We are a hypothermia shelter that houses 12 guests during the coldest months of the year, and have a fundraising gala every 2-3 years. At the beginning of our planning process for our February 2020 gala, we wrestled with the question “Do we really need an auction and event planning package for our little event?” At the end, there was no question that Silent Auction Pro was a HUGE reason why our event went so smoothly and exceeded our fundraising goals!

I cannot say enough good things about our experience using Silent Auction Pro. Some of the key things that we liked: Event Coach. From the beginning, we were assigned an event coach ([SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]), and she proved incredibly helpful in both understanding Silent Auction Pro as well as anticipating what other issues might come up before, during, and after our event. She checked in regularly, and was available even on weekends. Training Videos. Silent Auction Pro has a large number of training videos on YouTube that were very helpful. Admittedly, they seemed difficult to understand when I viewed them before we actually signed up, but once I was on Silent Auction Pro and able to play around, they made much more sense, and proved very helpful. Pricing Structure. At first, it seemed expensive to pay $800 and still give up 2% of our proceeds to Silent Auction Pro. However, the 2% is only out of auction proceeds, and not things like tickets or sponsorships. That kept the 2% cost down to under $300, for a total cost of $1,100. Comparing that to the many, many hours of time saved, the ability to start the auction before the event, ability to easily sell tickets, and all the communications tools made it worth the money many times over! Usability. While I would not call Silent Auction Pro the most user-friendly website in existence, it is user-friendly, and with a minimal amount of practice it becomes very easy to get around. The reports are also very useful and easy to generate.

There were a few very minor bugs, but that was it. I didn't care at all for WorldPay, which is one of the two credit card processors that Silent Auction Pro works with. They had horrible customer service and wanted to know WAY to much personal information about me in order to open an account. But that isn't Silent Auction Pro's fault ...

This was our fourth year using Silent Auction Pro. Like so many nonprofits in 2020, we were faced with really two questions: how can we successfully fundraise using mostly social media and how can we put together an event that seemed so foreign at the time, so quickly. While the changes made to the software were helpful and kept us competitive with other organizations, it was Silent Auction's customer service that was the secret sauce. From explaining all the new features to problem-solving, to follow-up reminders, we were able to host a successful fundraising event this year.

Some things are a little bit clumsy and not as user-friendly as I would like them to be. It would be helpful to be able to change the program colors to be a bit more like our brand. Reports could be more specific or to be able to customize them more.

Not a million screens amongst which to navigate.

There is a lot of repeat info on each screen. Would be great if information could be streamlined a bit.

When the pandemic affected our yearly auction, we knew there had to be a solution that could fill the void. Our school relies on the income from that event to keep our school up and running. We loved that Silent Auction Pro was able to help us continue this tradition, while also helping us raise the money that we need. Since our initial event, we have had two more auctions. Each time, the software improves and becomes more user and customer friendly.

Hands down, the best thing about using Silent Auction Pro is the customer support. At every small bump in the road, someone was there to help us figure it out.

While it's understandable that the software is constantly evolving and improving, I found that the menus were confusing the navigate.

Amazing! Everyone who has been on the phones with us has been fantastic to work with. Including the owner. He is completely a part of his team and business and does not hesitate to jump in and support you.

What I like most is what all it can do. For this event I only used one little portion, but learned in the post event how great this tool is going to be to use for our big fundraiser.

There is a LOT packed into one spot. Learning where everything lives is challenging, but their customer support is, literally, amazing. So really there is not a least.

When we moved our annual service auction online, we needed to move from our other auction software to one that had a Digital catalog and would process orders without any issues. It is a very good system and we look forward to working with them again.

We loved the customer service and training offered from Silent Auction Pro.

A bit more complicated for people who are unfamiliar with computer software. We had to do some workarounds to post more than one photo per item but I understand they have upgraded the software and have that ability now.

Very positive.

What I liked the MOST about this software was how easy it made the checkout and follow-up process with our guests. There are a lot of large benefits to using Silent Auction Pro, but I have to say that this has been the most significant aspect for us. All of the invoices are automatically created and batched for a seamless end-of-event experience. From the admin side, this has made management much less stressful.

Sometimes it was difficult to navigate or figure out exactly what functions lied where in the platform. It took a bit of digging around before I got comfortable with using it.

Online auctions require good software. SAP meets the challenge and excels at paper bidding and live auctions as well, integrating the results into common invoicing/check-out. Our experience has been very good.

On-line bidding and automated event invoicing/check-out. Friendly, competent support staff.

To be maximally effective, email addresses and cell numbers need to be captured, for ALL guests at registration/ticket purchase. Most 'registering' users do not have this info (or refuse to enter it) for their guests making it a chore to hunt down before the event, or binding up check-in. Credit cards on file is also difficult, but at least is not mandatory. Don't have any good suggestions, though, except maybe allow guest names (only) during registration.

