Upwork

After working as a freelancer on Upwork and receiving outstanding reviews, I was unlucky enough to accept a contract with one shady company, AWI MEDIA, they are supposedly based in the UK (they are actually based in Dubai). After trying to pay me absolute crap money I decided to finish up the contract with them and politely told them I would be finishing up with them. They didn't take kindly to this and so decided to leave abhorrent feedback on my record after abusing my through messages, which they promptly deleted. I reported the abuse to Upwork and was advised that because they had deleted their abusive message that the Upwork admin couldn't read it and therefore couldn't take action. I found this to be quite unbelievable that they have no control over seeing what has been posted on their site! I find it more believable that they can read it but they choose not to take action against the perpetrator. Obviously I won't be using their site any more. They either don't care or are powerless to ensure that clients are doing the right thing by freelancers.

The plataform is great, but they do steal the freelancer and employers a lot of money. Not only they take 20% to freelancers (I'm sure they also take a cut from the employer) but they also make a microtransaction sistem to apply to jobs. As if we where rich. Wich makes it a very unpleasant experiences. Big bussines wanting to fill mor and more their pockes. Taking advantage of us. who are desperates to try rto make a decent living.
Sadly, is the only way I have to stil have an income, so I will keep using it.

Many Clients finding Talents/Artist to this website to make easier for us to find job that suits in our capabilities. Well recommended to other Professionals.

Upwork is the best international platform where anybody can start his journey. Upwork connect potential clients with potential freelancers. Thanks for making our lives. Thanks

Upwork is best place for freelancers to work at the initial it was hard for me to find the job but after learning few tips and tricks I am Abel to land job on upwork

When I join at this website I achieve many goals. I found a new clients and get more earnings with high value and less time. I am very recommended this website to build professional career

When people ask me, what do I do for living aside from my traditional work, I said ' FREELANCING' and then I mentioned Upwork... and they said WOOWWWW!... and I answered them boastfully with smile. YES! I can't compare Upwork to other sites when it comes to freelancing. It's more than a five.

I was a freelancer using Elance before the merge with Odesk and Upwork was created. I had no issues with Elance and felt their rates were high, but I dealt with it. They had a lot of opportunities for gigs and I made good money on the site for about a year.

Then the merge took place and the policies and procedures made no sense. Upwork has no clue of what life as a freelancer is like. It takes one to two weeks to get paid for a job, even if the client put money in escrow when the job was started. The setup of the site is much more confusing than Elance and not user friendly at all. I will search for work and only a handful of the 3,000 jobs listed will show up for that category. Now they implemented new rates for freelancers, as you pay 20% for the first $500 made with a client, which is up from 10%! Then they charge the client an extra 2.75% now, so they are making an additional 12.75% on each job accepted on the site! However, if you make over $500 with one client, the rate goes down to 10% and if you make over $10,000 with one client than it goes down to 5%. Most clients on the site are looking to pay the least amount possible, so getting to $500 with one client would be hard with the new setup.

It was clear to me once the merge happened that Upwork was looking to make as much money as possible with keeping the money on hold for almost two weeks. This new increase in the percentages confirms that and I will not be using Upwork ever again.

I had a 90+ % job success score with Upwork. Eventually my shoulders started hurting a lot and I couldn't work at the computer much. Finally, I had to have surgery on BOTH shoulders. They only do one shoulder at a time and you have to go through all the physical therapy and get your range of motion back before they do the other shoulder. Anyway, I finally got to the point where I could take serious editing jobs again and I went to my Upwork account and found they had downgraded my success score to 75%! As you can see from my attached photo, I was a "top rated freelancer" with Upwork. Apparently, they got tired of not being able to take their exorbitant 20% fee from my earnings for such a long time, so they lowered my score, but you can check my job history - nothing but good client reviews. Upwork refuses to make any allowance for my being legitimately incapacitated by surgeries even if I send in documentation of the surgeries and lengthy PT. Word to the wise: If you value your professional reputation, stay away from Upwork. If you use their platform, youd better not have a lengthy illness or injury. Do yourself a favor and find another freelancing website. Better yet, build your own website and invest in marketing it - that way you can keep 100% of your earnings!

I've been working with my team on Elance since 2008. It was not perfect, it even had some major issues, but still we could find clients there, and it worked OK overall.
When Elance announced the "merger" with oDesk, I didn't think it's going to end that bad.
In brief, Upwork is awful. It's terrible. It's annoying.
Now I see that Elance was simply perfect compared to what I have to use now.
Upwork simply doesn't work:
- it has numerous technical and logical issues: so far I reported around 20 bugs (and that's only a part of what I discovered)
- it doesn't have proper support for teams, it seems to aim at low-cost individuals and low-budget projects (but on the other hand, it charges 20%(!) fee on small projects)
- it has a lot of trash projects: it was hard to search through low-budget projects and compete with low-budget low-quality providers even on Elance, and now things got about 5x times worse.

Upwork is a low quality marketplace, and I with that:
- either Elance gets back
- some new marketplace appears, and at least does what Elance did

Upwork may remain a sort of a trash can for $5 projects and providers. This is what it does best.

I'm professional freelancer for 4 years and this is my favorite freelance site
It's very intuitive, very easy to find information for the client, take estimates just from the glance, and overall working process mostly intuitive and easy.
I have one of the best clients come from this site.
Also I like that this site put no so much emphasis on numbers (like oDesk hours), tests, scores. I don't have time to make portfolio or perform tests but I have lot of to show or to say.
Also I like Elance that it clearly states where I am from thus it takes me advantage in competing with Indian developers - I have several times was chosen only by the fact that I'm not from India.

I can't point out some real downsize, there are lot of frustration about Elance because they rule out conflict into someone else favor, but it's natural - some one win an argue some one don't, who don't win - complains. At least there is some arbitration and you have a chance to win. For example at freelancer.com you don't have any possibility to initiate investigation if you wasn't paid. I don't think that this is real disadvantage of Elance.

And also - no withdrawal waiting time, no hidden fees, fees are paid ONLY when you has been paid.

For all those reasons I highly recommend Elance to everyone.