Upwork

I have been on UpWork for roughly 4 months now and overall I'm happy with it. It's a very healthy marketplace that makes it very easy to quickly find a job. I never needed to buy any credits because I got contacted pretty much on a daily basis by companies looking for my skills, so that was very encouraging.

There are, however, a few flaws that I'm hoping UpWork will work on to improve the experience for freelancers:

1) The types of jobs tend to be on the less strategic side and fairly straightforward. I have a lot of corporate experience that could come to good use, but I can't find jobs at that level.

2) I know that UpWork has an enterprise tier, but it's unclear how as a freelancer I can access those jobs.

3) UpWork has several badges for freelancers to recognise their skills. However, it's not clear how those badges are assigned. UpWork keeps the rules about that deliberately secret, to avoid freelancers hacking them. Whilst I do understand where they are coming from, it is a bit frustrating for freelancers who work well, have consistently high reviews and have been on the platform for long enough, to not get any badge at all and not be able to understand why that is the case.

4) What I really, really don't like about UpWork is their desktop timer. First of all, I had to contact customer support twice in the space of a month because of serious bugs. Given that a freelancer's revenue depends on that app, it should work 100% flawlessly. Second, it takes six screenshots an hour and sends them to the client as proof of your work. You can stop the screenshots from going out (you might have done some internet banking and don't really want your client to see your bank statements, for example). But if you prevent screenshots from going out, it detracts some working time from the desktop timer. What's worse, they recently also introduced some tracker that counts keyboard strokes and mouse movements and again adjusts the timer accordingly. That's really not, for a number of reasons: a) it's highly intrusive and against GDPR regulation in Europe; b) UpWork never asked me for permission, nor does it make it clear on its website that it tracks this way; c) linking revenue and quality of work to the number of keystrokes or mouse touches is plain silly and goes way too far.

5) UpWork's customer service team is very friendly and quick in responding. They genuinely care about freelancers, or at least that's my impression. However, the engineering team took around a month to fix the desktop timer. Again, freelancers' revenues depend on that timer, so to take a month to fix it is seriously burdening on freelancers, who then have to explain the issues to their clients.

So, overall it's a good platform to find jobs, but I do have some issues with it which I hope will get fixed soon.

I'll start off by saying I love upwork for the opportunities they have provided me with, but it for sure does have it's flaws and I'll point out two of the biggest ones.

1. The 20% comission UNTILL you reach 500$, which then turn into 10%. That would be fair and good if it didn't only count for ONE client. As of now, I've made almost 1000$ on upwork and, which Menas I've generated upwork atleast 200$ in commissions and even more in connects. Sadly, most of the projects people get on upwork are a one time deal and you almost never get the chance to reach that 500$ mark with just one client. I believe the 10% comission should be applied to anyone who has already earned 500 or 1000$ via upwork IN TOTAL.

Why? Because that would encourage people to really keep all the gigs and payments inside upwork, where reaching a "total earned" would actually benefit them. And of course, once you reach that 10% commission rate, the people would feel "appreciated" by the site and actually be more involved in trying to make more money via upwork (because no they make 10% more, technically). And that would go both ways, maybe it would be less comission, but it would result in more gigs, balancing it out if not exceeding the profits for upwork themselves.

Especially if you're from Europe, the 20% comission + the VAT that I have to pay from my own pocket ends up to turn into 30+% comission flat! And that is before taxes in my own country. The 10% comission also REALLY benifits your workers over seas like myself.

2. Im not quite sure why, because I haven't seen the page from a "Buyers" point of view, but atleast half of the time I feel like the clients never even see my gig application even when I've written a killer application, a lot of people tend to not respond at all (NEVER have been denied), which leads me to believe they never even get to see my application. I don't know if it's because their end gets flooded by people offering to do the gig for under what the minimum is (I saw that when I bought the upwork Plus account). But that should really get checked out.

Best regards,
Dāvis Paugurs

Upwork is a freelance site that connects CLIENTS WITH FREELANCERS, making itself a global market hub.

