Alerts

Get Instant Facebook Marketplace Alerts

An email or a text the moment a listing you care about posts, with a value estimate already attached. No app to sit in, no refreshing, no finding out an hour late.

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Why minutes decide who gets the deal

The listings worth chasing are not the ones that sit for a week. A well-priced console, a cheap couch, a running car under book value: those pull a stack of messages inside the first ten minutes, and sellers overwhelmingly work the inbox top down.

Which means the bottleneck is almost never your negotiating. It is the lag between the listing going up and you finding out it exists. Everything below is about shrinking that lag and making sure the alert reaches you somewhere you will actually see it.

What Facebook's own notifications do and do not do

Facebook has notification settings for Marketplace, and they are worth turning on. You manage them per category from the Marketplace section of your account, which Meta documents in its help page on Marketplace notifications.

The limits show up quickly, though. They land inside Facebook, so they compete with everything else Facebook wants to tell you. They tell you a listing appeared, not whether the price is any good. And they only cover Facebook, so anything posted to Craigslist or OfferUp passes you by entirely.

BigFlippa sends somewhere separate, on purpose. An email or a text arrives on its own, carries the numbers you need, and does not depend on you having the app open.

The two channels, and what each one carries

Channels are set per radar, so a radar hunting something rare can text you while a broad furniture radar quietly emails.

Email carries the whole thing: radar name, listing title and price, the Opportunity figure when one could be estimated, which marketplace it came from, a trimmed description, and a button through to the listing.
SMS is cut down to what reads on a lock screen: radar name, price, Opportunity, link.

You can run both, or neither. A radar with no channels still collects matches in your dashboard, which is a reasonable setup for a speculative search you would rather check on your own schedule than be interrupted by.

Controlling how much it buzzes

Alert tools usually fail in one of two directions: too quiet to be useful, or so noisy you mute them by Thursday. The notification level is the dial for that, and every radar has its own.

Everything pings on every match. Built for active flippers who want first pick, and expect roughly 15 to 30 a day on a busy territory.
Confident sends only what the AI scores as a likely deal. This is the default, and the right starting point.
Best only is reserved for exceptional finds. Expect one to three a week, and treat a quiet week as normal rather than broken.

The level changes what gets sent, not what gets found. Every match still lands in your dashboard, so raising the level hides nothing, it just stops the quieter matches from reaching your phone. Full detail is in the notifications docs.

Why alerts sometimes arrive in a bundle

BigFlippa does not send one message per match. The first match goes out immediately and starts a short cooldown. Anything found during that window is collected and delivered together when it expires.

This is deliberate. A broad radar in a busy city can turn up a run of matches in a few minutes, and thirty separate texts is worse than one message listing thirty listings. You still get speed where it counts, because the first find after a quiet stretch reaches you right away. Batched emails list every queued match; batched texts list the first few and point you at the dashboard for the rest.

Setting up your first alert in two minutes

Describe what you want. Write your criteria in plain English, including a price ceiling. BigFlippa turns the description into the Marketplace searches that will surface it, and shows you them before you save.
Drop a pin and set a radius. The territory is a point on the map plus a radius around it. Keep it tight enough that a pickup is still worth driving to.
Pick your channels. Turn on email, SMS, or both. Enabling SMS asks for a phone number the first time, and that number is stored on your account so every later radar can use it.
Choose a notification level. Everything, Confident, or Best only. Start on Confident, which is the default, and move up only if you find yourself ignoring the alerts.

How quickly the alert then arrives depends on the plan: 10 minutes on Basic, 5 on Pro, 2 to 3 on Max. The pricing page has the per-tier numbers alongside radar counts.

When an alert will not arrive

Four reasons, and all of them are worth knowing before you conclude something is broken.

Overnight. Radars scan between 08:00 and 22:00 in the territory's own local timezone. Nothing is found outside that window, so nothing is sent.
The radar is paused. Paused radars do not scan.
Every source is switched off. The radar shows a "No enabled sources" warning in the dashboard and has nowhere to look.
The subscription lapsed. Scanning stops, but nothing is deleted. Radars and saved listings come straight back when a plan is active again.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get Facebook Marketplace alerts for new listings?

Create a radar in BigFlippa: describe what you want in plain English, drop a pin with a radius, then turn on email or SMS. From then on every new Marketplace listing that matches your criteria is sent to you, with a value estimate attached.

How fast are BigFlippa alerts?

Alert speed depends on your plan and runs from 10 minutes on Basic down to 2 to 3 minutes on Max. The pricing page lists the speed for each tier.

Can I get Facebook Marketplace alerts by text instead of email?

Yes. Each radar can use email, SMS, or both. The text is compressed to what fits on a lock screen: the radar name, the price, the Opportunity figure, and a link straight to the listing.

Why did several matches arrive in one message?

The first match sends immediately and starts a short cooldown. Anything found during that window is collected and delivered together as one digest when it expires, so a busy radar does not fire thirty separate texts.

Why did my alerts stop overnight?

Radars only scan between 08:00 and 22:00 in the territory local timezone, so nothing is found and nothing is sent outside that window. Alerts also stop when a radar is paused, when every source is switched off, or when the subscription lapses.

Are Facebook Marketplace alerts free?

Facebook offers its own in-app notifications at no cost. BigFlippa is a paid service starting at $10 a month for Facebook Marketplace, with a 7-day free trial for first-time customers, and it adds email and SMS delivery plus a value estimate on every alert.

Be the first message, not the ninth

Set up one radar, pick a channel, and let the good listings come to you. Free for the first seven days.