Upwork and Freelancer are two of the most popular online work platforms. Founded in 2003, the U.S. based oDesk is the older version of Upwork. Freelancer.com was incorporated in Australia back in 2009. In this article I will compare Upwork and Freelancer primarily from a contractor’s perspective.
Upwork has raised there fees recently – what are the Upwork alternatives?
Background
As time passes, the world is moving towards outsourcing more and more. oDesk has been a secure place of online works for quite a few years. In May 2015, oDesk was re-launched as Upwork.
Freelancer has reached to its current position and brand by acquiring several similar entities including Get A Freelancer.com, EUFreelance.com, vWorker, Freelancer.co.uk etc.
Users
As said by Upwork, the marketplace now has around 9 million registered freelancers and 4 million registered clients. Annually there are 3 million job postings worth $1 billion. With the new brand and merger, the company expects to grow these numbers tremendously.
On the other hand, Freelancer claims that the platform now resides a whopping 15 million registered members who have posted more than 7.4 million projects and contests worth more than $2.2 billion so far.
Usability
Upwork offers a cleaner user-interface than Freelancer. You will find its necessary navigation options easily. There is a centralized notification system, message center and settings option. When you visit a job posting, it will show available client information including rating, open jobs, reviews, spending etc. You can search jobs using its category, subcategory and filter options. Applying a filter is just a matter of click on the appropriate checkbox.
Freelancer puts so many navigation links and even promotional widgets (e.g. Freemarket, paid plans) on the dashboard which make the page congested. It has a long list of categories and subcategories. Freelancer’s project listing pages show the job titles and job descriptions in the same font size, just with different colors. I think the project headlines desire larger fonts (which I’ve found on Upwork). Freelancer’s project filtering system is slower than Upwork. On Freelancer job posts, you will find less information about the client. However, on Upwork, you need to pay the company to know the current bids on a project. But Freelancer shows this information for free.
Unlike Upwork, Freelancer’s messaging service includes live chatting option on desktop. On Upwork, you can exchange messages via the website, but you can’t see whether the client is online or offline. Freelancer provides this feature.
Costs for freelancers
Upwork and Freelancer have both free and paid plans. The Upwork basic (free membership) plan offers 60 points (aka Connects) per month. A particular number of Connects gets exhausted each time the user applies for a job. A $10 per month fee increases the default Connect points to 70 with carry forward ability up to 140 points. The paid membership scheme also lets the user see competitor bids. Upwork charges 10% from what a client pays to a contractor (if you use ScreenshotMonitor for tracking – you can avoid paying this fee) There are also disbursement fees varied by withdrawal methods. Upwork provides a good number of skill tests which can be taken for free. Contractors can show these test results on their profiles to illustrate expertise.
Freelancer.com has a range of membership plans priced from $0 to $199.95 per month. It also takes a cut from the users’ earnings which varies from subscription to subscription. The company charges $5 or more for a skill test.
Availability of Better Paying Jobs
Upwork and Freelancer.com both offer jobs with diverse range of budgets categorized as hourly and fixed price contracts. My experience shows that Upwork gets more hourly job postings than Freelancer.com. I found quite a few discussions around the web that often there are scam projects posted on Freelancer. I’ve also learnt that, on Upwork, it’s easier to find better paying jobs when compared to Freelancer.com because the earlier one has better tools and policies to make it happen.
Monetary Transactions
Upwork and Freelancer support a variety of methods to pay and receive funds through the site. You can link your financial accounts including credit cards, PayPal, Skrill, Payoneer card and bank account(s) to your freelancer/client profile and make transactions. The marketplaces also provide co-branded Payoneer debit cards. Transaction costs may vary with situations. Please visit this Upwork page to see its transaction costs and find those for Freelancer.com here.
Both of the sites are serious about payments protection. You can utilize upfront payments, escrow and hourly billing system to enjoy a safer billing mechanism. The sites bring two types of jobs- fixed price and hourly projects.
