Freelancer.com Review [2024] – Great Reputation, BUT…

If You’re Willing To Pay For Quantity Over Quality, Give It a Try

Freelancer is one of the biggest freelance websites, offering access to 53 million professionals in over 247 regions and 34 languages. These professionals have experience in copywriting, data science, software development, research, and more – meaning that you can use Freelancer to acquire technical expertise and operate overseas.

Using Freelancer, you can either search through freelancer profiles and hire them directly or post a job and let them apply. However, Freelancer is known for its excessive scams, making most freelancers, job posts, and proposals useless to businesses looking for high-quality candidates. In addition, Freelancer doesn’t screen candidates and offers paid verification to all freelancers, making it impossible to determine who’s legit and who isn’t.

To avoid unnecessary stress, I recommend avoiding Freelancer.com altogether. If you want to hire freelancers online, create an account on Fiverr1. It’s a safer, cheaper, and overall better platform.

One redeeming feature is Freelancer Enterprise, which comes with no monthly fees or added costs compared to its regular plans, which charge exorbitant fees. Unfortunately, you’ll need to spend over $100,000/month on freelancers to see any benefit. If you’ve just started hiring or want to switch from another freelancing platform, you won’t see the cost-saving potential you can get on the best freelance websites.

Before you join Freelancer and put your money on the line, read our comprehensive review to find out why Freelancer is likely not the best choice for your business in 2024.

Basic Features That Create More Problems Than Solutions

Freelancer offers several standard features, including a built-in time tracker, tasklist, favorites bar, and notification center, ensuring you can organize and prioritize tasks and projects. However, compared to freelancer websites like Fiverr and Upwork, its layout and design are outdated and make navigating difficult. For example, it has numerous pages of features, despite most of them requiring monthly subscriptions and additional fees to access.

Enterprise

Specifically for high-volume businesses willing to spend thousands of dollars on freelancers, Freelancer’s Enterprise combines its best features to offer you an all-in-one solution. For example, you can hire expert recruiters and project managers who will identify quality talent and run your project from start to finish. Better yet, besides the platform’s usual service fees, you’ll pay no additional service fees, monthly fees, or joining fees.

Unfortunately, you need to spend upwards of $100,000/month on freelancers to reap the benefits – disqualifying most startups and SMEs. Plus, to access each service individually, you will spend $11.99 per project for a recruiter and $40/hour per project co-pilot. If you think Enterprise solutions could be right for your startup or SME, you can access over 8,000 more skills with Upwork Enterprise1 and design a custom package to fit your needs.

Preferred Freelancer Program

Freelancer’s preferred freelancer program is a good feature if you need top-quality talent with industry-specific skills and experience. It allows you to gain access to verified freelancers with exceptional track records and reviews, increasing your project’s chances of success. To qualify, freelancers must excel in the preferred freelancer entrance exam and participate in an extensive interview, guaranteeing their suitability for high-value projects.

Despite only 3% of freelancers participating in the preferred freelancer program, you will run into an overwhelmingly large number of bids per project. Plus, as you’re accessing top-quality talent, you’ll pay higher fees. If you’re on a budget, Fiverr Business is an excellent alternative1. It gives you free access to vetted freelancers, a dedicated success manager, and several collaboration tools.

Freelancer Verification

Requiring email, phone, payment, and KYC verification in addition to a video interview, Freelancer’s verification allows you to find legitimate freelancers quickly and easily. Each verified freelancer receives a blue badge and can bid on projects worth over $2,500.

However, anyone can acquire verification by paying $99 and attending a video interview, regardless of their skills and experience. Because of this, you end up with a large pool of verified freelancers who don’t fit your business’s needs. Fortunately, other freelance websites have solved this problem. For example, Fiverr categorizes freelancers by level, clearly showing whether your applicants are new, level 1, level 2, or top-rated sellers.

Freelancer.com Features at a Glance

Freelancer.com Could Be One of the Least User-Friendly Platforms

Overall, Freelancer.com is a difficult platform to navigate. It has numerous pages, tabs, and notification bars that are almost unusable on smaller screens. For example, every drop-down tab I tried to access while multi-tasking didn’t work, meaning I had to resize my screen to navigate the site. Despite this, it took me less than 5 minutes to create an account, and I could even scroll through its list of freelancers before finalizing my details.

