Upwork

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.

Review from me as a client:
One of the main issue for me is when I activate the ability for freelancers to manually log hours. This opens the gate to scams. In the past, a freelancer asked me to activate this feature and logged the maximum number of hours for the week. Then, he didn't do anything.
Then, it is difficult to find good freelancers because good freelancers have limited options to promote their work. For me, I find that freelancers on fiverr are better than on upwork. There are lots of low skilled freelancers on upwork. You can't rely on the user reviews. They are far too optimistic. For example, I have hired a Freelancer with 80% success rate. I discovered this individual didn't work from a computer. He just had a cellphone to communicate with me.
Clients are rated too. It may explain why clients give feedback that are too good compared to the quality of a freelancer. It may take ages to find a good freelancer because you would need to hire maybe 6-7 of them to find the best one. The most straight forward and simple your request is and the better it is. It is easier to find a good translator than a good business advisor on upwork. I think you can be satisfied by upwork if you hire freelancers to achieve simple tasks. For example: review a product, write a piece of code, translate something... Conversely, if you look for marketing advice, HR advice, business advice, don't go there.
Also, i think that some freelancers are overpriced compared to employees. It sounds crazy but it can cost you more to hire freelancers than employees.

Up work get lot of money from freelancers from the connects + the 20% of the order which not fair at all. If they can give free connects it'll be worth it.

I have used Upwrok.com for many years now. Recently, I got into a dispute with a freelancer who overcharged me $700 over a 3-month period. After we got to some resolution of my getting some money back, he was able to remove my honest feedback about the situation. You cannot trust freelancer reviews!

I've had some really good contracts with Upwork and I'm grateful for it. However, the platform does barely nothing to help freelancers, except putting them in contact with clients. And even then, most clients are terrible. I think it is unethical to accept clients that pay people $3/h or $5 for a 2000 words article. If the platform can't offer a legit minimum wage, I think it is useless. And even then, it takes 20% of our money, even if we just made $5. So many clients are disrespectful and have unrealistic expectations and Upwork does not protect us. I have also lost a lot of contracts because Upwork deleted them even though they were totally legit. With all the money they made from my work, I would expect them to have a live chat for support. Instead, it takes them a day to answer by email. I keep getting frustrated when using this platform. If you ever want to use it, remember that Upwork is not your friend and it does not want to protect freelancers.

This is a great platform to work on. Anyone who is looking to start their freelance journey should start with Upwork.

Upwork owner are greedy for money after elance merged with. They charge freelancer for non. Thet want money mony mony and mony. Shameful policy.

So you find a freelancer that might fit the bill, you cannot direct message them without an upgraded account. You can "Invite" them which means you have to post a job to all freelancers, not just to the person you are interested in. In order to direct message the freelancer, I had to use the Hire option but I still don't really know if I want to hire this person since we haven't even exchanged even one msg. Goofy system (by design).

Upwork is a site full of professionals and employers
I have registered there and when I scroll through to see available jobs, it baffles me.
I will advice on professionals from video editing, autocad artists, writers and any artisans to check them out

Many years ago I had used oDesk to find freelance website developers. I had some success and was general satisfied. Then Upwork purchased Odesk and it all changed. The biggest change was in the trustworthiness of their freelancers and the way they made it impossible to work with their freelancers to manage websites without risking getting ripped off by the freelancers. I finally did get ripped off by a freelance so bad I will never use them again. If anyone wants to know who the Upwork freelancer that scammed me was, feel free to contact me at *******805

I've been using it for about 2-3 months now and I'm not a fan. Way too crazy with monitoring you. For hourly work they make you download a time clock which will take screen shots of your computer while you're working every 1-10 minutes at random. Total invasion of privacy and feels like the employer is standing over your shoulder. Also, they have to "review" your account and it takes 24 hours+ to do so, which will make you loose opportunities to other bidders for lucrative jobs. There's a way better way to do this that respects the privacy of the users and doesn't tie their hands so much. They also take 20% of your income for your first $500 in profit, and then lower the rate after that to 10%, which can be a lot depending on what you're doing.