Apps
Upwork and Freelancer provide tracker apps to keep work logs with screenshots and task notes. Both apps are available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. However, you can also use third-party time trackers like Screenshot Monitor to log your work progress. Dedicated tools like these can do much better job at time tracking and screenshot monitoring than native Upwork and Freelancer application. They are also cheaper for you as they are free of just a few dollars per month per person comparing to 10% fee that you usually pay to Upwork or Freelancer.
Both of the marketplaces have mobile apps to connect clients and freelancers. The Upwork messenger app which is currently available for Android and iOS lets users set status, send messages, handle job offers, get notifications etc.
You can use Freelancer’s official mobile apps on your Android and iOS devices to post/bid projects, find workers/clients, chat with freelancers/buyers and manage your projects. It offers more features than Upwork’s mobile app.
Support
Upwork support provides assistance with live chat, phone line, ticket request system and FAQ items. On the other hand, Freelancer offers FAQs, live chat, and ticket/email supports. Here is no phone helpline.
Summary
Upwork and Freelancer- both of the online work sites claim to be the ‘world’s largest’ freelancing/outsourcing marketplace. In terms of the total number of registered users, Freelancer scores 15+ million and Upwork has 9 million contractors along with 4 million clients. Since Upwork and Elance have announced a merger, they got a greater opportunity to lead the freelancing market.
Freelancer.com provides a variety of features but its user interface needs some more improvements in order to look them organized. Freelancer charges fees for nearly all of its core features while Upwork has a less-aggressive subscription infrastructure. If you work regularly on Freelancer, you may save your transaction costs by upgrading membership plans. Read the Fees and Charges section carefully to learn more about this. Again, Freelancer’s mobile app offers more features than Upwork’s one. Freelancer has fewer support portals than Upwork.
According to my personal experience and the study conducted to prepare this article, I would choose Upwork as the winner. Upwork stays ahead of Freelancer.com basically for its simplicity, trustworthy features and user friendly pricing policy.
In this post, I have tried to present a comparison between Upwork and Freelancer. I hope you will find it useful to choose an online marketplace or recruit a remote worker. Also you can see this post to get some tips on how to hire a remote employee. Thank you.
Thank you for this, it is comprehensive enough, the observations are on-point. Ideally, freelancers can create accounts on both platforms and maximize their chances of landing projects.
Hi,
Yes, overall I would agree. Within a month (still having full time job) i spend about 100 point on freelancer.com and had two VERY small projects >100$. However on upwork I spend all my connects within 2 weeks (120 credits) and got 3 projects worth 500$ + earnings. Too many scam projects on freelancer. Honesty – avoid if you can, anyway as a client – you get what you pay for.
can you please guide me on upwork. i just got one interview and they told me to buy their softwares and then start working.
is this true?
Don’t buy anything. It’s a scam if client request you to buy anything to work.
Never buy anything. Don’t take free tests either. Tests must be paid.
I love working on UpWork for its simplicity and user friendly interface . Freelancer is still complicated to me to get started .
Hi can you please guide me how to work through upwork… is there any registration for online working?
I checked out Upwork today.. as I read through their user agreement, I found the following “interesting”.
It can take up to 90 days for EEC (Upworthy’s escrow affiliate) to release funds, or 180 days (budgets $<100). (so keep that in mind for cash flow).
There's also a pretty onerous "Non-Circumvention" clause (No. 7 in current agreement), which is understandable, because they need to protect their interests.
There is a complete, unconditional assignment of rights to the client, which is fine in 98% of the cases out there, but creatives are leaving a lot on the table by giving up their licensing rights. (I think this might be put in for situations where rights assignments aren't spelled out between the Freelancer and Client.)
Dispute resolution: I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like freelancers are bound by arbitration and therefore if something goes south, I think you are giving up your ability to seek other legal remedies (mediation, court) if something goes wrong. (There is an ability to opt-out in the fine print of the agreement, if you write to them within 30 days of signing up).
Anyway, it will be interesting to check out.
Thanks for the heads up about the arbitration clause. Unfortunately, my 30 days just lapsed as soon as I read it. My plan is to set up a new Upwork account, so I can opt out of the forced arbitration clause. (Also note, it applies only to US residents.) Arbitration is way too expensive and complex, especially compared to small claims court.
