Upwork 

Best place to find work in times of total despair, because there’s no other reason to use Upwork as a freelancer. You don’t even get a chance to make a claim or defend yourself if something goes wrong with a client and Upwork makes up false excuses not to give you payment protection. Treating freelancers as the enemy. Clients should pass a psychological evaluation before posting jobs.

Upwork used to be a good site for a freelancer. Unfortunately now, that has changed. There are too many scam clients, and too many offering work for what is basically below the minimum wage. I also find their customer support completely on the side of clients and not freelancers

They have no support department at all. You just talk to a bot that’s it. Any other alternative you will be fine

Review: A Costly and Disappointing Experience

I recently had a very negative experience on this platform. As a user from Ireland, I paid €750 for what I believed would be a complete project. However, all I received was a screenshot and a 1-minute video. When I requested a refund, the freelancer disputed it, and now I'm being asked to pay another €600 to appeal the decision.

This leaves me out of pocket for €750 with nothing to show for it. My experience with this app has been extremely frustrating and disappointing, and I strongly advise others to be cautious before using this service.

Hello 👋 upwork is a great company I love the company without them I don't think I we be now is Great company

I paid for a job but did not receive a solution. Subsequently, I contacted Upwork and created a ticket. Upwork requested chat logs with the freelancer and evidence that no solution was provided. After much back and forth, I supplied all the required evidence. Upwork then asked me to make an additional payment of over $600 for the process to continue. Naturally, I refused. This is a disgrace, and I am deeply dissatisfied.

Upwork will make you as freelancer pay a lot of money just for applying to jobs. I applied to 30 jobs (I payed for applying) and the clients didn't even see the application. This platform doesn't offer any real work opportunity for freelancers. I think they create job postings just to make freelancers pay for applying. I worked 40+ hours for a client, he took the idea and canceled to contract so he doesn't have to pay for it. It seems to me like they don't care about their freelancers or even clients. All they care about is their own profit. So please don't waste your valuable time on this scam website.

0 optimisation, the platform is unusable on a pc browser version, always not responding. Really annoying

STEAR CLEAR. Absolutely a scam. Stole £23 as part of a ‘task’ and won’t pay me my £30 pay check

Dont use Upwork. There are constant fraudulent charges billed to accounts and there is not customer to address the issue. Only way to dispute with the credit card company.

Most jobs on Upwork are not real jobs these days. When you check most of them even weeks after, you realize no one was hired, yet Upwork won't refund your connects. I can't tell if they've created automated job postings to squeeze freelancers of money via connects or what.

I registered in this company as a freelancer, as it sells itself as a platform for DIGITAL NOMAD, but they do not explain when you are registering that you cannot use the address of the country you are currently in (there are companies that need you to deliver a project urgently, but if your time zone doesn't match with the information about where you are at the moment, they probably won't accept it, which doesn't make any sense!!!) . I was trying to understand this, when my login was BLOCKED!!! I tried to contact support which is a machine and obviously it was unsuccessful. So I got in touch on Instagram because I know that normally machines don't answer the messages, I thought they could help me, but the poor man BLOCKED me ON INSTAGRAM instead of trying to help me!!!!! I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS TRASH PLATFORM TO ANYONE!!! Imagine even if you don't carry out work they can't resolve it, imagine wasting hours of your day doing a project and having a problem and not receiving your money and trying to contact this company. THEY DO NOT HAVE SUPPORT AT ALL!!

Tried to use Upwork. Hired a freelancer to create some design work. Freelancer agreed to the work. totalled 4 hours work. I gave him nearly 3 weeks to complete, thinking he would be done way before. 2 days after the deadline had passed he decided to cancel the contract with no explanation. What is worse is that there is nothing you can do, I cannot write a review on his profile as the site thinks I haven't had a job with him. Nowhere that I can see on the website to report them. DO NOT WASTE YOUR VALUABLE TIME USING THIS WEBSITE.

I've used upwork for years just recently used them again and one of their freelancers tried to Blackmail me saying he could ruin my business just as much as he could make it better if I didn't change my honest review. Reported it to upwork and the guy is still out there leaving himself fake 5-star reviews and still tendering for work. Even though the work he does falls short of what he promises.

Hello please please please I need a help cuz I don't know why upwork blocked my account without gave me the reason they blocked my account and I have money there and also have been contacted them since they not gave me a reply then and I don't know what to do again please I need help on this project

Thanks

what a joke of a company, account got limited with no reason, no phone support and chat is buggy, what a joke.

They value clients more than freelancers, but this is mostly a platform for freelancers. That's unaccettable. A client has no obligation to even see your proposal, which is a PAID proposal, and most of the times jobs are fake.

Two times I posted a job for my competitors to apply to, just to let them waste their connects, and guess what? It was totally legal. Tons of unskilled people wasted their connects sending proposals to my fake job opportunity.

This just a simple exaple, but literally, they don't value freelancers at all. But they forget their clients are freelancers too.

I have the app malfunctioning. But the support asks questions about billing.

Suspended my account, restricted the withdrawal of cash, even though I’ve been working there for 2 years. What a waste!

Started using the platform about 6 years ago, never was a fan of spec work though.

The main issue with it being leveling the job market and turning specialized work into slavery.

Back then, it was still possible to find a couple of decent gigs, assuming your rate was low enough. Lower than most competitors in the western world.

Now it became impossible. The "clients" on there, possibly 90% are fake accounts/ads, demand experienced professionals to work on challenging/complex projects for peanuts.

At the same time connects which are the Upwork currency to bid on projects are now tripled in price.

Someone mentioned that it is because Upwork is becoming an elite platform.
It couldn't be farther from the truth.
Upwork has degenerated into a full blown scam for freelancers, paying to compete for "projects" with ever higher bids who seem to spend now $100 on average for a $50 project.

That is on top of the fact that projects rates got lower and lower, and so it all becomes a race to the bottom for freelancers.

So you end up spending way more than you can possible make to bid on projects that with utmost certainty do not even exist, or are dramatically underpaid.

My advice to whoever feels like trying this platform is to stay (as far) away as possible.

The last drop was recently they rolled out with their own paid ads product within the platform, so now on top of the rip off price of connects, you get screwed by paying for ads as well.

Good luck with that!