Freelancer.com Review 2023 – Great Reputation, BUT…

Item: Freelancer.com
Rating: 3.0
Author: Max Anderson

Max Anderson Freelance Jobs Expert October 18, 2023

With over 25 million registered users and 12 million completed projects, Freelancer.com is a giant of the freelance world. However, there have been recent issues with spam, fake profiles, and low-quality work. If you’re looking for a freelancer, I recommend you head over to Fiverr, where you can hire someone for as little as $5.

3.0

Ranked 16 from 19 Freelance Websites

Pricing

Basic

$4.95

Plus

$9.95

Premier

$59.95

Key features

Seller Ratings

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Conflict resolution

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Overview

🏁Starting price	Free to use. Freelancer rates vary
💲Fees	3% project fee (or 'Milestone Payment' fees)
🏆Top freelance categories	Graphic design, marketing, writing, and app design
🔎Freelancer screening process	No
⚖️Dispute resolution	Yes
💬Live chat support	Yes

Bigger Definitely Doesn’t Mean Better

Freelancer is definitely one of the biggest freelance websites out there, with millions of members joining the site over the years.

Along with the large user-base comes an even larger problem that has been at the forefront of Freelancer’s dip in popularity. I am of course talking about the extent of spam posts and spam applicants that the platform seems to attract without having the ability to control it at all.

If you don’t want to waste your time wading through all that spam, you’ll be glad to know there’s a great alternative in town. We recommend Fiverr as it is home to a wide variety of freelancers who can get practically any job done. And the best part is that the prices are unbelievably low – you can hire a professional on Fiverr for as little as $5.

3.0

Templates

When Quantity Takes Over Quality

Freelancer claims to have a database of more than 7 million users, which is a staggering figure to say the least. While this used to be a big positive point, over the years the lack of control Freelancer has over spam applicants and posts has made it a serious issue for the company. The old say of ‘quality over quantity’ certainly rings true here as you can get lost in a minefield of low quality posts, and tons of low-quality applicants bidding on your jobs. If you are happy to receive hundreds of applicants and shockingly low-prices, then you won’t be fussed by Freelancer, but for those looking for a clearer outlook, Freelancer certainly proves to be an issue.

You can find freelancers and employers from all over the globe, but the current Asian invasion on the freelance market has flooded Freelancer the most. The major part of the active subscribers of the site are from India, China and Philippines, alongside with way more qualified and reliable specialists from Eastern Europe, which also agree to work for wages below the minimal survival level.

The other 10% of the applicants would be the scarce highly skilled professionals from the Old World and the USA who had been working through Freelancer since its very first days and who are not willing to leave the sinking ship. They have the highest level premium account and all the possible badges available on Freelancer, but in most of the cases employers prefer to hire a cheaper workers with less experience. Scams and frauds became another plague of Freelancer these days. Should you hire a reasonably good freelancer, make sure you have a senior developer or an editor who’d be able to make almost inevitable improvements.

3.0

Features

They Invented These Features

One may agree or disagree with the feature set and policies available through Freelancer, but it’s hard to shrug off the fact that Freelancer is the web-freelance resource that actually invented the ways most similar platforms work. Despite the tons of spam and inadequate bidders, Freelancer keeps blooming and engrossing the less business-savvy rivals.

Various badges, levels and complicated XP system used for ranking is something of their own unique invention, which other freelance websites have adopted and improved to eventually surpass Frelancer.com.

3.0

Ease of use

A Maze of Buttons and Features

Freelancer’s navigation might seem a bit complicated for a first-time user, but in fact everything is highly intuitive and – let’s face it – with so many features Freelancer has to provide to its clients, there could hardly have been less menus and buttons. The registration process is simple, and you may even skip it in favor of logging in through your Facebook account. You can register as a freelancer looking for work, a customer seeking for contractors, or get an account enabling you to perform both of these functions.

Once you’re in you’ll be prompted to complete your profile and add a portfolio as well as perform a lot of other tasks that will make your profile rank higher and seem more legit and attractive to potential clients.

As a customer, you will get tons of applications per each and every job posting, but bear it in mind that a major part of those applications are automated and generated by scripts. This is done by freelance slave-driver agencies, posting as individual contractors who’ll promise to do the work insanely cheaply. They will even do it – but the resulting work created by severely underpaid workers will be poor.

3.0

Support

The Support Is On-Line, But Not Exactly

Freelancer has a 24/7 live-chat support, but it’s not actually an instant means of troubleshooting, as the operator assigned to you may easily turn out to be “away” in the chat. However, you can always resort to the FAQs, extensive troubleshooting section, write an e-mail or submit a ticket.

