Best Freelance Websites Reviewed
Since I couldn’t find an objective comparison between freelancing sites, I decided to create one myself. The following reviews of freelancing sites are based on my personal experiences. Every freelance website will tell you they are the number one destination with the most qualified freelancers. But you should take that with a grain of salt. If you are looking for alternatives to Elance, here are your other options.
Freelance Job Site My Rating Ease of Use Freelancing Services Notes
Easy Programming,
Graphic Design,
Writing,
Marketing,
Virtual Assistants,
Business ServicesBecause Elance is the most popular freelancing website, it's easy to find a wide range of contractors. Elance has a very intuitive user interface that makes it easy to track candidates and work. I do notice on Elance that I get a few more proposals from staffing companies rather than individual Elancers. This sometimes relates to a slighly higher price. However, dealing with a staffing company does have it's benefits and it's still easy to find individual Elancers if that's what you want.
Needs improvement After posting a job on Odesk, I always seem to get the largest number of freelancer responses in the shortest period of time. However, I find the Odesk user interface difficult for comparing candidates, taking notes, and reviewing messages. While the UI could be better, Odesk is still one of my favorite options for finding low cost freelancers.
Easy (but time-consuming up front) vWorker requires extremely thorough job postings by employers. As a result, it takes much longer to post a job using their mandatory "Requirements Wizard". vWorker's intention is to help you flush out requirements as early as possible so that you end up with better results. Unfortunately, if you are non-technical and seeking technical advice (as well as a coder), the wizard may prove a little challenging.
Needs improvement ScriptLance has a straightforward user interface, but does not allow you to reivew bids and contractor profiles in the same window. They also don't have anywhere near the number of features as the best freelance websites above. I'm also put off by the not so obvious fees to the employer that are not rolled into the bid price from the freelancer like most other sites.
Needs improvement Like Scriptlance, Freelancer.com has too many job posting fees not baked into the freelancer bid amount. I also found it to be the worst user interface out of all the freelancing websites I've used. It's very unintuitive and difficult to navigate between proposals and candidate profiles. I was too turned off by the poor UI to hire anyone after receiving bids.
Super Easy Crowdsourced Graphic Design 99designs lets you set your own price for a design contest where multiple graphic designers compete for your project. It's hard to get a bad result with their money back guarantee. 99designs has a very simple and intuitive job posting process that helps you present your vision to designers. Visions can be very subjective and their process helps get you a much better result than a graphic design job posting on a typical freelance website.
Heres my more detailed review of 99designs and a couple of my readers tips for picking a logo and running a contest on 99designs.
Easy crowdSpring works just like 99designs and has a money back guarantee as well. However, starting prices are a little bit less expensive than 99designs. It's not as popular a website, but they claim to have just as many graphic artists competing on projects. Interestingly, they also offer crowdsourced writing services.
Super Easy Every freelancing service you can imagine with some crazy and ridiculous services mixed in. It's quick to hire a freelancer on Fiverr for a $5 mini-task (called a gig) and the site is super-addictive. You'll find some truly ridiculous gigs and some gigs that are worth much more than $5. Fiverr is great for very small, simple jobs like article writing or keyword research. Head in with low expectations and you will be pleasantly surprised.
The big difference between freelancing sites is usability
You’ll find qualified freelancers (and duds) on every site and some people have profiles on multiple sites. That’s why I focus on freelance websites that are easy to use. To get a feel for which site works best for you, test drive freelancers from several sites by creating a freelancer test assignment .
And if you want to see more of the nuances between sites, check out this freelancing website comparison by vWorker. They compare the best freelancing websites and go into more specifics than I do here.
If you’ve tried any of these freelance websites and want to share your own experiences, please leave a comment.
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Very nice comparison! I joined oDesk a while back, and wrote up my thoughts in a review as a contractor: http://www.michaelmusgrove.com/marketing/guerilla-marketing/odesk-a-review-and-my-impression-as-a-contractor/
I’m interested to see how it works from the other side of the fence, since I’ll be doing some hiring soon, myself.
I’ve also used Fiverr twice. Once with great results and one with no completion and no response. I had to kiss that $5 goodbye. I believe most people will do what’s right, however.
Thanks Michael and I appreciate your comments on a few posts. When you start hiring, please check back here, would love to hear your thoughts on using odesk from the other side of the coin.
RE: Fiverr, I like to think of it more like a place to kill a few hours than one of the top freelance websites. Put your five bucks in and think of it as going to see a movie. Some are bad and some are well worth the price of admission.
Thanks so much for the reviews. I had not very exciting experiences working with contractors so far. I think that communicating properly to the contractor to make sure he understandand what you want can take a while. And of course the selection process is of paramount importance. I had bad experience with graphic designers. I’ll give 99 designs a chance.
Andrea, it’s very easy to have bad experiences with contractors (I’ve had quite a few myself). And you’re right, vetting freelancers properly makes or breaks a project. Good luck w/ 99designs.
hi,
Freelancer.com is good but you run the risk of hiring freelancers who do not do the job themselves. Some providers win a project and soon after open their own project to re-outsource your work. If you are just going to get second-rate results does outsourcing make any sense to you? The same site has hard workers who have earned every rating they have on their profile who sadly do not the jobs they deserve.
Hi Zara, as you can see from my review of freelancer.com I was unimpressed as well.
With any freelancing site you do run the risk of finding people that will not do the work themselves and subcontract it out. That isn’t always a bad thing though. Sometimes recruiters and small consulting shops will add a layer of pre-screening and quality assurance to make sure your project goes well. But in any case, the best answer is to interview and test any candidates before you hire them.
If you care to share more specifics about what types of jobs you posted that were re-outsourced or had poor quality canditates, I’d be curious to hear more about them.