GiveSmart vs WinningBidder.com

Givebutter

Donorbox

DonorPerfect

Givebutter is a cloud-based, all-in-one fundraising platform for student organizations, sports teams, companies, and nonprofits which offers a range of tools for collecting donations online, running social peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, selling tickets to fundraising events, and more

Donorbox is an embeddable, localized donation form / plugin for websites, designed to encourage recurring donations with fast, multi-step checkout

DonorPerfect helps nonprofits of every size streamline fundraising and centralize donor data in one flexible, all-in-one platform.
A CRM that empowers teams to collaborate, stay organized, and make data-driven decisions from anywhere, so your mission keeps moving forward.

President of Friends of Atlantic Beach Elementary

GiveSmart has been unreliable, poorly supported, difficult to integrate, slow to resolve critical issues, and has forced us to create our own workarounds despite paying thousands for their platform.

Co-Chair and Board Member

The support team and the Customer Service Teams are professional and extremely helpful.

Tech Support

We usually have a large Fundraiser set up each year with Sponsor Recognition, Silent & Live Auctions and we have GiveSmart provide us with 6 GiveSmart support.

GiveSmart is a mobile bidding and event management solution for fundraisers of all sizes, including foundations, nonprofits, and schools. GiveSmart’s key features include a ticketing portal, guest and event management, as well as online donations and silent auction tools.

Absentee Bidding

Activity Dashboard

Activity Tracking

Alerts/Notifications

Attendance Management

Attendee Management

Auction Management

Bid Management

Billing & Invoicing

Buy Now Option

Campaign Management

Catalog Management

Communication Management

Confirmations/Reminders

Contact Database

Contact Management

Contribution Tracking

Credit Card Processing

Customer Data Management

Customizable Branding

Dashboard

Donor Management

Electronic Payments

Email Management

Email Marketing

Email Reminders

Event Management

Event Scheduling

Event Ticketing

Fundraising Management

Gamification

Inventory Management

Live Auction

Membership Management

Mobile Access

Mobile Alerts

Mobile Giving

Mobile Ticketing

Online Auction

Online Bidding

Online Giving

Online Ticketing

Onsite Ticketing

Payment Processing

Pledge Management

Point of Sale (POS)

Promotions Management

Proxy Bidding

Real-Time Notifications

Real-Time Reporting

Registration Management

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Reverse Bidding

Seating Map

Shipping Management

Silent Auction

Social Media Integration

Social Promotion

Sponsorship Management

Summary Reports

Ticketing

Ticket Reservations

Visitor Registration

Watch List

Website Management

GiveSmart

Web-based

iPad

Android

iPhone

OneCause

Silent Auction Pro

SchoolAuction.net

Handbid

Basic

Adv Ops Coordinator

The platform's flexibility allows each school to manage its own campaigns while ensuring a consistent system across the organization, which is a significant advantage.

Cost is the biggest factor. While the platform is user-friendly for participants, the backend can feel a bit complex at times, particularly when setting up more customized campaigns, auctions and events.

GiveSmart is a strong all-in-one platform for fundraising events, especially auctions, galas, and other large-scale events.

Our PTO has had an incredibly frustrating experience with GiveSmart, and I want to share our story so other nonprofits can make an informed decision.

As a PTO raising money for important school needs, this delay put us in a really difficult position.

The mobile bidding and overall guest experience are excellent and easy to use, which helps drive family engagement and revenue.

Critical steps were missed by their team, and we’ve consistently had to chase them just to make the platform functional.

For a platform marketed to nonprofits—many of which rely on volunteers—that alone was discouraging.

Communication was slow, unclear, and unhelpful throughout the entire process.

Based on our experience, I cannot recommend GiveSmart to any nonprofit or organization looking to raise money.

consultant

The customer service is AMAZING--the chat support has walked me through a myriad of questions and helped me in real time set up campaigns and avoid mistakes.

Director of Development

There are less expensive options available that offer many of the same features.

Donor Relations and Events Director

I liked the ability to manage event registration, seating, and event fundraising in one place.

I think they could provide more training with the annual subscription.

Director of Athletic Development

We chose to cancel our year-to-year deal this year and provided over 30 days notice of cancellation as per the terms of the original and annual agreement.

They would reach out to me a few weeks before my event to see if I was using all the software features available and push me to integrate them that late in the project.

Founder/Director

Their tasks were to welcome guests at the front door, take their tickets and most importantly RUN THE FUNDRAISING VIA TEXT DURING THE EVENT, Thereby helping us to raise upwards of $10,000.00 by speaking to the guests, encouraging them to donate and shouting out funds raised in real time.

Training could be a lot better. When asked if we could get help setting up an auction for the first time, the GiveSmart rep sent a video for us watch instead of personally helping us.

Executive and Office Assistant

I would definitely recommend it to others and believe that most of our problems were user issues.

The software has no value without the package of benefits namely the TEXT TO DONATE feature while at the event which is what is supposed to help your company raise funds.

I had to spend weeks if not months requesting very simple changes to the giving forms.

GiveSmart provides a relatively easy to use auction and ticketing platform that looks good on desktop and mobile.

It does not look appealing or feel easy-to-shop for an attendee who is immersing in the software during the event.