Email support
Limited live-chat support
Extensive FAQs
No phone support

3.0

Pricing

Fifty Dollars for What?!

Freelancer – with its extreme money-sucking policies – is not making money on the monetary transactions between the employers and the freelancers after a job well done. Freelancer.com is totally indifferent – if not to say “oblivious” – towards your activity on the site, as long as you are feeding it with your cash for acquiring new levels and ranking higher in the freelance lists. However, unlike iFreelance, which takes your monthly fee and leaves you the hell alone, Freelancer.com does not forget to get its cut of your money. The only thing that justifies this and the extremely high premium account fees is that you can save a lot of money hiring cheap workforce through Freelancer.

Initially, you start out with a totally free account, but you have to pay to unlock more options and lower the transaction fees. The tests available for freelancers are all priced $5 and above. You can pay to make your job posting or bid show #1 in the list of similar offers.

Freelancer offers multiple payment and withdrawal methods. You can deposit or withdraw funds using your verified credit card, PayPal, Skrill, or Moneybookers account.

The payment protection system lets freelancers request an initial payment, and it allows the customer to insist on total satisfaction in return. The website has an entire section devoted to sorting out disagreements between freelancers and customers.

The 1 month free trial allows both freelancers and customers to try it out without for paying services fees, but of course, that doesn’t mean you get free work done. You would still need to pay the freelancers you hire.

Freelancer.comBasic$4.95 / MonthTransaction feesSignup feeGet Started

Freelancer.comPlus$9.95 / MonthTransaction feesSignup feeGet Started

Freelancer.comPremier$59.95 / MonthTransaction feesSignup feeGet Started

Comparison

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Freelancer.com REVIEW: BOTTOM LINE

Freelancer was and still is a giant in the web freelancing market. The site itself is excellent, but a bit too greedy when it comes to giving you anything for free or promoting your profile. The hype and shameless promotion played a nasty trick on Freelancer: it is the most popular and populated site, but this is precisely what has lowered its actual value for customers. However, as long as there are people willing to resort to the cheapest labor possible to have good-looking profiles, Freelancer will still be one of the key freelance websites out there. If you are looking for a freelancer, we recommend Fiverr – there are loads of freelancers and the fees are inexpensive.

PRO’S

Great number of qualified and cheap freelancers
Works with different payment systems
Has reliable tech support

CON’S

Too many unskilled newbie freelancers
Tons of spam postings and bids
Charges money for every step you take
You may need to hire a senior developer or an editor to look over the work submitted to you

Max Anderson

Max is a Product Architect and Data Scientist. He teaches HTML, CSS, and JS to young web developers, and he wrote a few of the first guides to mobile app developments for Android and iOS.

1.5

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Project Fee

I was working on this site and had a client who assigned me two projects. I accepted both offers, which required a payment of $65 to proceed ($25 for project 1 and $30 for project 2). This was acceptable to me initially, but it became problematic when my client stated that project 1 was mistakenly created. The client cancelled it, however, the fee I paid was not refunded to my balance. I contacted support and was informed that my client needed to delete the project. I relayed this to my client, but my funds were still not returned. Upon contacting support again, my balance was refunded, albeit with the explanation that it was done as a courtesy. Moreover, the chat was abruptly closed by the support agent, which was rather unprofessional. I simply want my money back; there's no reason to pay for a cancelled project. This incident left me feeling quite offended. I would caution others to use or work on this site only if they are prepared to encounter fraudulent practices. It's also widely known that when participating in contests on this site, unscrupulous freelancers may plagiarize your work, and the site takes no action against such plagiarism. Be forewarned! That's all.

Fachruddin, Indonesia
October 18, 2023

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Thieves Everywhere Specially in Freelancer.com

I am a professional designer and have been servicing the people in Freelancer.com for 3 years. Till meet up with other paltforms I noticed some issues about this platform. Firstly they shelter fake clients and designers within. Never seen protecting real person's rights. Also low quality entries, jobs or employers into the bargain. Because word of justice is just word there. Everoyen uses stock and stolen assets but never apply sanctions. Any punishments over there, shame. Therefore professional designers get away from this platform. Because they don't respect us.

Talha, Turkey
September 21, 2023

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Freelancer.com stole my money.

