Understanding what matters
How to buy
tender alert services
With so many providers claiming “global coverage” or “AI-powered alerts,” how can you tell which one truly delivers? This guide breaks down the key features that matter most, from coverage and enrichment to pricing transparency and confidence signals, to help you choose the right platform for your business.
Tender alerts at a glance
Tender alert services centralise public procurement notices from different government portals either locally or globally. They add search facilities and automatic alerts, usually a daily email.
Why subscribe to one?
Government contracting is now a data game businesses need to find exactly the right tender opportunities from one of hundreds of different portals as early as possible.
How to buy
You need to align your market coverage with your ambitions, but once you have that, the real question is whether your chosen provider’s search can reliably find you the best opportunities.
At a glance: Key features for buying tender alert services in 2025
|
Feature
|
Importance
|
Ideal scenario
|
Weighting
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Coverage |
High |
Detailed coverage for core market. |
★★★★★ |
|
Economic coverage |
High |
Focus on profitable economies |
★★★★☆ |
|
Search |
Very high |
Relevant, fast, precise |
★★★★★ |
|
Alerts |
High |
Customisable, accurate |
★★★★☆ |
|
Data enrichment |
High |
Rich, universal filtering |
★★★★★ |
|
Pricing model |
High |
Transparent, flexible |
★★★★★ |
|
Attachments |
Very high |
Documents included |
★★★★★ |
|
Confidence signals |
High |
Refunds & guarantees |
★★★★★ |
Market alignment
You need to test whether or not the service you’re buying has the coverage you need for your market. There’s a good way to check this: search for some historic tenders from key sources and see if you can find them in the archive of the service you’re using.
Search
When you test coverage you’re also testing the service’s search engine. If your provider has the results but you can’t find them that’s a massive issue. That search will form the basis of your alerts, so if your search can’t find opportunities, you will miss opportunities.
Noisy search
If you know your search is working the next challenge is how noisy is the search? If you’re having to pick one opportunity out of dozens of irrelevant opportunities you’re not only experiencing more work than you need, you’re also more likely to miss opportunities.
Ease of use
Data enrichment, attachments and the right alert services are all features you’re going to need in your hunt for new opportunities. Can you confidently navigate your way around the system to take advantage of these tools, for instance can you set up new searches and new alerts?
Buy without risk
Having more coverage than you expect is a bonus.
Your map application covers more places than you'll ever visit, tender alert services will cover more opportunities than you will ever bid on. Having data from outside your market is more useful than you think.
Procurement data can be used to spot trends, find partners, look for new markets and expand your growth. Your colleagues might appreciate the insights from other territories.
Gather more data than you think you need is a good rule of thumb for any research project.
Unique sources
Open opportunities
Different countries
Search tools
Updates & archives
How frequently does your alert service update their data? Do they run every source daily or even more frequently? Do they refresh their data to pick up changes to notices? Do they maintain archives of data so that you can look at the contracting history of different buyers?
Business model
How does your provider charge? What do they charge for? Is it by the user or for the whole firm? What restrictions do they apply? Can you only buy an annual contract? Are you required to buy a minimum number of seats?
Pricing & guarantees
Is the pricing clear and transparent? Can you predict what you will pay and do you have the power to back out of a contract if you decide that the service doesn’t work for you? Will your provider give you a money back guarantee?
Easy to buy
Is the product easy to buy? Money orders, contracts, invoices? That’s what happens when the costs are too high and the business doesn’t want to deal with charge backs and other card payment problems. You should be able to buy the service in 2 minutes.
Downloads and integrations
Can you move the data from your service into other channels in your organisation? Can you download data and share it with other members of your team? Can you use the data in your CRM?
Tips to avoid buying the wrong service
How to spot red flags
What are the signs that the tender alert service you're buying might not give you the best value?
Demo only
If your provider needs to do a demo before they will let you use the tool that’s a great indicator that they don’t trust their search tool to find the opportunities, instead they’re going to get online and show only relevant opportunities.
Shortened trials
If you’re being offered trials of only a couple of days you need to ask why they can’t give you the time to test their system more thoroughly? A 7 day trial should be the standard minimum. Extending a 2 day trial isn’t the act of generosity you might think it is.
Annual deals only
No monthly deals. This is the biggest red flag in the industry. If your provider insists on locking you into a service for a year, they’re scared that you won’t use the service enough and will quit. Instead of providing a truly useful service they insist on tying you in.
No self-service
You know your market better than they do. You should be able to set up and run the system without having to rely on their involvement. Insisting on manual set up and too much hand-holding implies they haven’t built a usable service.
They want you to take the risk
Simple, no quibble guarantees are the simplest way to be sure that your provider trusts their customers and their product. If you ask for a guarantee and they won’t give you one, especially on annual deals you need to ask why?
No industry involvement
Do the people running this service care about the industry and the market? Do they care about the challenges of winning bids, or are they bragging about their latest company party? Find the CEO on LinkedIn you’ll quickly know what they care about.
Widely used data
Thousands of companies use our data every day.
Our API already powers some great business opportunity sites.
You've probably already used our data without knowing it.
Finding new tender opportunities around the world.
Opportunities a day
Increasing export growth through opportunity data.
Individual sources
Understanding compliance and hitting targets.
Hit target of 90%
Never miss an opportunity
Alerts & features
Why Open Opportunities is #1
Alerts and workflow features turn opportunities into action. We're dedicated to giving you the control you need, so that you can move from search to bid faster.
Never miss an opportunity
Guarantee
Why Open Opportunities is #1
Trust comes from openness and confidence. We're the only product with a clear, money-back guarantee, whilst our unique open data commitment is backed by over 20 years' cutting-edge research.
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7-day free trial to test everything with no risk.
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The only 30-day money-back guarantee, a full refund if you’re not satisfied.
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Transparent methodology + ability to request new sources.
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SLA-backed uptime commitments for enterprise users.
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Unique pledge: data is published openly for non-profit research.
