SiteMile WordPress Auction Theme Review and Pricing
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SiteMile’s Auction Theme is a WordPress theme that turns a standard install into a multi-seller auction site: eBay-style ascending auctions, reverse auctions, sealed and Dutch bidding, proxy bids, commissions and seller payouts. It is still actively sold and still being updated. All prices and dates below were read on 4 September 2026.
The short version
Buy it if you need a real auction engine and not a WooCommerce plugin pretending to be one. The bidding logic, the commission and fee system, and the six auction formats are genuinely deep, and SiteMile shipped an update 54 days before we checked, so this is not abandoned software.
Do not buy the single theme. SiteMile lists each of its 17 themes at $349, but on 4 September 2026 both of its checkout pages offered only club membership at $249 a year or $899 for life — so a year of access to all 17 themes costs $100 less than one theme’s own list price. The site also quotes three different renewal stories in three places. Get the price in writing before you pay.
What the theme actually does
Most “auction” solutions for WordPress are a bidding layer bolted onto WooCommerce products. This is not that. Installing the Auction Theme adds two top-level items to your admin sidebar — Auction Theme for configuration and Auction for running the listings themselves — and the auction is the native content type rather than a product with a countdown attached.
SiteMile advertises six auction formats: standard ascending multi-seller auctions, reverse auctions where the price descends, silent auctions with hidden bids, Dutch sealed-bid auctions where the lowest bid wins, raffle or seat auctions built on a bidding-fee model, and lowest-unique-bid auctions. Bidding supports automatic proxy bids where a buyer sets a maximum and the system bids on their behalf, manual bidding with live updates, auto-extension when a bid lands near the close, and a make-an-offer flow for counteroffers.
The marketplace plumbing is the part that would take you months to build. Pricing Settings alone splits into listing fees, other fees and custom commission fees: you set a base listing fee, a featured-listing fee, a sealed-bidding fee, your commission on completed transactions, a withdrawal limit and per-bid fees. Email Settings runs to more than thirty tabs covering every automated notification — withdrawal requests, counteroffers, item-won messages — each with editable copy.
Configuration is dense rather than difficult. There are more than twenty setting groups under Auction Theme, but each individual option carries a question-mark tooltip explaining what it does, which keeps the first afternoon from being pure guesswork. Two things do need external setup: a Google Maps API key if you want buyer-location features, and the Social Login plugin before the Facebook and Twitter connect tabs do anything.
Running auctions and what buyers see
Listings can be created from the admin side or by sellers from the front end, which is the mode that matters if you are building a marketplace rather than a shop. A seller sets the item, category, condition, starting price, reserve, buy-now price where enabled, duration and images; the theme then handles the countdown, the bid history, the auto-extension rule and the notification chain without further intervention.
The buyer-facing side is conventional in a way that works in this category. Listings show the current bid, time remaining, bid count and seller feedback score, with a bid box that accepts either a straight bid or a proxy maximum. Users get a dashboard covering their active bids, won items, listings, wallet balance and withdrawal requests. The user rating and feedback system is built in rather than bolted on, which matters enormously for a marketplace where trust between strangers is the product.
The design itself is competent and dated in equal measure. It will not embarrass you, and it will not distinguish you either.
What SiteMile publishes, read 4 September 2026
Every figure here came from sitemile.com on 4 September 2026. Where the site contradicts itself we have shown both figures rather than picking one.
| Item | What SiteMile shows | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Single theme list price | $349 | Products index |
| Single theme checkout | Not offered on either buy page we read | Both buy pages |
| Club, yearly | $249/year, all 17 current themes, unlimited sites | Both buy pages |
| Club, lifetime | $899 one-off, current and future themes | Both buy pages |
| Renewal after year one | “a small $19 fee after the first year to get updates and support for 1 more year” | Auction Theme product page |
| Last update | “Latest Update Released on 12 July 2026” — 54 days before this reading | Auction Theme product page |
| Version number | Not published | — |
| Refund policy | None stated; a cancellation policy is linked in the footer | Buy pages |
| WooCommerce integration | “costs extra, and comes with our PRO PLUS package” — PRO PLUS price not published | Auction Theme product page |
Catalogue value against bundle price: the number that decides this purchase
SiteMile’s products index lists 17 themes — Freelancer Marketplace, Microjobs, Classified Ads, Rental Booking, Responsive Auction, Transporter Shipme, Car Auction, Student Tutor, Jobminer, Taskerdev, Buzzler Directory, Penny Auction, Walleto, Agento Real Estate, Couponerr, Domain Selling and Buying, and Digital Downloads Marketplace — each carrying the same $349 tag.
The derivation: 17 themes × $349 = $5,933 of combined list price. Against that:
- The $249 yearly club is 4.2 per cent of the catalogue’s list value ($249 ÷ $5,933).
