ODesk
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Freelance marketplace |
| Founded |
Mountain View, California 2015 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California |
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Area served
|
Worldwide |
|
Key people
|
Stephane Kasriel (CEO), Thomas Layton (Chairman) |
| Website | www |
| Alexa rank |
 430 (January 2017[update]) |
|---|
Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, is a global freelancing platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. In 2015, Elance-oDesk was rebranded as Upwork. It is based in Mountain View and San Francisco, California.
Upwork has twelve million registered freelancers and five million registered clients. Three million jobs are posted annually, worth a total of $1 billion USD, making it the world's largest freelancer marketplace.
Upwork was formed 18 months after Elance and oDesk announced their merger on December 18, 2013 to create Elance-oDesk. oDesk was founded in 2003 by Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis. Elance was founded in 1999 by Beerud Sheth and Srini Anumolu. With the launch of Upwork, the oDesk platform was upgraded and rebranded and the company announced that the Elance platform would be phased out within a couple of years, resulting in a single freelance marketplace.
In early September 2015, the Upwork service experienced an outage which led to an apology being issued by CEO Stephane Kasriel. This led to the introduction of an Upwork Status page to offer freelancers and clients greater transparency.
Upwork allows clients to interview, hire and work with freelancers and agencies through the company's platform. The platform now includes a real-time chat platform aimed at reducing the time it takes to find and hire freelancers.
On 3 May 2016, Upwork announced that the service fee for freelancers will change from flat rate of 10% to a "sliding service fee" of 5% to 20%.
As of 21 June 2016[update], freelancers pay a "sliding service fee" based on total lifetime billings with each client: 20% for the first $500 billed to the client across all contracts, 10% for total billings with the client between $500.01 and $10,000, and 5% for total billings with the client that exceed $10,000. Clients pay a 2.75% per payment processing fee; some clients are eligible to pay a monthly flat processing fee of $25. Payments can be made using credit cards, PayPal, or bank transfer. Payments are made through Upwork's escrow system, which transfers the funds to freelancers after a 6-day period.
As of June 2016[update], Upwork reported $1B in annual freelancer billings. Freelancers can be hired for jobs on web, mobile, and software development, engineering and data science, creative services such as graphic design and writing, sales and marketing, customer service, virtual assistants, and accounting and consulting. The company provides voluntary skills tests in various disciplines from English aptitude to specific programming skills, and profiles include a feedback mechanism.
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Wikipedia