Is Upwork restricted solely to freelancers?

[55675219]

Hi, I'm a newbie and I was wondering if Upwork is just for genuine freelancers. I could see that if established-looking companies and businesses, with logos etc., were promoting their services through the platform then customers would perhaps tend to lean towards hiring them over individual freelancers, even if that one is qualified to do the job. 

[martina_plaschka · Accepted solution]

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Greg H wrote:

Hi, I'm a newbie and I was wondering if Upwork is just for genuine freelancers. I could see that if established-looking companies and businesses, with logos etc., were promoting their services through the platform then customers would perhaps tend to lean towards hiring them over individual freelancers, even if that one is qualified to do the job. 

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A group of freelancers can create an agency, that would comprise of a number of people that all have separate freelancer accounts. It does not work like a traditional agency, though, because the client still has to hire individual freelancers in the agency. 

The general consensus seems to be that clients prefer to work with individual freelancers and that being part of an agency is perceived as a disadvantage. 

[feed_my_eyes]

You can be a freelancer and also be an "established business" - those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

[roberty1y]

I think many clients here use the site for the very reason that they can have a one to one relationship with the freelancer, rather than deal with an anonymous company where they don't know who's doing what. As Martina said, agencies don't do particularly well on Upwork.

[prestonhunter]

I think that agencies are particularly appealing to a sub-group of freelancers who live in certain countries. They are accustomed to working that way, and they think that it makes sense to offer services that way.

Which is fine. Upwork offers extensive support for agencies.

The problem is that many of the agencies fail to deliver on behalf of the clients who hire them.

So if a client has hired a few agencies and has been disappointed by their performance, compared to the few individual freelancers that the client has hired, the client is naturally going to associate agencies with losing time and money.

I believe most clients don't have an intrinsic bias against the concept of agencies. But so many clients have had bad experiences hiring agencies on Upwork, that the whole concept becomes tainted in the clients' minds.