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As a developer, I am very satisfied. Great system.

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So what is the alternative aside for elance?

Hey guys. I wanted to get in touch with as many people as I can regarding Elance and their shady business practices. I'm an employer. Elance let me hire a firm from India that they kicked off their site for God knows what 1 day after I posted my job. Did Elance tell me? NO. This company had 100% positive feedback. That happens because Elance allows them to create multiple accounts, hire themselves and give themselves positive feedback. Many times the projects they have listed in their profiles are not from other companies but inhouse projects. Elance let me hire them and they ended up stealing my intellectual property, taking the first two payments for milestones, never delivering anything, and HACKING my computer, Elance account, bank account and basically my life. DO NOT WORK WITH THIS COMPANY!



I went to Godaddy to buy the domain ElanceSucks.com but it was already taken. What a surprise!

This is a rip-off, I tried it, it does not work! period...unless you want to work for free! i was reading a job description for a VA and the guy siad in his country a good Assistant charges no more than $2/hr...

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I've been providing web content and articles for clients via Elance for about a year now. I work between 30-40 hours a week and have made over $20,000.00 in the last 6 months.



I see negative reviews all the time and I just don't understand them. Not everyone has the skill to do this kind of work. Blaming Elance for lack of time-management skills, talent or motivation seems unfair.



That said, there are definitely buyers out there who aren't completely on the up and up -- just like in the real world, imagine that! The good thing about Elance is that you're able to read feedback that's left for buyers from their previous clients, as well as the feedback they've left for their providers.



All you need to do is take a bit of time to look into the projects you're bidding on. You can make money at this -- provided you have the talent. Not everyone does; don't beat yourself up over it -- but don't blame Elance either!

If it was an option, Elance would receive zero stars from me. They don't go after non-paying buyers and claim they can't "get involved." I'm sure if a writer failed to provide the good for the buyer they'd "get involved."

Horrible!!! In the same league as Guru. They put the screws to the contractors and suck up to the employers, who receive services for free!!! Elance is the worst!

Horrible for everyone else This site offers an excellent place for job posters and an absolutely horrible one for service providers. Just take a look at the ratio of postings to service providers. For example, Design and Multimedia has, right now, over thirteen thousand service providers...and only four hundred and twenty-two job postings.

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I do have complaints with the low bidding practices and for employers who want to pay 3-4.00 per hour (or less) for high level work.

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Really mediocre. I've been using Elance for about a month and I find the charges outrageous. Elance takes huge cuts out of any projects you win, and I think most buyers are contacting the providers directly.

I own several companies which employ more than a thousand service providers so I enrolled in Elance. I asked Customer Service for support on some areas that was not clear to me, which is normally answered in Guru less than 24 hours. Weeks passed and finally I got a response from them asking me to explain what I want. I sent them several inquiries weeks back and they don't seem to have a record of it. Guru sends me a message and resolves all my problems within 24 hours. I don't blame your reviewers for giving a poor rating on their customer service. So when I tried to cancel my membership for over $1500 dollars, I cannot anymore! Oh well!

Completely awful. Elance was worth using years ago at its inception, before it charged outrageous subscription fees and took unreasonable cuts from any of the projects you managed to win.

Waste of money, no customer service, Elance lies, poor website I signed up for Elance in early December. I followed their advice and took some performance tests (at $5 a pop) because they claim that when buyers do a search if you score high you will be high in the rankings for whatever skill. NOT TRUE.

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If the service provider doesn't respond, Elance does absolutely nothing to protect the *buyer" except to tell me that if I serve them with a subpeopna then they will send me the service providers personal information like home address, etc so that I can take the service provider to court. Bad, very bad business. I wouldn't recommend Elance at all.

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Have been back and forth on this site and am finally leaving it for good. This is not the place for serious contractors with experience, references, etc. expecting a fair wage.

Elance has the worst customer service of ANY freelancing site and I have used many of them. There is simply nothing worthwild about Elance.

No customer service, no good providers, bunch of frauds and cheats out there Elance is a joke if you are looking to provide quality work (and get anything close to a fair wage). For buyers it's even worse. The whole site is chalk full of low-quality providers with glowing resumes and feedback. The thing is the providers make multiple accounts and "trade" projects within the accounts for that very feedback. Elance turns a blind eye so they can collect their service fees.

The provider was horrible. They couldn't follow the project details or even simple instructions. They drug the whole thing out for like 3 weeks before they finally just said they didn't have the expertise to do it.

Use Elance if you like wasting money.
It's great for job posters and Elance employees and horrible for everyone else.

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If you are a buyer, thigs are very good for you.

If you are a seller, you will soon find out that you are the golden goose for Elance. Initially, it's free to open an account and list several items in your Elance shop, but as said earlier you can't expect any transactions to come by just listing your services.

What does this membership pay for? Elance says it pays for advertising and marketing expenses of the Elance (and in extension, your) marketplace. That's a pure rip-off! It's like paying Google to let you search! These people are unbelievable!

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Hefty charges for Service Providers. Mediation policy and refund policy are not reliable. Elance is a very costly site for service providers. It picks your pocket by both hands - (1) A hefty fee on registration, and (2) Additional 8.75% of the cost of the project, with minimum of $10 (25%, if Project Cost is $50). Its refund policy is also quite defective.

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Advantages: Easy to set up.
Disadvantages: Impossible to sell Elance is a work / project marketplace, where buyers post works / projects for bidding by sellers. Elance of course offers a listing service - where you can list all the kind of jobs you are able to offer, but according to my experience buyers almost never see those listings, since they are able to post a project for bidding.

No customer service, lots of fraud, expensive Elance is about the worst freelance site out there whether you are a buyer or a provider. If you're a buyer you have to watch out for constant fraud. Their escrow service is nothing but a scam.

Total waste of time for anyone who isn't an off-shore, fly by night group trying to pass themselves off as professionals who are willing to work for peanuts.