I was on elance for a decade and odesk a very long time as well. In all that time I had only one job that gave me a less than perfect rating. But I’ve had my account shut down repeatedly on both sites in the last year. elance had several disputes over forms/id and for not using the site for an extended period of time when I was on other contracts, but last time they would not tell why my account was suspended and support would send inane form letters that didnt apply to the situation (one was something like ‘we closed account if they had low ratings’. When I pointed out my account was suspended and not closed and I had a perfect rating, I’d get no response for awhile. I’d send more emails & eventually get a different canned non-answer, that I’d respond to and get reply that seemed like it might have been to someone else, never actually saying anything. They were probably humans but still wouldnt have passed a turing test.) I was always very careful to talk to clients through their systems, something I deeply regret now since a few will probably just go to other workers and I will not be able to get references or point to former job specifications and ratings when looking for new work.
Odesk shut my account down for several months because my icon was deemed unsuitable, it appears drawn and at point someone decided it was a ‘cartoon’. This seemed petty and easily resolved with some common sense and someone actually looking at the image. But I never talked to the same person at support but each sent a one line response with a link to a policy page, ignoring my plea that is was not a cartoon, and it was important to my brand etc . That account languished until I gave in and changed it but lost recognition and continuity across all the other sites (I had used the same name & logo for everything including elance, other freelance sites and my work-oriented social media accounts on twitter, facebook, instagram etc).
Then my odesk account was merged over to upwork (not by choice, I think it may have been which email address I was using to talk to support), and I ended up losing everything from elance 10 years worth of reviews, references and portfolio.
As of this week my upwork account was suspended for not having proper ID. Since my odesk messages are still there I see I last sent them a copy of my drivers license and bank account statement in April of 14. But on the 3rd round of communication this week as to what the problem is I suspect it will be because my drivers license spells my name in typical female way and my bank account, bills etc, have the same name with 3 letters less for a more common male spelling.
But for the 4th or 5th time, I am unable to do work, I dont know how long it will last or if its permanent, I get repeated bizarre non-responses and have invested a massive amount of time. If I got minimum wage for dealing with them, I’d be doing well. Its a way I would never, ever treat my own clients.
I am on other sites but upwork has consolidated the most work and elance and odesk were are where almost all of my ratings were. I am at their mercy and trying to accept I am going to have to start nearly from scratch while avoiding them like the plague. They are dangerous.
I also worked on Elance and had a 5 star rating and was 100% recommended. Elance originally sent me an invite to join Upwork, but I wasn’t too keen on it and decided to wait for the last minute to switch. About a month later I got the same email saying that I needed to improve my ratings. I responded to the email and got a canned response saying that if I was sure my ratings were good to disregard the email.
A little more than a month later I get a second email saying my account is getting shut down. I wrote them back and got another canned response saying how they take customer satisfaction very seriously and the decision to close my account was final. So I got on chat with customer service and they also sent me canned responses until finally I lost it with them and told them to look at my 5 star/100% recommended rating and asked them how I could possibly improve it. Finally a human responded and said they would elevate my ticket to the next level of support.
The next level of support simply closed the ticket without a response. I tried the chat again and got more or less the same result. I then tried contacting some of my clients to see if they would write me a review – not that I should have needed another one but just to give it a shot. One client told me she could not leave a review for me through the dashboard. Also my public facing profile has disappeared.
Unlike many other freelancers, I had pretty good luck getting work on Elance. I always went the extra mile on projects and even bought in clients I got from outside of Elance since we both trusted the payment system. I took some of their online tests, and scored in the top 10-20 percent on many of them. I can’t say I got rich from working on Elance, but it helped me build a great and varied portfolio.
While I understand their customer service must be swamped with issues due to the switch of platforms, I think I deserve a bit more than a canned response. If appears they are more interested in the number of projects a developer works on (and therefore money made) than the actual quality of the work. I guess this business model might make money, but I can’t imagine them having too many happy customers in the end.
Save you time and money, avoid Upwork. The headache of dealing with their team of headless idiots is hilarious. They have all of my contact details 3 plus years of transactions, copies of statements, utilities, and tax info.
