Freelance-Platforms: Upwork vs. Fiverr vs. Freelancer

Nowadays, we can not deny the growth of freelancing which offers a lot of advantages and can be an attractive alternative to an office job. If you are thinking about a freelance career, you need to reveal all the benefits and disadvantages. And the same if you would like to hire a freelancer. Let’s move forward to explore the pros and cons of being a freelancer, hiring a freelancer, and what freelance platforms are available today.

Advantages of Freelancing

With the pandemic that restricts the workers’ mobility, work from home has become more attractive, which increases the popularity of freelance work as well. Freelancers earn money by working for different companies or individual entrepreneurs and are not tied to a certain place. Do you know that according to online freelance statistics 35% of the total global workforce is freelancers and in 2019 there were 57 million freelancers working from home?. The reasons are listed below:

For freelancers: 

• Flexible working hours
• Autonomy
• Workload control
• High quality of work
• New skills and opportunities
• No commute to work
• No need to dress up
• Freedom of choice
• No office politics or culture, KPIs, etc.
• Work-life balance
• New connections

For clients:

• Flexibility and expertise
• Savings
• Reduced risk
• Worldwide reach
• High availability

Disadvantages of Freelancing

Obviously, the advantages of freelancing are many. However, starting your patch as a freelancer you need to take into account all the possible pitfalls of self-employment which requires thorough planning. Go through the list of disadvantages: 

For freelancers:

• Lack of corporate benefits
• Feeling isolated
• Unstable work and cash flow
• Lack of job security
• Managing multiple clients
• No paid time off
• No one to back up you in case of illness

For clients:

• Hard to find a candidate
• Lack of loyalty
• Risk of being disappeared
• Unpredictable Quality of Work
• Lack of supervision

Now, when we are familiar with the cons and pros of freelancing, let’s check out the most popular freelance platforms and make some comparisons. 

Upwork

From the combination of oDesk and Elance freelance platforms, it has been created maybe one of the most widely used platforms – Upwork. Today Upwork has about 5 million clients and 12 million freelancers and gets over 43 million hits per month, which make over 1 billion US dollars estimated annual revenue. Upwork is a portal for freelancers specialized in writing, graphic design, and web development. Through Upwork, you can find projects, apply for them, communicate with a client, and get paid. 

Upwork enables you to browse services and jobs that closely match your needs. While posting a job, you can add a description that allows inviting appropriate freelancers. You can hire freelancers for a few dollars per hour or for a fixed-price task for the same amounts. Since the platform charges from 5% to 20% of their freelancers’ earnings, they may charge higher rates. 

Fees

Clients of Upwork are charged from 3% to 10% for processing and administration fees based on the projects’ cost and subscription plan. Clients from Australia, Canada, the U.S., the UK, and some European countries may pay monthly fees of about $25 in line with the fees. 

Pros and Cons

Fiverr

Fiverr is famous for its low-cost service providers from all over the world. It has annual revenue of over is 5 million US dollars and one of the top most popular sites with about 35 million visits per month. Fiverr’s clients pay in advance for Gigs through which they offer from any digital service like WordPress design, logo design, writing services, transcriptions, to even voice-over recording. 

When Fiverr launched, all Gigs were at $5, but now freelance sellers are free to charge more. Orders are mainly completed in 1-2 days, but the delivery time is up to the seller, especially if there is a queue of orders. After the order is completed, the seller receives   80% of the total value. For example, if a Gig is $5, the freelancer receives $4.

Fees

The site is famous for its 5-dollar projects, but not all are strictly 5 dollars. Freelancers post fixed-price offers on the site and clients can purchase these services. There is not much negotiation involved in these gigs since the freelancers provide the scopes. Usually, freelancers may charge between 5 and 10 dollars per project.

Once a client chooses the Gig, there are several ways to pay. For all purchases of $20 and below there is a processing fee of $1, but on Gigs over $20 it makes 5%.

Pros and Cons

Freelancer

Freelancer has a significant database with more than 14 million registered freelancers and over 7 million completed projects. This option is a good one if you have money. It has one of the broadest ranges of professional skill sets and freelancer types. The price range is also broad. As the fees are not a few, many freelancers don’t want to pay, so you could browse only premium candidates and could miss good freelancers who are free users and have only about 6 bids per month. Freelancer like Upwork also has an escrow system for payment protection and has an app for task and time tracking.

As already mentioned, Freelancer users may charge higher rates since the platform charges high fees for membership and takes 10% of the earnings for fixed-price projects with a 5 US dollar minimum. For hourly projects, it takes 10% of the total bid amount or project.

Fees

Both the freelancer and the client pay fees on Freelancer. At entry-level membership, is a 3% cut of the project price for fixed price tasks with a 3 US dollar minimum. 3% of the total bid amount or project cost is charged for hourly projects. Standard and Premium members don’t pay project fees. However, membership fees can go as high as about 200 dollars per month.

Pros and Cons