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Upwork, a popular freelancing platform, offers a range of use cases for both individuals and businesses. Users have utilized Upwork as a …
Starting at $49.99 per month
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What is Upwork?
Upwork headquartered in Mountain View, California offers their eponymous freelance management system (FMS).
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$49.99
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per month
Basic
Free
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Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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What is Upwork?
Upwork Video
At Upwork, we believe the best companies win with the best talent. But great people can be hard to find. Through Upwork, you can hire and collaborate with high-quality independent professionals with the exact skills you need to get the job done. Watch our short video to learn ...
Show More Upwork Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Upwork headquartered in Mountain View, California offers their eponymous freelance management system (FMS).
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.1.
The most common users of Upwork are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
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Upwork, a popular freelancing platform, offers a range of use cases for both individuals and businesses. Users have utilized Upwork as a customer acquisition channel, enabling them to create a higher number of blog posts, copy for ads, and graphics for social media and Google ads at scale. The marketplace provides the opportunity to hire contract developers for small to medium-sized projects, allowing users to prioritize marketing tasks over content creation. Upwork has also become a go-to platform for agencies looking to find clients that match their specific Amazon seller skills, while facilitating billing and invoicing processes. Freelancers leverage Upwork to build a client database and generate extra income by utilizing their writing abilities. With its hourly service model, Upwork helps businesses grow in client volume and build trust through regular screenshots.
Additionally, the platform is used for short, randomly-occurring tasks that don't require hiring permanent staff or when departments are overloaded and specific skills are needed. It solves administrative pain points by providing virtual assistance for general administrative duties and data analysis. Upwork can be a quick way to outsource tasks or projects without upfront expenditure and ensures that freelancers get paid worldwide. This has proven beneficial in boosting efficiency in workflow and roadmap by providing candidates for different project lengths and commitments. Overall, users have found that Upwork streamlines the process of finding, vetting, and managing an outsourced workforce while effectively tracking hours worked and facilitating payment activities.
Valuable platform for finding verified talent: Many users have found Upwork to be a valuable platform for finding reputable and verified designers, writers, and creative talent. They appreciate the extensive candidate pool on Upwork, stating that it almost guarantees finding individuals who specialize in the specific skills they are looking for. Convenient communication and project management: Users appreciate how easy it is to communicate with customers and keep track of billing, tracking, and conversations in one place on Upwork. They also like the messaging service available on Upwork's desktop app, browser app, and mobile app, which allows them to stay in constant contact with clients regardless of their location. Flexible payment options: Some users find it useful that Upwork offers both fixed bid and hourly options. They mention that these options are helpful for different kinds of projects and provide flexibility when working with freelancers.
Difficult to contact customer service: Many users have expressed frustration with Upwork's customer service, finding it difficult to get in touch and feeling that the company lacks transparency in their decision-making processes.
Upwork does not prioritize freelancers' best interest: Reviewers frequently mention that Upwork seems to prioritize its own interests over those of the freelance community. This has led many freelancers to feel disposable and undervalued on the platform.
High fees charged by Upwork: A common complaint among users is the high fees charged by Upwork, especially for freelancers who are just starting their businesses. These fees are seen as a significant barrier and make it challenging for both clients and freelancers to use the platform cost-effectively.
Users recommend the following when using Upwork:
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Be patient and put in consistent effort to find good clients and build a good rating. Thoroughly fill out your Upwork profile and explain your needs clearly.
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Send multiple pitches per week and bid lower than others when starting out. Take on jobs outside of your preferred skills to get the first few 5-star reviews. Start with small, quick turnover projects to build your portfolio. Ask for fair pricing to avoid charging too little.
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Use a guide and review freelancers' performance on Upwork for reliability. Conduct thorough interviews with candidates on Upwork and communicate only through the platform. Make sure to explain what you need in detail and have a clear idea of what you want.
Overall, users highly recommend trying Upwork for freelancing opportunities and finding qualified professionals. They believe that Upwork is a great platform for achieving business objectives, economic independence, and connecting with excellent freelancers quickly.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-23 of 23)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
October 04, 2023
My experience...Scammed by (in my opinion) Upwork freelancer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Their site looks good
- 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
July 18, 2023
Upwork can be a great resource, but it's the Wild West and there are plenty of ways to waste time and money!
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Huge selection of talent.
- Good at presenting the skillsets of the freelancers.
- Easy to understand and use user interface.
- Mobile app works decently well.
- 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.
September 22, 2022
Upwork creates and aide in business Efficiency!
- Short term staff replacement.
- Helpful with projects.
- Business Growth.
- Workplace efficiency.
- Billing notices.
September 16, 2022
Upwork - A Great Place to be Connected with Projects that are Specific to Your Skills
- Providing me with opportunities specific to my specialty.
