Pedro,
honestly I think most Elancers didn't like Upwork when they first joined. I personally still love Elance more but you need to understand that we're all Upwork now. This is going to be "our platform" whether you come from Elance or oDesk (or both).
I think the main problem that caused this mess with the merger, was that the oDesk platform in general has been for too long based on hourly jobs. On Elance, it's almost the contract. I know both platforms had hourly & fixed price jobs, but almost everyone agrees that oDesk was better with everything related to hourly-jobs stuff, and Elance was better with Escrow.
In my opinion, one of the main reasons why Upwork decided to build the merger based on oDesk and not Elance, is because oDesk had more members. It's easier to move a smaller population to a larger one, but the opposite is much harder.
I'm going to list some great features that are available on Upwork but not on Elance:
- You can contact community members with a private message. This is a really nice feature where you can exchange knowledge with your fellow Upworkers.
- There's more jobs on Upwork (OK I know that means more freelancers) but this still means more opportunities anyway.
- In the past few months, the amount of Escrow jobs have increased amazingly! I remember I had to contact Customer Support when I first joined to ask them where did the Fixed price jobs go, and they told me they didn't have much. Now you can see there's many many Escrow jobs, almost the same amount like hourly jobs, and in the category which I work under there's more Escrow jobs.
- Some people like it, some people don't - but there's the Top Rated program which is supposed to give you more exposure and more opportunities (I personally haven't noticed any difference but I am sure some people are benefiting from it).
- There's a great mobile App for quick communication with the clients. It also allows you to accept/reject offers in a click of a button. This is really great I suggest you check it out if you haven't yet.
- You can set your availability and Upwork will send you invitations according to that. I loved the fact that Elance used to send me invitations every single day, but honestly sometimes I am too busy and don't need any invitations or need just a little. Upwork cleverly resolves this issue. I know some people are complaining that they aren't receiving any invitations, but I know that this is how it should work on the long run.
- I love that Upwork keeps adding features to the platform. They don't always listen to our requests, but at least someone listens to you and is ready to improve the platform after making a decision.
Elance had some amazing features which didn't exist on Upwork, like better invoicing, faster payments, creating repeating jobs, ability to add milestones as a freelancer, ability to submit a proposal without an amount & a better automatic emails system. Hopefully Upwork will be smart enough to gather the great features from Elance which don't currently exist on Upwork. Only then, Upwork will become the best freelancing platform in the world.
Best regards,
Wassim
