eBay Auto Offer Tool: SendOffer as an Alternative Compared (2026)

Why look for an alternative in the first place?

Sellers who shop around for an alternative to eBay’s automated offers usually fall into one of three situations.

First, multi-marketplace. A seller active on eBay.co.uk, eBay.de and eBay.fr wants the same discount logic across all of them, with perhaps a deliberate exception in a single market. eBay’s Seller Hub exists per marketplace, so each one needs its own setup.

Second, granular per-category control. A seller with 800 listings in model trains and 1,500 in vinyl rarely wants the same discount across both. Model trains often carry higher margins, vinyl narrower ones. A flat discount strategy does not match the reality of different categories.

Third, traceable analytics. A seller who wants to know at the end of the month which specific offer brought what margin is not satisfied with an aggregated total. Seeing which discount level produced which revenue, per category, is the foundation for optimisation.

If none of these three situations applies, eBay’s built-in feature is usually enough. If one of them does, the comparison below is worth reading.

eBay native vs. SendOffer at a glance

Figures in the eBay column are taken from eBay’s official Seller News announcements. Sources are listed at the end of the article.

What eBay’s automated offers do according to the announcements

eBay has described the feature in two official Seller News posts. In March 2024 the criteria-based full automation for Store subscribers went live, and later in the year a second variant for sellers without a Store subscription was added. Both posts are linked in the sources section.

Key points from the announcements:

• You choose criteria such as category or price range. eBay then sends offers automatically to buyers who match your listings.
• New listings are automatically included in matching campaigns.
• A single campaign runs for up to 150 days.
• Sellers without a Store subscription can set up automated offers from the Active Listings page, but they have to pick the items there manually.
• The eligibility criteria for buyers were expanded in 2024, so more buyer-interest signals now feed into who receives an offer.
• Store subscribers, according to eBay, get access to detailed analytics in the Seller Hub.

What the announcements do not cover: concrete UI paths, the exact eligibility maths, the trail of individual offers sent, or the precise shape of the analytics. Anything beyond the above would be speculation, so it is deliberately left out.

What SendOffer does

SendOffer is an independent tool that works through eBay’s official Negotiation API. eBay still decides who counts as an eligible watcher. SendOffer controls which discount goes to whom and what happens with the offer after it is sent.

• One default rule for your whole inventory, plus any number of category overrides (for example vinyl 8 percent, vintage tech 15 percent, everything else 10 percent).
• Full history per offer: listing title, buyer name once accepted, discount percentage, status (sent, accepted, expired, cancelled), gross and net revenue.
• GB, DE, FR, IT and ES from one dashboard. Identical rules across all marketplaces, or deliberately different ones per market.
• Exclude individual listings from automation with one click.
• Hourly automation, startable and pausable per rule.
• Pay only on results: 5% of the net sale price of each offer we close on your behalf. No monthly fee. Billed once per month after a 31-day refund-protection window.

In detail: where the differences matter

One dashboard or five Seller Hubs

eBay’s Seller Hub exists per marketplace. A seller active on eBay.co.uk and eBay.de at the same time sets up buyer groups and criteria twice. Across all five EU marketplaces that becomes five separate set-ups, five separate maintenance routines, and five separate sets of analytics. SendOffer bundles the five marketplaces. You define a rule once and it runs in GB and the other markets at the same time, or you deliberately split the rules per marketplace, for instance because your margin in IT is not the same as in GB.

In practice that means: if you raise the discount for a category from 10 to 12 percent, the value updates across every enabled marketplace at once. An exception only for IT is handled with a marketplace-specific override, without touching the other markets.

Per-category discount control

eBay’s campaigns can be filtered by category and price range. A seller who wants a different fixed discount percentage for each category ends up, on the standard eBay route, running several buyer groups in parallel. In SendOffer the rule hierarchy is more direct: one default rule and one override per top-level category, each with a fixed percentage that you choose.

Example: a seller with vintage tech (higher margin) and vinyl records (tighter margin) sets the default rule to 10 percent and overrides vinyl at 7 percent. New categories added later inherit the default until you decide to override them.

What happens after an offer goes out

eBay states that Store subscribers get detailed analytics in the Seller Hub. The exact set of data points behind that is not spelled out in the public announcements. SendOffer stores, for each offer sent: timestamp, listing, buyer (once the offer is accepted), discount percentage, status history, gross and net revenue, and any cancellation data. A seller who wants to see which discount level in which category produced how much revenue in a given month can read that straight off the SendOffer history.

At the end of the month you do not export a single total, you export a table where each row is an offer sent. Filter by category, group by status (sent, accepted, expired, cancelled), compare different discount levels side by side against the revenue they actually generated.

Store subscription and pricing

eBay’s criteria-based full automation requires an eBay Store subscription. Without a Store, you fall back to the manual variant from the Active Listings page. SendOffer does not depend on any eBay Store tier. There is no monthly fee — you pay 5% of the net sale price only on offers we actually close, billed once a month after a 31-day refund-protection window. If we close nothing, you pay nothing.

Concretely: once you sign up to SendOffer, add a payment method (required so we can invoice settled sales) and connect your eBay account, the first automated offer can go out without any further prerequisites. No onboarding call, no contract, no minimum turnover.

Run time and pausing

eBay campaigns run for up to 150 days. SendOffer has no fixed run time per rule. You start a rule, it runs hourly in the background, and you pause or change it whenever you like. For seasonal selling or short-term promotions that is more practical than a campaign model with a hard end date.

Before a sale event you start a rule with a higher discount percentage, let it run for two weeks, and pause it afterwards. With a fixed-length eBay campaign you would have to keep the 150-day countdown in mind and intervene manually at the end.

When does each tool make sense?

Honestly: not every seller needs SendOffer. eBay’s built-in feature fits well when:

• You only sell on one marketplace and have no multi-market maintenance to worry about.
• You already have an eBay Store subscription and the built-in criteria cover your inventory cleanly.
• You work with a single flat discount percentage for all categories and have no need for per-category control.
• You do not need a per-offer history and the aggregated eBay analytics are enough.

SendOffer makes more sense when:

• You sell on several EU marketplaces at once and do not want to maintain the same configuration five times.
• You want different discounts per category (collectibles handled differently from standard stock).
• You want to know which specific offer went to which buyer at what margin, instead of only seeing the totals.
• You do not have an eBay Store subscription but still want full automation.
• You want to start and stop rules at short notice depending on season or strategy.

If the second list describes your situation, you can try SendOffer directly. No monthly fee — you pay 5% only on offers we actually close. Get started with SendOffer →

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. eBay Seller News team: “Save time by automating your offers to buyers” (March 2024). Announcement of criteria-based full automation for Store subscribers.
2. eBay Seller News team: “Reach more buyers easily with updated offers” (late 2024). Announcement of the expanded eligibility criteria and the variant for sellers without a Store subscription.