GalaBid

Galabid

Comments: [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] is amazing and always really helpful. We love using Galabid each year for our Gala Dinner. The guests really enjoy using it and it is a very simple piece of software to use.

Pros:

Very easy to use Great video tutorials when you need help Easy to set up Great functionality and ability to incorporate Live and Silent Auction items

Cons:

It is expensive. Our event is a Gala Dinner to raise funds for the young people we support, and the Galabid bill is always the biggest bill for us. I am able to get discounts and free donations for everything else.

Galabid Review

Comments: Overall, we had a good experience. We managed to raise a lot of money through the silent auction, enjoyed working with [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN], and found the platform was aesthetically pleasing and worked well! We also found it exceptionally helpful to be able to copy and paste from previous years! However, our experience could of been improved if training was more specific to our needs and the platform did not require payment details on set up. Overall, however, it was good and helped us raise more than we expected! Hooray!

Pros:

- We really liked how easy it was to use as a guest/user. Viewing the photos and description was straightforward and aesthetically pleasing! - I like the fact you could have both buy it now and auction items. This is the first time we had someone buy one of the high-priced buy it now items! - Really great to be able to copy and paste things from previous years. This was a huge time saver and help!! - In the training, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] was kind and helpful. I found the template 'item descriptions' helpful to know what to put in the descriptions - I liked that you could have a backend for staff and a separate backend for volunteers, as well as guest view - I liked the amount of features e.g. raffles, fundraising scale, etc. Despite not using them this time round.

Cons:

- The training could of been more focused to what we wanted as an organization/event. We spent a lot of time covering 'set up', but we would have preferred to duplicate our previous set up and spend more time learning about notifications and alerts. A lot of the training was not applicable to what we wanted to do at the event. However, was good to learn about functionality, we had too short of a time frame! - At the end of the night, every total for how much raised was different, with no clear reason to why. This made it very confusing to tell the guests how much we raised and consequently we gave the wrong information about $ raised at the end of the night. In the end we had to manually work this out - For some reason, this time round, everyone who signed up were required to enter bank details. This put off a lot of guests as they deemed it too much information or too much hard work when they didn't 'plan' on buying anything. If this was easier (bank details on checkout), we are certain we could of raised more money/sold more 'buy it now' items. - Could of had clearer information on having a silent auction and live auction integrated. This was quite difficult to understand and was not set up until the event start time.

GalaBid

Pros:

It was easy to use and navigate. The Galabid team answered any questions I had as they came up and were very helpful.

Cons:

Visually when set up the auction platform looked a bit dated

Streamlined payments which improved efficiencies at the end of the event

Comments: Great service, great user-friendly system and great customer experience.

Pros:

Having GalaBid set up to take payments for the Silent Auction truly simplified our payments at the end of the night, and although we quickly learnt that guests had to accept the invoice to pay it (or we could do it on their behalf) this definitely streamlined how the evening finished. We also had to extend the closure time twice due to varying delays, but this was simple to do, and the texts that were sent to guests to advise them of this kept the process clean and effective. We also used Buy Now for the first time to get donations towards Bedding Packs, Beds and Bunk Beds that could be donated to kids. This was very effective and people found the process very easy. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] was lovely to work with, she spent a lot of time going through all the benefits of the system with us before we loaded it and this helped us understand how to best use it for not only customer experience but efficiency.

Cons:

We would like to of set an Auction Online date/time like you can to turn it off. The reason being that we had shared this page with a few supporters and donators prior to it going to guests. He had it turned off, but the message which could not be edited said the Auction had Closed. Which was accurate. Having the ability to put a message there saying 'Auction available from Date/Time' and automatically switch on would have been helpful.

Excellent Tool for Charity On-Line Auctions

Comments: Our expectations have been exceeded and we would wish to work with GalaBid again if and when we run another auction.

Pros:

The GalaBid software was very easy to use making it accessible for our group of inexperienced volunteers. This meant more people in our team were confident in using the site from the outset enabling us to spread tasks around the group. Setting up the auction and loading lots was straightforward and intuitive. The structures of the dashboard menus were logically laid out and the inputs required were self explanatory (albeit there are helpful prompts attached to each field). The customer facing site was attractive and its ease of use resulted in excellent engagement and results. The automated alerts to the bidders helped raise additional funds for our charity. Managing the auction with the dashboard, KPIs and reports was made very easy. In short, our expectations were exceeded at every level and we appreciated the support and contact from our account director who took a personal interest in how we were proceeding.

Cons:

When registering as bidders, there is an option to use a landline or mobile (cellphone) number. I would only offer the mobile option as the spoken instruction is not as clear as the text instructions - a very minor point in an otherwise excellent product.