Silent Auction Pro is an incredibly user-friendly software with a website that's easy to navigate. Over the years, I've continuously learned and become more familiar with its extensive features, such as donation reports, contact history, and mobile online bidding. The customer support is exceptional, and their comprehensive reports can be easily downloaded for event wrap-ups. The Bidsheet Pro option has revolutionized our planning process, offering a seamless experience from donation entry to checkout. The software's extras, like logos and communication tools, were invaluable in enhancing our auction.

Silent Auction Pro has its challenges, requiring research and self-starting to fully utilize its functions. Customer support was helpful, but the software's interface can be cumbersome with excessive clicking. While some features need improvement, the developers actively work on updates based on user feedback. Learning the system was a worthwhile endeavor, despite a few quirks.

As an online auction service for our non-profit fundraisers this program is excellent. We have had great experiences with this company, and they are always on hand for support throughout the process.

Silent Auction Pro is very easy to use and has a wonderful auction catalog set up that allows for multiple quality images and formats. Their support staff is amazing and very helpful.

Silent Auction Pro really works well, and I don't have any current improvements that I would note.

Set up and run the event solely from volunteer committee without having to contract with other services for ticketing or check in/out. Handle high volume auction and attendee counts with smaller committee.

Donation entry was intuitive and loved that we could pull up items donated before so that we didn't have to retype everything. Demo environment allowed us to get committee members up to speed quickly and also allowed us to practice on some creative set up to meet our auction needs. Ticketing feature offered a variety of ticket options, some only displaying with a promo code, and love the addition of the asking for the email address for a ticket purchasers' guests - made it simple to reach all attendees with the marketing tools. Allowing the ticket purchasers to select the meal, or any other item we programmed made the table/catering coordination easy. Marketing features to promote the event to our attendees as well as help them feel connected to the event that was a couple months away. We set up an online auction the week before our event and people loved it! The online auction was open to the public so it allowed parents to share with friends and family that weren't planning on attending. We posted the event auction items on the online auction as previews to entice bidders to attend to get a chance at the rest of the silent and live items. Reporting is good, check in/out is all on one page, the system performance is great. Loved working in system even from our smart phone browser to check on things, make changes etc. any time, any where. Customer support was outstanding!

Special characters aren't allowed in donation title so we had to change once they got loaded as an auction item. Special characters in the description like " for inch threw off the formatting of the data export to excel. Reporting is good, but would have liked a few more reports or the ability to create ad hoc reports. We found one report provided this item, but another report provided this item so we had to export to excel and do look up functions which is tedious to do each time. Would like more options for formatting of bid sheets, and also would like to see some additional options with displaying, leveraging the "Donation Tag" feature which is critical for us as our teams need to be identified. Would like filters on lists as well.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with this software. I was totally immersed in it, learning every possible feature and application, to ensure that we got the maximum use. Pro's: 1. The Help section is extremely well documented, and the customer support is amazing. The You Tube videos were very helpful for training both me and my volunteers. Any time of the day or night when I sent an email, I had an immediate response. 2. The options available were extremely comprehensive and knowledgeable about the mechanics of a benefit fundraiser. I cannot think of anything that I wanted to do that I couldn't do. From donor setup, to bidding styles (purchase of ticket parties for Teacher Experiences, to Silent Auction bidding, setting different minimum bids etc) to performance tracking, exporting info, everything was there. 3. The buzz that we created with the auction was definitely a boost to our event. We doubled our attendance vs. last year, just by starting the auction 4 weeks before the event, and creating excitement about the items that we offered early. 4. I am now set up for next year, with over 50% of the input work established already (donors, pictures and logos, bidders, etc). Next year should be a lot easier! 5. Auction Day section is powerful and easy to use - The check in was easy, online bidding was easy, and checkout was VERY easy, especially for those who had already registered their credit cards online. I could just click "auto process" for a batch of auction items, and with a click of the button, 20 people were checked out at once. Then I just looked up the auction number, passed out the gift envelopes or baskets, and done! "Be Awares" - I won't say Con's! 1. The upfront setup in the first year takes some time. Start early, and I strongly encourage you to read all of the "Help" sections before you start. Even then, tread carefully as you craft your setup, and re-read some of the Help sections. I ended up re-doing a few of my entries as I thought about the structure, and crafted it for maximum efficiency and reporting. 2. Engage team members to do their own data entry as they gather donations. This will save you a lot in data entry time, especially if you have a lot of auction items, and especially in the first year. 3. Train your "auction assistants" well, before event day. This includes check in, auction bidding assistance, and check out, but is especially true for Check in. Overall, very pleased!

