Direct Contracts now live for all freelancers

[Vladimir G]

Hi Temitope, Oyeyemi, Samuel, Innocent and Achala,

Thanks for your questions. Currently, Direct Contracts are only available to freelancers and their clients in certain countries. If you attempt to sign up and you or your client are not eligible due to the country you live in, you’ll see this message: “We’re sorry to inform you that Direct Contracts are currently not available in your country." Note that the message has been recently updated. We hope to expand Direct Contracts to more countries in the future.

[Geoffroy L]

Why did you put this restriction ?
That mean I can no more send direct contract to clients even if I have
already done it successfully before you put this restriction !
This is not fair!!!

[Muhammad S]

Hello dear community members, I have a question to ask I want to know if there are any options for client to review freelancer in direct contract?

[Aleksandar D]

Hi Muhammad,

Are you referring to the client leaving a feedback for your Direct Contract? If so, please note that sharing feedback is not an option with Direct Contracts. Feel free to check out this help article for more information.

Thank you.

[Crystal H]

I'm not seeing the benefits, other than to Upwork. What are the freelancers getting out of this? Upwork gets free advertisement to the new client, new money, and hopes of maybe landing them in the future. 

Everything is about money. 

We now have to pay for credit ( I was here in the Odesk days ).

20% is taken off the top automatically, so you do not only get that from us, but you charge the clients 3% so you're getting money from all sides. Sometimes factoring in that 20% in your bid causes you to lose to someone else who didn't.

Clients I get from my website mostly pay via PayPal they get no charge, and I pay a 2.9% + 30cent fee. Paypal also has the ability to make partial payments ( milestones if you will ) so again I ask what's the benefit?  A Direct contract with Upwork would charge me 3.4%

You can't say the benefit is not paying 20% because Paypal doesn't charge that either. 

I was thinking about advertising this payment option on my website.. but why would I? I get no benefit from this, it only takes more. 

Help me understand what I'm missing.

Thanks, 

Crystal

[Petra R]

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Crystal H wrote:

I'm not seeing the benefits

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Don't use it then

[Crystal H]

Petra, 

**Edited for Community Guidelines** If you had fully read what I was asking, I was asking for clarification on what I was missing; what's the purpose. 

It's actually something I wanted to use and advertise on my website I just wanted to know what the benefits were because it seems like since we are bringing them money that we otherwise wouldn't/don't have to - there should be something to help us. Or perhaps someone heard about new features coming down the pipeline that I am unaware of. 

I'm sure others have wondered as well. 

[Aleksandar D]

Hi Crystal,

Freelancers have told us they’d like to have one secure place to invoice clients and receive payments. Direct Contracts makes it easy to get paid by your clients who don’t have a full account on Upwork and just need access to review your invoices and make payments on fixed-price contracts. With Direct Contracts, you also get the protection of escrow and if a dispute arises we will be happy to help. 

Additionally, you may want to check out this help article for more information on Direct Contracts.

Thank you.

[Crystal H]

Aleksandar, 

I appreciate the response. I did know about the help article beforehand, but I didn't know that other freelancers were requesting it because they wanted one place for invoice and payments. That was never an issue for me, but I do see the benefit ( for them ).

I appreciate the answer! 

Maybe in the future, there will be a feature that will help me too. 

-Crystal 

[Geoffroy L]

Hi, I got this error when trying to creating the contract:

We’re sorry to inform you that Direct Contracts are currently not available in your country.

Why I'm having this issue? It's not the first time I'm using the direct contract feature.

Thanks