- Matching me up with clients.
- Making me feel secure about being paid.
- I don't always show up in key-word related search for my skills.
- The talent managers constantly invite me to apply to jobs that are not appropriate.
- Dispute resolution is pathetic. The person who was in charge was barely literate.
- Job posters should have to be more specific about what industry/type of business they are in.
September 14, 2022
Upwork is great
- Easy access to talent
- Allows us to bring our own talent if needed
- Easy and safe payment system
- NA
September 13, 2022
I feel as Upwork tried to destroy our business.
- Big project database.
- Communication with customer is easy.
- 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.
September 13, 2022
The best way to find contractors, track their hours and see positive results for your projects!
- Easy to find reputable and verified designers, writers and creative talent
- Keeps billing, tracking and conversations in one easy to manage place
- Makes sharing a job listing quick and easy and pulls in new potential contractors at lightning speed
- Once you find a professional you have to make sure to turn off applications to make sure that you don't continue to receive email notifications about inquiries.
June 28, 2022
Upwork Is A Freelancer's Dream
- Provides means of easier communication and contract setup
- Matches our skillset with people in need
- Makes it easy to bill and invoice clients all in one location
- They are really particular about not taking people off the platform, which can make things difficult during the initial meeting process if they want to know more about us or if they have trouble using the call features. It is understandable though, so Upwork doesn't lose the business off the platform.
- Their calendar sync feature can be a little tricky and make it hard to schedule calls or meetings. I was able to figure it out, but it took me a bit.
- I don't really like how you have to pay for connects when applying for jobs, but I understand why Upwork does it.
September 13, 2021
Upwork - Easy Freelancer Software
- Periodic screenshots - Upwork takes screenshots every 10 minutes which the client can view and feel confident in progress that is being made.
- Upwork messaging - The desktop app, browser app, and mobile app all feature a messaging feature that lets you stay in contact with the client at all times.
- Time Zone sync - Clients are across multiple time zones and it gets confusing adding manual time if you forget to track time.
- Finding clients
- Screening clients
- Collecting payment
- Tracking time
- Application occasionally has bugs.
- Better messaging integration to the application.
April 23, 2020
Great platform to bring together service providers with business owners in the most agile way
- Outsourcing
- Services Platform
- Contract
- It is a bit hard to distinguish good, high-quality service providers from the mass, huge amount of population. Due to high competition, even high-quality services are forced to lower prices and this can be realized only once the service is completed. So UpWork has room for improvement to distinguish quality from the mediocrity.
- Even though it is supposed to increase the overall quality, the entry barrier is a mechanism to prevent quality service to enter into the free market, too. So, rather than simply disallowing new memberships, there must be a better way to filter good service providers.
March 06, 2020
Upwork works!
- It's a global platform.
- I feel secure using it.
- It's an easy to use program.
- It could do a better job at filtering people.
- It could do a better job at telling us the rules of use for Upwork.
- The user interface could look better.
November 06, 2019
Upping the Freelancer Game
- It provides access to talent across the globe -- location is no longer an issue.
- The feedback/rating system helps with choosing the right candidate.
- The escrow system is great for us to feel safer. It can be scammed still, but only to an extent.
- The error messages are quite prevalent. The system isn't fail-safe.
- I signed up to receive notices about partial disruptions, etc, and I get a handful of notifications weekly.
- The mediation services that help with the return of escrow are not always just.
December 07, 2018
Upwork offers flexibility, credibility and trust to your outsourced workforce search
- Ratings and reviews of outsourced workers help add credibility to your potential contractor.
- Payments via escrow once milestones are agreed upon and executed makes for a seamless transaction.
- The ability to filter on several dozen categories allows you to find the contractor with the precise skill set you are looking for.
- Searching for contractors could use some help as keyword search drives many applicants that are not qualified.
- Although the current filters are great, more precision could be added to drill down deeper into categories.
- When posting a job, the responses you get are canned from about 75% of applicants. It would be nice if Upwork developed a system to flag applicants that respond with the same verbiage to everyone.
December 02, 2018
Expands your network to around the globe
- It has a lot of job opportunities (single projects)
- Great amount of companies searching for developers and designers
- The search tool is awesome, offering tools and filters to display exactly what you are looking for
- They could offer better pricing for small companies
- Change the way they handle company accounts (who are offering services), it's somewhat confusing
- Since there are so many developers, they could better distinguish job offerings from individuals to companies
November 18, 2018
Upwork - Global marketplace for hiring freelancers
- 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.
- Costs and fees. Upwork is not cheap. As a client you pay a fee to Upwork on top of what you're paying to your freelancer. As a freelancer, you ALSO pay a fee (20% of the first $500 earned from a client and 10% until you hit $10K, where it then goes to 5%).
