Auction software gives users a platform to organize, manage, and conduct live auctions either in order for a business to sell their goods or for nonprofit organizations to fundraise. We looked in the most popular options and up and comers and reviewed Silent Auction Guru, the WordPress plugin Ultimate Auction, and 32auctions. These solutions covered the scope for small companies in terms of features and price. Read on to our comparison and review of these three options, in addition to our top recommendations.

Best Auction Software for Small Businesses in 2017: Ultimate Auction

We urge Ultimate Auction as the very best auction software for small businesses in 2017 because it gives the most flexibility, it can be used as a continuing revenue stream, and it is affordably priced.

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Auction Software Comparison Table: Ultimate Auction vs Silent Auction Professional vs 32auctions

	Ultimate Auction	Silent Auction Pro	32auctions
Best For	Frequent auctions as a part of your business’ continuing revenue stream	Individual auctions, like events or fundraisers	Basic functionality for free
Pricing as Reviewed Learn More	$99	$99 for a single event 20% discount for next occasion 30% reduction for third and subsequent events	Free
Ease of Setup and Use Learn More	Intermediate	Easy	Easiest
Primary Features Learn More	Economy downloadable things Third-party payment processing integrations Multi-currency support Powered by WordPress, so most flexible Fully responsive layout Supports third-party auctions	Event direction Contact direction Donor management Create and print supportive materials, such as bid sheets and present certificates	Private auctions Third-party payment processing integrations Fully responsive design
Customer Service Find Out More	Online knowledge base, live chat, and email support	Online knowledge base, email, and telephone support	Online knowledge base and email service
	www.UltimateAuction.com	www.SilentAuctionPro.com	www.32Auction.com

Best Auction Software for Smaller Businesses: Ultimate Auction

We recommend Ultimate Auction since the best auction program for small companies as it gives the greatest flexibility, it may be utilized as a continuing revenue stream rather than on a per occasion basis, and it’s competitively priced.

Because Ultimate Auction is a WordPress plugin, your auctions will be built on the same stage as just over 25 percent of the world wide web. As one of the original and hottest web site platforms, WordPress is supported by a large community of developers and users who contribute endless themes and plugins to improve your site. We’ve got a full guide on how best to construct a WordPress Website in under one hour.

This provides you an endless amount of flexibility in how you design and build your site. Or you can use the theme that Ultimate Auction already contains. Neither Silent Auction Guru nor 32auctions can provide the same amount of flexibility to customize.

Ultimate Auction gives you several options for how to design and manage your own auctions, including:

Straight auctions — where consumers bid on an item and highest bid following a specified time purchases the item
Reverse auctions — where auctions start at a predetermined amount, then users bid down — useful for requests for proposals from sellers
periodic bids
Proxy bids — where a user bids a maximum amount, then the software automatically raises their bid to this maximum by small increments as they’re outbid by other users
Physical goods — such as adjusted shipping costs above the final bidding
Downloadable items

Ultimate Auction incorporates with PayPal for payment processing, which supports multiple currencies, and can add local sales taxes into the winning bid. You may even utilize Ultimate Auction to handle third-party auctions at which other users place their items for sale to your website and you charge a commission on their sales.

Much like 32auctions, the theme that Ultimate Auction includes is completely mobile responsive, something that you have to pay an additional $299 for with Silent Auction Pro.

The main drawback to Ultimate Auction is it requires effort and time to install, such as a brand new WordPress site in case you don’t already have one. As well, it can only be utilized on the WordPress platform.

See Ultimate Auction

Best Auction Software for Events: Silent Auction Pro

We recommend Silent Auction Pro as the best auction applications for occasions because of the wide assortment of features it offers that will help you market and manage your event in addition to the auction component of it.

Very similar to Ultimate Auction, Silent Auction Pro allows you select between directly and reverse auctions and supports proxy and regular requirements. However, it also offers other features that distinguish it in Ultimate Auction and 32auctions.

Silent Auction Pro is targeted towards fundraising events where auctions will be a one-time occurrence as opposed to a continuing revenue stream. That’s not to say that for-profit businesses can’t make use of its characteristics, of course, but it can help to bring some context around why they offer what they do and might help you make a more informed decision.

Silent Auction Pro provides an end-to-end remedy to help you handle any auctions in your own event. Contact management, donation management, and also the ability to create and publish supporting materials such as bidding sheets or gift certificates are all contained in the foundation AuctionCore package. While Ultimate Auction and 32auctions are effective tools for handling online auctions, neither can compare to this range of attributes that Silent Auction Pro offers for events.

However, since Silent Auction Pro is geared towards events, there are comparatively few customization options when compared to Ultimate Auction. You might add your company’ logo, but that is about it. At the same time, there is no mechanism for processing payments once bidding on a product has shut unless you update to a more expensive package. Ultimately, only physical things are encouraged, not downloadable ones.

