Upwork 

I have never felt this angry in my life! I'm a Dutchman living in the U.S. After bad experiences on other platforms, I finally found a great freelance web developer on Upwork. We were both excited about working together on the project.

The project would cost several thousands of dollars, and my wife was hesitant to add such a big amount to our credit card balance. She asked me to get money from my account in the Netherlands, so we could pay off the credit card immediately after paying Upwork. So I mentioned to my freelancer that I had to make several trips to the ATM to get the full amount together, since my Dutch bank only allows me to withdraw $800 every 72 hours. Then I would take the cash to my U.S. bank, pay Upwork with my credit card, then pay off the card. A bit of a time-consuming process.

In my message I wondered out loud, if maybe it was possible to pay 'directly' from my Dutch account. It was my first time using Upwork, so I had no idea what payment options they offered. The Upwork system flagged me because of those words, and my account was frozen for trying to pay my freelancer outside the platform, which ofcourse I had never implied at all. I notified the Customer Service team about the mistake their system had made. Instead of fixing it, my account got closed permanently. I messaged the Support Team about the misunderstanding, assuming that a human being would immediately understand what my words meant, but instead I received an email from Upwork that my account was permanently deleted, that I was banned from using Upwork again, and that they would no longer respond to future emails.

After a few days of contemplating my next steps, I decided that I really wanted to do my project with the freelancer on Upwork. So in a last time effort, I wrote an even longer explanation to Upwork, but today I received the same reply as before.

I am in absolute shock about this level of stupidity. Or Upwork uses A.I. only to communicate with customers, or their Support Team is located in another continent where English is not the first language, or they hire people with very low reading comprehension skills, or they never even bothered to read my original message and later explanations. To me it is clear that Upwork is more worried about catching bad actors, than helping honest customers with good intentions.

Future customers do with this information what you want. I am sure there are many talented freelancers offering their services on the platform, and who knows, maybe Upwork is not an extremely lousy company at all. I never had the privilige to find out. I do know that they have some real amateurs working at their Support Team. I hope you will never have to deal with them.

they dont deserve even the one star
trash

In recent times, the scammers have increased here, they post jobs but there haven't been any responds. Also, we have to buy the connects with a lot of money so that, within 15 days, if any buyer doesn't hire any of the freelancers, Upwork should return the connects. You should work on the connect, job postings, and scammers policy, Upwork!

This company sucks behind. I was recently scammed and did not fall for it. So they placed an add on Upwork and now I am bombarded with calls. I tried to resolve this issue with them and they wanted me to login before they would let me talk to a person. I do not have an account. They sent me round and round with a chat bot telling me to find the add and report. Dear stupid Upwork, I do not know what the add says. All I know is that it includes my phone number. I have tried searching for it and cannot find it. Please get me a person to fix this- no go. Just more annoying platitudes from their chatbot telling me they understand. Dear chatbot- you do not understand. This is insulting to say to me. So now I’m getting stuck with a million calls from people who are hoping to find work on Upwork. Beware if you use this site to try to get work there is no reliable way to know if you are responding to a real add or not. And Upwork sucks at making it easy for someone who is not logged in to get support.

I’ve been registered on Upwork for over three and a half years, waiting for someone to respond to the offers I’ve submitted. While the platform has potential, there are significant hurdles that make it challenging for gig workers like me to succeed.

Challenges:
First, onboarding is unnecessarily difficult. The certification requirements are overly complex, which seems out of place for a gig work platform. For instance, requiring users to post their entire educational history makes me question if this platform is truly meant for flexible, skill-based gig work. The degrees I’ve earned and the skills I’ve developed don’t align neatly—why should it matter that I have a degree in accounting when I’m focused on showcasing my expertise in building web applications? This suggests the platform may not be designed for someone looking for part-time or weekend work.

Second, despite trying different bidding strategies—both low and high—I’ve yet to secure a single lead or opportunity. It sometimes feels like the platform’s main business model is more focused on earning from freelancers purchasing credits to bid than ensuring job opportunities are distributed effectively.

Positives:
One thing I appreciate is the abundance of projects to bid on. The platform successfully attracts a large number of clients to post jobs, which keeps things exciting and offers hope for opportunities.

Room for Improvement:
I’d recommend streamlining the onboarding process to make it more accessible for gig workers without overly focusing on certifications or unrelated educational qualifications. Additionally, enhancing transparency about how bids are evaluated and ensuring more equitable distribution of opportunities would build trust. Finally, improving safeguards against scammers—especially those who target U.S.-based freelancers—would protect the integrity of the platform.

I was recommended this company by Yoast Premium, which made me trust them. I posted a job on Upwork, and many people reached out to me outside of the platform. I assumed they were from Upwork since I had just posted the job. I made a deal with Pearl Organisation and paid £200, but soon found out it was a scam. I wrote to Upwork to inform them, but I received no reply. I decided to give freelancers on the platform another chance, so I contacted a few of them. I hired someone for a job and paid him, planning to hire him again. However, I later noticed a charge of £48.39 in my bank account, along with another £33.35 charge on November 30th for a job that was never completed. I cannot reach anyone, and no one is responding, including the person I hired. They never mentioned any charge for posting a job. Due to this negative experience, I've decided to close my account with you. It has been a very stressful ordeal. I also checked reviews on Trustpilot and found some alarming feedback about this company. I do not recommend this company to anyone.