On-Page Chat

Freelancer’s on-page chat feature is great for projects that require regular communication and updates. Whether you’re asking questions, drawing up proposals, or rereading your previous chats, Freelancer makes it easy with a search bar and filter.

You can also view your messages on a separate page if you’d prefer, but there is no added functionality compared to its condensed version. In comparison to other freelance websites, its chat feature barely delivers. For example, when sending and receiving messages through Upwork, you can schedule meetings and filter messages by unread, favorites, interviews, and contract type. Better yet, it even shows the freelancer’s timezone, profile, and more.

Filters

Considering the number of freelancers using the Freelancer platform, you’ll struggle to identify potential candidates without filters. Freelancer allows you to filter freelancers by location, skills, exams, hourly rate, star rating, and online. Despite being a great feature, its filtering system is nowhere near as advanced as other freelancing websites and won’t benefit you nearly as much in your search for freelancers.

To compare, Fiverr offers specific filters per service offered1. For example, businesses looking for writers can filter by language, service offering, topic, tone, article type, service inclusions, seller level, seller availability, seller country, budget, and delivery time.

Content Hub

Freelancer’s content hub is a great way to learn how to use the platform and benefit from its features. Each article takes 10-20 minutes to read and can give insight into hiring in specific industries.

For example, several articles I read were ultimate guides, including how to hire and work with engineers, advertising specialists, CNC programmers, and more. If you’re inexperienced in hiring and working with freelancers, this type of content can be invaluable – even if you decide not to hire via Freelancer.com after all.

Fairly Responsive, but Its Live Chat Support Is Outdated and Vague

Freelancer is limited in its support, offering all freelancers and employers 24/7 live chat and email support. I contacted its support team to test its response times and asked questions about its Enterprise and corporate accounts.

I used its website to ask if there are any fees associated with an Enterprise account and who the ideal Enterprise account holder is. Despite being outside conventional working hours, I surprisingly received a standard response in less than 15 minutes.

On the other hand, its live chat is challenging to use due to its poor design. For example, you can’t easily increase or minimize the pop-up window. If you do, you won’t be able to access the chat and will need to refresh your page to view your conversation. Plus, once connected, you’ll wait 5-6 minutes at minimum for a representative to join the chat.

The support team is responsive, yet their answers can be somewhat brief, occasionally leading to further questions. After a couple of follow-up queries on my part, I gained a clearer understanding of the distinctions between personal and corporate accounts.

Freelancer provides a client help center that covers topics like project initiation, milestone payments, initial steps, and basic troubleshooting. The articles are concise and come with multiple links for swift problem resolution. However, the content seems more focused on promoting Freelancer’s services than delivering comprehensive advice, indicating that resolving issues requires direct support engagement.

Lowest Transaction Fees but Offers the Least Value for Money

Freelancer’s pricing structure is difficult to understand, especially if you haven’t worked with freelancing websites before. It offers several plans: Basic, Plus, Professional, Premier, Freelancer Corporate, and Freelancer Enterprise. Its Basic and Plus plans offer no features for employers, but they all come with a 3% fee on every payment. Despite this, if you pay annually rather than month-to-month, you can save up to $20/month.

Freelancer’s per transaction fee is the lowest compared to other freelance platforms, but you’ll pay more in the long run.

Unfortunately, you’ll incur additional project fees on most of its plans (excluding Enterprise). For example, you’ll pay $9.99 for featured projects, $9.99 for urgent projects, $21.99 for private projects, $229.99 for full-time projects, $11.99 for recruiters, $21.99 for NDA projects, $21.99 for IP agreement projects, $9.99 for sealed projects, $5 for priority projects, and $9.99 for extensions. In addition, you’ll pay for contests, to change your username, and more.

You’ll also run into maintenance fees of up to $14/month if you don’t log in for 6 months – which I haven’t seen anywhere else. Plus, when you factor in features, usability, and additional fees, Fiverr is the best value for money1. Better yet, freelancers on Fiverr determine the cost of additional services, allowing for high-value services at a fraction of the cost.