Upwork

This platform is one that has gone from being a valuable resource for freelancers and clients to a platform overrun with numerous spam job posts, extremely unfair pricing to freelancers, complete lack of customer support, questionable business practices (holding back invitations to force freelancers to "pay to play," and an overall free for all atmosphere severely lacking in quality control to the detriment of both freelancers and clients.

Unless freelancers and clients wish to be continually frustrated by unfair practices, it's strongly suggested using other resources to find freelance work or, for clients, finding talent..

Have you noticed? Upwork seems to operate more like a gambling platform than a freelancing site. The increased prices for connects, the need for connects to boost bids or earn the 'Available Now' badge – it feels like freelancers are being taken advantage of at every turn.

Consider this: for every job posted, Upwork can potentially pocket $300-$500 in connects from freelancers, even for projects as low as $50. On top of that, they take a 20% commission from both clients and freelancers, meaning they could be making hundreds from a single $50 job. It's starting to feel less like a fair marketplace and more like a gamble.

I'm skeptical that Upwork will prioritize improving its system for the benefit of middle-class freelancers anytime soon. It seems like more than 20% of freelancers have already migrated to platforms like Fiverr due to these practices.

Upwork, are you willing to address these concerns and make changes that support the freelancing community, or are you solely focused on catering to agency profiles? Clarification would be appreciated." #Upwork

Like Fiverr this site is basically worthless. People in 3rd world countries with a very low cost of living can afford to charge pennies compared to designers in the USA. So that means they get all the jobs. Don't waste your time.

The freelancers who work there are mostly hard-working, and the clients are mostly decent. However, nowadays Upwork is trying to exploit every possible penny from everyone, while providing no improved platform for more than 3 years. The system breaks down so often, scam job posts are everywhere on the platform, the support team can not be reached for freelancers, the chatbot help function does not work at all, and Upwork has doubled the long-term contract fee from 5% to 10% this year, while doing nothing, or even worse - cut the freelancers' phone support service... And their so-called auto-bot customer service or online chat service is just another failure - NEVER worked EVER - 1 bug after another! The current CEO should be fired immediately, since she has done nothing in more than 4 years... If any lawyer saw an opportunity, start a lawsuit against this company, every freelancer and maybe some clients could get compensated for Upwork's unreasonable poor service vs. high fees! Let the group sue start ASAP!

The client has no option to turn off Auto Time Tracker. Once Freelancer starts tracking time, they get paid no matter what. The client can "dispute" but it is a useless feature. Upwork is forcing the client to pay their BS guarantee to freelancers and they cares 0% about the freelancer doing work right. The site is full of garbage freelancers, it is a waste of time hiring and trying to weed the total crap freelancers from decent freelancers, The 5-star rating system is as useless as Amazon or anywhere else. If you have to use Upwork, do fixed-price contracts and small milestones.

In good faith I started a design project on upwork and deposited money into an escrow account with them. I told designer that I was entering my busy season and if we did not get it done before then I may have to put it on hold. The work was not completed before our seasonal slam on my other business, so I left the money in escrow thinking I could pick up project again in a month or two when things slowed down. When I went back into upwork a month later, my escrow money was stolen, given to the designer for a project they never even completed. $350 that I thought was going to be sitting there to be spent on my project and it's gone. Live and learn, will never deal with upwork again.

This has been the worst experince of any I have had online. Upwork literally allows coders to deliver substandard wok and still get paid. The force you to disute into binding arbitration. We hire a coder Kiran Sutar, to develop our app. We had numerous meeting and he became irate because we keep telling him he was not giving us what we asked for. Found out he really did not know whaat he was doing. Reported this to upwork. The still paid him, we never got any work product or access to it even though the forced us to pay him $4000. The will not protect their customers.

Terrible customer service. No Support line, takes days to respond to inquires even when in the middle of multiple contracts. A terrible experience all around.

Upwork won't give me my earnings. The only way to reach a human is on a subdomain with an HTTP login prompt that belongs in the 1990s, like they're trying to make it more difficult for users to reach any actual support. They provide certification for race and orientation. I didn't know I was joining the Nazi Party. They withhold earnings without warning for no good reason. They are some lying woke thieves at Upwork.

I am a member and I requested to submit my proposal but it doesn't allow me to send it so I sent 6 emails to customer support and I have no response. A couple of od days later, Upwork wants me to pay my renewal membership fee because I am almost expired. I guess I need to pay the money so I can submit my proposal.

Upwork has worst support system ever.

THREE MONTHS! Have passed since my application.
There is no solution to the problem with my profile.

I write more and more new messages to my ticket, but I only get "the issue was transferred to our Technical team."

I have worked with Upwork for 7 years now and have a great reputation, but now I am not getting new orders at all because my profile is not working.

Be careful when working with this company. You may one day get similar problems with tech support.

At first it looks a promising place for a small business to hire a professional. Once post a job, their support cancels account stating that it is violating Terms of Service. Not specifying how and what exactly is violating TOS. Support is terrible and fails to address the issue.

Slow as crap. Slow page loads, partial pages loaded, and "Wait" buttons pop up constantly. This is a legitimate business? WORLDS WORST WEBSITE!

