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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
Cloud
per month
Basic
Free
Cloud
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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
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- Recommendations
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
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
September 13, 2021
Upwork - Easy Freelancer Software
Our organization's business model is based on a hourly service to our clients instead of a flat rate. Upwork has been a great tool in helping our business grow in client volume, since the large client base is built on trust by taking screenshots every 10 minutes. This proves to the client that we are working on them, and not goofing off.
- 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.
- Upwork takes a cut from revenue, but it's not devastating. After maintaining a large contract for a long time, that percentage they take is lessened.
- This percentage they take, however, makes us not want to add clients we find outside of Upwork to that platform.
- Harvest
Upwork is better in integrated messaging and keeping the client up-to-date with screenshots. However, the percentage that Upwork keeps from revenue is a big negative against Harvest, since you can just use email to communicate.
We use Upwork to find and sort clients for our organization. Upwork makes the screening of potential clients easy as well as communication with potential leads. We use Upwork to communicate with current clients and collect payment as well. All of our employees use Upwork to track time for client work and to communicate with clients. One of the most beneficial features is the billing, makes collecting invoices so much easier and it is automatic.
- Finding clients
- Screening clients
- Collecting payment
- Tracking time
- Application occasionally has bugs.
- Better messaging integration to the application.
- Invoice/collection of payment.
- Organization of client work.
- Time tracking by client.
We have used a few different pieces of software to search for clients and track time. Upwork does the best at combining all of the aspects that we need in order to be organized with client work, in addition to bringing us more clients. The time tracking software does better because it takes reports and bills the client accordingly.
April 23, 2020
Great platform to bring together service providers with business owners in the most agile way
It is used by departments independently, rather than a top-bottom approach. Our company lead and managed a significant amount of its wor through outsourcing and that's exactly where UpWork comes into play. UpWork makes it possible to find a vast range of skills in pretty much any area from graphic design to software development or simply translation. Hence, our organization uses UpWork within departments according to rather spontaneous needs, different departments having different business needs.
- 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.
- Using Upwork provided high quality low cost products.
- Allowed us to meet strict deadlines with its responsive community.
- Allowed us to be responsive in our business, rather than going through other 3rd parties with specialties.
March 06, 2020
Upwork works!
We've used Upwork for higher virtual assistance for our company. It was used when we were first starting out and needed some general administrative duties done. It helped solve some administrative pain points for our company. Afterward, we used Upwork for our Marketing department to help with some data analysis and record keeping.
- 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.
- Allowed us to hire globally, giving us a higher ROI.
- It's an easy to use platform, which saved us time.
- It was a secure platform which allowed us to save time not worrying.
Upwork is better if you are looking for some quick hires that can help solve simple problems. If you are looking for someone to join your team, I would recommend something like Indeed or ZipRecruiter. I've heard Fiverr is also good, but I haven't used it yet. Overall, Upwork is a great platform.
November 06, 2019
Upping the Freelancer Game
We use it to hire talent, from creative personnel to developers. For any skill we need or any job too tedious to be done by the core team, we outsource through Upwork. The external team fluctuates a bit, due to changing needs, but we also have a core team of freelancers who stay for a few months at a time.
- 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.
- You can find what you need at the price you need. It's the best way to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
Better cost to value ratio, and a greater range of talent; we need more than writers. Fiverr is still good for cheap logo designs.