Introduction
Auctions for WooCommerce is a complete auction marketplace that runs entirely inside your existing WooCommerce store. It supports ten auction formats, real-time bidding with anti-sniping protection, a built-in customer wallet, four-way multi-vendor compatibility, and over seventy shipped subsystems — all without depending on any external SaaS.
What it does
| You can run | Examples |
|---|---|
| Live auctions | Highest-bidder-wins, lowest-bid-wins, sealed/blind, proxy auto-bid, Dutch descending, silent ballot, charity, penny pay-per-bid, seated event, unique-bid |
| Customer wallets | Top-up, withdraw to bank/PayPal, peer-to-peer transfer, OTP verification, partial-pay at checkout |
| Marketplace | Native multi-vendor with WCFM, Dokan, WC Vendors, or YITH — vendor onboarding stays in your existing plugin |
| Compliance | KYC, age gate, terms of service, audit log, hash-chained bid ledger, dispute resolution, GDPR cookie consent |
| Marketing | Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Twilio SMS, Firebase push |
Who it's for
| Role | What you'll do | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| Store owner | Install, configure, and operate the auction marketplace | Installation → First-Time Setup |
| Auctioneer / seller | List auctions, set increments, monitor bids, ship items | Add Auction → Auction Types |
| Customer / bidder | Place bids, watch lots, manage wallet, withdraw funds | Customer Overview |
| Developer | Extend with hooks, build integrations, query the REST API | REST API → Hooks & Filters |
How it differs from other auction plugins
- No SaaS dependency — Everything runs inside WordPress. No Node.js sidecar, no ML pipeline, no third-party server.
- Dedicated indexed storage — Bids, auctions, watchlist and audit log live in their own indexed tables (not in WordPress's general meta storage), so reads stay fast at very large bid volume.
- Race-condition safe — Every bid placement takes a row lock for the moment it's recorded, so two simultaneous bidders can never both win the same price.
- Adaptive polling — Live polling drops to 2–3 seconds in the final minutes, scales back to 5–10 seconds otherwise, and disables entirely for dormant auctions.
- Background jobs — Emails, auto-relist, payouts, and CSV exports all run via WP Action Scheduler — never on the request thread.
- Block editor + HPOS ready — Compatible with WooCommerce HPOS (custom order tables) and Cart/Checkout Blocks out of the box.
System requirements
| Requirement | Minimum |
|---|---|
| PHP | 7.4 |
| WordPress | 6.0 |
| WooCommerce | 8.0 (tested up to 9.6) |
| MySQL / MariaDB | MySQL 5.7 / MariaDB 10.3 |
| HTTPS | Strongly recommended — bid forms transmit user identifiers |
| Memory | 256 MB recommended |
| Cron | WP-Cron or system cron — required for auction lifecycle |
Next steps
- Quick Start — go from zero to a live auction in five minutes
- Features — full catalog of what's shipped
- Installation — upload, activate, license, ready