I signed up to freelacer.com this July as a buyer to find talented creators who can create content for my business. At first, everything was fine. I found a skilled freelancer who successfully completed 5 small projects for me, and I successfully paid for these projects through the freelancer.com payment system. I was completely satisfied with his work and all the payment processes on freelancer.com and decided to hire this freelancer for a larger project. It took us a month to complete this project, and the freelancer had to reject all other orders and projects from other companies. A month later, when I was trying to pay my freelancer $1,400 for a project, something unbelievable happened. Freelancer.com took my money from my PayPal account and froze it on the platform. They started telling me that my account was suspicious and I needed to go through an identity verification procedure. When I asked why everything was fine before and all payments were successful, but now my account suddenly became suspicious, they didn’t really answer me. I resigned myself and began to go through the verification procedure. I had to go through this process several times, but every time something was wrong, and they were always unhappy with something. First, they told me that my IP address did not match my place of registration, and they were forced to reject my request, which is outrageously ridiculous. I can be registered in one city and go to another city within my country on a business trip or vacation, this is not prohibited by law, and they do not have the right to refuse my request for such a reason. Now they simply reject my verification requests without giving a reason. I have already uploaded all my personal documents several times which are real and genuine, taken photos of my face next to my passport, and provided documents that show the legitimacy of my business. But for them, something keeps going wrong. When I ask the support team to explain the situation and name the reason, they constantly evade and do not say what is wrong. The support is not helpful at all and behaves like a robot, responding with template canned answers. As a result, it turns out that they withdrew a considerable amount of money from my account and do not give it to the freelancer because they do not want to accept my verification requests. They don't return the money and keep it for themselves, which is like a regular robbery if you ask me. My freelancer worked hard this whole month and didn't get paid as a result, and I lost my money as a result. So I don't recommend the freelancer.com platform, use UpWork or Fiverr instead.

Andrii, Ukraine
September 21, 2023

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It’s the worst freelancing site in the world

Freelancer.com is basically a platform creates by kids. That's how I see it as a freelancer. 99% of the jobs posted are scams and it costs so much money for their useless membership fee. Stay away from this scam site otherwise you'll waste your time and money.

Roeun, Cambodia
November 29, 2022

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POOR MANAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Worst ever experience. They are thief and completely Froud. They stole my $300 and closed my account for no reason. Please don't waste your precious time using this fake app. When you try to contact support then sent auto generated replies. Not even a single person there to reply. They stole my money and wasted my time. I requested many times that please transfer my funds in my account to my bank account that is my hard earned money. I earned that spending day and night. But no response from them about returning the money every time they say your violated our terms but never tells which one and never talk about sending my money to my bank account. THAT'S MY MONEY. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO KEEP IT.

Sajjad Ahmad, Pakistan
September 16, 2022

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Purchaser

The worst experience I’ve ever had no customer service The take your money they allow you to use a service the they won’t allow you to use your funds to pay the freelancer 5 days after you started the tell you your funds aren’t verified and it’s going to take days to verify meanwhile your money is out of your account and in there’s but you can’t pay the freelancer that rushed your job Very embarrassing and frustrating you look like a dead beat to someone that did a great job for you Good luck

David Benes, USA
September 12, 2022

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Freelancer’s Unacceptable Customer Relations

After previously writing a stinging review of Freelancer, one of their representative contacted me to amend the situation. Their attempts we laughable. Although I am just working with one Freelancer currently and the amounts are under 300, they will not budge on not accepting 3 forms of my personal ID. With all of the hacks and "personal identity theft" being reported on a daily basis, why would anyone set themselves up for a disaster like this??? Fiverr does not require such absurd confirmations. After not complying with the absurd demand of personal ID, I asked for the most recent project with the artist's NDA and IP contract to be refunded... since they won't allow me to do business on their site... what did they do? They suspended my account!?!?!? Wow! But that's ok, there's always by next best friend - Fiverr! Already found the same freelancer there! I informed the Freelancer representative that if they refund ONLY my project 2's NDA and IP contracts that I would amend my Sitejabber review, but they have not replied to my request, but in fact, closed my account! Madness! Why destroy their reputation over $40.00 of contracts that have not had their projects' started??? This is exactly why a customer relations website such as this one, Sitejabber, is an important resource to us all for reporting the egregious actions of a company against their customers. In short, my update is DO NOT USE Freelancer if you want to protect your personal identification, want to avoid a hellish customer experience, and just live a lesser stressed life.

Steve, USA
July 05, 2022

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Dumb operational staff

Freelancers may not even allowed to bring clients from another platform and have client pays inside their freelancer site. The company is running out of client, because they are run by very dumb operational staff. They are asking dear our clients for consultation only for 20 dolar. Which is showing how bad their financial condition is.

Elham Kaka Bakdiar, Indonesia
March 24, 2022

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