We signed up on a year-to-year annual renewal and did for 3 years in a row.

volunteer

A drawback for us has been the ability to create and send a personalized thank you identifying the object and tax information to donors as I upload their donation.

Development Associate

We love being able to customize many aspects of the platform to fit our fundraising needs and like that we have endless possibilities and uses for the platform.

One is when adding sponsors even though there are two categories, premium and standard, if you add a premium sponsor after adding other sponsors they show up in random orders.  

With endless access to the platform during the subscription period, we are able to come up with unique ways to fundraise and know the platform will help make them happen.  

Development Manager

Some of the back end features such as table assignments and ticket purchasing do not always function together smoothly. If a person purchases tickets or donates offline it is not always easy to get that plugged in nicely on the event site.

Managing Director

The best feature is the text-to-give as well as the live thermometer that you can use at an event to encourage people to help meet the goal!

The woman that scheduled our event was no longer in the same position in the company so she never even assisted us in the mess.

Executive Director

This product is the luxury line and its pricing reflects such - we utilized it because we often ran 10-12 events/year and could easily replicate data, but it would not have been cost effective for a single event.

GiveSmart used to send staff to help run your events and we are told this is no longer the case.

Marketing Volunteer

Anytime you share a link, be it to donate, or to view an item, etc., it just links to your general campaign and not to a specific component of that campaign.

We  had approximately a month before our annual auction and we were able to pivot from a live event to a virtual event DIY style.

Development Director 

I especially like that they highlight other clients events and work so you can see possibilities on other / different types event you can utilize platform for.

You cant update the subject lines either to get rid of the "NOTIFICATION" verbiage and thus the emails keep going to SPAM.

The Customer Service is right by your side in setting up your site and they provide a great "help" base with written and video information. Once you get the hang of uploading your donations it's quite easy.

Especially in a year with so many unknowns and endless virtual events, this software made it easier and less stressful to pivot, be creative, and fundraise for our cause.

Development Officer

We run a large silent auction with 300+ works of art - I wish there was a way to upload the artworks all at once, rather than individually.

Special Events Manager

There are some glitches in entering donation items and I had some photos disappear after loading them, but they were minimal.

Auction Coordinator

The software glitched or froze on several volunteers and myself during our event, which caused some headaches and time delays.

This has made our auction seamless to run, and the checkout is simple to use.

The mobile bidding is easy for users for our silent auction and this year being virtual for our "live" auction as well.

In addition, their support teams and their resources provide tools for organizations looking for ways to improve and grow.

Retired

I have had many complaints from folks trying to purchase the online raffle tickets.    Once they click the buy they get the message that KS for your purchase.   

Fundraising Events

Customer Support

Nonprofit and Volunteer Management

Text and Email Notifications

Integrations

Revenue Increase

Pricing

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Mid-size Business

Momentive Software

Auctria

Auctria: a budget friendly web solution to run your entire event from tickets to receipts; traditional auctions or online fundraisers.

OneCause has helped 14,000+ nonprofits raise more than $8 billion through 90,000+ fundraising events & campaigns. Our software helps manage all types of fundraising: events, auctions, appeals, raffles, peer-to-peer, online giving, tributes & memorials, giving days, and awareness campaigns. 

Operations Manager

The fact that the staff is so willing to speak with you on the phone for as long as you need goes a long way in getting your project going smoothly.  

Director of Advancement

We were able to resolve most issues relatively quickly and with good customer service.

WinningBidder.com provides low cost online auction software for nonprofits. Our software is simple to use, allowing organizers to launch an auction in minutes.

Real-Time Monitoring

Search/Filter

By industry, WinningBidder.com reviewers are most commonly professionals in non-profit organization management (44%). The most frequent use case cited is auction (100% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

WinningBidder.com is an auction program offering key features such as online bidding, online auction management, and payment processing, among others.

WinningBidder.com

BiddingOwl.com

PHP Pro Bid

Bid Beacon

president

there were no cons specifically, we did note the option to pay cash or check via donated items but automatically invoices so most people just paid with their card.

Health and Outreach Manager

I also didn't like if we wanted to close out and then open back up for the things that didn't sell, we would have to start a brand new auction versus opening it back up.

Volunteer

Also, I ran a dummy auction for internal testing and then had to start again with a new auction - it would be helpful to know not to close such a trial in order to preserve the initial entries.

Director of Operations

It made our ability to reach bidders from outside our event very simple as well.

Foundation Manager

Include a Save feature - when inputting auction items

I had to click on each individual flyer and print it, which initially resulted in me missing a few of the flyers and having to fly back to the office during set up to print them.

I did make sure to turn on the ask patrons to cover the fees option, which all of our winners did.

Donor Relations Coordinator

The printing poster feature was a little off - we had to re-create our own posters - the image was cropped funny on some of the posters.

The flyers that it creates are aesthetically pleasing and look very professional for displays.

President

User registration was also very smooth; we did not receive any complaints or have issues with attendees signing up and making bids.

Luckily, we could see what the bidders won and allowed them to pay by cash, venmo or check to avoid fees.

Tournament Director

The site gave us the opportunity to manage the event up to closing when we saw a big increase in activity.  

GiveSmart vs WinningBidder.com Comparison (2026)

GiveSmart

WinningBidder.com

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives