Tender alerts turn sourcing from a task you must remember into something that arrives. The value is not the notification — it is that a well-scoped alert shows you the handful of tenders you could genuinely win, instead of the hundreds published each week that you cannot.
Why Alerts Beat Checking Portals
- Closing windows are short. Two to three weeks is normal. Losing four days because you checked on Friday is losing a quarter of your preparation time.
- No single source is complete. eTenders misses municipal and SOE work; the Tender Bulletin is weekly. An alert built on aggregated sources covers what one portal does not.
- Consistency beats intensity. Bidders who see everything in their niche, every week, build a picture of who buys what — and that is what makes the fifth bid better than the first.
What to Set Your Alerts On
- The work, in the buyer's words. Tender descriptions say "provision of cleaning and gardening services", not "facilities solutions". Set keywords on the former.
- Provinces you can actually deliver in. Including a province you cannot service is how an alert becomes noise you stop opening.
- Adjacent work you could subcontract. Slightly wider than your core is where growth comes from — just not so wide that everything matches.
The Two Ways Alerts Go Wrong
- Too broad. Everything matches, you stop reading, and you miss the one that mattered. If you are not opening the email, the alert has already failed.
- Too narrow, or set only on a category. Source data is inconsistent — a tender for the work you do may carry no category at all. Always set plain-word keywords alongside any category, so a badly-tagged tender still reaches you.
Getting Alerts on Okhantu
Tell us what you supply and where you work, and matching tenders come to your inbox. You can also browse first — by category, city, province or buyer — and set the alert once you have seen the kind of work that comes up.
Get new tenders by email
Tell us what you supply and where you work, and new matching tenders come to your inbox instead of you checking this page.
Not registered on the Central Supplier Database yet? You will need that before you can be awarded anything — start with the CSD registration guide, then how to apply for tenders.
Common Questions
What are tender alerts?
An email notification sent when a newly published tender matches criteria you set — typically your industry, the provinces you can deliver in, and keywords for the work you do.
Are tender alerts free in South Africa?
Some services charge a monthly subscription. Okhantu sends matching tenders by email without charging for the alert itself; paid TenderOS adds daily delivery and match scoring on top.
How specific should my alert keywords be?
Specific enough to exclude work you cannot deliver, broad enough to survive inconsistent wording. Use the words that appear in tender descriptions — 'cleaning', 'welding', 'supply and delivery' — rather than your marketing language.
Why am I not receiving any tender alerts?
Usually the criteria are too narrow, or they are set on a sector taxonomy the source data does not populate. Add plain keywords for the work itself, widen the provinces, and check the alerts are not landing in spam.
How quickly will I hear about a new tender?
Okhantu scrapes continuously and sends a daily digest, so a tender published on a Tuesday reaches you Wednesday morning rather than in a weekly publication cycle.