After working hand in hand with my freelancer whom they blocked for still an unknown reasons mid contract, wouldn’t reply back, or even follow up. Told me lies, literally as we were both were on the line. Finally after weeks and weeks they fixed “the issue”.
However, 24 hours later they put my account on hold. It’s been for 3 months, they dodge calls, ofter no real information. I can’t tell you the stress and strain they put on our small, growing business.
1 Billion in transactions and they can’t back up the product with service and your information is freely shared in an unsafe manner. Avoid at all costs, or it will cost you more.
Since I’ve been active on Upwork for the past 2 years, I can tell you that your situation was pretty simple. I wonder why they didn’t tell you. Or maybe they did, but you omitted that in your post here.
When profiles are dormant and there have been no work or money transfer registered, the account will be put on hold. They weren’t going to close it (that’s too extreme even in case of serious violations), just put it on hold. Your rating (job success score) would drop over time.
This measure is taken in order to keep active freelancers ‘fresh and ready’ for clients. If you’re inactive for many months, then clients would see your profile and assume that you can work, but actually you may not be able to, you may not even respond to their messages.
Upwork wants to safeguard itself and slightly penalize inactive freelancers. I don’t take freelancing as a side job, but as my main job. You’re either a freelancer or you’re not. You can’t have a profile in a serious work-related platform and fill in the database if you don’t intend to work regularly.
That’s all. I am not Upwork’s advocate, I’m sharing what I know after spending hours in the Upwork community where you can have TONS of questions answered. Complaining is easy, but finding a solution is tough, and people prefer the easy.
Well I got my account suspended from upwork with the reason being “You have applied too many to job postings and have not gotten a contract. This means you are applying to postings not matched for your skill set” my reply to that was “If you investigate a little further you will see that my skill test provided by YOUR system has been scored above 10% and I am only applying to jobs with that criteria.” Hey I got unlucky with clients, that happens specially when starting out but i think being suspended indefinitely
Their answer? After 10 days without receiving an answer from their support team I emailed again “Hello guys, It has been more than a week and I want some updates” This is their reply: “Unfortunately, the appeal period is over and the decision is final.”
to which I answered “Wait a second here, you are telling me that even though the test provided by YOUR OWN SYSTEM says that the reason stated is outright wrong, you still decide to suspend my account forever? Please, I need a more through explanation for that.”
They then decided to close the support ticket without replying to my last email so I emailed them again saying:
“Seriously? You close the ticket with no answer to my inquiries? Is this for real? Is this how “Professional” you are? Come on guys, you know I’m right and that is exactly why you just closed it. But what about the postings I still see requiring free work that i’ve reported? Nothing, nothing done to them. Great way to show how much you “care” about free lancers.” .
It might be a different case than that of Tim but it shows the “trustworthiness” of their staff. I am trying freelancer now as of today.
PS: Sorry for the necro but I had to let you guys know that experience.
Thank you.
Means all this not as easy as it’s made to look.
Upwork sucks, bring back Elance! Sign the petition here: http://chn.ge/1VwXbFL
Elance was nice but will be closed soon, Upwork does not work very well at the moment and there are a lot of low-paid job offers. Freelancer is a bit unclear but from my point of view more likeable than Upwork and it seems that they do not have a “Non-Circumvention” clause like Upwork. That is an advantage.
I am an employer of big projects and medium projects.
Freelancer is so much easier to use as an employer.
Upwork is VERY freelancer friendly but is a nightmare for an employer. I can’t seem to find anything. The dashboard is awful.
Actually I would say that I also avoid Elancer now because it has turned into Upwork.
Upwork is a great place to find your freelancer and then … go to Freelancer and employ them there.
Basically if you are an employer use Freelancer.com
I have no connection to either except I have used them both. Many years experience.
As an employer who was just forced to move my Elance account to UpWork, I appreciate your comments. I just found my first nasty surprise with UpWork. They promised that all my previous projects would be moved. What they didn’t tell me is that to see my old projects, I am REQUIRED to post a new job. I told their online support that I currently don’t have job to post and I simply want to see my past projects. No luck. What kind of scam is this?!?!
And I agree about the dashboard. Who designed this thing. Simply awful to get around.
