Case Study: NextLot achieves scalable live auction growth with LaunchPad Lab

NextLot scales to $2B in transactions with LaunchPad Lab

NextLot, an online auction software company, faced significant scaling challenges as their platform grew. Their legacy system could not handle traffic spikes, especially during timed auction closings, leading to server crashes and dropped bids. They also needed a modern, embeddable bidding interface. NextLot engaged LaunchPad Lab to rebuild and scale their platform.

LaunchPad Lab migrated the infrastructure to AWS and built a custom auto-scaling system that could anticipate auction closings and scale from 4 to over 60 servers as needed. They redesigned the bidding interface as an Ember.js single-page application using web sockets for real-time updates and created a new API with a caching layer. This solution eliminated downtime and enabled the platform to handle over $2 billion in transactions and five million bids by 2017, supporting all-time highs in auctions, lots, and bids.

NextLot