BiddingOwl.com Reviews - Pros & Cons, Ratings & more

OneCause

Greater Giving

BetterWorld

Givebutter

32auctions

RallyUp

BiddingOwl helps organizations design personalized websites with custom logos, colors, themes, images, and event information to run and manage online auctions. Users can sell raffle tickets, print bid sheets and catalogs, preview auction items, promote sponsors, and accept online donations.

BiddingOwl.com

Web-based

Development Intern

I loved that the customer support was friendly and helpful. Also, the online layout of the auction was clear and simple.

Development Administrative Assistant

The customer service is outstanding. I like the site, it's easy to use on my end and customers end but having good customer service is a massive selling point for me.

President

Very helpful to walk through all the set-up steps to ensure we had everything correct before launching. Plus they've also been really quick to help me and my bidders when we needed help.

We liked how easy it was to enter the the Bidding Item, the Donor and the bidding specifics, such as Market Value, Start and Bidding increments. We also like the ease of updating these details.

Auction Co-Chair

The need to find an alternative way to auction off some items and give us a little cash led us to this platform. It has been an easy and effective platform and technical support is wonderful.

Admin Asst

Easy to close out the items and locate shipping information for winning bidders. Connects with PayPal for easy and quick payment.

Event Marketing

My organization has been using BiddingOwl for more than 3 years, we loved it. It easy to use as the administrator and as the user.

Volunteer

There were some technical issues with customers logging in, but I think that either user error or our own error in not explaining clearly.

Design/Marketing

Loved the ability to test it out, then convert it into my live online auction event.

They are polite, helpful and quick to respond. We look forward to utilizing this software again in the future.

Christmas Fair Lead and Chairman

Our Christmas Fair may just end up being the best we've ever had.

Community Development and Events Coordinator

It was very easy to set up and was clear about costs upfront without any hidden fees like some of the other online auction sites.

Co-founder

Customer service team  were very  response and super helpful. No upfront cost and reasonable rate of 4.9% for non-profits after auction closes.

volunteer

I have been very impressed with the rapid response by the customer service team.

Administrator

So far it has been great, will review again once our auction closes.

Sales Representative

Bidder sign up was confusing for some and kept throwing people out of the site.

Board Presidentg

Fund-A-Need was hard to find for bidders. I think we could've raised more money on Fund-A-Need had those items been more prominently displayed or found.

Executive Director

A lot of individuals looking to bid on items had trouble figuring out how to do so.

Microsoft Excel

Positive experience. Will definitely use it again!

Great option for nonprofit fundraising!

We use biddingowl every year for our cyber auction and we love it!

BiddingOwl is user friendly and fantastic!

We had a great experience with our first online auction!

Great for online auctions

The site is pretty user friendly.  I love that we can run a fundraising auction without an upfront cost.  They just take a small percentage of our earnings.  Customer service has been amazing whenever we need help.  

Great online auction site

I have been very impressed with the rapid response by the customer service team!

Great customer service

Great way to make the auction process easy for the bidder and the host! 

Bidding Owl Great for Small Nonprofits!

 The biggest surprise was this was our most succesful auction ever with a record breaking amount grossed and netted.  We will be using Bidding Owl in the future from here on out.

Best thing to come out of Covid restrictions

Overall, our experience with BiddingOwl.com was positive and met our needs for this particular event. 

Parity Productions Review of Bidding Owl 

Customer service was THE BEST!!!  No matter how many times I called with nit-picky questions, they were friendly and patient.  They always had an answer when I screwed something up.  I love that they can test the site to make sure everything works properly before going "live."

Great Customer Support

[SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] have been so helpful with the many questions I had before and during the auction. This was a last-minute decision to do an online auction when our event was canceled back in April. We were so glad to raise some money for our school.

Great customer support!

My overall experience with the BiddingOwl program was fabulous.  We have used a personally designed Excel program in the past to manage our silent auction, and it was very vulnerable.  This program is pretty much foolproof and efficient.  We were able to conduct our auction online in this time of COVID-19 without much work or worry at all.  

Absolutely amazing!!

Overall, our school makes quite a bit of money with our annual online auction. Customer service is prompt and extremely friendly, so for me, that outweighs the negatives. I'm happy to continue using this site!

Great for School Fundraiser!

We've been able to (more easily) raise a lot more money through out online /  fundraising auctions when using this software. We've also had comments from our supporters that it has made things easier on their end.

Makes auctions so much easier

Thank you so much for your review!  We appreciate your great comments and constructive feedback.  We agree it is time for a refresh of the site.  We are currently working on a refreshed look while keeping our user-friendly platform.  We have listened to our auction chairpersons and bidders and will even be adding some additional enhancements!  Thank you for letting us be part of your success!

Bidding Owl made our online auction run smoothly. It was easy to set-up and manage plus our bidders had a positive experience as well. Would definitely use Bidding Owl again.

Super easy and fun way to set-up an auction to fundraise for our non-profit

It was great.  We initially thought the SMS alerts were not working but in fact they were and worked fantastic!  Having a different pricing structure for NFP (Not For Profit) organisations would definitely get more customers their way.

