Upwork Reviews

They always protect the freelancer. I've seen cases where the freelancer overbills and Upwork will basically determine the freelancer is committing fraud, refund the only last 2 weeks, throw the client under the bus for the rest of the money and then let the freelancer continue to operate on the platform.

I said I wouldn't write a review, but I'm bitter, how could someone deceive me like that, so I have to write something, so that someone else doesn't end up like me. I signed a contract that a freelancer will create a theme for woo commerce for me, it will cost $399, which I paid for it, that freelancer can start working. The work will be finished in 7 days they say. I gave freelancer also unlimited access to my cPanel from the web server. Arrived the 13th day, and I still have nothing in my hands. My domain didn't even show a theme. Even installed woo commerce did not have a shopping cart, etc. Just some white plain default theme. Nothing was shown to me, the theme was not created, on day 11-13 day had on my domain that there was an error with WordPress ("There Has Been a Critical Error on Your Website" error.) I contacted chat support on Upwork to ask them what to do, they told me that after 14 days, the freelancer gets money from the escrow even though nothing has been done. Then, when I hear that from Upwork chat agent, on the 13th day, I terminated the contract, so that the money would remain in escrow, and then I changed the password for cPanel. I requested a refund from the freelancer to refund my payment, because I did not receive anything after 13 days. To which the freelancer sued me back on Upwork. In the end, to cut a long story short, to have a peaceful life, and not to get too excited (bad heart), I gave up and handed over $399 to the freelancer, Upwork didn't stand up for me, the freelancer didn't even after a few days to give me anything he did, to at least get something for my money. NOTHING. So my first attempt at Upwork will be my last. Would you be mad if you gave someone $399 and got nothing for it? It's like you threw it into the wind. Freelancer pretends to be deaf, Upwork says that it is a matter between me and the freelancer, without any protection for me like the client, unbelievable. I have never had such a bad experience in my life. I pity them all! In the end I will try to create a theme myself, at least I will have something. I am clean before my god. Only my god wouldn't want me to write this review, he want that I need to forgive this people, but I'm only human and for now I can't forget this event.

This site became complete unforgivable garbage. If you are new at freelancing, save yourself by skipping this site and I promise you 3 things - money, progress, happiness.

You see, Upwork used to provide these things, like many other beneficial things, but now it treats you like a 20-IQ personnel, like slaves - in the essence you are working FREE for them, because THEY are getting literally all the money you can or COULD earn. Here is simply how:

You have one completely ridiculous system called "Connects" which acts like a token or credits that allows you to apply on jobs. Now, every month you are getting 10 "free" connects and you think "wow that's great" but listen to this: you see an easy job for $5, already 50 submitted proposals by other freelancers, connects required for applying for that job: 6 connects. Do you see now? You don't? What if I tell you that YOU CAN BUY additional connects?Yes, spending $6 for 40 connects literally means you can apply to 6-7 jobs, don't get me start about payments of those jobs. This is completely preposterous and I think that whoever came up with this freaking idea of requiring illogical amount of connects to apply for such a simple low-payment jobs... Ah man, I wish things were different. Upwork has great customer service, such a good user interface, things are mostly practical and easy to use, but man they got it so wrong in the core. Don't get me even start about RATINGS and REVIEWS, things which literally make clients in complete control over your destiny on this site. I had once a very old client who accidently gave me the lowest rating possible, he apologized and wanted to change it (of course he didn't know how, because these geniuses complicated it so unnecessary) and my overall profile rating from 100% dropped on around 80% (I can literally say "bye" to any chance of landing a job). Yes, their service does not let you to change/remove clients feedbacks even when client tells them that he made a mistake. Trust me, it's simply impossible to stay sane on this site, not to mention earning anything. Just skip it, believe me. This site is only beneficial to those who made profiles when the site launched, but for you - BELIEVE ME - it's a waste of time and energy and sanity. You will bankrupt if you start to use it. Go to other sites.

Within seconds of trying to create an account [as a client, to hire a researcher], I was hitting the wall with Upwork's website. Having filled out all the information requested, I hit Enter, and was immediately presented with the following message: "This almost never happens, but something went wrong. Please try again later or contact support for assistance."

