Bidding Owl

Our quilting group makes quilts for veterans. We donate our time, talent and all the materials to make full size quilts to honor those who have served our country. We decided to try auctioning one of our quilts to raise funds for our work.

Caroline and Jo'Ann were so easy to work with in helping set our auction up. Regardless of the outcome of the auction, working with these two super helpful ladies was everything customer service should be. A person always answers the phone and quickly solves the problem and makes sure the solution has worked before moving on.

The picture is of our auction quilt.

2nd year using this platform. First year we had lots of questions and had a learning curve to overcome on our end because we had never done an online auction before. But the auction went off smoothly. Second year the front end business of loading items/photos went much smoother. Had a glitch when the auction closed and the winners did not receive the notifications they should have gotten right away. The customer service people do respond quickly. There are some upgrades I'd like to see like the ability to sort your onscreen bidder list, look up winner for each item faster, crop and edit pictures after they are uploaded, etc. If those added I'd definitely give them a few more stars, but for the price and service I think it's a good option for small nonprofits.

This site is great! I love that all of the auctions on here benefit nonprofit organizations. The bidding process is easy, and I've never had a problem receiving my merchandise!

I was actually shocked to see a bill from Bidding Owl after my experience with them. Everything about this experience was terrible - from the picture hosting (there is no way to edit or modify your pictures and everything was posted sideways) to the fact that they can charge after the fact without disclosing pricing or the fact that they'll take 5% of non-profit fundraising money after doing absolutely NOTHING.

We had nothing but problems with them, and for the most part, my auction tanked when in years past it's been our highest rated fundraiser.

Customer service is non-existent and the phone number on the site doesn't work (but has recently been changed from a 1-800 number). I emailed them to complain - no response.

This screams "scam" and I'm considering filing a complaint with the FTC.

Bidding Owl made running an auction very easy. We have a live event with two weeks of pre-bidding which raised over £700 at the pre-bidding stage. Very excited about what will happen this afternoon.
Great help, quick replies to emails with all the information I needed. I very much recommend using Bidding Owl!

I have used Biddingowl for four years. The first year I had no idea what I was doing and they patiently helped me through the whole process. The next year I had a glitch right before the auction went live, and they helped me fix it very quickly. This year, I feel like an old pro with only a couple of questions, but they are still very helpful. The site is clean, easy to use, and makes us look like a highly capable organization. I really appreciate all the help they have offered through the years.

We've been using Bidding Owl for a few years now for our non profit fundraising event. There are clear instructions throughout their site and they are always available for a call to walk you through a problem. There fees are reasonable and they don't require any upfront payments so you can earn revenue from your event and then pay them their percentage. Win-win.

Bidding Owl provided an EXCEPTIONAL online auction management experience for our non-profit education foundation's recent fundraising event. Bidding Owl has always been amazing, but their recent software updates are PHENOMENAL! Adding auction item information, photos, and links to donor websites was SO SIMPLE! Our online auction site looks so professional and beautiful! This was my first experience entering all of our auction items and I actually found it ENJOYABLE & so rewarding to see the final product! I HIGHLY RECOMMEND BIDDING OWL!

We've used Bidding Owl for the past several years for out PTA online auction and it's been wonderful! Customer service is super helpful and very responsive.

Its a great site to run an auction, Its very user friendly and the tech team is beyond helpful! They are extremely nice, friendly and always there to navigate through any technical questions! This is our 3rd time using Bidding Owl for our school auction without any hurdle!

We have been using Bidding Owl for our online auctions since 2015 and have had many great experiences with them. The Auctions run smoothly and the folks that work there are very nice, helpful and most importantly, competent in all aspects of setting up and running an online auction! They do a great job during the entire set-up of each auction and helping us set-up and design the website for each event. Our non-profit organization, the United States Lighthouse Society, has now had many successful auctions with them and they have all done great.
On a different note, there are two distinctive financial differences between them and other companies that we have experience with:
1. Currently they do not charge a flat annual fee just to be able to have auctions with them. We found that many other companies charge a fee simply for the ability to have an auction on their site. This is difficult for us to justify, especially when we don't know how much money an auction with make (or lose).
2. The percentage they charge is the same or less than the other companies that we have used or looked into for our online auctions.
For us, the financial reasons are enough to use Bidding Owl for our online auctions, but when you combine that with the great job they do and that they go out of their way to ensure that your auction is successful... The decision to use them for our online auctions was very easy.
We highly recommend Bidding Owl to any non-profit looking to have an auction.