Out Not-For-Profit Business experience of Bidding Owl

We found that using Bidding Owl helped us to organize our auction items and gave us greater flexibility with making adjustments to pricing and bid increments than we had using manual bidding process. It saved hassle and frustration for both us and our bidders at the end of the night! It was exciting to track the progress of the bidding in real time and obtain data that can be used going forward. Overall, it was a positive experience and we look forward to using it again next year!

A Great Auction Management Option

As a school group and non-profit we really needed a low cost auction solution. Not only was this low cost, but we increased our auction revenue so much over the standard paper and pen silent auction.  Our parents and bidders loved it and loved being able to bid on their phones during the event. Just remember not to plan anything big at your event during the last 10 minutes of auction bidding, because everyone will be glued to their phones and having fun bidding. Proxy bid functionality is awesome, but lots of bidders still like to be in the moment and do it manually.

Bidding Owl is great for schools and non-profits

Great Experience with Bidding Owl.  2nd year user.

We are a small K-5 elementary school and Bidding Owl has allowed us to keep providing a fun community event (our online auction) without a significant profit reduction.

GREAT PRODUCT FOR NON-PROFITS

I used this software for our elementary school online auction. It was great to use for  bidders, visually really bright and pretty!  The cost was wonderful too for what you receive! Im a huge fan! 

Bidding Owl a great product! 

I have used BiddingOwl.com for 2 separate school fair auctions (2017, 2018) and i'm about to use it again in May 2019 for an other association.
As I use Bidding Owl for fundraising and volunteering activities, I would love to see the 5% decreased for non-for-profit activities, however, BiddingOwl.com has been the most effective, helpful, bidder friendly online auction site I have ever used.
The auction set up is easy enough but it's the bidding side which is the highlight and main benefit as the bidders are the most important part of the auction.
The support is exceptional, diligent and prompt. 
I would definitely recommend BiddingOwl.com to any enterprises looking for a auction site.


Amazing customer support for the most effective bidding site

We really loved being able to keep track of the bids so easily!

Bidding owl is so easy! 

Effective Fundraiser

Increased auction revenues for a non-profit

Easy to Use, Great Addition to our Event!

Economical way to provide online fundraising services.

Overall, a great value with lots to offer. 

Foundation Manager

Bidding Owl was the Easiest to use!

Heather:                                               Hello, I'm Heather. I work with the Registered Nurses' Foundation in Ontario, and I'm happy to share my experience on BiddingOwl that I give a five star rating to. It was COVID that made us move our auction to an online service. We researched a few companies the first year, and found BiddingOwl to be the easiest to use and the one that best suited our needs. We had a couple of board members who made some suggestions the next year, and we looked into those. They were considerably more expensive, and had individual prices for everything that was added. For instance, if you wanted more than one picture, you had to pay per picture. BiddingOwl was adequate with the three pictures allowed for each item, and again, moderately priced, and we stuck with BiddingOwl for the next two years.
                                                       We chose BiddingOwl after considering other options that we found online and that were suggested to us because it was easy to set up, it was a platform that we could see would be easy for our supporters to use and to bid on, and because it was moderately and appropriately priced, not charging for every little thing. It's been a great tool for us to raise funds for our foundation.
                                                       We found BiddingOwl very easy to follow. The site itself is a straightforward platform. There's no real tricks. There's option, and you start off with the chance to explain your organization and our mission, and share a little bit of information, recognizing that while we would do the promotion of our auction, there are also people who might find the auction just off of the BiddingOwl site. So getting the items in to the system was very straightforward. The descriptions, the specific places to add information about delivering the items that were purchased and that we were able to specify that for each item because we had a number of different ways that we would get the auction items to people. We found the listing of bidders helpful, and we do have a number of organizations and individuals who donate multiple items, and we just pulled them off the list. And in the subsequent years, they were still on the list and we were still able to pull them down, update things when we needed to.
                                                       So the overall, again, the process, the pictures are straightforward. They explained that it's easier and better to have the pictures the right size. They're clear about the directions for what makes a good picture of the different items. So getting it all set up and ready to go live was straightforward and easy to follow.
                                                       Looking at BiddingOwl for a silent or an online auction for any not-for-profit, I do recommend the platform, and I have recommended it to folks that I know in other associations because it's straightforward, it adjusts to the number of items that you have available. And the staff are great at answering questions and explaining things very quickly and even more quickly... They recognize when your deadline is, deadline to go live, and it's like they're on top of that and ready for you.
                                                       In terms of service from other similar kinds of services that we've used, their support, I think, can't be beat. And particularly in the first year, that was critically important, but has been helpful even in the subsequent years that we've used the program. It's a great platform. It's easy to use. We got lots of feedback from the people who bought things in our auction that it was straightforward, it was easy to register, it was easy to bid. They appreciated the fact that you can put in a maximum bid and leave it and not worry about checking in to see if you've been outbid. There were people who appreciated getting the notifications by text on their phones when they'd been outbid.
                                                       A lot of the people who support our foundation are older than me, and I'm not very young, and don't use technology a lot, but they were surprised and pleased at how easy it was to use.

BiddingOwl.com Reviews

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