When looking at both of these services it is very hard to find features where they differ so I will start by listing off what they both do best. Both Auctiva and Inkfrog are great when it comes to creating an auction. Do you remember creating auctions with eBay’s list your item form? This was a long, tedious multi-page process that put most of your time into creating auctions. Arguably the best feature of these services is that they simplify this process into one single page. Allowing you to add your title, price, category, description, images etc on one compact page. Both Auctiva and Inkfrog allow you to use your own custom eBay template within the listing creator, or you can use one of the many that are supplied for free. Image hosting is also included with each service, and uploading images is a breeze. Each service will allow you to edit live listings, which by itself is worth the price of admission. Both Auctiva and Inkfrog offer the ability to add a cross promotion gallery to your auctions, this is a must have for sellers who want to show all of their auctions from within each listing. Both of these services will allow you to track your inventory, halting automatic listings from launching when inventory gets low. Lastly both Auctiva and Inkfrog will allow you to send automatic emails such as winning bidder, payment reminder and custom emails. This is a huge step towards automating your online business.

Now for some of the ways Auctiva does business that Inkfrog doesn’t. Currently Auctiva is the service to go for if you are looking for reports on your sales. This is something Inkfrog has had in the works for a while and should be released in the near future. Auctiva uses a nifty time saving feature called profiles. This allows you to create multiple combination’s of payment, shipping, about us, contact information, marketing tools(gallery), checkout options and add those to your auctions via the listing creator. You can even add your profiles to a master profile along with other information such as a template, price and category to make your auction creation that much faster. The power of Auctiva’s system definitely lies in this ability to create profiles, and master profiles which can make creating auctions a process of adding images, a description and a price and clicking save.

Inkfrog is no slouch in its auction creation process. It does not have as elegant of a profile system, but it does use profiles along with templates. While using the Inkfrog listing creator you can choose to simply save the auction to your library or save as a profile. If you choose the latter option, you will now have a profile with all of the same details ready to go for your next auction. This can be a huge time saver by letting you add your template, payment information, shipping details, post auctions rules and other reusable information to your profile for later use.

Inkfrog is known for its Globals feature. This allows you to create a global such as price, template, ebay id and a bunch more and quickly add that global to a saved or active listing. This can be a huge time saver when editing live or saved listings and provides a great way to experiment with different strategies.

Inkfrog also allows the use of multiple eBay accounts with one account. This means you can have one Inkfrog account and manage multiple eBay ids in one place. For a larger seller who sells on more than one account this was the deal maker for me, and the reason I go for Inkfrog over Auctiva.

As you can see Inkfrog and Auctiva are very similar. In my opinion they are so similar in features that it is like comparing Pepsi and Coke. They do however have a different look and feel and that may be the reason you choose one over the other. Or maybe your like me and you want to manage many accounts from one locale, in which case Inkfrog takes the bacon. In any case I recommend signing up for a free trial with both service and give them each a try. I was once strictly an Auctiva guy, then they decided to charge a percentage of my profit for their service. I quickly made the switch to Inkfrog and have been with them ever since. Auctiva has since changed their pricing to $9.95/month or $19.95/month if you want to use their web store. This is the same $9.95/month price that Inkfrog charges.

The first and most important thing to understand is that any template is simply HTML along with Template Tags. The HTML gives the template its look, while the Template Tags allow you to draw in data to your template such as description, images, title and many others. For example if you wanted to place your description in a certain area of your template you would place the [DESCRIPTION] tag inside an HTML element. Below you can find a complete list of the available Template Tags and a description of what they do.

The second thing you should understand is how to import your own custom template into Auctiva and begin to use it. The first step is to navigate to Listings and click create new under the custom templates heading. The next step is to give your template a name and add your HTML and Template Tags into the main box. Lastly you will just need to select the template you just created while you are creating a new auction or master profile. That is all there is to it, you are now ready to start using your own custom Auctiva template.

You might be thinking that this is great, but you are unsure where to begin when creating a new Auctiva template. This is why we have created over 100 free Auctiva templates to get you started. To start using one of these templates just browse to our template area, pick a template you like, click download and copy and paste the HTML when creating a new template in Auctiva.

Supported Auctiva Template Tags

[STORE_WINDOW] – inserts the Auctiva Store Window in your auction at this location instead of its usual at the top or bottom of the listing

[TITLE] – the title of your auction

[SUBTITLE] – the subtitle of your auction

[SHIPPING] – your shipping details as defined on Profiles->Seller Details

[PAYMENT] – your payment details as defined on Profiles->Seller Details

[TERMS_OF_SERVICE] – your terms of service as defined on Profiles->Seller Details

[ABOUT_ME] - your about me information as defined on Profiles->Seller Details

[CONTACT_US] - your contact us information as defined on Profiles->Seller Details

[DESCRIPTION_AND_IMAGES] – this tag inserts your auction description along with your images. The images will be inserted into your description using the location and layout that you specify on the lister page, like one of our regular templates. We use 400x300s with a ‘click to supersize’ link.

[DESCRIPTION] - instead of the above tag, you can use this one to insert the auction description only (no images), then use the tags below to specify the location/type of images.

Use Auctiva’s auto-arrangement feature for your images (this utilizes the 400×300 with click-to-supersize):

[IMGS_VERTICAL] – images will be in a straight verticle line, one on top of the other

[IMGS_PAIRED] – images will be in a verticle line, paired up two-by-two

[IMGS_HORIZONTAL] – images will be in a horizontal line, one next to the other

[IMGS_SLIDESHOW] – your images will play in a slideshow, with one image being visible at a time and switched out for the next one every few seconds

– OR — Place each image individually:

[IMAGE1_URL] – the image URL only, you must create the HTML tags

[IMAGE1_URL400x300] – the image URL for a 400×300 version of the image only, you must create the HTML tags

[IMAGE1_URL96x96] – the image URL for a 96×96 version of the image only, you must create the HTML tags

[IMAGE1_ORG] – the entire HTML tag for your original image, no resizing, borders, click-to-superize link, etc.

[IMAGE1] – the entire HTML tag for a 400×300 version of your image with a click-to-supersize link around it. (Of course smaller images will not be resized)