For something that "almost never happens," it continued to happen every time I tried to complete the sign-up phase. When attempting to contact "support" [and I use their own term loosely], one is met with a huge page of options - ALL OF WHICH REQUIRE YOU TO FIRST LOG IN. The irony is simply palpable.

Fortunately, though, at the very bottom of the page, I spotted a Help & Support link. So I clicked it. And it took me... to the page I was already on.

But, you know... the great thing about a company that prevents you from signing up for their services is that it also prevents you from wasting any money on them, and certainly any more of your time.

I'm still a freelancer on their site. It's so frustrating because I am coming across opportunities through them but they take an extortionate amount of money off both the client and freelancer, with NO allowances for non profit work. They throw obstacle after obstacle at me, pausing contracts, not giving me my payments and refunding them to the client instead and saying I didn't qualify for payment protection even though that is PRECISELY what they pretend to offer. And then they expect you to pay THOUSANDS of dollars if you want to take your relationship with your client out of upwork with a whole TWO YEARS of meeting on upwork. It's insane. They are nothing but a greedy money machine and have caused me nothing but headaches. They asked me to verify my ID today which I've already done MULTIPLE times. My client and I have wasted so much precious time just dealing with their BS when all we want to do is get on with our work and get paid. I don't now how legal this "conversion fee" is but I'd like to speak to a legal professional about it.

No customer service or anyone to communicate with regarding an unauthorised ttransactions

Upwork has provided me with remarkable freelancing opportunities. Have enjoyed the projects and networking with people globally. Great place to develop job skills and acquire work experience.

they charged me with out my permission

Nice platform, but some tasks published here are underpaid, I would like to be able to complete more of technical tasks for more money.

Did you know that when you leave a critical review of a contractor and they have earned a lot of commission for upwork, they can have that review removed?

I hired a contractor based on the feedback I was able to read, all great feedback. However I wasn't aware that some contractors that make a lot of money for upwork can have CRITICAL reviews deleted...

So beware, I strongly recommend you STAY AWAY from this platform as there must be a lot of underperforming contractors that get away with sub-par work and can have critical feedback removed.

Easy to make money for the platform and keep the high-volume contractors happy..

I'll close my account with them and move to freelancer.com, they have much better trustpilot scores, too.. I recommend you check them out.

I thought I would give them a go. I am a php developer, and wanted to see if I could make some money on the side of my day job. I have bid on countless jobs but never get anything. This is a scam in my opinion for sure and the only people making money it would seem are upwork.

Upwork is worthless. I went into it with a really gung-ho attitude and purchased several hundred dollars of Connects. I understood that they would be valid for at least a year. But their policies on particularly Connects are very confusing: Within only a month or two, I was receiving notifications that most of my Connects would be expiring within the next month!!!. When I complained, then they said then that most wouldn’t expire until next year. But then I received a notification again saying that they would be expiring within the next month. Again I complained. I received lots of confusing information where it seemed that even Upwork’s Customer Service personnel didn’t know what the heck they were talking about.
With regards to Upwork itself and getting jobs: I found most of the jobs listed were for pathetically low rates. I do translating and proofreading: Some of the rates were ridiculously low: Where I would be asked to work for probably 1/10 of what I would normally work for. (It seemed way too much like Fiverrr for my taste in that regard.)
I cancelled my membership and demanded a full refund. TERRIBLE PRODUCT!!!!

I gave it a shot two times and both times they disappointed me. They didn't deliver anything useful and of course, they didn't refund the money either.
Their rating system is flawed in so many ways that you better ignore all the rating scores. The bad reviews are removed at the request of some particular members.
It is very good for scammers though!

Once again I got bitten by the brilliant Upwork customer service.
Even for simple requests such as reopening a contract that they closed automatically because they thought it was inactive, the answer is "we will not do it", "the system has been programmed like this", "not even the heads of engineering and all the managers can revert a closed contract", "we cannot hold funds for more than 90 days", "these are our terms", blah blah blah endless series of excuses and outright lies. And this pattern is repeated for any request that you make to them.

A 5 star rated book keeper added manual hours without working on my books. I filed a complaint and Upwork was only able to provide a fraction of the cheated funds back to my acct though they were aware of the theft. They assured my the book keeper would be dealt with. I was PREVENTED from writing a review on this still 5 star book keeper. He is still "working" on their platform today, seemingly without a glitch. Cover up for a crook for profit is what Upwork is doing.