Best Freelance Websites Reviewed

Since I couldn’t find an objective comparison between freelancing sites, I decided to create one myself. The following reviews of freelancing sites are based on my personal experiences. Every freelance website will tell you they are the number one destination with the most qualified freelancers. But you should take that with a grain of salt. If you’re looking for talent, here’s an unbiased review of your best options. If you want to be a freelancer yourself, check this post out.

Freelance Job Site	My Rating	Ease of Use	Freelancing Specialties	Notes
Elance	Read/Write User Reviews	Easy	IT/Programming, Web Design, Virtual Assistants	Because Elance is the most popular freelancing website, it's easy to find a wide variety of people (they actually have 1.8 million registered contractors). I've found Elance has a very intuitive user interface that makes it easy to track candidates and work. They also have a work guarantee and escrow service that ensures you only pay for work completed on fixed price jobs. Read More...
oDesk	Read/Write User Reviews	Needs improvement	IT/Programming Web Design	After posting a job on Odesk, I always seem to get the largest number of freelancer responses in the shortest period of time. However, I find the Odesk user interface difficult for comparing candidates, taking notes, and reviewing messages. While the UI could be better, Odesk is still one of my favorite options for finding low cost freelancers. Read More...
99designs	Read/Write User Reviews	Super Easy	Web Design Logos	99designs lets you set your own price for a design contest where multiple graphic designers compete for your project. It's hard to get a bad result with their money back guarantee. 99designs has a very simple and intuitive job posting process that helps you present your vision to designers. Visions can be very subjective and their process helps get you a much better result than a graphic design job posting on a typical freelance website. Here’s my more detailed review of 99designs and a couple of my readers’ tips for picking a logo and running a contest on 99designs. Read More...
Fiverr	Read/Write User Reviews	Super Easy	Any crazy service you can imagine	It's quick to hire a freelancer on Fiverr for a $5 mini-task (called a gig) and the site is super-addictive. You'll find some truly ridiculous gigs and some gigs that are worth much more than $5. Fiverr is great for very small, simple jobs like article writing or keyword research. Head in with low expectations and you will be pleasantly surprised. Read More...
vWorker (formerly rent-a-coder)	Read/Write User Reviews	Easy (but time-consuming up front)	IT/Programming Web Design	vWorker requires extremely thorough job postings by employers. As a result, it takes much longer to post a job using their mandatory "Requirements Wizard". vWorker's intention is to help you flush out requirements as early as possible so that you end up with better results. Unfortunately, if you are non-technical and seeking technical advice (as well as a coder), the wizard may prove a little challenging. Read More...
Freelancer.com	Read/Write User Reviews	Needs improvement	IT/Programming	Freelancer.com has too many job posting fees not baked into the freelancer bid amount. I also found it to be the worst user interface out of all the freelancing websites I've used. It's very unintuitive and difficult to navigate between proposals and candidate profiles. I was too turned off by the poor UI to hire anyone after receiving bids. Read More...
crowdSPRING	Read/Write User Reviews	Easy	Web Design Logos	crowdSpring works just like 99designs and has a money back guarantee as well. However, starting prices are a little bit less expensive than 99designs. It's not as popular a website, but they claim to have just as many graphic artists competing on projects. Interestingly, they also offer crowdsourced writing services. Read More...

The big difference between freelancing sites is usability

You’ll find qualified freelancers (and duds) on every site and some people have profiles on multiple sites. That’s why I focus on freelance websites that are easy to use. To get a feel for which site works best for you, test drive freelancers from several sites by creating a freelancer test assignment .