Visit Silent Auction Guru

Best Budget Auction Software: 32auctions

We recommend 32auctions as the ideal budget auction applications because it’s among the very few on the marketplace to supply a free bundle, albeit one with hardly any features or customization choices. But, their à la carte pricing model lets you add, and cover, only those attributes your business needs.

32auctions’ free voucher package includes the following attributes:

Up to 20 items
One image per item
Fundamental donor data storage and management
Fully responsive and templated layout
Regular bids, proxy bids, and purchase it now option
Add transportation fees along with winning bids
Third-party payment integration
Metrics and analytics

However, there are a number of downsides to their free auction option, like the inclusion of third-party ads, limiting you to one image per auction, and 32auctions branding. Businesses need to pay extra fees to remove these advertisements or put in their own branding.

Visit 32auctions

In-Depth Review: Ultimate Auction vs Silent Auction Pro vs 32auctions

prices

Ultimate Auction: Ultimate Auction constructions their pricing depending on the type of permit being issued — personal, business, or developer. The difference between the programs is how many sites you are permitted to set up the plugin on. The private license ($89) permits only 1 website, the business license allows up to five sites ($99), and the Developer license permits unlimited sites ($119). For the purposes of this review, we’ve quoted the business license price of $99.

Silent Auction Pro: Silent Auction Pro’s base program, AuctionCore, which is required for all users, is priced at $99. Business’ can add additional bundles of attributes for an additional price, including:

AuctionDay

Priced at $249 plus 2% of all transactions, the AuctionDay bundle is targeted to onsite features for your occasion. A few of those features include:

Check-in/check-out service
- Simple, compact check-in/check-out procedure
- Printed attendees bidder numbers
- Printed attendee information sheets
- Rapid entry of bid results
- Section count-down timer
- Simple auction results print-outs by section number
- Process invoices and accept last minute cash donations
- Record and process ticket sales
Optional integrated merchant account
- Integrated charge card service
- Securely swipe credit cards via USB established credit card swipers (optional)
- Compare tickets and also take cash contributions online
Detailed event history auction outcomes report
Premium technical support

AuctionPromoter

Priced at $149, the AuctionPromoter package helps your business to promote your auction occasion. Some of this bundle’s features include:

Create and print customized”mail merged” letters, emails and texts such as: donor thank you letters, donation solicitation letters, email blasts, forms, and reports
Scheduled notifications — predefined removal and posting of statements and sending of mails and texts
Instantly create a publicly viewable online program manual and online public donations list
Scrolling marquee leader board displays the detailed information regarding every auction item including current bidding standing
Export auction items to create a printed program guide using Microsoft Word or some other compatible word processor programs
Boost group branding by presenting a Complete page banner plus keyword logos
Print table display sheets including photographs and donor logos for each auction item
Custom data export for Raiser’s Edge, eTapestry, along with other donor management systems
Contain donation and auction item photographs
Contain donor and host logos
Contain links to donor and sponsor websites

AuctionMobile

Priced at $299, the AuctionMobile bundle includes features which help maximize your auctions for access on mobile devices. A few of these features include:

Fully responsive design
Simplified mobile sign up webpages
Automatic notifications through text and email sent when high bidder is outbid

32auctions: Along with their free package we’re reviewing in this guide, 32auctions allows companies to add individual features on an à la carte basis or bundles of the most popular features. These packages include:

The Works

Priced at $220, the Works package includes:

Up to 300 auction products
Up to 4 images per auction
No third-party advertisements
Add your business’ branding
Donor and host direction

Finest for Live Event

Priced at $160, the Very Best for Live Event package comprises:

No third party ads
Transition to reside occasion with bidding sheets, product information sheets, and live data screens

Benefits of Setup/Use

Ultimate Auction, Silent Auction Guru, and 32auctions are extremely distinct platforms that involve different installation processes, each using their relative difficulties. Let us look at each one in more detail.

Ultimate Auction

Since Ultimate Auction is a WordPress plugin, there may be several actions to its installation.

If your company already uses WordPress to power your own site, then this procedure will be a touch easier. Otherwise, or if you want your auctions to reside on a standalone site, then your first step is to construct and start a WordPress website. This does not have to be as complex as it sounds — there are lots of website hosts that will finish the installation for you for free and we have a full guide on the way to setup wordpress too. Ultimate Auction comes with pre-built themes you can use to jumpstart the design procedure.

As soon as your WordPress website is ready to go, you’ll have to install the supreme Auction plugin. This is a very easy process — literally, just a couple of clicks to set up and activate it. If you want to customize the design or design of your website, WordPress gives you access to most files via its administration dashboard or you’ll be able to get them right on the server that’s hosting your site.

