Upwork

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.

After paying them $29.99 to unlock unlimited invites for jobs I realized this payment applies for only 1 job. It's really stupid to pay them $29.99 every time.

Suspended without any reason!
I was writing to support, they answered me to contact them on email, I have sent a message and they never failed to respond

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 am glad that I earned a lot of projects with active clients on Upwork. Upwork is good for finding and working with long term clients, be genuine with them and you can earn a handsome amount.

Upwork is a place where I spend my whole day to earn something and I really mean it as at the end of the day I have something in my pocket just because of them. Thank you

I do NOT recommend Upwork, it discriminates, its completely unethical and such an insult to you and your work ethics. It is DISGUSTING & HIGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL. DO NOT RECOMMEND! LEARN TO BE PROFESSIONAL OR CLOSE YOUR BUSINESS!

I had a good experience using Upwrok, got a job that works with my languages (English, Russian). I definitely recommend the page and I will use it again.

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.

I was a client on Upwork. Hired a freelancer who turned out to be a fraud! He tricked me into paying him lying that the deadline had been approached BEFORE I had a chance to review his finished work. On completion, it turned out he had stuck me with a FREE SSL certificate for my website that was going to expire in 90 days. It did not even have my domain name on it! It caused a security red flag on my website. I had to spend MORE MONEY to fix it. When I showed them proof of that, free-lancer admitted to giving me a FREE certificate to expire in 90 days. But Upwork DID NOTHING to get me back my money. ASKED ME TO PAY AN ADDITINAL $300 TO GET BACK $150! BEYOND RIDICULOUS!

I paid to upgrade and never hear back. I made up the ******* but it says I haven't reached the limit. I have sent countless emails but nothing. Waste of my time and money.

I really enjoy upwork. I recommend it to everyone.
For new freelancers it s a bit hard to get jobs but if you keep pushing you will get what you want.
Overall great website

Upwork is the best freelancing marketplace for the freelancer like me who are trying to grow his/her career with a full of joy. I recommended Upwork for the self employed people for their career.

UpWorks escrow system is very helpful for me. I like their security measures to protect freelancers and clients. Their customer support is readily available by phone. Their website is sometimes hard to navigate. I like their option for phone and video conference through Upwork although many clients don't seem to have a clue how to use it -- maybe some client instructions on that could be added. I would also like to see the service fee % set for total Upwork sales level rather than only on repeat client sales. More and more freelancers are using Upwork for work that doesn't get repeat clients such as in my business of landscape designs which target homeowners who have only one property to landscape and my designs will last for years. This is discriminatory to businesses such as mine. Since client's payment methods and my bank have been verified at the time of hire, why does UW take so long before the payments are transferable and show up in my bank account when the transactions are electronic?

It is great freelancing website and I help buyer to get they need. I am working on upwork from 1 year and I have great experience with this website.
Highly recommended.
Thank you upwork

Upwork has provided me and millions of people around the world the means to work and earn at the safety of our homes - truly a blessing in the middle of this pandemic or crisis.

I started my freelancing career on Upwork 7 months ago. There are a lot of jobs which are fit with my skills and I met some great clients. I really enjoy working on Upwork!

Other than other work from home websites with just empty words, this platform indeed gives you work opportunities and guaranteed income. Safe and securely.

I am a social media expert and would love to work with Upwork. Thank you, Upwork. Upwork always helps me in my work. They give a response as soon as possible.

It's a very good freelancing website. It's difficult at the beginning (just like every good thing), nonetheless, its services are top notch. Highly recommend!

I've been working on Upwork since they merged with Elance. I've been able to keep steady jobs coming in that pay very well. I highly recommend them to anyone looking to freelance.