UpworkReviews 2,134

My all freelaancers are very good i found from UPWORK, But UPWORK company by itself is very bad for customer service.
I will go back to freelance.com at lease they care about there clinets.
I have three times check with paypal and they advised me that they have paid to upwork with reference.
I did pass all the information to many time to upwork.
But they still saying your ticket is for investigation.
I have paid 2 times money from my bank account and they still have suspended my contract and my freelancers not got paid.
Anyway i will pay to my freelancer by otherway So my worker doesn't my bad image bu upwork mistakes.

All the money is shipped offshore as soon as it is deposited. Every client is Western and every contractor is ISIS. Many contractors had names like Tom, $#*! and Harry but they communicate in broken English.

The hiring system makes it impossible for anyone imported from oDesk or Elance to get hired. I went from a level 11 with 4.8 stars on Elance to an unexplained 63% completion rate on Upwork.

I contested this arbitrary 63% completion rate since out of nearly 100 contracts I only returned/refused 2. They got back to me over 6 MONTHS later saying they would look into it.

The site is a fraud. You are better off surfing Craigslist.

The problem with Upwork is that they make it verrry difficult for freelancers who are new to get hired, because Upwork makes metrics recommendations to clients when they are posting their available jobs. These recommendations are things like hire only "rising stars" or hire only freelancers who have a "90% job success score" - and in order for a freelancer to be included in either of these categories, they have to have a certain number of jobs under their belt which is impossible to do if clients won't hire you because you don't have a certain number of jobs under your belt. Much better results on freelancer.com.

I used upwork for 3 months and meanwhile, I met 3 clients.
And I got 5 star reviews always and could keep 100% job success.

One day, I was just requested to provide my id card and bank statement without any reason.
Actually, id card and bank statement is the personal info which we cannot like share.
But I uploaded it and after receiving it, upwork closed my account!

THEY DIDN'T TELL THE REASON!
HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE EXPERIENCD!
DON'T USE UPWORK! SCAMMERRRRRR!

I bid on several jobs and got none. Then I built my own website and hired someone to promote it. They said they would give my site backlinks. I later found out paying for backlinks was discouraged by Google. Was the five star rated freelancer so stupid that he did not know? So even five star freelancers are not helpful enough to give ANY positive return on investment. I am sure all clients would agree, upwork promotes fraudulent behavior in freelancers, for example it helps a freelancer to do a "course" or buy a review (which upwork does not do enough to prevent) or listen to some "expert" freelancer who is so incapable that his business relies on upwork to succeed. On top of that, you lose 20% of what you pay as upwork's commission fee, so if you pay $1000, you are actually paying the freelancer $800. This is a waste of money as I found out the hard way, and many freelancers indulge in black hat practices that will lower your site's rankings. Even upwork tests have been asking the same questions for years. There are many sites which give the questions and answers of upwork tests and freelancers use these to pass tests. People who are defending upwork obviously benefit a lot from all this, like Danny Margulies who has a private forum dedicated to succeeding on upwork, and people who regularly write mere words for $125 an hour. Stay away, and stay safe.

I was very active on Elance before the merger and name-change. Elance was GREAT in every way. As soon as it became Upwork, it took MONTHS of issues only to migrate my profile, and after that, I was told I had to provide new bank information. I did so, and a day later, found three fraudulent withdrawals. I complained to the FBI (interstate commerce) with no help, and aside from my bank being nice about crediting me for the fraud, I still had to close all my bank accounts because of that. DO NOT TRUST THIS SITE!

Upwork is being run by a group of $#*!ty people who are just greedy for money. I don't say it is a scam, it is 100% legit and also I have earned a decent amount from upwork. But the upwork management sucks. Recently my account got suspended for no reason. When I asked them to provide me a reason then they simply refused and they also charge 20% from each service you provide and also a withdrawal fee and also a very low conversation rate. Moreover if unfortunately if you get in a dispute which is not a big issue because it can happen as there are plenty of frauds. In that case upwork again find new ways to launder money from freelancers. I can say if you are working fine on upwork then you are very lucky and a suggestion don't login your account from any other device or from app because app suck. Even though your project get spoiled but don't try to login on any other device if your care about your account.

Be very careful who you hire on Upwork because if things go wrong, Upwork's powers of mediation are none existent, even if you present an infallible case!

Having raised such a case for mediation - due to freelancer unable to complete the job as agreed, as well as overcharging despite agreeing a fixed fee! - they simply didn't want to know.

It is my opinion that Upwork's allegiance is firmly with their freelancers who, lets face it, pay them a big commission (20%!) for each job they get.

