Being a seller for 3 years
Being an active seller on this platform for 3 years, here is my feedback.
Positive point:
on very rare occasions, some serious projects are being posted- even though they are highly limited to German sellers and if you are non-German you won't have a chance to get them. The disappointing fact that they are being awarded to German sellers only is not totally the website's fault but it is not something to ignore. I give this one extra star for these big projects.
Negative points:
1. If it is not the most expensive freelancing platform in the whole world, it is one of the most expensive ones. I know no other subscription plan which costs 100 Euro per month (50 Euro when they propose some special offers!). I've never seen this price for all types of subscription-based websites including freelancing ones. It is extremely expensive and in return, you will never get back what you paid for. At the end of the day your income from the platform equals to what you paid to them as their fees.
2. Twago is completely passive and they never care about what happens to sellers and buyers. For example there is no dispute resolution and if you encounter a problem with a buyer (and vice versa) they do NOTHING and the project remains open forever!! This might sound ridiculous but even the escrow money remains in escrow forever and neither the buyer nor the seller can take the money!! When you ask for their support, they say we cannot intervene and both parties must settle with each other. This is the worse customer support I've ever received during my freelancing career in the past 10 years. Another instance of Twago being passive is leaving feedback after closing a project. Both parties can leave false and in-genuine feedback and they simply don't care if you report it! They say as long as it doesn't include cursing and harassing sentences, we don't touch the feedback regardless of whether they are genuine and reliable or not!!!
3. The interface is very poor and lacks lots of basic features of a freelancing platform. The website is not responsive, has different problems on different browsers, uploading is always problematic, asks for login every time you open it up again (even 1 hour later), lacks a report flag, lacks proposal cancellation, lacks dispute report, lacks recurring-clients features, lacks auto-payment, project management is very poor and basic, and lacks tons of other basic features which are very common on any other freelancing platform. The interface reminds you of the websites back in 2008. You cannot even dismiss a notification! It is interesting that I've reported all these for many times but there is no change and they don't care.
4. German is the dominant language and apparently the reason is Twago focuses on advertising it only in Germany or German-speaking territories. It is better to say German-based platform rather than Europe-based because if you don't speak and write German, you will practically get nothing. In my opinion this is not an international platform and you can feel and see this in practice.
5. Twago recommends silly prices to buyers while they post a job. For example it offers 100 Euro by default for logo design jobs! This kills the very few potentially good clients which might pass by Twago and want to pay good for a decent job. As a buyer, when you see a recommended price of a peanut box, you will never think about paying more and therefore you will get garbage and the professional seller doesn't get any jobs. This way Twago helps and encourages underbids and peanut workers.
6. The platform does not even generate an invoice for the buyers and each time we work for a buyer they ask for an invoice from us!! Once I emailed Twago about this and they said it is not their responsibility to issue an invoice to the buyers!!! So if we don't voluntarily send the client an invoice, they will never get one. This can be another aspect of their passive state and their neutral position. They don't even give you a paper showing that you've worked on their platform and earned money!
The website has more problems and these were few to mention. I'm going to cancel my subscription after the expiration of the current plan.
14 July 2019
Unprompted review