- The process for using Upwork can be lengthy when you're trying to find a new freelancer for something you have not hired for previously. Per Upwork, it takes an average of 3 days for a client to hire a freelancer.
- Job success scores are not exactly accurate. If a freelancer ends a contract that has been sitting open too long, clients are not required to leave feedback. No feedback counts as a negative toward job success score.
June 27, 2018
Quality work for a fair price
- Great interface. It is easy to navigate around and find the type of work you need
- Able to read reviews of others who have worked with the individual
- Safe and fair payment for both sides of the job
- Upwork is in a difficult business where their success depends on the reliability of the people who use the product. I think if they continue to focus on their customer service they will be going in the right direction.
- It would help to have the option to communicate more with them prior to hiring.
- More payment methods.
June 04, 2018
Upwork is the best online jobs marketplace!
- Upwork allows you to easily filter the job listings and find the job that fits your preferences.
- Upwork allows you to feel secure with every transaction with their payment system in place.
- Upwork allowed me to do what I love and earn more while I'm at home or traveling.
- Upwork should focus on allowing people to part of the platform based on test results and not just not accept them because there are lots of freelancers already with the same skill.
- It should also be strict with some of the job postings like suspending those with just soliciting for free work or proposals.
- Upwork should proactively provide free valuable to its top freelancers.
- They should improve the metrics they use for the "Job Success Rate."
- Messaging service is available in a browser, Windows, and Android, so I can communicate with clients wherever I go.
- Project searching is very powerful, which makes it easy for me to find projects to bid on.
- Scaled project fees make great sense for long-term commitments.
- Ratings and feedback system make it easier to spot good clients.
- Tech support is active and always responsive.
- Scaled project fees make it hard to get started with some clients.
- Kinda wish we could chat with clients before making a bid, but it seems to make sense the way it is right now.
- High volume of leads with little effort on your part
- Decent rates and a wide variety of work
- You have a profile so you can brand yourself there and it is easy to get started.
- Job Success score has nothing to do with "job success." It is a arbitrary number that punishes freelancers like me that aren't doing services where a company would use me again and again. Also, they punish you for leaving jobs open even though most clients want to leave the job open in case they have followup questions.
- Not enough follow up to try to get clients to leave reviews. You are punished if they don't leave feedback.
- The platform is price sensitive, this may be a smart move but it also turns a lot of top freelancers away.
March 30, 2018
Great platform for beginning your freelancer experience
- Upwork's payment platform is really secure since it counts with direct bank account linking Upwork counts with hacking prevention and a high level of encryption. Also, it is always really responsible for its payments, if you do the work listed in the time provided, then expect to be paid.
- Other sites have a minimum rate, in Upwork this is free, so the competition with other freelancers gets interesting. And there is a progression once you get more work, which allows you not to be stuck with the same work rate.
- When trying to hire a freelancer, it's really easy to set the money you will expect, since the freelancers provide a fixed or hourly rate. You can specify a preference in your job posting depending on your needs.
- Upwork is pricey, they take 10% of every transaction of the freelancer, and if you have a premium membership the cost gets higher.
- Doing your first freelancer job can be difficult since there are so many freelancers on that website, so be prepared to set a really low rate at first.
- The website can be a bit laggy. I have lost some jobs just because I'm not able to load the information before the clock finishes just because of some lag issues.
- Reaching out to talent for short-term projects: It is a quick an easy way to have extra manpower for your project, all you have to do is create an account on Upwork and post your project online.
- Easy to manage your freelancer's performance: once you have found the right freelancer, you would need to direct them to finish your project as you require. Using Upwork, you will be able to monitor your freelancer's work online. Working hours are recorded and screenshots can be requested through Upwork's software (need to install Upwork on your computer).
- Easy to make a payment to your freelancer: You can make payment to a freelancer half way around the world through Upwork which makes it extremely convenient for both freelancers and project owners.
- More payment methods: at the moment, an online transfer is available as the only payment method to freelancer. It would be nice if both project owners/freelancers could choose other payment methods (such as gift card or discount of a particular product/service).
- It would be great if Upwork can have a quick test for project owners to use to test the potential freelancer (for example, quick language test to make sure the freelancer is capable of translating a particular document).
- Giving points to freelancer: some freelancer that do particularly well on a task could be rewarded by project owners and those points could be converted into some prizes to encourage a freelancer (currently only reviews are available).
March 17, 2017
Opens up a world of freelance talent, instantly
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Breadth of talent (thousands of freelancers, rated by users).
- Ease of communication (instant chat, file sharing).
- Instant access to talent (post a job and get replies within a few minutes).
- I'd like the ability to share folders in addition to individual files.
- On some occasions, I'd like to post a job without revealing my budget. Would be nice for freelancers to propose a price.