Be very carful with them. They are a SCAM

Upwork started out great, but sunk deeper and deeper as scammer fake freelancers conquered the site. I tried using the site many times as a client. Each time something happened....something horrible. One time someone somehow got my info and used it to get lots of jobs paying themselves through Upwork (talking $1,000 for just one). Another time the guy insisted I pay him before finishing the job, and Upwork still gave him money.
They say you can't ask for money off site, well, I was asked numerous times and those freelancers were NEVER knocked off the site.

It's clear in Upwork policies that communications don't get taken off the platform for both freelancer and client safety. After 3 days, my freelancer terminated her contract & messaged me on every social media platform and email saying her account on Upwork was suspended to respond to her privately to continue work. Concerned, I raised a support ticket with Upwork, my project on hold waiting for 2 weeks with no response, and then today Upwork email me advising they've blocked MY account for inappropriate use. My only use on the platform was raising a job post, hiring a freelancer, and then waiting for support get back to me with the outcome of investating my freelancer - my project has now experienced significant delays and there seems to be no personal touch point with Upwork to rectify the issue.

I have tried using this freelance work site on two occasions. To apply for jobs, you need "connects" which eventually the initial free ones run out. So you then need to pay for top ups. Pay to find a job? Absolute crap! Then you end up spending all of your connects on spam job ads. Waste of time. Go somewhere else to find work.

This platform is full of fake ads, trying to entice you to part with your $ to buy "connects" so that you can apply for the gigs, most of which pay less than the price for a cup of coffee.
Have I heard of anyone landing any form of work through this website that scams freelancers?
No! Stay away at all costs!

Terrible, lots of scammers clients and I also find that the customer support is always completely on the side of clients and not freelancers. There is not a email address for freelancers to contact for questions or problems but only for company’s. I won’t be using upwork anymore!

will not use never again. freelancers scamed you. NOT OK !!! freelancers not ok on this site

not reccommended

WTF Upwork, I requested a testimonial from a REAL client and co-worker I HAD before and you flat out reject it. What a load of BS. This platform is NOT worth my time.

Ridiculous site. Takes advantage of people who need extra income to instead scam them out of money by making you pay to apply to a job. How is this even legal?! I could understand taking a commission but this system is very unethical

Pay, pay, pay, pay. You need to pay for EVERYTHING. But when it's time to get YOUR money from YOUR work, get ready to wait and, of course, keep paying. On top of their %, there is not free option to take your money out of the platform without paying. It feels like a scam all the time.

I wouldn't recommend this platform. I wanted to hire a PE, but the majority of the freelancers were using nicknames or fake names. I had no way to verify if I was talking to a real engineer. Ultimately, they blocked me because I asked someone to verify his identity by accepting my invitation on LinkedIn, as he was misrepresenting himself. Perhaps they blocked me for something else; I don't know. However, I had no intention of paying or discussing the work outside of Upwork. Don't waste your time!

Very nice site to work

Ok so I can't setup a review for UpWork.com (not sure why?)

Ok, so I got very badly ripped off on UpWork, and I thought I would simply check Google reviews, but there aren't any, so I came here- and as I can see above, EVERYONE is complaining here in the IG comments. Which made me immediately see this is a common thing.

I'll keep mine brief. A did a search for a VA, and Rhona Mae Bucag from Philippines came up with 71 x 5* reviews. We chatted, she sounded great, very helpful and we agreed to sign the contract.

She stated $10 per hour, i thought too good to be true, as her English was immaculate; therefore I am sure she will add a few hours on here or there which is fine. I walked her through what I needed- to create an Excel spreadsheet with 200 contacts, each contacts had 4 columns and should take around 1 minute so around 200 minutes.

She took her time, and said she has done 40 rows and it took 4 hours. I thought that's slow, but who cares, happy to pay. I thought, I'm even happy to pay 100 or 150 bucks (15 hours) for something that should take 4 hours as it's so cheap.

Anyway weeks went on, and she kept replying that her Internet was down, and that then she was on holiday. I didn't realise, and I didn't receive a notification but Upwork had charged $141, then 1 day later $153 then 4 days later $278 then $130 then $60 and then $145- you get the picture. So to fill out a spreadsheet she charged me $700- which is 70 hours.

I then logged into UpWork, BUT you can only contest the previous week, so if you've not been logging in, checking your statement, sorry- UpWork will take as much as they want from you.

I don't believe the person behind this account is the person she says she is, but more a group who are out to con people on UpWork. Her profile has now gone also.

Very easy system to manipulate, and I am surprised upWork allow this to happen now they are a public traded company.

I'm down 700 but more importantly, how much are upWork making from all these scams? and how much are people losing- I am going to guess- many many millions