Auction.ioReviews of outsource.com

Easy way to find clients for online, freelance work. There are a lot of new jobs regularly. Recommended!

As the freelancer I am unhappy with the program. Positives: The payment system is terrific. They process the payment and the person seeking my work does not have any of my PII. The system works well. Negative: Not enough job opportunities. Many of the users post VERY vague requests for quotation. There is no way to communicate with them to ask for specific details. There is no feedback within the request for quote system so that I can gauge whether my price was too high, qualifications inadequate, etc. Disappointing.

phillip howard heilp you

I love how the freelancers submit bids relative to my budget. I've worked with two and have been very pleased with the results. It's great that I can re-contract someone that I've worked well with, without posting the job to all. Would definitely recommend as a source for talent! I was not aware that freelancers had to "pay" for the privilege of bidding on jobs via credits. Shouldn't the cost be owned by the one submitting the job bid? I paid 10% of the accepted bid to you for each job I posted. I received 20 bids for a job and opened several proposals to determine the applicants ability to perform the job. Freelancers should NOT be "charged/penalized" if I open their proposal. Their credits should only be used when they accept my offer. Ideally, they shouldn't have to pay for credits at all.

Not enough information about the Job to be performed. How can I be expected to quote, such a sparse description of the project. How did the client come up with an offer, without a complete description?

In comparison to the other freelance sites out there, Outsource's platform is shady at best. Subscription fees are FAR and away higher than any of the others, and the value is negligible; Outsource offers the lowest number of credits/bids per month while requiring significantly more (3-9 credits!) to bid on any given project. They tout that they are the better deal, since they do not take a cut of project payments; however, the quantity and quality of projects on their site have severely dropped off over the past 6 months and do NOT warrant the hefty subscription fees. At least other sites ONLY take a cut of work you actually get! Outsource 'guarantees' that your proposals will be read; however, 80% of the projects applied to are abandoned or not awarded, even if mysteriously 'viewed'. Outsource offers ZERO transparency as to an employer's stats, ratings and whether or not a project is actually being awarded and completed through their site. After 13+ years as a freelancer on all of the various sites, I have NEVER experienced such a low response/return rate. To date, over the past 1.5 years testing the Outsource waters, I have paid upwards of $400-$600 in fees (subscriptions+having to purchase additional credits since professionals are offered precious few), to get around $1200 in work. Did I mention that Outsource forces you to sign a 1 year contract guaranteeing that you pay them $60+ a month? All the while they do not guarantee that you will find any work to justify the cost. Since they have unreasonable subscription costs instead of taking a cut of actual projects paid through their site, they clearly have no incentive to push for quality clients and postings. Comparatively, on Upwork, I pay a monthly subscription fee of $10 and receive 100+ bids to use (2 each) on a high volume of quality projects - there are so many high-budget projects, I can completely pass on anything under $300! I can only assume Upwork has managed to deplete both Outsource and Guru of anything worthwhile - on the other sites, I feel fortunate just to get a response to the $199 bids I have to place to stay competitive with the overseas lowballers. Over approx. 4 months on Upwork, I have paid $40 in subscription fees and received $5731.50 in projects! With such a high rate of return, I would happily pay a cut of ACTUAL jobs over a set fee any day! My Outsource subscription ended a few months ago, and I elected not to renew it. I visit the job listings every once in a while to see if there is anything worth returning for. There isn't. There just isn't. I understand Outsource is one of the newer freelance sites, but they need to wake the F up with some major reform if they want to last through the year.

The title says it all. This is WAY better than other similar services I've tried.

great outsourcing! slow and heavy site.