YITH WooCommerce Auctions Premium

Auctioning in your store without sinking the price of what you sell

Selling a unique piece, a limited edition or something you have run out of often ends up with a fixed price nobody knows is high or low: either you undercharge, or the product sits there. YITH WooCommerce Auctions Premium turns that doubt into a mechanism: your buyers set the price, and you set the floor.

People who buy this plugin usually sell things without a clear market price: a customized item or an out-of-stock product. In those cases scarcity works in your favor, but only if the starting price doesn't give the product away. That is why the most valuable setting here is not the bid itself, but the reserve price: the minimum you accept, below which nobody wins the auction.

Auction types and prices you can define in YITH WooCommerce Auctions Premium

Each auction is configured separately. These are the pieces that matter:

• Start price, minimum increment and reserve price: the first opens the bidding, the second sets how much each bid must go up and the third protects your margin.
• Buy now price: lets users end the auction by purchasing the product. It can be hidden automatically when the first bid comes in or when a bid exceeds the reserve.
• Manual or automatic bids: in automatic bidding, eBay style, the user enters the maximum they would pay and the system raises the bid for them up to that limit. In manual bidding, each new higher bid notifies the others so they bid again.
• Reversed auction: the lowest bid wins, instead of the highest.
• Secret auction: the current bid and the list of bids are hidden.
• Participation fee: the user pays a fee at checkout before being able to bid.
• Extra commission for the winner: it covers costs such as taxes, management or legal costs, and can be shown on the product page or only at checkout.
• Start and end dates, and automatic extension: if someone bids a few minutes before the close, the end is pushed back.

What it needs to go further

Some features depend on other YITH plugins. Asking for a valid card before bidding and automatically charging the winner require YITH Stripe. Letting your vendors create their own auctions while you keep a share requires YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor. Without them, the plugin works, but collecting payment from the winner depends on the order that is generated and on the person paying.

Frequently asked questions before you decide

Can I stop a winner who then doesn't pay?

There is no total guarantee, but you have several barriers: asking for confirmation before each bid is published, requiring registration, charging a participation fee and, with YITH Stripe, requiring a valid card and automatically charging the winner. If they still don't pay, you can notify the second-highest bidder or reschedule the auction.

What happens if nobody reaches the reserve price?

Nobody wins. You can choose to have the auction rescheduled and published again automatically.

Can users follow an auction without bidding?

Yes. They can sign up and receive email notifications, or add it to a watchlist they check from a widget or from their account.

Can I show the countdown?

Yes, there are 4 countdown styles with customizable colors, or you can disable it and show only the end date.

Email notifications that keep bidding alive

An auction works if people come back. The plugin sends emails to those following the auction and to bidders when there is a new bid, when it is about to end, when someone outbids them (which encourages them to bid again) and when it ends. When it closes, you can automatically generate an order with pending payment status, with the checkout link in the email to the winner, so they don't have to guess how to pay.

Auctions are displayed with shortcodes, widgets and blocks

You don't have to leave the auctions buried in the shop. With shortcodes you can create pages with active auctions, scheduled ones or those from specific categories. There are also widgets for sidebars and Gutenberg blocks to insert them on any page.

Before publishing the first one, decide three things: the reserve price of each product, whether bidding will be manual or automatic and whether you require registration or a card to take part. Test the whole flow as a buyer: bidding, being outbid, winning and reaching the pending payment order. If you use a heavily customized theme, check in the demo how the countdown and the bid form look.