So if they were to award in favour of the Client, it would dent their own profits! (where's the sense in that!?!)

Upwork mediation - Inept, toothless and bordering on unethical. Hence the review.

Avoid - July 2017. Having been scammed before when working directly with freelancers, but having good experiences with fiverr, I needed a place to get some development done. I was delighted to find responsive developers and an escrow system and had my first job completed within 24 hours and happily released funds. And then, I couldn't get the freelancer to do any more jobs. Apparently, they couldn't get the money from Upwork either. I queried this with Upwork and was told they had permanently suspended the developer with the weasily response ". We are unable to provide details as to why we have done this". Great! So the great experience I have with the freelancer, upwork decide to bin for a reason that only upwork knows, and force to me to find another way to work with the developer. It literally doesn't get worse than this. If upwork cared for their customers (like me) they would at least have the decency not to hide their reasons. So upwork have my escrow money sitting in their account earning interest. My freelancer hasn't been paid. Bad result.

I just experienced the biggest nightmare of my life, working with an Upwork vendor. He's a 3D animator by the name of Sergey Petrukevich. He repeatedly tried to blackmail me for more money throughout the job. I kept Upwork in the loop during the project and afterward, asked them to sandbox him for good so he could not attempt to extort anyone else. They PUNISHED ME! Upwork obviously approves of their vendors holding clients to ransom for more money. It now all makes sense. The more a vendor robs a client of additional monies, the more Upwork gets paid. If you value your wallet and your sanity, avoid Upwork like the plague. For me, this was like fending off a rapist, reporting him to the police and then being thrown in prison for assaulting the person who tried to rape me. Yes, it was just about this bad.

As long as one finds the professional(s) she was looking for, the system works. It's sloppy (as of the UI), but works: money put in escrow, the freelancer does the job, gets paid when finished and both parties are happy.

The issues come when any, literally any problem raises, especially for when the freelancer fails to deliver:

As of Upwork handling your money: It runs back from escrow to your bank account. There are no other options for this. Can't be held in escrow, no "client account" in the system or anything. Means, if the job must get done, so should be posted again, it should also be financed again while one waits for the escrow money to arrive back to the bank account...
Adding to this, if the freelancer doesn't approve this action (e.g. She was gone for good, so won't be around to do so, or simply doesn't care), it takes a good 12-14 business days (in my experience) to get the money back.

As of Upwork handling you, as the "valued" customer: If one asks for help, gets the standardized, copy-pasted answer. If one asks for a solution, gets the same thing, as well as an excuse (mostly "our system works like that"...). If one complains stating this is not good. Gets a negative remark on her account...

I understand those who rate this site 3+ stars. I felt the same way for my 1st, minor project as I found the right candidate and the job was done.

BUT as soon as things go serious, investment goes high and actual professionals should be found for the large scale job, the system starts stuttering, the safety net is gone and one has to realize this site is useless, its processes are killing and very, very silly, as well as the support is impotent.

I definitely do not recommend using this site ever, for any business. Find someone better. It won't be difficult, go to any other provider...

I am a high profile freelancer, worked for some very reputable clients and with years of a successful freelancer career.
I've invested a lot of time and efforts to make my Upwork profile stand out and I did it. I carefully selected what work to show on my Portfolio, I've taken a lot of skill tests on the system in order to prove my expertise.
And it worked for some time. But guess what happened to me this year - they asked me for ID and other documents to prove my identity, this process was hard enough because they rejected my ID image and wanted me to take another shot at it especially for them and then resubmit it. I did it and finally after days spent I was able to verify my profile.
Now (a month later) they just permanently terminated my account without any real reason given. I received a blanket "explanation", that after a quick Google search I found out it was nothing more than a blanket message, sent to many Upwork freelancers, who also ended up with their accounts terminated.
I've tried to at least ask for the real reason, but they failed to provide one. They don't care for freelancers, they are only moved by their own interest on the back of the freelancer community. I believe anyone, who wants to start a freelancer career on Upwork deserves to know the truth how freelancers are treated.
- you will spend a lot and a lot of time and efforts to build your profile,
- you'll be charged 20% (!) for the services, that you provide,
- and you may end up with a permanently terminated account at any time, with no explanation whatsoever and no possibility to appeal it.

All in all I think Upwork is a very wrong place to make a freelancer career online, really toxic for your career development. They will feed on you and your skills, but will dump you out whenever they want. You have no rights there. Like back in the days of slavery.
Don't get burned just like I did.