At Least I can still access Elance so I will have to manually save all my project, info, messages and files.
As an employer, it is a horrible first impression. So Freelancer it is.
agree word by word, upwork is not like elance, i tested freelancer.com and there is huge difference, currently i’m using this as my regular platform, quiet ok
Freelancer.com cannot give a guarantee payment for freelancers even in hourly projects.
Upwork is a great site. I have several clients who send me regular jobs on that site and the ratings really motivate one to work even harder and better. The only thing is the bug issue on the site. Hope that gets sorted real soon!
Guide me how shall I start my work through upwork
Don’t trust upwork.
You have worked in freelancer.com, too?
In the past , I was okay to upwork.
But now I must say “no”.
No for both of freelancer and client.
The lack of technology.
This is my post, please read, thanks.
________________________________________________________
Finally, freelancer.com is better than upwork.com , I think.
As a word, upwork is not full in terms of technology.
I have some experiences of working in both of freelancer and upwork.
1. There are more scam in upwork than freelancer
2. Of course, I am a freelancer in these sites, but I think upwork is dangerous for client.
3. Upwork has un-full rules in terms of recommending freelancers, suspending accounts and other problem.
4. Some people says that upwork has better interface, but this is not true.
Simple interface means lack of technology.
5. Freelancer has very fast filtering speed.
But upwork’s filtering speed is very slow.
6. In fact, the number of users of freelancer.com is more much than upwork, because freelancer.com is better.
upwork is not unstable.
Finally, upwork has to admit that upwork is not good than freelancer yet.
There are many technical problems to solve yet, in upwork.
And I think upwork invest less than freelancer.com for server.
Thanks for reading.
Upwork is way better I joined 2015 November and within the few months I’ve been top rated. I stayed for 3months on Elance jobless until we merged with Upwork
I tried the two platforms. Upwork is not well organized as it was before Odesk and now Upwork. Their messaging system is sucks. Customer service is so bad. I posted a project and the freelacer took my money without delivering anything !!!!!!!
The article mentions using screen shot monitor to avoid paying the 10% fee to Upwork. Can someone clarify?
Every time a client pays a freelancer through Upwork, they pay 10% on top of it to Upwork.
I wouldn’t circumvent paying the 10% fee to Upwork (which is soon to be 20% fee). If they catch you, there could be severe legal and monetary repercussions.
Upwork is a great site. The competition is tough but its worth it. Its also user friendly. About the earlier comments about Upwork, it use to be true but guess they rectified those errors
Unfortunately, I see UpWork going nowhere but down. It has shifted its focus to be so client-centered, that it is driving away talented, self-respecting US designers. I’m an experienced bay area graphic designer (who has done a lot of work for big name silicon valley tech clients). I’ve used Elance occasionally over the years to pick up extra work when things were slow. Last week, I got an hourly rate design request from a past client on Elance, so the new UpWork forced me to download their latest “desktop app”. I had to track the time I spent on the project in real-time by pressing a stopwatch button on and off. Ok, fine. But, as if this wasn’t obnoxious enough, the app took screenshots of my laptop screen every few minutes so that the client can review them later. It was very distracting. Of course, I have no access to these screenshots. It felt SO rude and invasive. God forbid I need to check my email while a graphic is rendering. Then I have to worry about the screenshot being taken at the moment I’m trying to read an email. Anyhow, using their new app was the most demeaning, BIG BROTHER-ISH design experience I’ve ever had. I will not be looking for gigs there again. Treating their designers (who they siphon 10% from for every job) like untrustworthy toddlers is going one step too far. Good luck UpWork.
I agree, desktop apps are too invasive. It makes freelancers feel like temporary employees for clients which is totally wrong.
I rarely do hourly rates. It’s either a fixed or daily rate.
I believe that 20% fee is too unfair from upworks, specially after the merger with elance. This is called an “Anti-competitive practice”
I have mostly used fiverr and upwork lately. The issue for fiverr is often people overstate their skills so there is a LOT of time wasting. On upwork I have worked with a few people who offer a low rate per hour, but drag the project out for weeks without seemingly doing anything. Projects that should take 10 hours end up taking 80, because “they find new things” . I have had to put all my projects as fixed amounts because of this scam. I was told by one person that his boss made him work on a per hour rate, but at the end of the project he admitted it was just so that he could post massive hours and double his rate for the next client. It would look to new clients like he was really worth the rate because of all the hours he racked up.
