Questions
The awkward ones, answered
Price, continuity, support and what we don't do: the questions that decide it, rather than the ones that are easy to answer.
What does it cost, and how is it priced?
A flat monthly fee. No setup fee, no commission on hammer, no cut of your payments. The number depends on how many sales you run a year and whether you need the live floor add-on, never on your hammer totals, so a record year costs exactly what a quiet one does. You get a firm number during the demo, not a proposal a week later.
How long are we committing to?
A flat monthly fee, no setup cost, and nothing held hostage if you leave. The full export in the next answer is available on any day of the agreement, not as a parting favour.
What happens to our data if you go away?
You can export everything, any day, without asking us: lots, bidders, consignors, orders, settlements and payouts as CSV, bookkeeping vouchers as SIE 4, and every invoice as a PDF. The pieces that would be hardest to replace were never ours in the first place: the domain is registered to you, the Stripe account is yours, and the bidder relationships are yours. Worst case, a move away from us is an import into something else, not a negotiation.
Who supports us during a live close, and at what hours?
The people who built the platform, directly. No ticket queue, no first-line script reading from a manual. Two things matter more than a stated SLA: nothing is ever deployed during a closing window, by standing rule, because a thirty-second restart in the last minute of a sale is a real cost; and uptime, CPU, memory and disk alert automatically, day and night, so we usually know before you do.
How hard is switching, and what actually breaks?
About a week, and we schedule the cutover between sales, never during one. Bidders, lots and sales history come across as records, item numbers continue where your old system stopped, settlement statements keep the layout your consignors know, and the lot URLs Google indexed on your old system keep resolving. They redirect to their new home, so your search rankings move with you rather than starting over. The honest list of what does change: passwords never transfer between systems, so bidders set a new one the first time they log in (an announcement bar tells them, in their own language), and your staff learn a new admin. If anything looks wrong on the day, DNS points back in minutes. See Switching for the full playbook.
Will our bidders cope with the change?
The conventions they already know are the ones we implement: a maximum bid settles one increment above the runner-up, and a late bid extends the lot rather than sniping it. The storefront is on your domain in your brand, in twelve languages with automatic detection. Bidders keep their accounts, paddle numbers, favourites and bid history, and they can pay, download their own invoice and track their lots themselves. In practice that means fewer phone calls to your office, not more.
Which countries, currencies and VAT regimes do you support?
The platform is live today in three countries, three currencies and three VAT regimes. It handles EUR, SEK, USD, GBP, NOK and DKK; the second-hand margin scheme per order, standard VAT, and export treatment when a lot leaves the tax area. Built and reviewed with our customers' own accountants. MitID and BankID verification where a house requires it. If your country isn't one we've run yet, ask on the call and you'll get a straight split of what already exists and what would be new work.
Do we keep our own Stripe account and our own bidder list?
Yes to both, and neither is negotiable from our side. Card, SEPA and MobilePay settle into the house's own Stripe account. You are the seller of record and we never hold your money. Your bidders are yours: we don't market to them, don't share them between houses and don't put them behind a marketplace login. That is the whole argument against selling through a marketplace, so we'd be a poor joke if we did it quietly.
What is not included?
Live floor auctions are a paid add-on, not part of the base fee: the auctioneer console, the clerk panel and sub-second video. Live bookkeeping sync runs to Dinero today; every other system gets a SIE 4 voucher file or a universal CSV that imports, and a direct connector is an adapter we build on request rather than something already on the shelf. There is no self-serve signup: a free trial is something you ask for and we set up, because a tenant, a domain and a certificate are configured by a person, which is deliberate. And your Stripe fees, carrier postage and photography stay your own costs, as they are today.
Who exactly are we buying from?
It is founder-led, built inside Circulaire, and developed with the houses that run on it rather than for a market study. That is why the storefront footer reads “Powered by Circulaire”. The company page has who, what runs on it today and the continuity answer in full.
Can we see it running somewhere real?
Bastionen Auktioner in Copenhagen, Denmark runs weekly hybrid sales on the platform, on their own domain: basti.dk. Nothing on that site says our name except one line in the footer.
Still not sure?
Email us the hardest question you have about moving. We'd rather answer it now than on the call.
Bastionen Auktioner runs weekly hybrid sales on their own domain at basti.dk
Not demo-ready? Write to us instead.