2015: oDesk vs Elance (vs Freelancer, etc)

macdonjo3

macdonjo3

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Well, I've used oDesk many many times. I've completed over 50 projects and spent $xx,xxx on freelancers. I'm still not satisfied with the level of quality the bids are. Even if I put the budget high, I'll get a bunch of applicants with recycle cover letters and no interest of displaying that they actually know the technologies. The oDesk platform is a bit flawed and allows low quality to flourish.

I'm looking at Elance. It's quite a clean platform. The amount of bids are low, but seems to be well organized and serious, interested bidders. Elance must have a max on the amount of bids per day or something to ensure bids are of top quality.

I'm thinking of hopping over to Elance for a few projects.

I've also used Freelancer.com and it was okay. I'd like to hear from some different platforms. I've done way too many tests on oDesk and want to hear what others have tried.
 
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I look for alternatives or local people in that specific trade
 
If you don't mind sharing, what is the nature of your projects? Because
almost all the sites have gotten much worse. I'd advise against Elance,
it's terrible. I have heard good things about PeoplePerHour, but I haven't
had the chance to try them out yet, so take my advice with a grain of
salt.
 
I particularly don't like oDesk for their ongoing account reviews that tend to get your account suspended for no logical reasons, it just feels like that they are into suspending accounts on a random basis even thou you have received almost all positive feedback and 5 star reviews.
 
Visit said:
I look for alternatives or local people in that specific trade
Click to expand...
Local people are expensive. I live downtown of a major city and devs are expensive, unless I go with college students who might be reasonable depending on experience. I'm looking for under $20 per hour.

tiyowan said:
If you don't mind sharing, what is the nature of your projects? Because
almost all the sites have gotten much worse. I'd advise against Elance,
it's terrible. I have heard good things about PeoplePerHour, but I haven't
had the chance to try them out yet, so take my advice with a grain of
salt.
Click to expand...
All sorts of projects. Every category. Mobile apps, websites, software, facebook services, writing, data entry. Right now, I need a high quality app developer.
 
As both a Freelancer and Employee on those sites, I've tried them, all.
I'd say go for Elance.
I say that after using Freelancer, ODesk, Guru, Elance and a couple others which slipped my mind as typing.
That's just my input though.

If you want, you could also send me a PM :)
 
VoidITSolutions said:
As both a Freelancer and Employee on those sites, I've tried them, all.
I'd say go for Elance.
I say that after using Freelancer, ODesk, Guru, Elance and a couple others which slipped my mind as typing.
That's just my input though.

If you want, you could also send me a PM :)
Click to expand...

I think I'm going to try Elance. It's looking promising.

On a second note, does anyone know why Elance has so many Chinese workers? oDesk is mostly Indian freelancers and almost 0 Chinese freelancers. I've read great things about Chinese culture, so I might hire my first China-based dev. I know China has filtered media, so maybe oDesk is blocked. I know Dropbox is.
 
yes definitely elance is alot better. I have experience from odesk and freelancer they claim they make some big apps from their cover letter which is quite obvious a lie
 
For me, i've only tried Freelancer, but i can see that the whole idea became so suck

on every lancer site now you can find lots of bids and it looks like you have no chance to get a job, so i think that this way is dead now or at least getting dead !
 
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I spent so many time and money finding good VA at oDesk, however, when I found one, i really improved my business. Have been working with my VA via oDesk for a couple of years and am very satisfied with it.
 
I must admit I use Elance for a lot of my projects. I'm pretty picky too as these are all projects I could code myself but just don't have the time, and have found some great contacts who I use repeatedly.

I find putting a note on the job description saying 'no teams' etc. helps as i'd much rather work and have contact with an individual ;)
 
OneSpeak said:
For me, i've only tried Freelancer, but i can see that the whole idea became so suck

on every lancer site now you can find lots of bids and it looks like you have no chance to get a job, so i think that this way is dead now or at least getting dead !
Click to expand...
That's because all the bids are low quality and the job is awarded because there are 15 bids that spam or lack qualifications or interest.

Tim_A said:
I must admit I use Elance for a lot of my projects. I'm pretty picky too as these are all projects I could code myself but just don't have the time, and have found some great contacts who I use repeatedly.

I find putting a note on the job description saying 'no teams' etc. helps as i'd much rather work and have contact with an individual ;)
Click to expand...
Exact same deal here. Agree 100%. I could code it all, but every dev is tight for time, so we need to outsource. I have always used individuals, as I can never get a agency together fast enough. It takes 3 days to get the first line of code written.
 
I really like oDesk as a freelancer. I've signed up for every site under the sun but they vetted my skills the most and seemed to provide a good user experience, i'm sure its even better on the buying side of things.

I however do NOT use their time banking software. You want X, i'll give you X. Whether it takes me 50 seconds or 50 hours is irrelevant.
 
After some more thinking and analyzing what I've done so far on oDesk, etc... Bug fixes and modifications under $200 are usually what works best on oDesk. eLance only has a "under $500" range, but I believe they did introduce custom budgets recently to try to cater to the lower market. If you want a website, app or any piece of software built for say $2000, then Elance seems to be the better choice.
 
PeoplePerHour is good. I used for many time and it's perfect for me. You can try if you want ;)
 
I have to agree. Out of those 3 mentioned, elance works the best for me. But there are still lots off guys just copy-pasting the letters from project to project. From my experience Freelancer is the worst. Haven't found a good freelancer there for a while
 
Consider using envato studio, I think they have a review process and not anyone can join (advertise their services there).
 
so i think that this way is dead now or at least getting dead !
Click to expand...
Yep, you don't suck, lets blame those sites. Freelancing is definitely dead.
 
Little update, just hired my first freelancer on Elance. He's making a high quality animated/cartoon explainer video for 30 seconds for $250 in 5 days (if I remember correctly).

So far, really enjoying the experience. I had lots of bids with 5 stars 60-300 jobs completed. Many bids were from various countries that you wouldn't get on oDesk. About 50% of the applicants, or more, took the time to understand my job and immediately got to asking real questions about completing the job. Really enjoying the platform, will definitely be hiring some more people on there. Glad I took the leap as not too many people have strong preferences on their platform of choice.
 
Elance is better than oDesk, Elance has clean and beautiful management system, but one problem is you can't bid on more than one category. But oDesk is different, you can bid on any categories. Besides, Freelancers seems disgusting to me, their platform and website and jobs browsing styles are different, not okay. I don't like Freelancers.com, more competition, any jobs.
 
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