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walihjafferi
Community Member

Completed project, next projects outside Upwork

What does the rule say? We completed a project on Upwork and its been a month. Now the client contacted me directly on my phone and wants to hire on monthly maintenance / small tweaks / bug fixes outside Upwork directly through Paypal.

Question is: Are we "allowed" to work outside Upwork with clients that we are no longer working with on Upwork? Or does the rule say if you ever worked with a client on Upwork you will always have to work with them on Upwork?

2 REPLIES 2
florydev
Community Member


Wali Hassan J wrote:

What does the rule say? We completed a project on Upwork and its been a month. Now the client contacted me directly on my phone and wants to hire on monthly maintenance / small tweaks / bug fixes outside Upwork directly through Paypal.

Question is: Are we "allowed" to work outside Upwork with clients that we are no longer working with on Upwork? Or does the rule say if you ever worked with a client on Upwork you will always have to work with them on Upwork?


You have to keep the work on Upwork for two years, after two years (not sure from first payment or inital contact date) you can go free. The client can pay an opt out fee but it doesn't happen very often.

 

Technically the client has violated the TOS, I would gently suggest that you won't do it and pretend it never happened but the one thing I wouldn't do is go off platform for payment. People get caught all the time, they never think they will, and then they complain about being banned without any reason. It is invariably this reason (they usually take a while to admit that they took payments off platform).

 

You should also ask yourself why they want to take you off platform.  It is of very little cost to them to keep you on Upwork, what they are probably hoping for is for you to be cheaper. Maybe they are trying to save you money but if you found work once on Upwork and you want that trend to continue you need to build history here. 

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Wali Hassan,

 

Please note that only the relationships that have been maintained for two years on the platform may be taken outside of Upwork, and those do not violate the Upwork Terms of Service or require the Upwork Conversion Fee.

~ Bojan
Upwork
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