Webkul Product Auction

I've been using this app for just about four years and have run over 1,800 auctions. When it works, it does work really, really well. Auctions are relatively easy to set up, I typically add three daily and will have as many as nine running at any given time. But when, something goes wrong, it's a real challenge especially when I have items that are generating a lot of interest and bidding. This app is one of the better options at the moment, but just be prepared that outages will occur. Here's a brief list of what you can expect from time to time.

1. Most commonly, the app will simply just stop working. This seems to happen about once a month or so. Bidders will not be able to make bids nor will I be able to access the admin. This seems to happen at the worst time, when auctions are nearly ending and when most of the bidding action happens. This occurs enough where I added to my product descriptions that "in the even of confirmed app failure, auctions can be cancelled/voided at any time, even after completion of auction". That being said, I don't recommend auto-approving the winner since the the app can fail and then declare a winner anyways. This equals lost revenue and unhappy customers.

2. E-mails to bidders may fail. I've received a few instances where bidders were not notified via e-mail that they were outbid. It simply was not sent as all sent messages are in my sent items.

3. Bidding may or may not auto update from the bidders view. I recommend adding "PLEASE REFRESH OFTEN" in the product description as a reminder.

Again, I do like the app. But I just am prepared for the occasions where this app will just randomly stop or become unresponsive. These outages create the most headaches for me. When it works like it should, it's very good.

Excellent support and works pretty well. There are a few ways it could be improved but I am sure that the developers are working on this. Thanks everyone for creating a great product

I tried a couple of these and the support these guys gave was the best. They also helped me put the widget on custom product pages and custom collections pages which is HUGE. I think there are some improvements to be made in the general ui/ux area but the app is pretty solid so 4/5!

This is the only auction option on Shopify, so keep that in mind. The app itself works well enough, but it's just a pain to set up. The instructions are written by people who have English as a second language, so they are very confusing to follow.

Honestly, you're better off getting the app and just asking Support to integrate it. It is much faster than trying to follow the instructions, getting stuck, then needing to contact them anyway.

Support is very responsive. The only issue is their emails are often like the instructions, often being difficult to understand. It can take quite a bit of back-and-forth to resolve something, but it does get done.

The 7 day trial becomes quite ridiculous, because in our case, we were still having conversations with Support about setting up the app when our first $30 charge appeared.

The app is missing a few basic features you'd expect from an auction app - like one-click restart for items that didn't sell (you need to create a whole new listing) - but again, if you're patient with Support it'll work.

We haven't tried the proxy or automatic bidding, so can't comment on that.

Excellent concept for an auction on a website. Integrated into our website. They were very helpful with this integration. But it had a lot of tweaking after the fact to make things right.

Pro
Very customizable with email alerts and various customizations

Cons
Can not do bulk products or anything in bulk. Every product that is place for bid have to be done one by one.

We are a live fish store and we had some WYSIWYG items on our page and had to make the product for each item (which is the normal process), but then after the product was made... we had to go in the product auction app and set the configuration for each production one by one.

*Would be nice to be able to select a batch of productions from your store and use a standard auction template.... and post all the products to auction with a few clicks instead of doing each product one by one.

Other than that it is a good app to download.. just need tweaking by the support team to fix compatibility issues with your website.

4 starts because it has worked but not for everyone. Little wonky but seems like best option available on shopify app store.

The support team is great! It is not all evident; how to use the app but they are patient and effective, helping out it any way they can to match your needs.
Thank you!

We had a really great experience with the customer service team. We were struggling with adding the coding but with simple collaborator access... the team had our auction up and running in no time! Thanks again team :)