What a horrible business. They know of the fraudent freelancers who are working on their site and stealing money from customers and they don't do anything against it! Stay far away from them.

I can't believe it. I opened an Upwork account as one of my clients uses this site. 24 hours later, after being fully identified and verified, they deactivated my account without an explanation. I'm supposed to have violated their policies which is amusing as I have not been on the site long enough to do that.
I've asked for an explanation but won't be holding my breath._____________________________________________________________

Upwork has since contacted me directly. They claim their decision was related to a previous account and this one was only deactivated because they had too many freelancers who could do the same type of work. Whatever.
They still won't tell me which "serous violation" I am guilty of and hide behind their privacy policy. Just to let them know, the only reason I signed up with them in the first place is at the request of exiting clients. I won't be bothering anymore. If they can't be honest with a simple answer related to an account deactivation, they can use the same method to be dishonest in other ways as well.

Yet another irresponsible spammer that does not verify email addresses.

Anyone can sign up with email addresses that do not belong to them.

Then you are stuck with their endless spam and no way to unsubscribe.

We posted a project on Upwork over 4 months ago. The freelancer did not perform and refuses to refund the money stating he spent it and offered a payment arrangement. Upwork did not protect us instead replied that it is too late to dispute the charges, too late because the freelancer strung us along for months promising to work harder. We lost 4 months time and $4,500.00 plus the pending legal fees to fight it. Upwork has all the factual evidence and will not hold the freelancer responsible. I was scammed by the platform, we trusted the ratings and never expected to be victimized as we have.

Upwork is deducting 20% commission on our hard earned and also taking from us about 1$ for each proposal submission. J It is showing popups to buy connects to apply on jobs. I pray God to put a lock on Upwork doors and the CEO of the company should see a path to Hell.

Upwork takes no responsibility for anyones problems. They act like a middle man that doesn't have to resolve any issues putting sole responsibility on the freelancer and the client. When the freelancer and the client are on bad terms though, you come to find out there are no real solutions and when money is involved, this is a huge issue.

As a client, I've had 2 issues with freelancers and I'll leave it at that. I'd be writing a novel to describe my terrible experience with freelancers eager to sell their skill and desire to deliver on your project, to then only complain when they spend hours fixing their own mistakes. Blame you and get mad that it's a fixed contract price. I've wasted over $1,000 on this site with freelancers who treat their clients like crap. It's clear why they can't get clients on their own without this site. Upwork clearly doesn't care who works on their site. They should be focused on helping their customers who pay and actually make them money. They've done nothing to help and I'll be staying far far away from this company. I urge you to learn my my lesson and save your own money before going to this platform that should be shut down.

If I had one company to take off the face of this Earth, it would be Upwork. Downright, worst service I have ever experienced, both on the client side and freelancer side (and I have been with Upwork since 2009 when it was still Elance) so yeah I have a right to this ACCURATE opinion. They absolutely hate when you form a team of your own on the platform because they see it as competition and a liability to their bottom line (considering teams try to take jobs out of the platform to avoid the fees). Furthermore, there's terrible talent on there - my grandma can perform services better than most the foreign thirsty freelancers on there who can barely speak English and worst of all, there is no AUTOMATION to the service! Luckily, I'm fixing that. Have fun with your new competition, Upwork AKA Hellwork.

They posted a fake job posting and prompted me to sign up before applying. When I finished signing up, I went back to apply for the job and it wasn't possible. I realized that the post was an example of a job that I could get if I signed up and not for an actual job. It turns out the real application was to even be considered for jobs because they emailed me in the middle of the night to tell me that my profile wasn't accepted. I graduated with multiple awards and am looking for experience, but they're just looking to pad their bank account by taking massive billing fees from people who want to charge more.

I've used Upwork several times, and I have yet to get satisfactory work. I hired a CMO on the platform to manage a wordpress website project. 6 months and $65k later, I have 8 web pages that are not responsive, the builder doesn't work in the blog, an elementary design and I'm having to pay a new designer for a new website. I parted company with the CMO and her designer. They had rated me positively on Upwork until I cut them loose. Then, they changed their feedback. What type of nonsense is that? Upwork doesn't like accountability. I'm the client, I'm paying, yet when I give honest feedback about a provider, so others don't get poor performance like I have, I get a bad review. Lol I've worked with Marketers for 15 years, and I've yet to see a single one that understood personal accountability.

Upwork is just like any other big business, making money for themselves. Freelancers are obviously there because they need work, yet you have to pay to try to get work. That makes a lot of sense! And I say try because you have to bid on a job you're interested in. The more you pay, the better place in line they put you in to try to get you noticed. On top of that, you have to pay even more money once you get a job. They take a percentage of anything you make. I say anything because you're lucky if you even get a job. Most people that post jobs are either scammers or want to pay you absolutely nothing. If you need help with anything, you can never talk to a live person. And if you're lucky enough to get a response from Upwork via email, their response has nothing to do with your question. So it's absolutely pointless! It's just not worth it. These guys tried to create something new, but it's just a money grab. Stick to temp services.