Guru.com vs. Time Doctor vs. Upwork

Guru.com is great if you are a freelancer looking to connect with clients to get projects, but it is not for people looking for a steady flow of work or a more permanent employment situation. There is a learning curve before you can successfully get clients, but once you get the hang of it, it works nicely.

Incentivized

Time Doctor is well suited for certain businesses where some or many of the employees are now working remotely due to the pandemic and post-pandemic times. It is a good way for the employer to keep track of activity and (more or less) keep people honest. For businesses and employees where there are a lot of site visits, travel, etc., Time Doctor is a little impractical since it requires the employee to manually enter in whatever time was spent on tasks performed away from the computer. If an employer is hoping to track that activity, they still need to rely on the employees' honor systems to enter in times and tasks.

Incentivized

I would recommend Upwork to a colleague as a solution to workplace issues. Our company has utilized Upwork to vet out potential competitors as well as partners in a lengthy data analysis project, as well as given our engineering team extra hands when implementing new products, projects, and features. This has allowed our company to stay on track with projects without in-house manpower.

Incentivized

• Tracked time both macro (categories) and micro (down to the project and the tasks)
• Reminded us when we went off task and got lured in via social media
• Provides us with detailed reports to share with joint venture partners, clients and more

• Allows us to filter freelancers by location. This is especially important when working across time zones.
• Upwork is one of the only freelancing websites that actually provides a filter for US based contractors; and they rigorously verify this.
• Huge candidate pool. You're almost guaranteed to find a few individuals who specialize in whatever you're looking for.
• Allows both fixed bid and hourly. Each one is useful for different kinds of projects.

Incentivized

• Relatively high fees taken out of earnings
• Fake clients still get through, which causes a headache
• Having to pay to get your bid higher up in the list of freelancers makes it even more costly

Incentivized

• One thing I would love to see is integration with my cell phone. Time Doctor already has an app, but I want it to automatically capture the time I spend on my phone with clients. For now I have to manually enter in this time and must note when the call started and when it ended.
• Integration into Wave apps where I generate my invoices. I'd like to be able to select a project from Time Doctor in my invoice and have it automatically populate the time I spent on it and the dates I worked on the project rather than manually finding and entering this information.

Incentivized

• In my opinion the worst customer service. It is impossible to contact them via phone, and they are not transparent about their decisions.
• I feel they don't have the freelance community's best interest in mind. Their focus is on the companies that pay. Freelancers are disposable.
• They charge ridiculous fees to the freelancers that are the ones that need the money the most because they are the ones starting their businesses. It is like if your employer charges you for coming to work.

Incentivized

This is user friendly and can be tailored to our business' needs

Incentivized

I use this daily and it is very simple to use. The setup is very easy and customizing the fields is simple enough. Editing it is also very easy to do.

Incentivized

I have earned a lot on Upwork and I would always recommend it to my fellow peers and people who have skills and are looking independently and remotely from the comfort of their home. Once you get successful in developing a good profile on Upwork revenue target are more easier to achieve.

Incentivized

The support was terrible! They never responded in sufficient time and their assistance was always super vague. I never felt like they had an actual solution to my concerns. They were nice, but I don't feel like they were trained in their own system. It felt like I was talking to a wall.

Incentivized

Support has been great. Rarely have I ever had an issue that has required support but when I have they have been great. I did have to interact with support to confirm my identity and the process was easy and quick and support was helpful to know what I needed to do to accomplish that task.

Incentivized

Other than we are happy with the way Time Doctor works for us, no key insights.

Incentivized

I still use Rescue Time for different reasons. I review my stats once a week by email. I think it's a totally different product. My egg timer keeps me more on task, but it doesn't record my times

Incentivized

Upwork is better suited for finding contractors that you can have ongoing relationships. Compared to Fiverr, it's a much easier process to find qualified designers rather than one-time contractors to design simple things for you. The interface is easier to use as well and the billing management makes it so much cleaner and easier to know how much we're spending and how contractors are logging work hours.

Incentivized

• It helps me to use my time more effectively.
• For a small amount each month I believe I get a huge return on investment in form of traceability of my hours spent. The major factor that made me choose Time Doctor was the price and the value. I don't think I would still be interested if it was more expensive.

Incentivized

• We have gotten close to 50% of all of our clients through the platform.
• Upwork backs the work done through the platform, so no matter what the client or person you are working with does, you get paid for the work that you do. You aren't left hanging after doing hours of work for a client and then never getting paid for it.
• Made it easy to communicate with clients from different parts of the world and set up partnerships and agreements in an easier fashion. I would highly recommend it to anyone with a unique skill set.

Incentivized