AuctionWorx Total Cost of Ownership

AuctionWorx total cost of ownership is more than the licence. This page goes through each cost in the order you meet it.

Licence cost

AuctionWorx is sold by RainWorx Software in two editions, Enterprise and Events. Enterprise is for listings that close on their own schedules. Events is for scheduled auction sales with a catalog of lots. The licence price comes from RainWorx, and the rest of this page covers what you pay on top of it.

Customization cost

Cost follows scope. Systenics works in four steps:

1. Discovery and ballpark estimate. A free discovery call to review requirements.
2. Requirements and mockups. If the ballpark works for you, full requirements gathering and UI/UX mockups produce a closer estimate.
3. Build in milestones. Features are built and tested in defined milestones.
4. Deploy and support. Deployment goes straight to your AuctionWorx installation.

Customizations are built through extension points rather than edits to core files, which keeps them upgradeable. That matters for cost, because an edited core file means manual file diffing at every upgrade.

One-time add-on costs

These have published one-time prices with deployment included (see Systenics’ published one-time add-on prices):

• White-label mobile apps for iOS and Android: $1,799 (Buyer), $2,299 (Buyer + Seller), $2,699 (Buyer + Seller Pro with AI)
• Excel bulk listing plug-in: $499
• AI-enhanced listing descriptions: $2,699
• Barcode listing creation: $2,799
• Community activity feed: $399

No subscriptions, no per-listing fees. The AI generator does use a usage-based AI service, so watch that line as volume grows.

Hosting cost

Systenics recommends Azure for AuctionWorx. What you pay depends on the resources you use:

• Compute scales up during peak bidding, and bidding is CPU-heavy.
• Listing images grow file storage as your catalog grows.
• Deploying in a region close to your audience and using a CDN reduces latency.
• Pay-as-you-go pricing helps in quiet periods, and reserved pricing on longer commitments is cheaper.

If you are on shared hosting and your audience is growing, that is the point where an Azure migration usually makes sense.

Mobile OS-compatibility and version upgrades

Every one to two years, Google and Apple require updates to all mobile apps so they stay compatible with current Android and iOS versions. These are chargeable. On past projects the AuctionWorx mobile app upgrade has typically cost $500 to $1,000, sometimes less. There are no annual maintenance fees. If you publish under your own Apple Developer account, you renew it yourself ($99 a year).

AuctionWorx upgrades add to this. RainWorx ships frequent minor releases and roughly yearly major ones. Moving to a minor release costs around $300 when both the website and the mobile app are migrated. A major release costs more, since a larger feature set may need migrating on both. The more customizations you have, the more effort each migration and test takes. The mobile app is supported only on the latest AuctionWorx version at the time of purchase.

Putting it together

Your recurring costs are hosting and, for mobile, the OS updates and third-party service plans. One-time costs are the licence, add-ons and customization. See the customization service for the project side.