When doing our online auction, we found this site easy to set up. With the necessary information even if we are not a US based organization.

We also received positive feedback from those who decided to bid on our items, as it for the most was self explanatory how to go about registering as both a bidder but also bidding.

Our bidder also likes the function that let them know if someone over bid their high bid.

We liked the fact that the company reached out to each winning bidder and let them know that they had the winning bid at the end of the auction.

Our Rotary Club used Bidding Owl for our Internet auction and it worked very well. We will be using it again

This is really an easy auction platform to use. We have used it twice and are getting ready to do our third. It's ended up saving tons of time versus trying to do it on Facebook and was the cheapest option. The customer service is great and it's easy to customize.

We are a nonprofit high school and use BiddingOwl once per year to host the online auction portion of our Spring Fundraising Gala. It's been a great free, convenient option, and it helps us keep more of the money we raise!

They do not know how to manage tech or have the resources to do it because we were about to go live with our online auction and they had difficulties and shut everything down for an undetermined time. Now we are in a mess scrambling last minute. Very unprofessional and not competent to offer online auctions.

Site was relatively easy to figure out how to use. Helpful support documents. Responded to email questions next business day. Bidders don't seem to be having issues, easy to register and bid. Easy to export item list. Would have liked to be able to customize winning bid email and invoice, but maybe in the future. Liked that we could opt out of using PayPal through bidding owl website and use our own payment website.

I was tasked with finding an online auctioin site and after much research chose Bidding Owl. Why? A real person actually answered the phone when I had questions. And, ongoing questions sent by email got prompt and helpful replies froman actual person. My Friends of the Library group were first time online auction users and Bidding Owl was a great partner. They will lbe the "go to" choice for alll future auctions.

Bidding Owl has been amazing for us. It is simple to use and allow for online pre bids from auction patrons along with on site bids and the checkout and payment process was so smooth. It allows us to sell tickets to our events, handle sponsors and volunteers and the auction setup and implementation portion is so user friendly.

The Bidding Owl auction site specializes in helping non-profits. We are a private non-profit animal shelter that operates on donations only. This is the second year we have used BiddingOwl as our auction site for our signature annual fundraiser in which approximately 225 guests attend each year. The program is user friendly. The site looks very professional for your guests. Their customer service personnel are always available and very patient and knowledgeable. They provide a live group training which is great. All that are involved in your auction fundraiser can ask questions and have hands on experience before the event. This eliminates having one person learn the system and try to train others. The fee charged is very reasonable. One upgrade I would suggest is being able to send pre-event texts and emails to guests from the previous year and new guests that register.

Our band boosters utilized bidding owl.com for our spring silent auction in 2022. This was our very first time to use online software to run a silent auction. It was very easy to add the items into the system and everything went smoothly during the auction. The bidders loved being able to see the items online, bid, see when outbid, and check out online once the auction was over! We increased our earnings by more than 4 times what we did the years before using only a live system! We raised about $3400 when live online before the in person silent auction event even began! We will be using them again this year for our spring silent auction and highly recommend the software to any group fundraising using a silent auction!

Bidding Owl allowed us to provide a friendly user interface for our donors. Tracking the payments has been easy. It would be ideal if we could upload multiple items, or reusing past items can be helpful. Not sure if we can or if I need to learn more. 1st time to setting t up.

Bidding Owl was a tremendous help with our fundraising for our non-profit. The site was very easy for use to manage, it was easy for the bidders, and the reporting aspects made closing everything out very efficient. It was great to have the ability to connect to PayPal and the fees were vey reasonable. I highly recommend this site to other non-profits.