The worst common thing has been not only the hours scam, but a few contractors have also forced me to give them five stars or they would give me a really low score. They would not communicate for days on end and just before the weekend send a cryptic message that they were ‘working hard on it’.
I have found some of their practices very deceitful and there is NO one at any of these contractor sites who wants to deal with this kind of corruption. DONT trust the star systems or the hours work, ask for previous examples of work and have a lot of comms before hiring to see if they know what they are talking about, and shut it down and walk away if you believe they are not working in your interest.
Elance was great. Upwork is an utter bizzare, moneygrubbing disaster. I’m an employer in a highly competitive biz. Cant get privacy on my jobs anymore. Have to state a $$$ budget instead of negotiating it. And those above who said customer service is zombie, are correct. Upwork is THE most unbusinesslike outfit yet, except for Freelancer that swallowed some escrow, a small amount, but would not give it as the bonus intended –to the person who did the work, just sat on it instead. Dishonest company imo. I think too the freelancers we’ve worked with at Elance, and before VWorker and whatever it was called before that… Most were quality and very dear persons as well.
I hope someone will start a new freelancer-empoyer company and undercut Upwork to the BONE. The working people deserve far better than some shell game, and rising % in order for Upwork to make money on their backs for simply introducing people to one another, and running a server. The employers need a site that is ACE accurate, to the point to navigate and to research previous completed jobs. And a customer service that is actual human beings, AND responsive in 24 hours.
I think too, someone ought write an article for Forbes on the mess that corporate of upwork/odesk/elance has foisted on us all. Let the public know. And the shareholders. Especially the shareholders.
Wow, thank you all for sharing your experiences. I was excited about getting started in freelancing, but perhaps more research into reliable sites is needed. Sounds like a good idea gone sour. Perhaps, as archangel suggested, a new freelancing site will open up and restore the original good intentions of those that have gone before. Meanwhile I’ll finish writing my book!
Hi all,
A few weeks ago, Upwork suspended and closed off my account without any valid reason. The excuse given was that I was not generating enough revenue for them. So, it was my fault that Upwork is not generating enough income and the employers want to pay $20 for a $200 job. I have seen people working @$3/hr and apparently, Upwork is still allowing it. Upwork is just an extension of Odesk.com, which was just a cheap online labor market. It’s almost like fiverr.com mixed with very poor management skills of Stephanie Kasriel, the main culprit. The main blunder was to close off Elance.com, which was just awesome. I had made substantial income from Elance until that retard Kasriel came along. Not only that, Upwork also suffers from very frequent technical glitches and server downtime.
My advice will be if you really want to invest time and money into Upwork, do it as a secondary, tertiary, or some kind of a backup source of income. The only positive thing about Upwork is that tests are free but I seriously doubt how long it will stay that way.
I am also almost convinced that Upwork is going to be closed down by 2017.There are just not enough projects. The situation is so bad that Upwork ITSELF is posting projects just to make things look better. At the time of posting this on 1st September 2016, approxiamately 12:30p.m. IST, there are more than 2,330,000 freelancers and a little less than 130,000 jobs in total. However, out of which, less than 10% jobs maybe genuine(but cheap) clients because in many cases the payment method is not verified. There are many spammers posing as employers out there. Upwork is just stupid and a plain waste of time and resources.
-A former Upworker.
—
Interesting note about the “fake projects” on Upwork. I recently signed up for an account there, after a good amount of time working on Freelancer. I basically have the EXACT sane profile on both sites and approach my project proposals the sane as well. Completely custom, petsonalized and project specific for every single bid I submit. Yet, I’ve gone through almost 2/3 of the credits Upwork gives you and I havent receieved a single message from a potential client. Which I find incredibly strange considering I get about an 85% response rate on bids via FL (if not better…). Even taking into consideration the fact that my UW profile basically has zero track record, I still find the abysmal response rate strange compared to when I first started with FL.