As soon as it’s possible for somebody who’s web savvy to make minor changes to the PHP and CSS, we recommend that you hire a web programmer to be safe. Because there is such a big community of folks who use WordPress, finding a good source on a freelancer site like Upwork is normally easy.

From here, the procedure to set up your auction is relatively simple — especially if you’ve ever used popular services like eBay.

All of your auctions are handled through the easy to browse WordPress administration dashboard.

Silent Auction Guru

Silent Auction Pro is a totally on-line service, therefore unlike Ultimate Auction there is no need to set up your own site to host the auctions original.

Nevertheless, the government and configuration of Silent Auction Pro is more involved compared to Ultimate Auction. At the same time, the user interface is quite dated and doesn’t incorporate many modern improvements in usability and user experience design.

Fortunately, however, Silent Auction Pro does include a very comprehensive help section on their site. The wiki-like format includes step-by-step instructions for every function you could want to do and most are followed by links to YouTube videos that walk you through the process.

A demo section also enables you to produce mock auctions so that you may learn the procedure before you work with your business’ real data and live auction.

32auctions

Because 32auctions is a more basic support, the installation has relatively few options and is therefore easier to complete. With minimum information required, you can have your own auction live within minutes of creating your account. The auctions will also be confidential, giving you the control over who is permitted to view it according to who you provide the unique URL to.

The auctions themselves are equally simple to navigate and participate in, with info only laid out and prompts for users clear.

Features

Ultimate Auction, Silent Auction Guru, and 32auctions all provide the basic characteristics you want to manage your auctions, albeit in various ways.

Straight or reverse telephone
Routine or proxy bids
Metrics and analytics
Bidder and donor advice
Added shipping charges
Layout templates

However, since all three are targeted towards various types of business applications, they each provide some exceptional capabilities.

Ultimate Auction: In addition to the attributes listed above, Ultimate Auction is unique in it is powered by WordPress. This gives it the best flexibility in terms of layout and extra functionality your development group may want to add.Ultimate Auction is also the sole auction software we examined to encourage downloadable things, multi-currency alternatives, and most significantly — third party auctions, where the other user places an object of their own and you earn a commission on their purchase.

Because of these extra features, we urge Ultimate Auction since the best auction software for small businesses who are looking to utilize auctions as an ongoing revenue stream.

Silent Auction Guru: Silent Auction Pro is targeted towards businesses that are hosting auctions as a part of a bigger event. As such, many of the exceptional features that it offers link specifically to event management. These include:

Event direction
Contact management
Donor management
Create and publish supportive materials, such as bidding sheets and gift certificates

Silent Auction Pro’s pricing structure is event-based, therefore it would be hard to leverage it as an ongoing revenue stream. However, the exact same pricing structure combined with these particular features allow it to be our recommended auction applications for events.

32auctions: 32auction’s primary advantage is that it supplies a stripped-down merchandise at a budget price. In reality, in its most fundamental, 32auctions can force your auctions for free.In addition to the price, 32auctions’ auction layout templates are totally responsive, something you have to pay extra for with Silent Auction Pro. 32auctions additionally supports third party payment processing integrations and private auctions, should you want to limit who has access.

Customer Support

Ultimate Auction, Silent Auction Guru, and 32auctions all offer comparable customer care choices. All 3 provide online knowledge bases, with Ultimate Auctions’ and Silent Auction Pro’s being far more comprehensive, as well as email-based support.

Ultimate Auction also offers live chat support and Silent Auction Pro is the only auction software of the three to add phone support.

Ultimate Auction: Ultimate Auction is the only auction application of the three to add live chat service.

Silent Auction Guru: Silent Auction Guru is the only real estate software of those three to include phone support.

32auctions: 32auctions doesn’t offer you any support choices above and beyond the fundamentals above.

Other Auction Software Options

There are many other auction software options available on the marketplace that could possibly be a better match for the business’ requirements. Here are some of the others that we liked and what makes them unique:

Provider Name	Why Is It Unique?
Ultimate Auction	Best software for small companies, especially for ongoing revenue
Silent Auction Pro	Finest for events
32auctions	Best budget choice
SchoolAuction.net	Targeted to non-profits, especially schools
BidPal	Targeted to non-profits more broadly, outstanding customer support
ClickBid	Another choice for occasions
Auctria	Comprehensive end-to-end solution

The Most Important Thing

Ultimate Auction represents the very best combination of flexibility, included features, and price. It is powered by WordPress, which means there’s an endless community to support it; it is the best of the three software we reviewed to support auctions as an ongoing revenue stream; also, it’s reasonably priced when compared to most choices. Therefore, it is our recommendation for the best auction applications for 2017.