Bidding can be an excellent way to encourage online purchases, and thanks to WordPress auction plugins, turning your website into an auction site is as simple as a few clicks.
With WordPress auction plugins, you can transform your website into a dedicated online auction tool like eBay, Amazon, Shopify, and other auction platforms.
In this article, we will cover what WordPress auction plugins are and why you need them, and give you our picks for the best free WordPress auction plugins currently available.
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What is a WordPress Auction Plugin
A WordPress auction plugin is a tool you can use to turn your website into an auction site.
Whether you want to sell your own items or third-party items, these plugins make it easy to set up and manage live auctions using your WordPress site.
Why You Need a WordPress Auction Plugin
If you want to sell items, a live auction website can be one of the best ways to drive sales and increase the price those items sell for.
Unless you want to spend time coding, setting up a live auction on your website can be a hassle unless you have a WordPress auction plugin.
Save time and effort by installing WordPress plugins that come prepackaged with all the tools you need to quickly launch your own live auctions.
The Best WordPress Auction Plugins
You will get a lot of results when you search for “auction” on WordPress Plugin Repository and while some are great, not all of them are built the same.
There are plenty that have good reviews, but some of those plugins haven’t been updated in years, and others haven’t been tested with the latest version of WordPress, which can cause unforeseen issues.
With that in mind, every plugin listed in this article has been tested up to WordPress 5.7 or later and has at least a 4.5-star rating. Using this standard should prevent you from using a plugin that is not worth your time.
On top of that, each of the plugins mentioned below is also completely free to install and use.
That means that all of the plugins recommended in this article are regularly maintained and updated, and should work seamlessly with your WordPress website, at no cost to you.
Now, let’s take a look at the top choices available when searching for a WordPress auction plugin.
Ultimate Auction for WooCommerce
Ultimate Auction for WooCommerce has more than 3,000 active installations and has maintained a perfect 5-star rating for good reason.
The plugin is simple and flexible and makes it quick and easy to add products to your WordPress website as auctions.
It comes loaded with useful features that allow you to customize your auctions. Reserve prices, countdown timers, and a “Buy Now” option can be added to auctions, and you can set bid increments for individual auctions.
Admins will receive email notifications for all bidding activity as well as for payment confirmation.
Auctions can be edited, deleted, or ended at any time, and admins also have the ability to cancel the last bid if needed.
With lots of features and a simple setup process, Ultimate Auction for WooCommerce is definitely worth checking out.
If you do not have WooCommerce, you can install the Ultimate WordPress Auction Plugin, which is a non-WooCommerce version of the plugin that has 2,000 installs and a 4.5-star rating.
It has all the same features, it just isn’t optimized for WooCommerce like its counterpart.
Dokan
Dokan markets itself as the best WooCommerce-powered front-end multi-vendor marketplace on WordPress.
It helps you to build your own marketplace similar to Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Magento, and other marketplaces in under 30 minutes.
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Dokan is fast and easy to use. It is a great way to start eCommerce and earn through commissions with all kinds of products including digital, physical, and variable products.
Dokan’s top features include:
- Frontend Dashboard for Vendors
- Frontend Simple Product
- Order Management
- Withdraw System for Vendors
- Individual Vendor Stores
- Order Email Notifications
- Storefront Widgets
As a Dokan admin, you can have unlimited vendors and those vendors are able to create an unlimited amount of products. You can also use your admin controls to control things like product publishing, vendor registration, and subscription renewal.
Dokan’s versatility and a long list of features have earned it a 4.5-star rating and 70,000 active installations.
Auction Nudge
For those looking to host eBay auctions on their site, Auction Nudge makes doing so very simple.
It is a plugin that has earned a perfect 5-star rating thanks to how easy it makes it to add eBay to your WordPress website.
Auction Nudge fully integrates with eBay to add your eBay listings, profile, and feedback to your site. It also allows you to add your auctions to posts and pages as widgets using shortcodes, or directly from within your theme.
The plugin has several display settings that can be easily changed including theme, image size, category list, items per page, show multiple pages, show search box, and open in new tab.
If eBay auctions are your thing, it’s hard to beat this plugin.
WC Vendors Marketplace
WC Vendors Marketplace is a plugin that is similar to Dokan as it allows you to create your own multi-vendor marketplace with WordPress powered by WooCommerce.
It hasn’t been around as long, but it does have 10,00 installs and a 4.5-star rating.
Like Dokan, the WC Vendor Marketplace plugin can be used to build a wide range of online marketplaces and it does not place restrictions on the number of vendors or products you can create for your marketplace.
If you want to get your auctions up and running quickly, WC Vendors Marketplace saves you time with a setup wizard that guides you through the initial setup of your marketplace.
WordPress auction plugins provide a quick and easy way to turn your WordPress website into a fully functioning live auction site.
Whether you want to sell your own items or others’ items, these plugins can help you list those items as live auctions with just a few clicks.
All of the plugins we covered above can be downloaded for free from the WordPress Plugin Repository.
Since all of the above plugins are free, there is no harm in trying them out to see which ones work best for you.
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