MegaBid gives an auction house its own live bidding platform and branded apps, so the people bidding on your lots are your customers rather than someone else's traffic.
Live simulcast and timed sales · iOS and Android · Runs alongside the marketplaces you already use
The problem
Third-party bidding portals put your catalogue in front of buyers, and take a cut of every lot for doing it. The harder part is what you never get back: the bidder's email, their bidding history, and any way to tell them about the next sale.
"We were paying to reach people who had already bought from us three times."
A frustration we have heard from more than one saleroom, and the reason MegaBid exists.
MegaBid is your own platform, running under your own name. Your lots stand alone rather than beside a competitor’s, your bidders belong to you, and they hear from you alone.
The platform
One system for the saleroom, the office and the bidder, built to work as a single piece rather than four tools bolted together.
Room, telephone and internet bids on one screen. The auctioneer sees every bid as it lands, and online bidders follow the rostrum with sub-second latency.
Run timed online sales with staggered closes and anti-sniping. Bidders leave a maximum in advance and the platform bids for them, up to their limit.
Published under your name, with your logo on the home screen. We handle the store submissions, the review process and every update after that.
Built for the person actually clerking a fast sale: one keystroke per bid, instant undo on a misheard paddle, and a running record of who bid what.
Lots, photographs, estimates and condition reports in one place, with a photography workflow your team can run from a phone in the warehouse.
Buyer invoices raised the moment the sale ends, with premium and VAT applied to your rules, plus vendor statements on the other side of the ledger.
Ways to sell
Most salerooms use all three across a year, and you can decide as you go.
Your auctioneer works the rostrum as always. Online bidders see and hear the sale as it happens, and their bids land in the clerk's book alongside the room's.
Open a sale for a week, let it close lot by lot, and clear the volume that does not warrant a rostrum. Useful for probate, house clearance and the long tail of a general sale.
An app on a regular buyer's phone is worth more than any amount of advertising. Yours goes to both stores under your own auction house, not ours.
Whatever you sell
Estimates, condition reports, hallmarks, provenance and as many photographs as a lot deserves.
Jewellery
WatchesCeramics
Silver
Fine artHow it works
You keep running sales the whole time. Nothing is switched off until you are ready.
We import your existing lots, images and bidder list, from a spreadsheet or straight from the system you use today.
Your colours, logo, terms and premium structure across the site and both apps. Your name is the one bidders see, throughout.
We run a full dress rehearsal with your clerk and auctioneer on real lots, so the first live sale is not the first time anyone has used it.
Someone from our team is on hand for your first sales. After that you have support on sale days for as long as you need it.
In production
MegaBid runs live, three-day general sales week in and week out: jewellery, watches, militaria, coins, Asian works and general antiques, with room and internet bidders in the same book and the clerk keeping up at forty seconds a lot.
Every feature on this page exists because a saleroom needed it on a sale day, which is a different thing from a feature list written to win a tender.
For your bidders
The bidder-facing half matters most. If it is awkward, they go back to the marketplace, and the whole exercise is wasted.
Packages
One flat platform fee, so a strong sale costs the same as a quiet one. Tell us your volumes and we will put a number on it.
For salerooms starting with timed and absentee sales.
For salerooms running live sales with a room and an internet audience.
For salerooms that want their name on the app store.
Book a demo
Half an hour, screen shared, using lots like yours. We will clerk a few through live so you can see what your bidders would see, and what your clerk would be doing.
If it is a poor fit we will tell you plainly, and point you at whatever suits you better.
Questions
Most salerooms keep theirs at first. MegaBid runs alongside the portals you already list with. Salerooms typically start by moving their regular buyers across, keep the marketplace for reach on the lots that need it, and let the numbers decide the rest.
You do. Names, emails, bidding history and invoices are yours, exportable in full whenever you ask, and your buyers hear from you alone. That is the entire point of the exercise.
Someone is reachable on sale days, and the room can always keep selling: the auctioneer's book does not depend on the internet. Bids already placed are recorded, so a bidder who drops off does not lose their position.
Yes, published to the App Store and Google Play under your auction house, with your icon and your listing. We handle submission, review and updates, which are the parts nobody wants to learn.
Timed sales can be live quickly. Simulcast takes longer because it deserves a proper rehearsal with your clerk. Own-brand apps depend on store review, which is the one part of the timeline we do not control.
A flat platform fee rather than a percentage of hammer, so growth does not cost you more. The number depends on how many sales you run and which package fits, which is why we would rather talk than publish a figure that would be wrong for you.