UpworkReviews 2,128

I can't imagine this company will stay in business for very long. They froze my account saying there was suspicious activity which they couldn't explain and expected me to send them a copy of my licence or passport! Are they crazy? Who would share that type of information? Something is going on so beware if you have an account with them. Now I'm reviewing every single charge from them with my employee because I'm sure something isn't right.

I had been a freelancer at Upwork since 2014. I have found lots of clients there and have payed the 10% fee in exchange for their service as a job posting board and payment platform. Then things started to change - first, everybody were limited in the amount of the proposals they can make (~30 a month), then they had raised their fees to exorbitant 20%. I have landed a full time job, and left Upwork account to collect dust. Lately I have returned to Upwork and after making 5 proposals, my account was forcefully switched to invisible (It was their new drug dealer style policy - if you do not bring them money NOW, you will not get anything valuable from them), and after about a week my account was suspended. Emails were answered by a robot. I had never seen such rude and unprofessional attitude to the freelancers who are milked by their exorbitant 20% fees, treated like slaves with no rights, and kicked out for no reasons.

I would grade lower since I did manage to hire a relatively good freelancer on the platform, however the reason I'm giving Upwork a 1 star grading is far more significant.
It's on more than one occasion freelancers misrepresented their work history by claiming work they haven't done.
Upworks response, other than a generic "we will look into it" was that they can take responsibility only for the projects that were done on it's platform, but they do not take any responsibly for a freelancers' lies in regards any work that was done through a different medium.
A valid excuse for a startup, not a multi million $ company that is just trying to waver any responsibility.
I had no choice but to contact the affected companies directly.

Suddenly one day they suspended my account permanently and blocked my funds.
I worked hard on Upwork to improve my rating to top rated and I was on the way to be top rated, however they suspended my account blocking my funds.
No reason was cited for suspension of my account.
I am highly disappointed with their action and also concerned about my funds earned.
I am planning to take legal action against Upwork if I get good support from freelancers who have affected by abrupt suspension of account by Upwork.

I had a 90+ % job success score with Upwork. Eventually my shoulders started hurting a lot and I couldn't work at the computer much. Finally, I had to have surgery on BOTH shoulders. They only do one shoulder at a time and you have to go through all the physical therapy and get your range of motion back before they do the other shoulder. Anyway, I finally got to the point where I could take serious editing jobs again and I went to my Upwork account and found they had downgraded my success score to 75%! As you can see from my attached photo, I was a "top rated freelancer" with Upwork. Apparently, they got tired of not being able to take their exorbitant 20% fee from my earnings for such a long time, so they lowered my score, but you can check my job history - nothing but good client reviews. Upwork refuses to make any allowance for my being legitimately incapacitated by surgeries even if I send in documentation of the surgeries and lengthy PT. Word to the wise: If you value your professional reputation, stay away from Upwork. If you use their platform, youd better not have a lengthy illness or injury. Do yourself a favor and find another freelancing website. Better yet, build your own website and invest in marketing it - that way you can keep 100% of your earnings!

I'm new to Upwork as a customer. I know this name through Elance that is mentioned on so many website for its content writing. I need to hire contents for my website. Unbelievable! The price of an article is processing fee + fee from the client + fee from the writer. Even they suggest me a fee for posting a job that can be seen by many writers.

I need a review article for Amazon products and I send an offer with links. They remove all the links and send me a message for violating their TOS.

Today, I again receive a message that talks me not pay for a writer without specific reasons. I don't know what is this, I also pay for my offers, even there are some articles that I can't use because broken English. They told me that I violate their TOS and threat to disable my account.
Here is the message:
"Hi Sieu,
We are contacting you to let you know we have removed a job you recently posted.
We recently learned that your job post was requesting unpaid work from a freelancer, which is against our Terms of Service. Unpaid work includes requests for sample work related to the job post, free advertising, charitable work, agency recruiting, requests for working relationships outside of Upwork, and offers of positive feedback instead of payment, among others.
As a result, we deleted the post and removed any proposals that had already been submitted.
Going forward, we welcome you to post jobs. However, Upwork only supports projects where clients pay the freelancer money for their work.
We suggest you review our complete Terms of Service by visiting Terms of Service. Please note that future violations of our terms might result in further action being taken on your account, including deactivation.

Regards,
The Upwork Trust & Safety Team"

There are a lots of good services out there in the market for me to hire contents, why I have to use their bad service? I decide to remove all my financial information from their system and say good bye forever to Upwork.

My all freelaancers are very good i found from UPWORK, But UPWORK company by itself is very bad for customer service.
I will go back to freelance.com at lease they care about there clinets.
I have three times check with paypal and they advised me that they have paid to upwork with reference.
I did pass all the information to many time to upwork.
But they still saying your ticket is for investigation.
I have paid 2 times money from my bank account and they still have suspended my contract and my freelancers not got paid.
Anyway i will pay to my freelancer by otherway So my worker doesn't my bad image bu upwork mistakes.

All the money is shipped offshore as soon as it is deposited. Every client is Western and every contractor is ISIS. Many contractors had names like Tom, $#*! and Harry but they communicate in broken English.

The hiring system makes it impossible for anyone imported from oDesk or Elance to get hired. I went from a level 11 with 4.8 stars on Elance to an unexplained 63% completion rate on Upwork.

I contested this arbitrary 63% completion rate since out of nearly 100 contracts I only returned/refused 2. They got back to me over 6 MONTHS later saying they would look into it.

The site is a fraud. You are better off surfing Craigslist.

The problem with Upwork is that they make it verrry difficult for freelancers who are new to get hired, because Upwork makes metrics recommendations to clients when they are posting their available jobs. These recommendations are things like hire only "rising stars" or hire only freelancers who have a "90% job success score" - and in order for a freelancer to be included in either of these categories, they have to have a certain number of jobs under their belt which is impossible to do if clients won't hire you because you don't have a certain number of jobs under your belt. Much better results on freelancer.com.