Upwork

Honestly, I love Upwork. It has made it so much easier to find people that are looking for our skillset and get us connected in a way that is very easy. They also do a great job of vetting people who want to use the platform, so you know you are getting a real person when a job is posted or when you apply to a job posting.

Upwork is great for freelancers who work in the design industry since the screenshots help the clients see a step progress of whatever you are designing.
Upwork is great, in general, for freelancers who work on a digital platform, since the screenshots help with that.
Upwork might not work well with physical freelancers who don't work on a computer. However, if you set up a webcam in your workspace, Upwork could take screenshots of the live feed.

I don't get involved with support cases, but from what I've overheard it is good.

Upwork is perfect if you are looking to find clients for your service. I think Upwork would be not so appropriate if you are selling more complicated services or products. Ongoing jobs with communication between clients and workers are ideal. It works best for service-based businesses that can handle multiple client's jobs at the same time.

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.

UpWork is especially useful when a spontaneous, niche, rather specialized custom work is needed such as graphic design where one's company/organization might not have such a team within. Because UpWork is full of responsive, responsible, hard-working, and highly available service providers, even strict deadlines will be met thanks to its great community and performance system UpWork created. So it can be said, rather than everyday tasks, UpWork is best fitted for niche, custom work that can arise in somewhat exceptional times with strict deadlines.

Conventional outsourcing consists of going over 3rd parties, interviewing them, going through bidding, and a lot of bureaucracy which causes a lot of inefficiency in terms of time and cost. Not to mention finding these 3rd parties in the first place before all these long processes of bureaucracy. UpWork pretty much eliminates all of these downsides, being a platform to bring freelancer service providers with business owners in a very agile way, such that it is possible to roll up the sleeves and get into the actual work. UpWork's system also protects both the business and service providers thanks to the trustworthy community it built over years, as well as the system that ensures that. So as the business owner you're sure you'll get the quality service you need.

If you are looking to hire people quickly, Upwork does a great job. It allows you to hire people from around the world. If you are looking for general administrative jobs, this is the perfect platform. We did not use this for very advanced hires, we felt like that was better done in person.

Overall, Upwork is great. Compared to the competition, it's one of the best out there. It was great when I first started my business and I've been thinking about using it again. It has allowed me to hire freelancers to get jobs done quickly and efficiently, I don't know if I would have found a better solution out there.

Upwork does what it is purported to do -- connects freelancers to clients, and does it better than others we tried. New freelancers come and say they moved over because of the safety the escrow provides, and we use it very efficiently as clients. Even with all its faults, if you need a freelancer for anything, Upwork is a good choice.

They respond quickly and solve problems ASAP. The mediation is the only weak point, granting scammers a % of the money they didn't earn. Just because they submit a job full of errors we don't want to fix, they aren't entitled for pay that is set aside for the job done well.

Upwork is well suited for startups and small companies looking for outsources help. It is probably a bit too all encompassing for the enterprise, as the needs of the enterprise are not fully met because of a lack of privacy tools such as NDA's and onsite visits.

I think it's perfect for short term projects, since if you work with clients from around the globe, you don't know if they're organised and follow best practices on project management.

On the client side, Upwork is great for accessing a huge pool of talent in a wide variety of skill sets. It's also excellent for finding US-based freelancers. It allows you to interview (chat with or ask questions of) freelancers before you hire them, so you can get an idea of whether or not someone will be a good fit for your project.

On the freelancer side, Upwork is a mixed bag. Their policy of "receiving no feedback hurts job success score" seems unfair. This is far overshadowed by the 20% fee on the first $500 though. It makes doing small projects on the platform a lot less profitable or desirable (maybe they do this on purpose?). It is extremely nice though to be able to filter projects for "US only," though.

There are many projects where we do not need someone on our team to be dedicating all their time to it, so Upwork is great for those scenarios. Instead of training someone for days on how to use something, an Upwork specialist can complete it in just hours.

Upwork is suitable for freelancers who are looking for a shift of career from the usual corporate setting to a more flexible online freelancing career. I believe it's best for beginners and pros - there are lot of opportunities for everybody. It's not suitable for people who like to work in a typical office - obviously! Upwork is great for us millennials who love working flexible or even work-leisure integrated lifestyles.

As a freelance hub, Upwork seems to be a great place for individuals to get started in the freelance world. Compared to other options, Upwork makes it easy to set up a profile and gain exposure that might otherwise be impossible. At the same time, standing out in a sea of freelancers can be difficult, especially for one just starting out. Still, I can't recommend a better way to get started, really. There are paid memberships, but I get enough exposure without them.

It is great if you are trying to get some easy freelance work. It's not great if you can't provide a complete service by yourself. It's also not great if you are a large brand looking for an agency partner to work with. Once you are more than a $10 million dollar business, you need to go to the next level and not use platforms like Upwork.

From a freelancer point of view, Upwork is an excellent platform for starting to work on your own. It can help in connecting with lots of potential clients whose needs match your talents, whether it is for writing to graphic design and software developing, just keep in mind that at first, it will be a little bit difficult getting your jobs with a good pay rate but once you gain a good reputation, work will practically come along.

Upwork is extremely useful if you are in need of an urgent talent for your project. For example - you need to translate your website into a local language for a market and your staff simply does not know that language, or you need to develop a mobile app to enhance sales through a mobile channel but you do not have any staff who knows to develop a mobile app. All of this could be done by a freelancer on Upwork; either it is a native in the local language who lives halfway around the world from you or a software engineer that does freelancing projects in his/her free time.

I can't think of a scenario where Upwork doesn't work. Perhaps if you need to meet with your contractor face-to-face, you should look into a local option.