UpworkReviews 2,128

They outsource all of their customer service, can't get anyone on the phone in the US, and their practices make it next to impossible for new providers to get any work. They require ID verification. I don't know about you, but I'm NOT sending my ID to a foreign country. In fact I'm not sending my ID to a US company. They claim to be the #1 freelance platform in the world. What a freaking joke! If that is true, then why aren't they running their ID verification through a portal like Equifax or Been Verified? They aren't. And we just closed our account out with them. Good riddance. And 20% fees? These people SUUUUUCK. They even charge the clients now. Nothing like the rich getting more greedy and what was once an awesome US company is now a bunch of foreigners.

Very poor site I have 2 grand right now on fraud checks I have no clue what to do with. I have reported them to the fbi and bbb. I also got harressment by the community for something I did do but other client hired me to do.

To start with, let me clarify that I'm a top-rated Upwork freelancer and have been getting good business there. However, ever since they re-branded as Upwork (from oDesk), they have begun to suck in spectacular ways.

Their site is infested with bugs. Messages go missing all the time, it's no big deal. Notifications are not sent for new messages, payments, etc, it's kind of routine. Their site fails to load all too often. Worst of all, they have the lousiest IT and customer services people, who would just keep giving you lolly-pops without actually solving the problems. My last complaint has been pending with them for more than 2 months, and they have failed to resolve the issues.

This was their technical side. Now, coming to the business. Ever since they merged with Elance, they have become the lousiest place to get work. I mean, I'm among their top 10% contractors. Yet, I hardly receive one invite in a couple of weeks. I need to send at least 50 applications before I get a single reply. Frankly, I'm lucky to have made some long term clients in the times of oDesk. Upwork is utter trash.

Their CEO should get an award for screwing up a perfectly good website in a spectacular fashion.

This upwork do not appreciate their freelancers. They make you feel like your a crap, even though they earn money from YOU. Well not anymore, I will go directly to clients and get paid for what my talent is really worth. To Filipinos, you may want to consider finding work with onlinejobs.ph whether you are a newbie or experienced.

I AGREE TO THIS GUY! ITS VERY TRUE!

Experienced freelancers are dying on this platform.

Their ranking system will punish you and your Job Success score if you make "ANY" mistake. Once you are below 90% you will never get work again.

Their ranking system punishes freelancers if the client does not leave feedback - Your fault.

Their ranking system will punish you if there are any problems with a job.

The platform is buggy and slow. Still, is is the largest freelancing site in terms of user base. With the acquisition of Elance, they are the only place to go. Enlace had way better interface, though Upwork still has some nice things, such as multiple categories for users.

As in most freelancing sites, the top 10% are getting 80% of gigs. The lower 10% gets another 10% of gigs, and the 80% down below gets 10% of gigs. It is very competitive, and many gigs are never awarded. Amateurs will not survive there, but pros can use it for certain amount of income.

It varies, as some months you earn a lot, others you earn nothing. I would not recommend to depend on it for your single income source until you have a killer profile and reputation. If you are really a pro and are willing to put up the time to create a killer profile, market it, study your competition, study market prices within Upwork, work and gather reviews for your profile, it can be a good income source. It can take anywhere from 6-18 months, depending if you are on it full time or part-time.

If you are new to freelancing do not work here.

Experienced freelancers are dying on this platform.

Too many freelancers and not enough clients.

Clients are often scammers so be very careful.

Their ranking system will punish you and your Job Success score if you make "ANY" mistake. Once you are below 90% you will never get work again.

Their ranking system punishes freelancers if the client does not leave feedback - Your fault.

Their ranking system will punish you if there are any problems with a job.

Bad clients only need complain and Upwork will give them all your money back. Even if you did a good job and can prove it. You'll also be punished again.

Feedback from Elance jobs from 1-2 years ago will go against you if none was left. You have no control over this and you are punished.

The system crashes 3-5 times a week.

The message system constantly breaking down and if you miss a job offer, you are punished.

Wording on the site is done by non English speaking people.

English language - Masterful is considered the same as Native English?

New jobs are listed as Recency?

The CEO does not seem to have any idea what his people are doing to ruin this site.

Odesk used to be a good place to work. Upwork is very scary with all the hundreds of rules you MUST know.

Great freelancers with 5 years + experience cannot get jobs unless their rates are really low.

Clients are very cheap. $5 jobs are everywhere and mostly scammers.

Customer support people are not English speakers for the most part and can only copy and past canned answers.

There is no help for freelancers.

Clients do not know how to use this complicated platform.

Never work for a new client. It will cost you Job Success points.

The overall experience is awful and very stressful and very difficult for new people.

I would never recommend this site to anyone.

What the $#*!. Screenshots deleted automatically for my 3 jobs at night (40 +20+9 hours). Up-work is just a piece of $#*!. Mother$#*!ers are not solving it. Same issue happens with my friend, and they are not solving his issue, since 3 months, they just say ask your client to allow manual hours and add manual hours. But most of the clients do not allow that and hard work go into vain. This time, i will $#*! you harder. Hey mother$#*!ers, i will kill you if you will play with our hard work. Give me my money back now... Clients have not allowed manual hours, how i will get paid... Mother$#*!ers... username: rahul*******

I tried to open a freelancer account. After I uploaded my picture to my profile, I received an email saying it violated their policy. Why? Because they didn't think it "belonged" to me. When I questioned further, and said in fact it was a photo of me, then uploaded another, different photo, I was sent a generic email and told to verify my identity by scanning and sending them several government-issued and other bank documents. Um, no. Stay away from this organization.

