An Honest Elance Review

There are lots of people searching for an honest, well-written review of Elance. That's not hard to understand, because that site provides one of the largest choices of freelancers and independent contractors from across the globe.

They cover various categories like graphic design, programming, administrative assistance, and writing. If you need a contractor to help you create content for your project, it could be beneficial for you to know just how Elance measures up.

Elance for Buyers:

Buyers find Elance to be their superprize. They've built their site upon the user experiences of their buyers that means never spending a dime except for what buyers pay their hirees. Signing up is simple and easy. It takes just a few minutes and you're ready to post your first project. Like most Elance review writers point out, this site is eager to you to get started as quickly as you can.

To set up a project only take a bit of minor work. It is a good idea for you to take a few minutes to look over the available options for your project. You should be thorough in stating exactly what you are looking for, so you won't be smothered with bids from contractors of low quality skills.

If Elance has a weakness, this is it. Anybody can join Elance and become a member as long as they pay the monthly fee. That gives them the right to bid on your project. That means you are going to be responsible for weeding out the field. You'll have to read the submitted samples, set up interviews, and create milestones to ensure that you receive the quality of work you're looking for.

The Providers:

In regard to locating quality providers, most of the Elance reviewers state that Elance has been somewhere in the middle in terms of quality, mainly due to having such a high volume of providers. It reminds you of the ‘getting what you pay for' type of setup. If you want top quality, but want to pay little, then it will be hard to get quality work.

On the other hand, if you don't mind paying providers well, then you can find some top quality workers (which are scored and easy to locate). Everyone has ratings for you to view, along with repeat clients, total earnings, overall aggregated score, and more. You can research each candidate before making your decision on which one to hire.

Workroom Tools:

The earlier review writers concerning Elance raved about it because they were one of the very first services to ever provide escrow services. This service worked out marvelously. Providers pay their escrow fees from their earnings. This is instant in most cases after they verify your payment source.

The workroom has been through some upgrades recently, and now provides same-hour tracking as well as screenshot tools like Odesk. However, they are still lagging a bit behind by not having desktop tracking or mobile apps like Odesk does.

Most of the Elance reviewers also mention how Elance's backend might be a little confusing. It has what sees to be an overkill of available payment and invoicing options. This is because of their upgrading as well as their feature testing.

You can expect changes from Elance about every month or so, some will be small, and other total overhauls. That leaves people feeling confused and searching for options. Customer service can be hard to reach in a real pinch at times and documentation is limited.

The Bottom Line:

Like any good review writer writing about Elance will say, there are positive and negative points alike in regard to making Elance your choice of an outsourcing tool. They do have more providers along with a greater project network than lots of other sites. Buyers pay no fees and have access to provides from across the globe almost instantly.

The platform itself at times is dizzying. Provider quality can be difficult to verify, and where bids are coming from cannot be guaranteed. This can be problematic in categories such as Writing and Translation.

Overall you will find that Elance is a very useful tool. It can help reduce your work-load by a broad margin. However, you cannot expect it to perform all your heavy lifting. You still have to conduct your interviews, edit work, and make good use of the feedback tools in order to land the kind of solid independent contractors you can rely on for quality work on your future projects.