I can't imagine using another software program. This is a program that can easily taught and transferred among changing administrators of your event (ours is a school/band fundraiser, so our parent teams are different and evolving each year). Since the software is straightforward and user friendly, it makes it easy to recruit and replace team leads (unlike our previous system, which made a potential new team lead say "oh, I couldn't do that! That looks complicated!"). We have appreciated the support from Silent Auction Pro, especially when we first got started with the program. It's been a real blessing to our event!

This software has made the planning process so smooth for us. The Bidsheet Pro option has been the best fit for our event. The ability to enter donations/auction items, credit the student bringing in the auction item, and then have an online catalog to share, bidsheets, and an easy checkout process at the click of a button has improved the process for us 10-fold.

I do wish there was an option to download the reports into a Google Sheets format. The reports automatically download into Microsoft Office Spreadsheet format, which is the better format for functionality, but as an organization, we appreciate the ability to share documents with Google.

Excellent! We have grown our fundraising auction three fold since instituting Silent Auction Pro. Much as to do with the ease in which we can sell tickets, process charges, create bid sheets, etc. Everything Silent Auction Pro does well!

Above all else, the support you get from Silent Auction Pro is beyond best! The staff is on top of answering inquiries almost as fast as you can send them.....and you get to actually talk to someone, who has English as their first language! Besides that, the software is easy to use. Good help screens and an incredible demo site that you can practice on.

Still attached to World Pay for processing, BUT they have recently included their own WorldPay reports which eliminates the need to try to decipher the WorldPay reports!

The biggest pro for our organization is the customer support. It's superb. Being a rotating group of volunteers, we don't always have the technical know-how to manage the software right out of the gate each year, but the team at SAP really helps get us there by being available, knowledgeable, and clear with their guidance. Other pros: the functionality is robust, allowing us to do everything we need (set up online, silent, and live components of our auction, plus sell raffle tickets and track a fund-a-need). The platform is well organized and easy to navigate.

It does take some time up-front to learn the software and all that it can do. Sometimes we worried that we weren't using it at its full capacity or were taking more steps than necessary to complete a task. However, I think this is particular to our situation, because our group changes every year.

Silent Auction Pro completely changed the way we ran our annual silent and live auction. It took us out of the time-consuming task of tracking everything by Excel worksheets and allowed us to focus more on the actual fundraising.

We used this software to transition from using Excel worksheets (SO time consuming) to check people out from a live auction, to swiping credit cards and capturing their info for faster checkout. We were able to track our history of donors and popular items, and streamlined our request process to focus on what bidders really wanted. Selling tickets to the event became a much easier process as well. The software was intuitive, and the customer service was great.

While we loved our experience with Silent Auction Pro, we eventually felt we needed to switch companies to a platform that allowed for public searches of online auctions, rather than requiring a link and approval from an Auction Chairperson. We switched to another company in order to take advantage of a large and searchable/public auction community. However, that switch has cost us much more money. Instead, a strong marketing campaign on social media would bring the extra bidders without paying the more expensive subscription fee that the other company charged us. I will encourage the next Auction Chairperson to use Silent Auction Pro.

We raised more money with less time and lower cost.

This was our first time running the school gala and we set out to find some new software to help us get the job done. With Silent Auction Pro we were able to do more with less - money, time and effort! From data entry to bid sheets, display sheets, program production, online bidding, ticket sales, day of event support, credit card payments (through a 3rd party which was also phenomenal), check in/check out and post event reports it was truly a joy to work this product and the support team. This was my 3rd job for several months (following my full time paid employment and running a busy household) I often found myself in need of support at 10 or 11 pm. I always found a friendly and helpful voice on the other end of phone. Moreover, with Silent Auction Pro, if you can dream it, you can do it. Any idea we had the team worked with us to bring it to successful fruition. They were always available to troubleshoot and even proactively offered corrections to problems I didn't even know I had! With the helpful of Silent Auction Pro we delivered the school's most successful fundraiser in years!

Silent Auction Pro was very helpful in getting and staying organized for our auction. It is a fairly complex bit of software, so the first-time user may be a little daunted by all the options, but the support staff is always (And I do mean pretty much Always) available to explain things, and to help you figure out any issues. They can log in and look at your event with you, and give you real feedback, rather than just general suggestions, which is a huge help. The video instructional resources are also much more helpful that a printed set of instructions and are available on YouTube. It gave us a way to quickly determine how much we had made and which categories of items did the best. We also got a summary of who still hadn't paid for their items. We bought just the Core and Auction Day, and that was fine for our medium-sized auction (around 100 items and 150 attendees). A bigger event could definitely have benefitted from the features of the Auction Promoter, but we were able to sell tickets online and print all the materials that were needed with the package we got. Selling tickets online is very helpful, and the partnership that SAP has with Vantiv is a great feature. The folks at Vantiv are also very easy to work with and setting up the merchant account to accept credit cards was very smooth. However, I think there should be a non-profit rate because the cost was relatively high and went up at the beginning of 2017. Fortunately since we signed up 2 months earlier, we got the lower rate. We did have an issue that caused us some delay and confusion. We had some Celebrity Dinners that we knew would generate a lot of interest and would have multiple winners. We didn't want to use the set price option that is offered for multiple winners because we wanted the competition. We ended up with some delay at checkout because we weren't prepared for how to keep track of the multiple winners in that situation. However, I think that closer consultation with SAP's support staff in advance could have helped us avoid most of the delay (and all of the confusion). Overall this is a very good product, and I would definitely recommend it for an auction of any size.

As a nonprofit consultant, I have worked with a variety of nonprofit organizations on their gala auctions. I recommended Silent Auction Pro to a nonprofit pre-school for their gala. We utilized all of the features offered by SAP, including a live and silent auction, the mobile feature and the event planning features with a very user friendly table assignment function. The product is very responsive and intuitive, and helped this organization raise over $79,000 above sponsorships and ticket sales the night of the gala! Silent Auction Pro is without a doubt the best value of all auction products available. Jim Donnell and his team at SAP are extremely informative and helpful and are available for customer support nearly 24/7. I never had a question that wasn't answered politely and patiently on the first call. You do need to be a self-starter and allow enough time to self-train and train your committee members using the helpful You Tube videos, but their Support people are always available for questions and troubleshooting. If your organization is on a budget or just doesn't want to pay a lot of money for the auction and event features, Silent Auction Pro is for you!!

It is intuitive and and easy to learn. Support team is very responsive and is constantly updating the product. It offers the absolute BEST value of any auction software I have used or researched! The mobile product is clean and user-friendly.

Some of the functions are a bit hard to find. You do have to be a self-starter to research all of the functions and know exactly what is needed before the gala night to check in, check out, and close the auctions. I had to contact customer support several times throughout the evening for assistance.

We have increased our profit every year using Silent Auction Pro. The Auction setup is wonderful. I cannot imagine using any other product! 10 out of 10!

I love the changes that were made this year. The site looks great on mobile use. It was SO easy to get help when needed and Becca made a sheet for me that I needed that saved me SO much time!!!

I wasn't a big fan of the seating chart feature. I think it could be helpful for some people but there were just too many variables for us to use it. This wasn't a big deal to us at all.

Very good to excellent.

First and foremost, we were thrilled to raise more than $10,000 from our previous online auction. I was super impressed by the customer service and support before, during and after running our auction. The software is easy to use from both the administrative side and bidder side. The software is aesthetically appealing. It attracted our usual bidders as well as those (of an older generation) that were hestitant with using eBay. We received many comments from our bidders that they liked this software.

Would like features added to the software that deal with shipping items. For example, would like to be able to assign shipping charges to an auction item that the bidder can view when bidding. Also, would like ability to add multiple photos for an item.

I will definitely use Silent Auction Pro for our next fundraising event. The ease of use, price, and functionality of the website were good for my team and I.

I like that the staff at Silent Auction Pro continually checked up on me to make sure that I understood everything that needed to be done before my fundraising event. This was my first time using Silent Auction Pro and that was a HUGE help. I also found the videos very helpful when learning how to use the system. My team and I found Silent Auction Pro easy to use and user friendly.

I didn't like that you are unable to create tickets without a person's name assigned to it. We have sponsors that are gifted anywhere from 2-10 tickets. Sometimes they use the tickets within the company and other times they give them to their customers. The system wasn't easy for my team to find the correct company since it was assigned to a name, not a company.

It was great! This year everything went off without a hitch. It worked beautifully and was easy to use. I definitely recommend Silent Auction Pro.

My kids school does an annual auction to raise money for the PTO. I am a parent volunteer that is the chair for the school auction. This year we switched from another company to Silent Auction Pro and it has been night and day. Silent Auction Pro is very easy to use and it looks great. I am very happy with my decision to change to Silent Auction Pro.

To be honest I can't think of anything that I didn't like. It was easy to use and if I had a question my contact at Silent Auction Pro was very quick to respond and walk me through it.

We started using SilentAuction Pro during covid for our annual art auction fundraiser. This year we made it a hybrid event (online bidding but viewing the art in person). This helped us keep the supporters we picked up when we were fully online and allow folks to view the auction items in person. It turned out great and we learned a lot on how to do it even better next time.

The instant log in link. The messaging module. The ability to have multiple photos and video.

The menu can be challenging to get used to/navigate.