Initially UpWork delighted with a clean user experience and easy setup. Unfortunately you will quickly find they are good at billing you, but reluctant to pay your contractors. We've spent four weeks trying to solve a payment issue with a contractor who we had told we would be paying every two weeks. Horrible customer service has pushed us off and failed to take quick ownership of the problems. We are taking steps to move away from UpWork as quickly as possibly.

I'm not happy with Upwork polices and rules. Working there for a 5 year as a freelancer at Odesk. But after updating to Upwork. They changed many rules. And that's why lot of freelancers are leaving this site. Odesk and Elance was best. But this is not good at all. Increasing fee day by day.

You have to be very specific about what you want. Otherwise you will pay for nothing. Because from the seller point of view, they cannot work for days in order to satisfy you. On the other hand as a buyer you except something that the seller must do it in a big percent of of what you expect. And if the seller is not be able to do it? Have not the skills? If the product delivered is not what you expect you will pay for it... and you will not be able to argue or get a refund. Just be careful. I would put average to good, but because I ordered a work I paid a lot and I received nothing that I can use, and I have to pay again for something and start it from the beginning I put 2 stars.

So I came to Upwork again and thought I give another try in getting in. After some adjustment to my profile, I got in... I start doing some stuff like send proposals and surfing the site for jobs related to what I do as a photoshop artist. Soon or days later I found out that Upwork has a bad policies and some flaws. Apparently they will kick you out if your not making it. Like not being at the top like others. Their site has too much fees and it seems like you got to buy connects once you wasted on proposals. Its hard to find the right jobs and well who knows how long I got being there? Their project catalog is crap. Its almost like Fiverr but with just too many details. They don't have a box for additional images. It looks the site is dying. They got over 7 million members but over thousand members are on..

I'm one of the first adopters as a software developer freelancer, worked on Elance since 2011, it was certainly a life-changing at that time, the platform was great, had both business owners and freelancers' best interests at mind, had very reasonable fees and functional withdrawal methods, it was undoubtedly rich in quality customers and quality work, good contracts and competent freelancers, if I'm voting on Elance would 100% give the best review can be written for a service 100 stars not just 5.

Then oDesk and Elance suddenly announced merging, and no more Elance, it's going to be Upwork, I'm not gonna lie, oDesk was the wasteland, the lowest quality freelancers mixed with very cheap tasks, it was just a nightmare, I remember one-time trying oDesk, the next day I came running to Elance, and falling in love even more.

So the merge happened and the new management asked us to migrate our profiles to Upwork from Elance as it was going to be killed, anyway my first impression of Upwork was 'holy mother of God', they made an oDesk with just a modern user interface, I then focused on my full-time job and didn't bother to even try Upwork, few years later I needed some extra cash so turned back and started actively using the service, contract fees were very low, requirements were very high, it was like they obviously chose the new strategy, give business owners a very competitive platform so they can get the lowest prices, never mind the quality, and basically nicely screw the freelancer, Merry Christmas.

To make it even worse, Upwork gradually started to screw the freelancers even further, give less free connect points, then make proposals require more connect points, then abolish all of this and just force freelancers to buy connect points so they can apply, all on top of very cruel fee system of 20%! 20 damn percent! They are milking the freelancer on top of milking the business owner, for me they only way I understood that was just it's greed, pure and simple, Upwork knew and believed that the majority of freelancers had no other way to go than finding work on their platform, they used this fact very well to just massacre freelancers' earnings.

Bottom line is, I'm a guy who's top-rated in Upwork and was from the top 3% of all Elance freelancers, my clients were always happy and had more than 50% return rate, so you can't say I'm a sour loser, but Upwork just can't survive like this, it's a matter of time until some good samaritan comes up with a better solution.

Be very careful who you hire on Upwork because if things go wrong, Upwork's powers of mediation are none existent, even if you present an infallible case!

Having raised such a case for mediation - due to freelancer unable to complete the job as agreed, as well as overcharging despite agreeing a fixed fee! - they simply didn't want to know.

It is my opinion that Upwork's allegiance is firmly with their freelancers who, lets face it, pay them a big commission (20%!) for each job they get.

