Bidding Owl

Bidding Owl is easy to use for managers setting up the site as well as bidders. Not only is the website gorgeous with the capacity for lots of information and photographs/logos for all items, but the customer service is excellent. We highly recommend Bidding Owl and will be using them every year for our annual fundraiser. Have an excellent website, get help whenever you need it, and raise a lot of money for your non-profit - it doesn't get much better than this!

We have been doing in person auctions at our church (The Plymouth Church in Framingham) since 2005, using our own (very old) proprietary database. It was antiquated and left a lot to be desired. 2020 was to be another in person auction, but with the pandemic, we decided to go online for the first time. We found Bidding Owl through friends who have run auctions, and we will never ever go back to the way we did auctions before. Bidding Owl makes it so easy to set up the auction, add items and all the details around it, get paid by the buyers, notify people, and so much more. We decided to stick with the online format again this year, but if we go to in person, we will definitely looking to use Bidding Owl.

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.

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.

We are a small non-profit run strictly by volunteers that has little to spend on operating overhead. Bidding Owl gives provides us the resources to do an online auction, which would otherwise be beyond our reach, and does so at an affordable price. It is reasonably easy to use and the personal response to our email requests to reset the auction has been quick and friendly.

Having never done an online auction before, BiddingOwl made it quick and easy! Customer service was on point and always responsive. Setting up the auction was very easy as they walked you through the steps. Adding items, pictures and editing, if need be, was quick. Overall I am very impressed with the quality of the auction and cannot wait to see how much we raise.

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!

What a great tool BiddingOwl is for an online auction! We used this for our Annual Silent Auction. This is the first time our organization used online bidding and it went seamlessly! The support staff was always so responsive, knowledgable and answered any questions we had. The website is very organized and user-friendly. We were able to print reports and bid sheets. All info in one place was great. Our supporters loved it and so did we! We will definitely use BiddingOwl in the future!

I was a little worried using a new service for a new type of fundraiser. Of course everyone is having covid-19 issues with their fundraisers, that we are all used to hosting in persona/live. There was a bit of a learning curve but with Bidding Owl it was possible for us to save our fundraiser. It was easy to set up, the customer support was wonderful, and we were able to rally for our event! Looking forward to using them in the future!

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 site is great and inexpensive (free, with 5% fee of final sales!), but the customer service is what makes it so great.
The only cons are the limited number and quality of photos - only three photos allowed, and the quality isn't high enough to allow customers to zoom in on the sale items.
Five stars for quick customer service response and clear, concise, on-point information, though. Makes the set up process stress free!