I hired a freelancer and he did some work and repeated pushed me to close the job to only find out that he has changed the entire coding structure of the plugin as he pleased without sticking to the guideline. So I opened a dispute to get my money back, and upwork has been dragging this without making a decision while the freelancer is not replying to the dispute. The dispute was reported and told to be open May 9th, 2019, and I contact them via chat both on the 9th to open it, 14th May to check, for them to to only tell to check back 2-3 days later, and then again on the 15th May I went to the dispute center, and saw that they have actually opened the dispute on the 14th of May and NOT ON THE 9TH when I reported it. Then they give me more excuses (T&C quotes) about their darn policies and tells me that the freelancer has 4 working days to report back or they will take ACTION. Today is 23rd May, 2019 and they have given the freelancer another 2 working days to respond WITHOUT TAKING ANY ACTION as stated & providing me more T&C's to justify there incompetency. Wasting my time and holding my money. Will never use these thief's again, taking the side of fraud freelancers and taking customers for granted.

I hired a so called "Web design expert" on Upwork and what a complete waste of time and money this was. The freelancer did not deliver the job as per the work agreement in any way. The website that be built for me was nothing like I requested it was just a horrible job in every aspect.

The website design was nothing like I requested in the detailed contract provided, some pages had code errors showing when loading and the images he used were all fuzzy and out of shape on most pages.

Even though I asked for the website to be 100% mobile compatible when I tested the site it did not work correctly on smartphones.

He requested the payment milestone to be released, I said no you have not provided me the agreed upon work. He said he had given me what I requested which was complete BS.

The freelancer said he would not redo the website and it had no problems. I opened a dispute but this is where is goes from bad to a complete con for buyers on Upwork.

Upwork said they would not make a judgement on the quality of the website he built. Even though I spent hours detailing all the obvious problems to Upwork they said I had to work it out with him, "Upwork" said they would not get involved in the dispute and they would not refund my money. Why even have a dispute process in the first place if they won't help buyers when things for wrong!

As long as the freelancer says the work is "just fine" that's it, you have lost all your money in any disputes.

Upwork said it was all my fault if I did not check the freelancer properly before entering into a contract with him, the support quoted me their terms and conditions that cover everything in their favour, they will not accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

The quality of the work that I received did not match the posted resume on Upwork so I think he was just a complete fraud about his stated profile and experience. Don't take the profiles on Upwork as actually true or honest in any way.

I lost all my money on this job with no support from Upwork, anyway I hope my review informs enough people to stay away from Upwork.

It does not matter if you are getting a website built or getting anything else done on Upwork the dispute process is a sham, the terms and conditions cover them 100% when problems arise and you will just get nowhere with them.

PS. I did get my website built successfully with a local company that had an actual "shop front" with a real qualified "Web design expert".

Not sure how or where to start. Working through UpWork has been a nightmare. I'll try to summarize my experience. All I wanted was a simple game for both iOS and Android. Posted my job, received plenty of candidates and chose a freelancer based on her work portfolio. Her name was Natasha Korecki. I explained exactly what I wanted, gave her references, example of similar games and I even sent her a document with everything written of what I want. We agreed on hours, which kept increasing due to her not being able to finish on time. She started working ok design and graphics, which I did like, however, the final completed product was not even remotely close to what I wanted nor what she has been designing. At this point, we're at the ending and we're going back and forth about re-designing. Keep in mind, the whole time, I've been in contact with UpWork to makes sure they have my back. We agree agreed on redesign but she needed more more, which she had plenty of to finish and what we Agee did upon. Now, to save me the headache and stress, I agreed to just get it over with and keep the current design. The game was submitted and approved by Android, however, it was rejected by Apple. Once I went back to Natasha to fix the issue, she kept pushing me to start a new game with her. I explained, we'll discuss once my current game is approved and good to go. She has declined to fix it, unless I start a new game. She also declined giving me the source code to have someone else fix, unless I start a new game. I even received an email from UpWork stating that during their routine investigation, they found the freelancer being linked to a group that was kicked out for inappropriate conduct. Now to UpWork. I've been emailing them back and forth for over a month. All I keep getting is "unfortunately" this "unfortunately" that. I've been dealing mostly with Mark. I explained my experience over and over but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. Finally, he forwarded me to another team. Keep in mind, this was all over email, there is no support/customer service phone number anywhere, so it's frustrating to get my point across. I was excited to get a call from Michelle from the Talent specialist department. Once talking to her, and spent few minutes explaining my situation, she tells me, I only assist in helping with hiring freelancers, but she can let her team know. Now I'm even more frustrated. But wait, there's more. When I asked her to please have someone call me instead of email, she did not sound assuring as she stated, they may not be able to call, as we use emails for tracking. As that might be understandable, we are at a different level now and customer satisfaction should be first priority. Sorry for the long text, just wanted to share with everyone thinking about using them. You're basically on your own.