- The $899 lifetime is 15.2 per cent ($899 ÷ $5,933).
- Most usefully: $249 for all seventeen themes is $100 less than the $349 asked for the Auction Theme alone.
That gap is the whole story of SiteMile’s pricing. The $349 per-theme figure is not a price you are expected to pay; on the two checkout pages we could read on 4 September 2026 it was not even available to pay. It functions as an anchor that makes $249 look like a discount, when $249 is simply the price. Treat the catalogue as a bundle, because that is the only way it is sold, and judge the $249 against what you would otherwise spend on an auction plugin plus a marketplace plugin plus a theme — not against $349.
The lifetime tier changes the arithmetic if you intend to run the site for more than four years, since $899 is 3.6 years of yearly membership. It also includes future themes, which the yearly tier explicitly does not.
Where it loses
The pricing is told three different ways. The products index says $349 per theme. The two buy pages offer only $249 a year or $899 once. The Auction Theme’s own product page promises “a small $19 fee after the first year to get updates and support for 1 more year”. Those cannot all describe the same transaction. Nothing here proves bad faith, but you should not hand over money until support confirms in writing what you are buying and what it costs at renewal.
The payment gateway list has not been pruned. SiteMile advertises PayPal, PayPal Adaptive, Payza, Moneybookers/Skrill, iDeal, iDeal Mollie, Sisow, Payfast, Quickpay and Authorize.net. Payza ceased operating in 2018 and Moneybookers was rebranded to Skrill many years before that. A gateway list carrying a processor that has not existed for eight years tells you the marketing copy is older than the code. Confirm your specific gateway works on a current install before buying.
No version number and no public changelog. “Latest Update Released on 12 July 2026” is the only maintenance signal SiteMile publishes. You cannot see what changed, when the previous release was, or how often releases actually land. Compared with a ThemeForest item, where the full update history sits on the item page, this is a meaningful loss of visibility.
WooCommerce costs extra and the price is hidden. Integration “comes with our PRO PLUS package”, but PRO PLUS is not priced anywhere we could find. If your plan depends on WooCommerce shipping, tax or payment infrastructure, that is an unbudgeted line item.
No refund policy is stated. Neither buy page commits to a money-back window. On a $249 to $899 purchase with no trial, that is the single biggest reason to ask questions first.
It is a theme, not a plugin. Your auction functionality and your site design are the same package. Redesigning later means either living with SiteMile’s templates or rebuilding the front end by hand, because switching themes takes the auction engine with it.
Who it suits
The Auction Theme earns its money for someone launching a genuine multi-seller auction marketplace who needs commissions, seller payouts, proxy bidding and several auction formats working on day one, and who values that over design flexibility. At $249 for the year you also get the Classified, Freelancer, Microjobs and Rental themes, so if you are the kind of operator who tests several marketplace concepts, the club is a reasonable research budget.
It suits you badly if you want a handful of charity auctions on an existing site — a WooCommerce auction plugin is cheaper and less invasive — or if the visual design of your marketplace is a competitive differentiator, or if you need a documented changelog and a refund policy before you will spend money.
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See the Auction Theme on SiteMile
Comparing options first? See our roundup of the best WordPress auction themes and plugins.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the SiteMile Auction Theme cost?
On 4 September 2026 SiteMile listed each of its themes at $349 on its products index, but both of its checkout pages offered only club membership: $249 per year for all 17 current themes on unlimited sites, or $899 once for current and future themes. We could not find a way to buy the Auction Theme on its own. The theme’s product page separately mentions a $19 fee after the first year for continued updates and support.
Is the SiteMile Auction Theme still updated?
Yes. The product page states “Latest Update Released on 12 July 2026”, which was 54 days before we checked on 4 September 2026. The theme is not abandoned. SiteMile does not publish a version number or a changelog, so you cannot see what that update contained or how frequently releases arrive.
What auction formats does it support?
SiteMile advertises six: standard ascending multi-seller auctions, reverse auctions where the price descends, silent auctions with hidden bids, Dutch sealed-bid auctions where the lowest bid wins, raffle or seat auctions using a bidding-fee model, and lowest-unique-bid auctions. Bidding supports automatic proxy bids, manual bidding with live updates, auto-extension near the close, and a make-an-offer counteroffer flow.
Does it work with WooCommerce?
Only as a paid add-on. The product page states the theme “integrates with woocommerce plugin” but that this “costs extra, and comes with our PRO PLUS package”. SiteMile does not publish a price for PRO PLUS, so budget for an unknown additional cost if your plan depends on WooCommerce.
Is there a refund policy?
Neither SiteMile buy page stated a refund or money-back guarantee when we read them on 4 September 2026. A cancellation policy is linked in the site footer. Because there is no trial and no stated refund window, confirm the terms with SiteMile support before purchasing.