Use your resorces on Freelancer not Upwork.
freelancer is bs. they take money wherever they can. the site structure and UX is also bs compared to upwork. and i strongly think freelancer makes fake profiles and invites you then to projects that then are cancelled so that you pay money to them and can’t earn anything.
I have used Upworks with some success but recently I m having a nightmare with a freelancer. I paid in full for a website and gave excellent ratings to the freelancer but there is a hitch. Two major problems which prevent me from releasing the product. I want to take the arbitration route to resolve things as I got no where with complaining to them. Questions: (1) What can I expect from Arbitration in terms of cost and fees and (2) Who exactly am I ‘suing’: Upworks or the freelancer. (3) What repercussions will the freelancer experience if I go through with it and (4) what repercussion will the freelancer experience if I win. (3) and (4) have to do with the leverage I may have with the freelancer in negotiating prior to arbitration.
Great article on the difference between the two. I’ve always used both as I’ve found different talent on the two different networks. Interesting to hear about all the mergers too! How times are changing.
I’ve just got on Upwork, and it collect me for 20% fees. I’m just thinking it is too much. For a platform like this, low rate and more service will help them survive and grow. Like the platform of Alibaba, enterprise offer around $2000 for one year (at which they can easily earn back ) . Upwork is also a middle man/safeguard platform. So their main goal is not about make quick and easy money just by suck the blood from our freelancers/clients. Their main job is to do REAL things. Make it a good website, a good channel
Freelancer is best , upwork is not so good now ,because its too complicated and fees charges 20%, i suggest everyone to use freelancer
Upwork is getting worse every day! First, Elance suspended me with no explanation. I believe it was because I was accepted at Odesk at about the same time. Now, after many years, Upwork has suspended me because I got no earnings for past 2 months while saying that they did so because I’ve applied to too many jobs that do not match my skills (what a nonsense!).
I am stunned by their unprofessionalism. What a shame for a platform that used to be among the best.
At the end, even though I am highly disappointed by this, I am glad I am no longer part of it.
Finally, freelancer.com is better than upwork.com , I think.
As a word, upwork is not full in terms of technology.
I have some experiences of working in both of freelancer and upwork.
1. There are more scam in upwork than freelancer
2. Of course, I am a freelancer in these sites, but I think upwork is dangerous for client.
3. Upwork has un-full rules in terms of recommending freelancers, suspending accounts and other problem.
4. Some people says that upwork has better interface, but this is not true.
Simple interface means lack of technology.
5. Freelancer has very fast filtering speed.
But upwork’s filtering speed is very slow.
6. In fact, the number of users of freelancer.com is more much than upwork, because freelancer.com is better.
upwork is not unstable.
Finally, upwork has to admit that upwork is not good than freelancer yet.
There are many technical problems to solve yet, in upwork.
And I think upwork invest less than freelancer.com for server.
Thanks for reading.
Upwork is complete bullshit, most of their jobs are fake, most customers are only looking for deals instead of good quality jobs, they also charge 20% to the freelancer which is absolutely exaggerated, not to mention if you apply to many of those fake jobs (which btw they don’t regulate in any way) without landing a job they close your account with no options to appeal
Awesome post. Thank your for sharing such a nice article.
Thank you Jennifer! We’re glad you enjoyed it!
I guess they win with durability and ease of carrying but yes, there has to be a compromise somewhere. Thanks for the advice Mark 🙂
great stuff
Hi Arafat. I encourage you to entertain yet another Upwork horror story, currently unfolding over at LanceBase. A once well-established Upwork freelancer was unjustly and improperly (illegally?) removed from Upwork for simply logging in while traveling. It’s quite a good read and it will be interesting to see how Upwork handles this.
https://www.lancebase.com/threads/a-client-told-me-theyll-never-use-upwork-again-heres-why.10637/
I guess they win with durability and ease of carrying but yes, there has to be a compromise somewhere. Thanks for the advice Mark
Upwork & Freelancer use same App concept for time tracking , is it petant or use third party app because both are using same concept and app for time tracking.
Yes! Finally someone writes about keyword1.|
Thoroughly written article. Keep doing and keep sharing with us.