Shopping-agent guide
Mulebuy was a standard China buying agent: it bridged the gap between overseas shoppers and domestic marketplaces such as Taobao, 1688 and Weidian that rarely ship internationally and generally will not accept foreign cards. You submitted a product link, the platform bought the item with its own domestic account and had it delivered to its own warehouse in Huizhou. There the goods were inspected and photographed free of charge, and once you approved the photos you could consolidate several orders into one parcel and pay for international shipping. Long-term free storage meant you could batch purchases over weeks or months before shipping them out.
Discovery was handled in two ways. You could paste a product link, search by keyword, or search by image directly inside the platform; or you could browse the Mulebuy Spreadsheet, a curated and continuously updated catalog of product links from the same marketplaces, organised by category with images and seller details. Copying a link from that catalog straight into Mulebuy removed most of the manual searching.
The ordering loop itself is worth understanding even if you never use Mulebuy again, because every agent in this category runs it the same way. A first payment covers the item price plus domestic shipping to the warehouse. QC photos then arrive, and this is the point where mistakes are cheap to fix: check colour, size, variant, quantity, stitching, hardware and any visible damage, and raise problems while the parcel is still in China. Only after approval do you choose a shipping line and pay international freight, which is quoted on weight and volume.
Since Mulebuy went down on August 3, 2026, purchases have been unavailable and the platform has said it has ceased operations. If you have open orders or stored items, the practical position is that the situation is unconfirmed — there is no published news about whether service will resume, so keep your own records of order numbers, payments and tracking in case you need to dispute a charge, and do not send new money to a platform that cannot currently complete an order.
For buyers who want to keep shopping, the same Taobao, Weidian and 1688 links generally work at other agents, including Kakobuy, Superbuy, Lovegobuy and CSSBuy. Which one suits you depends on what you valued about Mulebuy: if it was the spreadsheet-style sourcing and simple interface, an agent with a comparable catalog and a low base fee is the closest match; if it was bulk ordering with many shipping options, a larger established platform will fit better; if it was detailed QC photos, prioritise an agent that is known for those and accept slower support replies. Before committing to a new platform, confirm its free storage period, whether standard QC photos are free, the cost of extra photos or measurements, its supported payment methods, and whether its shipping lines accept your item types and destination.