Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
What is Dropshipping Product Optimizer?
Dropshipping Product Optimizer (DPO) is a Shopify app that bulk-rewrites your product catalog with AI - SEO titles, descriptions, meta tags, variant option cleanup and translation, brand normalization, and .99 price rounding - with a mandatory preview and approval step before anything is written to your store.
How is this different from editing products manually?
Editing hundreds of supplier-sourced listings by hand is slow and inconsistent. Dropshipping Product Optimizer applies the same writing rules, brand list, and description layout across your whole selection at once, and still lets you review - and even hand-edit - every single product before it’s written.
Do I need coding knowledge to use this app?
No. Everything is configured through the app’s Settings, Products, and Runs tabs. No code is required for any part of the workflow.
Do I need my own AI provider key?
No. Every plan runs on AI provided by Dropshipping Product Optimizer - there’s no key field to fill in. That’s what the per-product charge on your plan pays for.
How do I tell which products I've already optimized?
The Products tab has an Optimization column showing a status pill for each product: Optimized, Pending review, or Reverted. A blank cell means Dropshipping Product Optimizer has never touched that product. You can also filter the whole list by optimization status. See Optimizing Products.
Pricing & Plans
Is there a free plan?
Yes. The Free plan includes:
- 20 products optimized per month
- The full optimization pipeline - no features are gated behind a paid plan
- $0.03 per extra product if you go over quota with an active paid plan to meter against, capped at $10 of overage per cycle
What are the differences between plans?
- Free - 20 products/month, $0.03/extra product, capped at $10 overage/cycle
- Starter ($5/mo) - 50 products/month, $0.02/extra product, capped at $20 overage/cycle
- Professional ($15/mo) - 150 products/month, $0.01/extra product, capped at $50 overage/cycle
Plans differ only in included quota, overage rate, and overage cap - every plan runs the same full pipeline.
What counts as a billable product?
One product that reaches “applied” within your billing cycle. Previews, skipped items, and failed items are never billed. See Plans & Billing for the full breakdown.
Can I see what a run will cost before I start it?
Yes - once you select products on the Products tab, a banner shows exactly how many are within your included quota and, if any would go over, the estimated overage cost before you click Optimize.
Runs & Approval
What happens to my catalog before I approve a run?
Nothing. The pipeline generates a full before/after preview for every selected product, but no Shopify write happens until you click Approve & apply.
Can I undo a change after it's applied?
Yes - each applied product can be reverted individually. Revert restores titles, descriptions, SEO fields, and prices from the original snapshot, but it cannot recreate a deleted variant option or undo an option rename - anything Revert can’t fully undo is called out in a warning banner before you approve.
What if I like some of the changes but not others?
Untick the products you don’t want before approving - only ticked products are applied. You can also edit a specific field by hand instead of accepting or rejecting the whole product - see Editing Proposed Copy.
What's the difference between Reject and Cancel?
Functionally, nothing - both stop the run and leave your catalog untouched. Reject is what that same action is called once a run is awaiting your approval and your selection is all-or-nothing (everything checked, or everything unticked); Cancel is the label used while a run is still previewing or applying, or when your selection is a mix of both.
Optimization Features
What does the AI do to my descriptions?
It rewrites the intro paragraph, benefit bullets, and spec list based on your product’s existing facts, your store’s writing rules, and your description layout template - it’s instructed never to invent a material, dimension, age rating, or certification not already present in the source.
Will Dropshipping Product Optimizer change my prices?
Only by rounding each variant price up to the next .99 - and only if that’s switched on in Pipeline Options (it’s on by default). You’ll see the exact before/after for every variant in the run’s preview before you approve.
What happens to variant options in other languages?
Option names and values are translated into your configured language, unnecessary options like “Ships From” are removed, single-value options are dropped, and remaining options are sorted with natural, size-aware ordering. Any duplicate variants that result from cleanup are automatically merged. Each of these can be turned off individually in Pipeline Options.
Can I control how measurements are shown?
Yes - the Measurements setting lets you keep the supplier’s original units as-is, lead with metric and show imperial in brackets, or the reverse. See Pipeline Settings.
What is “dropship scrubbing”?
It removes tags and image alt text that mention China, mainland, dropshipping, AliExpress, or CN - the supplier and origin “tells” that commonly leak into imported product data. See What Gets Optimized for the full list of pipeline features.
How do I get better output from the AI?
Your Settings have a bigger effect on the result than any AI model choice. Set the correct language, describe your store vertical, define your target customer, and add a few clear writing rules - see Pipeline Settings.
Troubleshooting
My run isn't finishing?
Check these things:
- Give it a few minutes - larger runs take longer, especially with many AI calls per product
- Open the app again from your Shopify admin to refresh your session
- Check the run’s status on the Runs tab for an error message on individual items
I can't start a new run?
This is usually a quota limit - see Troubleshooting and Plans & Billing.