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Upwork

Score8.4 out of 10

73 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Upwork?

Upwork headquartered in Mountain View, California offers their eponymous freelance management system (FMS).

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Who Buys & Uses Upwork

Upwork Reviews

What users are saying about Upwork.
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Warmest Lead Gen Network on Upwork

Incentivized
Ch Shahryar FazalView profile
Business Development in Sales at Silver Ant Marketing (SAM) (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am using Upwork for the last 4 years to hunt Marketing, Development and BPO projects for my company. Upwork is the platform on which if you follow the growth patterns you can easily get the warm leads for your niche. My experience throughout this tenure has been very pleasant and I would recommend Upwork to freelancer who are looking to work independent with diverse clients around the globe.

Pros

  • Get you connected with Relative Jobs
  • Opportunities to tap bigger Projects
  • You can also hunt Talent around the Globe as per your requirement

Cons

  • Connects pricing has increased a lot and it should be managed to keep the platform user friendly
  • Upwork should allow to share email and meeting invites for Team Members through Agency Account
  • To grow the biggest Lead Gen platform Upwork should reduce the 10% Fee to 5%.

Return on Investment

  • Efforts and Growth on Upwork is directly proportional to the Revenue
  • Received 4x investment return every month
  • Once the profile is developed you received good business and recognition on Upwork

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Fiverr and Toptal

Other Software Used

Fiverr, Toptal

Upwork is great at getting employers and freelancers together

Incentivized
Gustavo Du MortierView profile
Software Engineer in Information Technology at Mastersoft (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Upwork to find freelance job offerings that I can do in my free time, such as technical writing jobs. The platform is great to find jobs that match exactly my particular skills. And there's plenty of job offerings. Search filter also help a lot to refine complex searches.

Pros

  • Protect both employers and freelancers interests
  • Validate user's identity
  • Guarantee payments

Cons

  • Upwork could benefit from using AI to spot potential scammers
  • They should emphasize the risk of accepting a job when the employer is suspicious
  • They should clarify when paid bonus are not guaranteed

Return on Investment

  • I have to pay Upwork 10% of my payments which is ok
  • It has a good impact on my business a I get more clients
  • It offers a safe communication channel between freelancers and employers

Alternatives Considered

Freelancer.com

Other Software Used

Freelancer.com, Fiverr

Absolutely amazing tool for an Outsourcing company to get quality Leads from

Incentivized
Ishant Harjai
Business Development Manager in Marketing at FAB Web Studio (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Well, it is the best Freelancing platform in the world for a reason. I have been working on UpWork since 2012 and it has been fantastic. Our agency also uses it get most qualified leads from.

UpWork has everything:
- For an Agency: It gives a way to manage the teams, their finances, the work, client and freelancer communication etc.

- For a Freelancer: It goes even beyond that. As with UpWork someone can start earning from Day one with a very minimal investment.

Pros

  • Provides exceptional leads for our business
  • We can find the right jobs from a very vast pool
  • We have an amazing Dashboard that we can use to work and communicate with our clients.
  • The payments system is hassle free. When I work with a client and if I bill them on Hourly basis, I get a payment guarantee.

Cons

  • Finding bad spots are hard in this amazing online tool. I can say that sometimes I feel that UpWork connects system is very expensive.
  • Bidding on some jobs costs more than 20 connects which is not quite budget friendly for people starting out.

Return on Investment

  • Absolutely amazing ROI for us. As we get about 90% of our business leads from UpWork
  • Everything positive about it.

Alternatives Considered

Freelancer.com, Guru.com and Fiverr

Other Software Used

Freelancer.com, Guru.com, Fiverr

Upwork can be a great resource, but it's the Wild West and there are plenty of ways to waste time and money!

Joshua Groves
Director in Engineering at MM Acquisitions, LLC (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Upwork when we have short, randomly-occurring tasks that we need completed and it's not worth hiring a permanent staffer. For instance, when we need seasonal customer outreach calls made, or if we need some graphic design work done for some marketing material.

Pros

  • Huge selection of talent.
  • Good at presenting the skillsets of the freelancers.
  • Easy to understand and use user interface.
  • Mobile app works decently well.

Cons

  • Biggest issue: In my experience, about 1/3rd of Upwork freelancers are running some sort of hustle where they overbill and under-deliver.
  • Second biggest issue: In my experience, most of the Upwork freelancer's English is pretty bad.
  • Third biggest issue: In my experience, a lot of the Upwork freelancers come from cultures who's expectation of quality work do not match those of my country.

Most Important Features

  • Low cost.
  • Flexible resources to augment our staff.
  • Easy to use.

Return on Investment

  • Positive: great ROI on simple, very clearly defined tasks.
  • Negative: I feel it is frustrating and a waste of time on more complex tasks.

Alternatives Considered

Fiverr

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Podium, Pipedrive, ServiceTitan

My experience...Scammed by (in my opinion) Upwork freelancer

Lena Mannerfelt HolmView profile
Art Director in Marketing at Oceanlogo (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used Upwork to hire a freelancer to help us get back a hacked and deleted facebook account. We were unfortunately decieved by the freelancer who did absolutely no work and had made us pay in advance. We naturally had the Upwork Customer service involved, but we got no help whatsoever in the dispute, even though complete evidence were presented of the fraud. In my opinion it is very sad that Upwork permit scams on their site. They also removed the review I wrote about the freelancer. Please be careful everyone...

Pros

  • Their site looks good

Cons

  • In my experience, they allow scamming on their site, freelancers ripping clients off
  • In my opinion, their Customer Support don't take disputes seriously
  • In my experience, Upwork removes written reviews

Most Important Features

  • Featuring freelancers

Return on Investment

  • Taken a lot of time in a dispute
  • Waiting to hear from Customer Service (who did not respond)
  • Getting scammed by a, in my opinion, hacker (the freelancer we hired)

Alternatives Considered

Fiverr