UpworkReviews 2,128

Odesk (old name of Upwork) became lousy after being merged with other freelancers site. You can't get a job easily if you don't have any earnings yet. And if you apply for let's say 10 jobs, they do suspend your account INDEFINITELY for the reason that your application is high. Below is an example of their email after suspending an account:

We are contacting you to let you know we have suspended your access to Upwork indefinitely.

Our decision is based on a careful review and the fact that you have submitted a high number of proposals for jobs on our site without many contracts or earnings. Unfortunately, this means the jobs posted by clients are not a good match for your skills.

I know this news is likely disappointing to you. But our goal at Upwork is to enable freelancers to successfully connect and collaborate with clients who need their skills and expertise. Unfortunately, this means we must part ways with freelancers whose skills are not in demand in our marketplace.

If you want to appeal this decision, you can email us at *******@upwork.com. Please note each case will be manually reviewed by our Trust & Safety team to decide if your account can be reinstated.

Please know we don't make decisions like these lightly and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Regards,
Upwork Trust & Safety

Now, you may want to open an account to them. BUT don't be shocked if one day, they will suspended your account too for unprofessional reasons.

Good day! :)

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.

I was a successful freelancer with Elance, which in 2013 was the best freelancing platform on the web. For six months I actually made a full time living as a writer/editor and supported a family of five after losing my day job. It was my water of life. Then someone got the bright idea to merge with ODesk, the ultimate dirtbag third-world lowball platform where I had never found any jobs that paid even close to US market value. If you mix water and dirt you get mud. Quality writing jobs disappeared and in the four+ years since the merger I have not seen one job worth bidding on. ODesk successfully poisoned and absorbed its more successful competitor.

I have used Elance before it became Upwork and the quality of providers was much higher. These days as long as someone can pass the basic ready test he is good to go and based on Upwork policys allowed to screw you out of time and money. If you and your contractor agree on terms Upwork does not care and allows them to bill you what they want. So if someone enters hrs you are stuck paying for services which where not delivered. Will be looking for a new platform to hire programming contractors as Upwork is becoming shady. They bill you Monday am, and before you can dispute something they deduct the $$ from your account. Legit companys give you a few days to review and you pay for undisputed amounts. But hey customer service is as bad as the platform itself as it is down multiple times a week

My Upwork experience started from March, 2018. I used to have up to ten clients. But the one was strange. It was Emma Serlin. Firstly, she asked to prepare the transcription without opening a contract. Secondly, she said that the result was great and opened the contract in order to pay for the previous file. Then she asked for another transcription and suddenly ended the contract with low feedback. After I asked her what was wrong, she said that she was not satisfied with the results. I can't understand, why she didn't say that she didn't like something when she actually did not like and asked for changes. I don't think this is reasonable. Be aware of such kind of employers, who can make a poo to your job success score.

I used Upwork for the first and it was the last time. Their freelancer delivered not functional website, I asked for a full refund, they said I need to ask freelancer. When I contact him for refund, he blocked me. I contacted Upwork again, sent them all necessary information about the work I was promised and what I recived, all messages... and after several emails they said that they just connect freelancers and clients and they cant do anything about my case. I lost my money and received very very poor website.

Upwork has a credit card verification process that is extremely burdensome for businesses. The customer and the freelancer have to spend numerous hours and a ridiculous amount of time verifying a couple hundred dollar credit card payment. Meanwhile, the freelancer has done the work and Upwork will not process process payment and pay the freelancer. Upwork has turned a great experience with my freelancer into a payment time-sink where I will no longer use the service. Too bad!

Got linked up with a freelancer and it was going well until I realized there was no way this person could accomplish the task, and then you are just screwed. The freelancer was making 8th grade graphics, literally thought it was a joke when it first was submitted. I would never use this site again because of the process, you should get a trial period to see if the person can actually do what you are looking for.

Do not ever use this site, and if you do then know how much risk you are taking. I'm sure there are good freelancers on there but few and far between, good luck hunting.

I see a lot of negative reviews. I've been on the platform two months and am happy, overall. I think a lot of the negative reviews are left by those who break TOS, or who are inexperienced and/ or don't take the time to understand the ins and outs of the platform. Yes, Upwork fees feel ridiculous at first, but the longer I use the system, the more I understand the need in place. Clients must verify their payment, they offer payment guaranteed jobs, and I am often approached by Upwork with jobs they matched me up with. The system also organizes my jobs, offers security by lightly screening clients enough to verify they are real people and not bots, and there are a lot of checks and balances along the way that helps me avoided being, well, screwed over. I'm doing well and am happy with UpWork and don't plan on switching platforms anytime soon.

I posted a job on Upwork for white-hat, quality link building. I got a response from a freelancer promising the following:
"I will carry out an extensive research based on industry vertical and first prepare a list of related blogs, bloggers, influencers and website owners and start with an outreach campaign to gain valuable link placement on authority sites. Backlinks will be on highly relevant and authority sites and will be permanent and contextual links. Recently, I've had a very good success rate building in-content links on already published articles on authority sites."

He ended up placing 4 links on sites that had the lowest quality writing. 1 was de-indexed in google indicating it had already been penalized for spamming; 1 used to be a French e-commerce site that went out of business, and the domain was bought for history/DA and turned into a blog to sell links (domain name was complete irrelevant to the niche); 3 had all traffic coming from referral and direct traffic, indicating a PBN.

I asked him to remove the links. He never did. I ended up having to disavow the links.

What made matters worse, is when I contact Upwork and asked if I could leave feedback so other businesses would have a warning, they told me feedback was only allowed when payment was made on a project, but that it would count towards the freelancers job completion rate. I checked the freelancers job completion rate, at it was at 53%. Obviously, if someone misrepresents their skills, there will be a dispute. And, given his completion rate, this likely wasn't the first time. He is still operating nonetheless. This policy facilitates bad behavior by freelancers, and is a shady business practice by Upwork.

I recently signed up at Upwork and had my first project which took me about 1 day of work. All seemed to be perfectly normal. I completed the project the client approved payment and then suddenly my account was blocked.

After reaching out to the Customer Service, they informed me that I had to verify several details. Which I did, then they asked if I could reach out to my client as there was a problem they could not explain. I reached out to the client and didnt get an answer.

Then I mailed Upwork during a period of 2 months several times, I hardly got any response, sometimes it took over a week to get a respond from Upwork.

Today I received the message (see screenshot attached) that because my client was fraudulent they won't be paying me for my completed work.

It has been a terrible experience working with this company. There CS is rude, unprofessional takes ages to respond and the worst: they won't pay me for my completed work.

I strongly advice to not work with Upwork if you don't want to lose your money. This company is a mess!

With good intentions I was looking for work writing, editing and reviewing for media sites. Here is an example of some of the work offered on UpWork. First employer: I need a 40 page e-book written in 2 weeks for $50. Second employer: For my blogsite I need 2-4 blogs per month (1,000 words each) to be paid at the rate of $10 each. Must have a minimum of a masters degree. Third employer: Need a tutor for my bratty kid to train in the sciences. Will pay $5 per session. These a facetious representation yet they come close to the mark to the job offerings on UpWork. This company keeps a minimum of 20% of the wage. My advice: Upwork is a disaster paying slave wage with potential employers who are either nutcases or live under a rock. Many better sites stay light years away from this one.