Upwork

Elance is a company of scammers
Most of their contractors are scammers Indians
Aman Aggarwal Expert in Databases and Server Administration: is a good example
https://www.elance.com/s/aman-aggarwal-dba/
I worked with him and he just stole my money
All his reviews are fake
Notice the number of overall reviews of users who submitted the reviews 1 or 2
He delayed the project over 30 days and then disappeared
I turned to elance to get refund
But their response was:
As there are no funds currently held in Escrow and the last payment released from Escrow was more than 30 days ago, the job does not qualify for a Dispute Assistance call or arbitration through Elance. We can not issue a refund without the freelancer's consent.
I told them that the work was not performed
There is no response from them!
Elance = scam, aman619aggarwal = Indians scammers
Fraud Scam company!

I'm a freelance artist for a living and if I could give upwork -5 stars I would.

Before I even get to my main issue they take an unreasonable cut of your earnings and will not let you withdraw your earned money without jumping through many hoops.

The first and only project I've taken on that I site I was never paid, despite the fact I submitted the project on time and beyond the requirements. Upwork told me they could offer no support in helping me get paid for my hours of work.

Since then the employer has said that he never got my work and therefore wants his money back (which I never received). So now I am being asked to pay for the huge displeasure of having to work for that man.

Upwork has had "technical errors" and didn't process my first two disputes on that claim. And I am not allowed to contact them to ask for support (as explicitly stated in their email).

A horrible site that offers artists below minimum wage with no support when things go pear shape. The point of using a third party is to be protected from matters like this.

Upwork has helped me big time during these times of hardships and uncertainties... Upwork also opened doors for me to explore more on what I can do as a freelancer.

The project "e-commerce website" order was made 3/29.
The freelancer has not delivered the first milestone "Beta site delivery".
Claimed the refund but nothing is happening.
As of 4/22, UpWork confirmed by email.
You requested a refund for your unused deposit of $250.00. If the freelancer "NANCY KESHARY" does not respond to your request within 7 days, the remaining balance in escrow will be automatically refunded to your payment method.

Checking with the support team, the deposit had already been released to the freelancer 4/5.

Now I claim to Paypal to get my full refund from Upwork.

DO NOT TRUST WHAT THEY CONFIRM YOU!

Upwork is a great and respectable platform for freelancers to make really good money.

They not only cater to the clients but also respect the freelancers needs.

My favorite perk of Upwork is "UPWORK PAYMENT PROTECTION" under hourly contracts.

That means that even if your client disappears or for some reason are no funds in their card - as long as you have worked on an hourly contract upwork will cover that loss for you.

Overall a great platform to work with - great customer service and available within minutes you call - i have never waited on hold for more than a minute TOPS.

Kenneth, Upwork staff with his lack of intelligence and minimum wage salary, concluded that I am in violation of the terms of services with no explanation since he invented everything in his little pea size brain. I strongly believe I have not violated anything.

I encouraged Upwork to hire people who has advance degrees and resides in the U.S. in their management team not Kenneth who resides in remote village in third world country. Kenneth managed to scrape by on leftovers in his slum just to barely survive in this pandemic. His ignorance attempted to give a judgement on my account in the website that nobody cares.

It is apparent to me that such professional people in question is impossible since Upwork does not have million dollars to spend to pay their salary. However, in this information age, Kenneth's job can easily be replaced by self learning artificial intelligence.

It is pretty amusing that I was recommended Upwork by someone from third world country that I hired through Craigslist. Here in the U.S., only small amount of people would notice what Upwork is.

Cons:
Ignorance staff
Poor management
Wasted of my expensive time
Small audience since nobody knows about this website
The navigation and layout is not up to standard quality
It offers very little in terms of additional resources
It is basically just a search engine for job listings, that demands percentage of your earnings.

I am amazed to work on site like Upwork. Highly Recommended. You feel safe while adding Billing Information. Thank you so much Upwork for giving such an amazing platform.

Very good platform with excellent customer service.

Lots of jobs available every minute and they have a payment verification platform so you get paid for the service you rendered.

I have been on the platform for several years now and at some point I was a paying user. My expertise is in SEO and as you can imagine competition is high and there are a lot of so called "experts" that charge low rates and most of them land the jobs. In the first years I was charging also relatively low rates, but as my expertise and experience grew, I increased my rate, but at the same time considerably lowered the chances of getting projects easily.
What did upwork do? Probably after applying to 20-25 jobs in about 2 months, I get an email saying that my account has been removed because I had no contracts gained and that my skills are not required by their clients. No warning, no nothing (while 7 jobs where still active and I had proposals sent and waiting for replies).
Anyway - I will be looking into other platforms that are not flooded by low quality freelancers that don't care about quality of work and can afford to charge lower rates since they don't care about making a business connection with their clients.

Have been in Upwork for almost 7 years and it greatly help me as an individual. I have the learn lots of skills from my clients and its a very good platform for every one.

Used Upwork for 2 years for channelstreem dot com and hired several persons to admin our servers spent more than $20,000 so far. Recent experience taught me 2 thing about Upwork. First, con men discovered they can cheat the platform and make a profile full of fake info, misrepresenting who they are and qualifications. Some, pretend to have knowledge in computers but in fact they get the contract and farm it out to someone else with scant knowledge that actually try struggling to do the work. The second issue I learned, is that never deposit any money into escrow, as these con men simply never complete the work then ask you to close the contract and release fund. When you discover you been had, and request refund, the con man files a dispute of which I never received any notice of in the app or by email from Upwork, when time to reply to the dispute expires, Upwork pay the con man money out of escrow fund. My observation now, is that, most anybody qualified to work left Upwork, it is becoming very difficult to find honest help with the knowledge and experience they put up in work bio, and the percentage of crooks are getting higher by the day... So be careful who you hire, don't be impressed by the con man fake work bio and listed experiences /education, all lies, and never deposit funds in escrow at Upwork until the work is done right as agreed and on time. Even now when I still try to see copy of the dispute, all I see is blank white page as if Upwork do not want you to see the dispute (see image). Will definitely start looking for better alternative to Upwork hire.