So if they were to award in favour of the Client, it would dent their own profits! (where's the sense in that!?!)

Upwork mediation - Inept, toothless and bordering on unethical. Hence the review.

For people just starting to freelance, Upwork seemed like a great start if name recognition is your sole standard of an efficient platform. It may seem difficult to actually land a contract at first; and unfortunately, that's not helped by cits reputation as being a swarming place for exploitative, bottom of the barrel clients. But Upwork's always been transparent and proactive about payment policies (including their own percentage) as well as ensuring payment protection

Or at least they were. Recent policy changes in client/freelancer communications insist that Upwork is the sole platform to discuss projects with prospective clients. Which wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing If their conferencing and messaging options were in the least bit reliable. Their time tracker is notorious for inaccurate captures and crashing every two weeks, forcing reinstallation I've had several instances where a contract has been suspended due to unresolved payment resolutions with clients I haven't interacted with for YEARS (who indeed paid in full) only to find those suspensions negatively impacted my job rating. And Upwork's new policy of rewarding "badges" to top earners doesn't just encourage underhanded competition. It encourages an atmosphere based on financial incentives solely; not the quality of your work

But scammers continue to abound on Upwork. As do abusive, insulting and downright exploitative clients. Upwork can control that to some degree, but they've shown a whole sale lack of standards when vetting contractors in comparison to freelancers (who typically need to jump through hoops to optimize their listed services.)

While Upwork isn't the only game in town, they're the most reliable. They're also the most secure. But their policy changes and customer service are positively abysmal. In most cases, you won't be able to feed your family off of Upwork. But if you're looking for an additional source of income or are willing to adjust your lifestyle to fairly austere standards in order to freelance full time, it can be one of many solutions. A flowed solution, but a solution none the less. Just make sure you know what to look out for.

As a freelancer, the private and public feedback system is incredibly frustrating and unfair. Clients can leave you positive public feedback but also provide negative private feedback which factors into your Job Success Score. Freelancers have no way to improve their business and/or resolve issues with clients if they don't know what the issues are. Very unfair that UpWork encourages private feedback vs. asking clients to be open and honest with freelancers and then uses this information to bring down their scores and impact their ability to get future work. Also, much of the positive feedback a freelancer receives is excluded from the score unless it meets specific criteria like being given after a contract is ended and within 14 days. Many of my clients have preferred to keep contracts open for ongoing work but then this feedback doesn't count.

I've used the site as a freelancer for 6 years (originally O desk). To begin with it felt supportive and despite the huge competition from freelancers charging barely anything and clients wanting ridiculous amounts of work for pittance I started to build up work. I had 1 issue with a client and the support team resolved it fairly and quickly.

Nowadays I'm constantly getting emails about ‘changes to their terms' which are usually not beneficial for freelancers. The ‘connects' system is the final straw for me. Upwork already takes 20% of all my earnings (they charge the client 10 or 20% too on the same work) now they want me pay a monthly fee to be allowed to apply for jobs that make them their money? It's no longer viable for me, I'll use my few free connects for occasional jobs but I feel a bit ripped off by Upwork.

After contacting them, being told they'd take my license and then having them refuse to even look at it was typical of how they behave. Today they did add a license verification system so at least they have solved that offensive issue. Now, I'll indeed see how the rest of it all works out... 20%, however is still a rip off, in IMHO.

The system is very poor, I worked with it for more than 3 months, concluded both a small contract and a long-term one. One fine day, I decided to work. It says to me that your account is blocked, I wrote to the tech support, for 26 days they decided how to send them the documents to me, I still sent them what they asked, all the documents were correct and valid, but the account was deleted without any reasons and explanations. So I do not advise you to work with them very system!

I have encountered two scams so far on the upwork.com platform for freelancers. One where I even even lost money because you want to believe that such platforms do adequate screening of clients and freelancers, alike. After my ordeal it was then I found sites such as sitejabber.com and even the upwork.com community blog section report cases of clients who are offering bogus work. Very disappointed as I am an individual who is honestly looking for legitimate work, willing to give her all. If this is also you, look elsewhere to showcase yours skills and look elsewhere for freelance work.