momoGood vs. 32auctions: When Free Stops Being Enough

Why nonprofits compare these two platforms

32auctions and momoGood both run online silent auctions, and they are priced on opposite principles. 32auctions is free to start and stays free for small auctions. momoGood is a subscription platform sold to organizations running events as part of a year-round fundraising program.

Those are two products aimed at two different problems, and the useful question is which problem you have.

Who is 32auctions?

32auctions is online silent auction software that has been running since 2009. The company reports more than 130,500 causes have raised over $320 million on the platform.

Its entry plan is free: up to 20 items, unlimited bidders, no credit card required. Larger auctions move onto paid plans, and there are optional paid add-ons, but a small organization really can run a complete online silent auction without paying anything.

It is built to be set up without help. No implementation call, no onboarding project, no account manager. For a PTA, a small charity or a first-time auction, that is the whole appeal, and it works.

Who is momoGood?

momoGood combines event fundraising with donor messaging. The events side comes from Givergy, which has helped more than 3,000 charities raise over $1 billion through auctions, galas and mobile bidding across four continents. The messaging side comes from Tatango, which runs SMS fundraising and advocacy programs.

Events, text messaging and workplace giving share one donor record, so the bidder at your gala and the text subscriber who gives in December are the same person in the same system.

Who should not switch

If you are running one online silent auction a year with twenty items and a volunteer committee, 32auctions is very likely the right answer and momoGood is not. You would be paying a subscription for capabilities you have no use for, and the free plan does the job you actually have.

We would rather say that here than take a demo call that wastes an hour of your week. The rest of this page is about the point where that stops being true.

Feature comparison

Running an auction soon? See how momoGood silent auctions and mobile bidding work, or read our guide to pricing auction items.

The four signals you have outgrown a free auction tool

The trigger is usually a change in the shape of your fundraising rather than a fault in the software. Four signals tend to show up first.

1. The auction is now attached to an event in a room

Online-only silent auctions and gala nights are different products. The moment you have a ballroom, an auctioneer, a paddle raise and a checkout queue at the end of the night, you need live auction tooling, ticketing and someone reachable at 7pm on a Saturday. That is a category of software a free self-serve tool does not try to be.

2. Item counts passed the point where volunteers can manage them

Twenty items is a spreadsheet. Two hundred items with procurement, donor credits, fair market values and category structure is an operation. The admin burden, not the bidding, is usually what breaks first.

3. You are exporting data to do anything with it

If your post-event routine involves downloading a CSV and re-uploading it somewhere to thank people, that manual step is the cost you are actually paying, and it grows every year.

4. The board is asking what happened to last year's bidders

This is the one that usually starts the conversation. An auction platform tells you what was raised. It does not tell you which of those bidders gave again in the autumn, because it never saw the autumn.

Platform economics

Free is a real price and it deserves a straight comparison. For a single small auction, 32auctions costs nothing and momoGood costs a subscription. There is no version of that arithmetic where a subscription wins.

The comparison changes with volume and with what the events are for. An organization running three or four events a year, with ticketing, a paddle raise and a messaging program, is buying one platform instead of assembling four tools and the manual work between them. Our auction pricing sets out how that is structured.

32auctions is cheaper, and momoGood does not try to win on price at the small end. The subscription has to be worth more than the tools plus the labour it replaces, which only holds above a certain size.

The volunteer-hours question

The economics of free software come down to whose evenings pay for it.

A free auction tool moves cost from the budget line to the volunteer roster: item entry, photo uploads, chasing procurement, printing, checkout on the night, and the reconciliation afterwards. None of that appears in a price comparison, and all of it is real.

Two organizations with identical auctions can reach opposite conclusions here, correctly. A committee with willing volunteers and time to spare should absolutely take the free tool and put the saved budget into the mission. A development team of two, already stretched, running a gala alongside a grant cycle and a year-end appeal, is buying back hours rather than buying features.

Before comparing prices, put a number on the hours your last auction consumed and who spent them. If that number is small and freely given, the decision is easy and it is not us. If it is large and coming out of paid staff time, compare it against the subscription rather than against zero.

When to choose 32auctions

32auctions is very likely the better choice if your organization:

• Runs one online silent auction a year, without a live event attached.
• Has twenty items or fewer, or is testing whether an auction works at all.
• Is volunteer-run with no budget line for fundraising software.
• Wants to set it up today without talking to anyone.
• Already handles donor communication somewhere else and is content with that.

When to choose momoGood

momoGood is the better fit if your organization:

• Runs a gala or live event where the room, the stage and the paddle raise matter.
• Runs more than one event a year, so setup work compounds.
• Wants onsite support rather than a knowledge base on the night that matters.
• Wants the auction to feed a year-round messaging program rather than end when bidding closes.
• Has a development team accountable for donor retention, not only for event revenue.
• Also runs, or wants to run, workplace giving and employer matching.

Making the switch

Moving off a free tool is mostly about not losing the history you accumulated on it.

• Export bidder and item data before you change anything. Past auction results are the baseline you will measure the new platform against, and they are easy to lose.
• Move between auctions, not during one. The quiet period after your event is the cheapest time.
• Bring the catalog across once. Item names, descriptions, fair market values and starting bids usually transfer as a spreadsheet import.
• Keep your bidder list. This is the asset. Everything else can be rebuilt.
• Set the comparison in advance. Decide before the event whether you are judging on total raised, items sold, average bid, or bidders retained into the following year.