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Upwork

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Overview

Upwork has a rating of 2.5 stars from 2,119 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers complaining about Upwork most frequently mention customer service, credit card, and job success problems. Upwork ranks 6th among Freelancing sites.

  • Service
    477
  • Value
    459
  • Shipping
    253
  • Returns
    289
  • Quality
    453

This company does not typically respond to reviews

Positive reviews (last 12 months): 16.7%
Positive
3
Neutral
0
Negative
15
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270
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How would you rate Upwork?
Top Positive Review

“Unlocking Freelance Opportunities with Upwork”

पपीता म.
4/23/24

Upwork has been my trusted platform for finding freelance opportunities and connecting with clients from around the world. The platform's vast network of clients and freelancers, comprehensive job listings, and secure payment system make it easy to find meaningful projects and build a successful freelance career. I appreciate Upwork's commitment to transparency and professionalism, as seen in its dispute resolution process and feedback system, which ensure fair and equitable transactions for both parties. Moreover, the platform's collaboration tools and communication features enhance teamwork and streamline project management. With Upwork, freelancing is not just a job—it's a rewarding and fulfilling career.

Date of experience: 4/22/24
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Top Critical Review

“Not worth it”

P X.
9/10/24

Business practices are arbitrary and unfair with the cost for freelancers of doing business on the site constantly increasing and various services and perks taken away. Not worth it for freelancers--and clients don't fare much better.

Date of experience: 9/10/24
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Reviews (2,119)

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Reviews that mention popular keywords

customer service (91) freelancing platform (135) credit card (22) customer support (44) payment protection (24) freelancing site (80) bank account (20) freelancing career (25) post jobs (16)
Thumbnail of user jigneshs7
India
1 review
0 helpful votes
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September 16th, 2020

I have been using this before a year and gained many contracts. This platform provides very good clients and if we stuck in any contract upwork support team ready to help us.

Date of experience: September 15, 2020

Thumbnail of user ripplel
Brazil
1 review
19 helpful votes
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December 19th, 2014

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!

Service
Value
Shipping
Returns
Quality

Date of experience: December 19, 2014

Thumbnail of user igorm50
RU
1 review
0 helpful votes
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August 4th, 2020

I get a lot of good experiences. With one year of experience, my skills have improved to a new level. There are many great clients and Upwork's service is always friendly.

Date of experience: August 4, 2020

Thumbnail of user derrickj27
Kenya
5 reviews
13 helpful votes
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December 31st, 2018

My experience with upwork has been great so far. It was quite difficult getting it started, but over time I have gained track, earned customers trust, and seen my earnings rise.

Date of experience: December 31, 2018

Thumbnail of user subhanas
Pakistan
1 review
0 helpful votes
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September 21st, 2020

Upwork is the best platform to earn money online through your skills. I have tried many other platforms but they didn't proved good for me. I really enjoy working on upwork

Date of experience: September 21, 2020

Thumbnail of user taylors89
Australia
1 review
9 helpful votes
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October 16th, 2017

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.

Date of experience: October 16, 2017

Thumbnail of user kathrinab4
Philippines
1 review
0 helpful votes
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May 6th, 2022

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.

Service

Date of experience: May 6, 2022

Thumbnail of user annys1
Poland
1 review
7 helpful votes
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November 22nd, 2014

Super site.
Money delivered to my instantly from this services.
I'm gold membership and I earning there a lot of money.
They changed my life.
Thank you admin very much...:*

Date of experience: November 22, 2014

Thumbnail of user changl10
GB
1 review
9 helpful votes
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April 27th, 2017

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!

Date of experience: April 27, 2017

Thumbnail of user demid14
Pennsylvania
1 review
0 helpful votes
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June 27th, 2020

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.

Service
Value
Shipping
Returns
Quality

Date of experience: June 27, 2020

Thumbnail of user laxmib4
India
1 review
0 helpful votes
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July 2nd, 2020

Superb experience! 5 years on Upwork and it's been Totally worth it with many great opportunities...
Thank you, Team Upwork

https://www.upwork.com/fl/laxmibhatt

Date of experience: July 1, 2020

Thumbnail of user yogeshp8
India
3 reviews
3 helpful votes
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April 17th, 2018

Third class freelancing service provider, this is for only few peoples, not for all. They don't want allow you to make profile on there platform. Everything is rubbish. :/

Date of experience: April 17, 2018

Thumbnail of user nasira27
Pakistan
1 review
0 helpful votes
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June 23rd, 2021

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.

Service

Date of experience: June 22, 2021

Thumbnail of user tarac140
Georgia
1 review
7 helpful votes
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April 2nd, 2020

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.

Date of experience: April 2, 2020

Thumbnail of user bobsm
Pakistan
1 review
0 helpful votes
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December 9th, 2020

My experience was so good. I hired someone from Pakistan for doing my SEO task for event blogging and I'm shocked meanwhile time he completes his Job. Highly recommend

Date of experience: December 8, 2020

Thumbnail of user nyoree
Nigeria
1 review
0 helpful votes
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February 1st, 2021
Verified purchase

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.

Service
Value
Quality

Date of experience: February 1, 2021

Thumbnail of user douglascarrollg3
California
1 review
1 helpful vote
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November 1st, 2023

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.

Service
Value
Shipping
Returns
Quality

Date of experience: November 1, 2023

Thumbnail of user jheniner
Philippines
1 review
1 helpful vote
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March 10th, 2021

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.

Service
Value
Shipping
Returns
Quality

Date of experience: March 10, 2021

Thumbnail of user mazenm8
Lebanon
1 review
0 helpful votes
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August 13th, 2020

This is the best Freelance mobile and web application. Although the commission is a little bit high (20%), but it opens for you new opportunities to get hired by clients from all over the world.

Date of experience: August 13, 2020

Thumbnail of user diegon20
Argentina
1 review
0 helpful votes
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November 6th, 2020

Upwork has helped me move forward in my career. It's system has delivered everything I expected from it and made it super easy to deal with clients, manage job offers and search for new customers.

Date of experience: November 5, 2020

Thumbnail of user mateiioann
Sweden
1 review
3 helpful votes
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August 14th, 2018

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.

Date of experience: August 14, 2018

Thumbnail of user minhaju3
Pakistan
1 review
0 helpful votes
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September 15th, 2020

I have more than 1 year on upwork. And I got only 70$. Its not the amount which I was thinking about. Drawback of Upwork is less connects (According to me) It should be unlimited.

Date of experience: September 14, 2020

Thumbnail of user terrep263
Florida
1 review
3 helpful votes
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June 2nd, 2023

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.

Date of experience: June 2, 2023

Thumbnail of user michaelr1735
California
4 reviews
34 helpful votes
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December 10th, 2021
Verified purchase

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.

Service
Value
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Returns
Quality

Date of experience: December 10, 2021

Thumbnail of user jamesk1383
New York
1 review
0 helpful votes
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September 29th, 2020

Upwork does just fine. They have slowly improved and I wish they would hire a usability specialist to go through their entire website and make it more user-friendly.

Date of experience: September 29, 2020

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