Logistics”. This page is updated based on the region you set up (see Part 3)

international shipping fee - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

For example, as I set my region as Canada, here is what I would see under “Estimated Delivery Time and Fee”. The international shipping fee for the first 0.5kg is 85 CNY and for the next 0.5kg is 40 CNY. Custom and GST are already included in the fee.

canada shipping fee - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

You can also find information about delivery promises and possible compensation for delays here. For example, this is the information shown for Canada.

estimated delivery time - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Part 11: Track and Receive the Package

It is simple to track your international package. You can click on “Your Package” to see all your consolidated orders. You can then click “track order” to track your orders directly.

track package - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)
track order - taobao internationally (pigoutyvr)

Recommended Articles

19 Comments

  1. […] have previously mentioned this briefly in my previous blog post, Complete Guide to Buy Directly from Taobao Internationally. And it is a good reminder here to always check seller ratings and buyer […]

  2. Thanks for the post. As I also live in Canada, I have a question about the shipping fees. First 0.5kg is 85 CNY, 2nd 0.5kg is 40CNY. What about each 0.5kg after that? Is it also 40 CNY per 0.5kg?

    1. Yes! That’s correct; and they recently increased the shipping price to 48CNY instead of 40 ?? I haven’t had a chance to update this info!

  3. Hello, am I able to buy shoes that are similar to designer brands?

    1. Yesssss there are actually a lot of high end and great quality of design shoe brands, and they have actual and legit store operating on taobao. However, as shoes are super heavy, I would not recommend buying them and shipping them across. The price may end up being the same or even more expensive than buying locally.

  4. Do you have to look for something specific in order to have orders shipped to a warehouse?

    1. Nope you can literally search and buy anything. And they will all get shipped to the warehouse and group them before sending them to you.

  5. An outstanding share! I have just forwarded this onto a colleague who had been doing a little research on this. And he actually bought me breakfast because I discovered it for him… lol. So let me reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending time to talk about this topic here on your blog.

  6. If i have a working account of Taobao registered in China on Chinese Number can I ship my goods Internationally. If I can do that can you please let me know the details i mean what steps i will need to follow on my email address.

    1. I wasn’t sure if you can ship the goods internationally, as I normally order as a customer. Sorry about that!

  7. There is an item I wanted to buy from taobao. The only link I am getting has the designers name on the product description. I wanted to know if it will be okay to ship that to Canada or will the warehouse destroy the item?

    1. Hi, unfortunately, I wouldn’t able to determine this for you. It is best to contact the seller and ask for more information of the products.

      1. Can I order if I live in the UK and if I can do you know how much shipping would be?

      2. Unfortunately, you can’t ship directly to UK at this point. Sorry for the late reply.

  8. Is there a particular limit on the number of items you can ship at one time. As I ordered 36 items this time they wont let me select more than 20 items to combine together and pay for the shipping the weight altogether for all the items is only 17kgs. By doing this I would have to pay almost 500-600$ in shipping which is absurd. Anyone know of this that can help?

    1. Hi Manny!

      Yes, you are correct. Taobao only allows shipping 20 items max in one parcel. So if you have 36 items, you would have to ship them in 2 packages. What I normally do to minimize the shipping cost is to maximize every “0.5kg”. The shipping charges every 0.5 kg, and even if you go beyond just 0.1kg, they still charge you the full price of 0.5kg. So I recommend calculating which parcels to put in each package. Sometimes it can save quite a bit! I hope this makes sense and helps.

  9. OMG this actually worked. Thanks so much.

  10. Hi, thanks so much for sharing this info!! We have recently left China after many years living there and finding out that I can still order from Taobao gave my life a whole new meaning 😀 I do have one question: what about customs? I live in Canada. Thank you!

    1. Hi Maggie, no problem! I am glad that my guide helped. The customs will be included if you are using the shipping service offered by Taobao. So you won’t have to worry about that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *