Silent Auction Pro Reviews

This is terrific software, especially for a smaller nonprofit. What sold the software to us is that when I inquired about it online on a Saturday, I got an immediate phone call from the owner of the company and software developer. This was very typical of all interaction with this company throughout our use of the software - we got immediate responses from support when we had questions, they understand that auctions happen on weekends and support needs to be available then, and when we found a few quirks in the software they were repaired immediately, often by the developer personally. We previously used Greater Giving and BidPal; all three have features that I like and don't like, but overall SilentAuctionPro is by far the best value for the price. The a la carte pricing is a huge benefit for nonprofits like ours that cannot use all features (i.e. online bidding). Overall, from last year to this year (BidPal to SilentAuctionPro), we went from about 100 to 195 attendees, and from our worst checkout ever to our best. The instruction files, help menus, videos, etc were by the far the best of any nonprofit software we have used. We were invoiced after the auction for the software, which could be of great benefit for a nonprofit just starting out with their first auction.

I would love to be able to have a website where people can enter their own donations and have them populate as donation items in the system. There were a few quirks like the system not liking quote marks and ampersands. I would like for there to be a bit more explanation on the page about the security of registering your card as many of my guests weren't comfortable doing so at the time of ticket purchase. It would also be great to have more customization options for the ticket sales page. Because of the way we run our auction, I would very much prefer to be able to assign bidder #s to a household rather than to an individual, but this would have been fine if we had noticed it earlier and planned accordingly. I would also like to be able to customize a bit more on the receipts, include ticket descriptions, etc. I would have set up our fixed price items differently than we were advised to as I don't think it was the best option for our auction and was a bit of a hiccup, but in fairness it was something we didn't get to in advance and did on the fly, so it would have been avoidable with a little planning. Although the reports are generally pretty great, I did have to piece together a few to get to what I needed which could be a pain for someone with less Excel experience. Really minor, but because we can't use online bidding, I print our bidsheets on carbonless paper. Would very much prefer that the half sheet option printed as a 2up because I ended up reformatting them in Adob

This is my 3rd year using Silent Auction Pro for my kids school Auction.
The program is great and the staff are wonderful and very helpful.

I wish I could run a report the way we need it for item distribution after the auction. Instead of going into a large report and sorting it in Excel. Would be great if it just sorted by winners names all the items they won.

It does the job but doesn't exactly WOW me as a user

Seemed very basic and run of the mill. Nothing stood out as I had to keep using this.

Ease of use of product. Support documents on "how to" use the system and customer support.

I can't think of anything. Overall, they have fulfilled our online auction needs.

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.

Software is user friendly and website easy to navigate. Continue to annually learn and become more familiar with functionality of features since 2013.
The websites offers variety of features: previous donation report, contact history, donation inventory and tracking, auction item bundle function, mobile online bidding, email merge, and custom email / texts distribution.
Support (Help) staff is very knowledgeable and accommodates at anytime.

Would like to see individual email / text contacts available for email distribution, besides category labels.
Would like to be able to obtain only 2-3 years previous donation history. History older than 3 years not necessary, report too long and cumbersome.

Silent Auction Pro is very intuitive software. They have thought through the needs of both the organization putting on the event (silent and/or live auction) plus have made it user friendly for the auction bidder. Reports are comprehensive and easily downloaded to use as event wrap up in usable formats. But where they go above and beyond it their customer service. Clients have access to live support during normal business hours during the ramp up to the event plus live support during the event should the need arise to contact them while the event is in progress. Hats off to Silent Auction Pro for their great event product.

There are a few features that I believe are being addressed in an update coming at the first of 2022, one of which is the ability to use tablets and the event instead of computers. We look forward to the update.

That first phone call to Silent Auction Pro led to a Zoom demo with [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]. The demo with [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] led to our Board giving approval for the contract. Since that first conversation to the post-event conversations, every step, every need, every question, every "OH NO" moment on my side was quickly answered and solved. There is no customer service team like theirs. Their team is the BEST. Phone calls were answered either immediately or with a very quick return call in minutes. And I must add that phones were answered during Holiday hours. Besides their immediate and expert support, the package features and pricing were more compatible with our NPO's size.

The announcement feature and the communication functions were tremendously helpful. We scheduled videos and sent texts and emails for our event. Afterwards, I sent every donor, sponsor, group member, volunteer, and every registered bidder either an email or software generated letter with the information that pertained to each one specifically. This function alone saved me hours of work. Thank you, Silent Auction Pro!

The initial use of the software required diligent data entry. It was a lot of work. We now have a database containing donors, sponsors, bidders, volunteers, and workers. Next year's data entry will not start at zero.

For some data entry and reports, (without checking which aggravated me the most I must be vague) having a "scroll to the top button" would be nice. Also, when working in one function, I would like to always be sent back to that one function when I hit submit rather than have to find that spot again.
And there must be a better way to edit items after they have been merged into an auction item. I never asked, so there might be. I would find a spelling error or decide to add a better description for an Auction item. The edited text would not appear unless I deleted it as an auction item, edited the donated item text, then reassigned as an auction item. Also, I believe a sponsor function that could be separate from the donor and bid reporting function would be beneficial.

These are my only criticisms. They are small and might have had an answer if I had asked. They were not even important enough for me to put on a list when I talked with the Support Team.

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.

Silent Auction Pro helped manage all aspects of our fundraising event -such aspects include; ticketing, silent auction, live auction, raffle sales, Paddle-Raise etc.
The ability to have guests save their credit card information made the "check-out" process a breeze.
Silent Auction Pro gives detailed reporting for all areas of the event.
Silent Auction Pro's entire customer service team is friendly, knowledgeable and extremely helpful.

We had some troubles with getting our guests to log-in to the software ahead of time to add in guests' information or add their credit card information to their account. This is not any fault of the software though.

This software is very straight forward and easy to use whether you are a computer geek or technically challenged.
Customer support is the best you will find. 9 out of 10 you are connected with a live knowledgeable person.

Hard to find issues with this software. Has been able to handle about any game or twist to a traditional live auction we could come up with. With over 300 attendees the table assignments gets overwhelming.

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.