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Comment by ttoinou | Hacker News Reader

   Upwork (~$1000/month): Freelancers.
  I especially use Upwork because I don't have
  to think about all the billing stuff and time tracking, etc.

The same for me, and they take a cut both sides (3% or 50 USD / month + 3% fees USD/EUR on my side and 5 to 10% on the freelancer side). I was wondering if there was an alternative to upwork for those who only need it for its automatic billing system + time tracking + weekly summary + screenshots of work (don't need to research for new talents).

I guess time tracking tool could enter this market

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I've tended to avoid Upwork, because it seems onerous on Freelancers, and also seems to result in the commoditization of freelancers. Working with that kind of talent can be burdensome. The best results require you to be ultra specific in your requests. I guess I'd prefer spending a bit more on Smart people... but those guys aren't on Upwork.

There's everything on upwork ! Really good workers, bad people (lying about their schedule, deliverable, making up false excuses and insulting you) and average freelancers. If you are looking for someone remotely for a few well-defined small tasks upwork is really good to start with

Where are they?

https://screenshotmonitor.com/tour

* No billing support, but they do have an API.

https://screenshotmonitor.com/apidoc/

I would quit if I was forced to install that.

This is in response to Upwork. If you’re not on Upwork this isn’t relevant.

Upwork charges 20% of the first $500, 10% of the first $10,000, and then 5% onwards. Limits are per freelancer, client pair.

If you're spending >$10,000 on an individual freelancer it seems it might make more sense to hire someone?

(Getting started working with ~$500 webdev contracts on Upwork recently so very familiar with these numbers)

I would pay for that if it's cheaper and my freelancers were OK with it.

I think another benefit of using Upwork for this is the hours get logged on their Upwork profile which makes them more "active" and preferred in the Upwork algo?

Yeah right ! That's why I was thinking that freelancers would be OK to stay a few months on upwork (and improve their profile) and if you want to hire them more long term they'll be OK to switch and avoid the high fees

upwork has a non-circumvention clause with a minimal $3500 fee to break (it pretty much always scales to be not worth breaking).

As to "how will they catch us" it would seem to fairly obvious from the freelancers schedule

They are not necessarily enforceable. It's probably just to scare the freelancers. Once upwork makes contact between freelancer and employers there's nothing they can do to really prevent them from talking between each others and agreeing on working on a new contract.

(also I've been told this clause is only for the 2 first years.. ?)

given high hourly rates for engineers - what does $1000 buy you?

for 80 USD/hour, more than 12 hours of work :) ?

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