I completely agree it's not good to work. Not sure why some people not agree but there are plenty of guys who had bad experience. And very few get advantage from upwork especially buyer. They nowadays request profile verification for every new freelancer who is going to get in this website while theres no other website which is doing this. Furthermore, they reject the profile submit when first income to the upwork by saying they dont have enough place to work because already sufficient developers in those skill category. This will be very frustrating for newbies who wants to start business by relying on them. If someone cannot believe, just try it. Its very simple. Once you passed that after 9~10 times of failure, it will close your account unless you get a new job within 2 months which you will have only 20~30 chance to apply to new job in each month which will very few opportunities for newbies. For succeeded one who had hardly get at least $10 job, they immediately require video call verification which is all ok for me but something like I did criminal thing. Actually, there are no other sites are doing like this at least for freelancing area. When you success all this thing and continue work on website, when problem happens like client complaints you or disputed, they will suspend your financial account and sometimes revers all transaction you get earned by working even though you have significant work evidence and earned with your all burning effort. When you request to their support why this is happens, they says, because of your suspicious activity or because of terms of condition or privacy policy and not stating the exact reason. When you are complaint about this when you are 100% right, then they are answering as they have some bugs on their system.(Rare case of course but if you cant believe, just try it). Sometimes buyers are managing freelancers by threatening to giving 1 star rating even did good works which is definitely your effort is higher than 1 star rating but they are saying its freedom for buyers to left feedback according to their experience which is completely true. But in freelancer points of view, 1 star rating is definitely not good for future work award and even more, it doesnt affect anything if freelancer gives 1 star rating to client. So many of freelancers do some more free work to get account reinstated or 5 star rating for future work and it will make you like slavery to clients. Of course this all can be avoided if someone liked to be suspended and get 1 star rating and finish this website, whats the matter?

This site:
-claims that it's there to help freelancers and clients hook up with each other, and offers escrow protection to make sure payments are fair.

However:
- if a client gives you a bad review, it doesn't matter who's in the right or the wrong; your account will be damaged, and your business will look bad, for months. Again, all it takes is one upset client. Do you really want to pay 20% of all you earn in order to work on a website that has rated you terribly in the public eye? I mean, who hasn't gotten one or two grumpy, impossible-to-work-with clients at one time or another?

- scammers galore use this site, and Upwork does little to nothing to filter them out from the real clients. Moreover, if you accidently get scammed, it's you that Upwork threatens to sue, not the scammer. You could get ruined by this site.

- their site is CONSTANTLY being "fixed". The technical difficulties they experience as a matter of course are huge and never-ending. My computer is sometimes unusable due to messages from Upwork that won't disappear from the screen and cover one third of the screen, no matter how often I shut down and restart my computer.

- payments are grossly, unfairly, low. You're competing with people who can, and do, work for $5 a day. That's not Upwork's fault, but it is what happens when a site is global, and unfortunately, finding fair work on Upwork is just about impossible from a freelancer's point of view.

- Clients have you over a fire, and Upwork won't protect you from it. Say a client wants you to write 5 articles for them, but only wants to pay you for 1. The client simply "changes his mind" about the template and the topic each time you submit the article, saying that what you wrote wasn't good enough, but that he'll give you another chance if you actually write about this totally different topic instead. What do you do? To refuse means to get a 1 star rating and a bad review that you can do nothing about, but which will harm your business for the next 6 months. You HAVE to comply with this dishonest client, working for 5 days for him for the price of 1 day. Otherwise down goes your Upwork rating and your future potential business vanishes!

- Unfortunately, I found the other freelancers are sometimes dishonest too. This means that clients can be extremely jumpy, ready to give you 1 star ratings that actually the freelancer who worked before you deserves. That means that your advertising, online image, and profile can get damaged because of another freelancer's dishonesty.

I wish that I had never worked on Upwork. The longer I worked on it, the lower and lower it went down in my opinion.