What's happening
Auction invitations, registration approvals, outbid notices, and invoices are sent to bidders by HiBid's email servers — not from your computer, your Gmail account, or your Auction Flex SMTP settings. If an invite isn't arriving, the problem is almost always on the receiving end (the bidder's address or inbox) or a delivery block on our side that support can check and clear.
Because these emails don't come from your own email account, changing your Aflex credentials, your SMTP settings, or your Gmail app password will not fix missing bidder invites. Those settings only affect emails you send yourself, such as invoices emailed directly from Auction Flex.
What to check first
Confirm the address is a HiBid bidder account. Verify the bidder's email is spelled correctly and is associated with an existing HiBid bidder account — invite emails can only go to a registered bidder account.
Send yourself a test invite. If you receive it, the invite system is working and the issue is specific to that bidder's address.
Check whether it's one bidder or several. One bidder usually means an inbox or address issue on their end. Several bidders at once — especially at different email providers — means we should check delivery on our side, so contact support.
What to tell your bidder
Check spam, junk, and promotions folders, and search the inbox for "HiBid" or your company name.
Confirm the address on their HiBid account is one they actively check.
Ask if they ever unsubscribed from HiBid emails or marked one as spam. If they did, our system stops sending to that address until support re-subscribes it — no setting on their end can undo this.
Ask if they signed up with Apple's "Hide My Email." Relay addresses (ending in @privaterelay.appleid.com) frequently block auction emails, and this address can't be changed within HiBid. Have them follow our Sign in with Apple - Missing Emails guide to turn on Apple's email forwarding so relay mail reaches their real inbox.
When to contact support — and what we check
Contact us right away if the invite still hasn't arrived after the steps above, or if multiple bidders are affected. Send us the exact email address of each affected bidder. On our end we can see things you and your bidder can't:
Whether the email was delivered, bounced, or blocked
Whether the address is on our suppression list from a past bounce, unsubscribe, or spam report — and re-subscribe it if so
Whether there is a wider delivery issue affecting a specific email provider
Re-subscribing a suppressed address is the most common fix for "the invite never arrived," and it's not something you or the bidder can do from any settings screen — but since it requires unsuppressing on a separate system, it can take a bit longer than other support requests.