Just a short note. I have hired over 23 freelancers and completed over 30 jobs on elance in the last 4 years. I had a problem with one freelancer and attempted to resolve via their very confusing process. I could NEVER get anyone to speak to me on the phone. In short, I paid a freelancer $219 for work that was never performed correctly and Elance did not speak with me to resolve. They would only send emails. Not acceptable to me. I am moving away from them.

I hired a Brainstorm Force in India who was dishonest with me and deceived me. I hired them to help me gain internet presence and rank higher on search engines but I found out that during the time I hired them, I was never listed with any search engines. No one could find me! I didn't pay this freelancer to have no one find me on the internet! I couldn't believe it. I have proof that I was deceived by this freelancer and had to hire another company outside of Elance to fix this issue which is a big deal.

I called Elance and tried to get my money back but their process for refunding my money after funds are released through escrow is nonexistent. Basically, you won't get your money back even if a freelancer deceived you and it was fraud! Even requesting for a refund after a job is closed is pretty much 0%. It is up to the freelancer to refund my money and I'm 100% sure they will not refund my money. Elance has no process for dealing with fraud after escrow is released and since I didn't know much about search engine optimization, I believed the freelancing company I hired. I believed they were doing their job to help me succeed and gain internet visibility. BIG MISTAKE ON MY PART. I'm just sorry I hired this freelancer and I'm even more sorry that I went through Elance. I just want to get my hard earned money back.
Is there anything I can do to get my money back?

I had my 5 star account closed without any warning. I was informed that my client satisfaction was low and they would not reconsider my account. That was in September. Since then I have had numerous emails from them telling me that my account satisfaction is low and I should try to improve it. The latest email states that I need to pay a client back $9 as they found I had not completed the job to satisfaction. Fine. I just wanted Elance out of my life so I agreed to pay. Now I have been told I need to do a wire transfer as they don't accept PayPal. So I need to pay $45 in fees and drive a 4 hour round trip to sort out a money transfer. Yeah right. Elance can go jump in a lake.

I want to start one. I have maintained 5 star feedback and had a high percentage of repeat customers on elance. For no reason, elance permanently suspended my account for a lack of customer satisfaction. I don't appreciate elance messing with my livelyhood like that, do you? I know of 3 other people that had their accounts suspended in the same week. It's like elance switched to upwork and in the process suspended thousands of peoples livelyhoods. No ok in my book. I'd understand if their reason was justified... but if people have 5 out of 5 star ratings on elance they are nothing but saints! The buyers took advantage all the time on the site anyways (would ask for more than mentioned in the job posting before paying). Elance would back them up when questioned... it was already cruel to the worker. Now this? WOW no way--wrong!

I want to know which FEDERAL AGENCY I can ask to investigate this group. They take money into escrow and then it magicallly disappears. Freelancers write with complaints about money and completed work disappearing. The site is IMPOSSIBLE to navigate, with tabs and labels that make no sense. Oh! Do NOT enroll or sign up. So much of my outsourced work has been lost, incomplete, late or never even received by the bidder. On a side note, the freelancers are non English speakers who really cannot handle even mildly sophisticated projects.

Elance is a haven for scammers and swindlers. I have been involved with them sporadically these past few months, and I have found that there are various loopholes that exist which make payment assurance rather sketchy. I had one client where the platform worked well, merely because the guy was ethical; however, I ran into another seedy individual and in short, it has been a complete nightmare in getting payment. We had clear terms, exchanged an agreement, I completed the work according to specification and time frames, had the work accepted, and then the guy decides he was not paying. I contacted the Elance dispute department, only to find out that they could not offer me protection because of how the job was set up - it was an hourly job instead of a fixed price. This absurdity now has put me out of receiving payment and was given a "tough luck" attitude from Elance.

In addition, bear in mind, that the people that post jobs on Elance are looking for CHEAP labor. A good majority of the freelancers post from third world countries and really drive the pay down overall for everyone else. Once you begin with such a low pay and then have to dish out the +8% fee for Elance you really feel like the place promotes slavery.

Do yourself a favor and stay away from this site.

May 24,2018 update:

I see nothing has gotten better at UpWork since I posted a year ago. If it's any consolation, they are slowly going down in ranking, according to Alexa. They've been in a downturn for well over a year now since they upped their commission to 20%.

I sometimes jump into the "Community" discussion boards and read through the complaints, which are addressed by a small hand-picked group of individuals who lie and make excuses for UpWork. Like how UpWork can't be responsible for phony job postings, it's too much for them to keep up with so they rely on freelancers to figure it out for themselves and then report them. That's freaking incredible. Worst site ever.

April 1,2017 update:
I needed some Google compliance work done on one of my websites so I ran a job on UpWork and found a good guy who did a great job. That was all fine. But I was surprised that at the end of the billing week UpWork just chunked the guy's hours off my credit card without my being able to review and approve the work done.

So I have to leave my review at one star as they do try to automate everything and are control freaks. I wanted my web developer to review some advice from one of my SEO accounts and UW wouldn't allow me to message him the user name and password, as that would be considered paying him off site. What? Creepy site. Very creepy.

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If you scroll down slightly you will see a review by J. M. Everything he says is absolutely true.

UpWork has subsumed Elance and it's the WalMart for freelancers: high volume + low prices + cheap labor = profits for Stephane Kasriel, the %&#@ CEO who sold us out.

And they are trying to automate the site and reduce staff, therefore boosting profits. I have an avatar pic of Queen Elizabeth I on my profile, I listed my hourly rate at $285 to mock them and I've never even bid on a job there, and yet I get an email telling me I am a "Top Rated" freelancer now and I need to jump to the site and starting quoting jobs. It's a scam!