As a client, you must often land up in a dilemma while hiring freelance developers. Even Sometimes you do not understand if you wanted freelancers or outsourcing companies. Now, the top freelancing companies are Upwork, Guru, and Freelancer. Hence, let’s see who wins in the battle among Upwork vs Guru vs Freelancer vs Outsourcing Companies.
Freelancer
Let’s start with Freelancer. It is quite a popular platform used by freelancers and businesses alike. The site has got over 14 million registered users. It is a little different from other platforms as it charges both the business owners and freelancers for the projects.
There is an entry-level fee of $3 or 3% ( whichever is greater) – of the project cost, for the hiring company. The basic rates, on the other hand, for freelancers range from $3-5 or 3-5% whichever is greater. Before upgrading to a paid membership, a freelancer can bid for only up to 8 proposals/month.
The platform provides a desktop tracking app for tracking hours spent on the project by the freelancer. This is a deterrent for many freelancers looking to bid on fixed-cost projects, rather than hourly ones. The platform also has a membership fee for businesses wishing to promote their projects.
If you are a freelancer and have been inactive for a while, the platform will charge you a fee for being ‘inactive’. It also charges its users for converting money from one currency to another.
Related Post: How to Choose The Right Engagement Model While Outsourcing
Upwork
Upwork is a relatively new freelancing platform, as we all know that it’s the merged entity after the Elance and Odesk merger.
The quality of freelancers on Upwork is observed to be higher than the other freelancing platforms.
If you thoroughly look at the Upwork desktop site you will find that it ensures all kinds of spam accounts are promptly deleted, so the users on the site remain genuine. Upwork provides a decent skill verification process to ensure one can hire freelancers who are reasonably skilled at the work they do.
The Upwork desktop site has a fairly easy registration process and requires some basic details like an email address. Upwork does not allow users to share their direct contact details with their users. The platform has a 5-star rating system and each project delivered satisfactorily, gets a chance to be rated by the buyer of the service.
Upwork charges its clients a fee of 10% of the project cost while it is completely free for freelancers.
Guru
This is another freelancing platform that is popular with freelancers of today. Guru is fairly easy to use and that is an important aspect for most users.
The project notifications feature of the platform helps in getting to know about the latest projects with ease.
Guru allows freelancers to bid for a certain number of projects for free, after which one has to acquire a paid membership on the platform. Also, many freelancers have observed that the quality of projects on Guru is quite unsatisfactory as they pay much less than the average.
While there is no dearth of projects, as a service provider, one really has to understand the projects thoroughly before investing the time to send out a proposal and place a bid. On the other hand, employers find it tough to find the right talent, as too many freelancers place their bids.
Related Post: Why is Outsourcing Important For Startup Product Development? 
Source: http://www.inramstechnology.com/
Outsourcing Companies
After evaluating freelancing sites, let’s look at the pros and cons of hiring an outsourcing partner for hiring dedicated resources. These companies provide experienced resources, depending upon the requirements of the project.
The major advantage of such companies is that they do not charge a commission on the project cost, the way freelancing platforms do. Such companies provide fixed-cost resources who work on your project and ensure successful delivery. The resources are available for discussion and feedback, just like full-time employees.
The hiring company also gets access to timesheets and daily reporting, ensuring that the productivity is according to the desired standards. Businesses find it really hard to find the most suitable candidates for their projects, on freelancing platforms.
They keep posting jobs, only to find the least fit resources bidding for it and not completing the work as desired.
Flexiple
Flexiple is a network of pre-vetted freelance software developers & designers. This network helps top startups & companies find quality tech talent. Their goal is to help tech companies:
1. Find quality talent: Pre-vetted through our screening process.
2. Hire them quickly: Handpicked recommendations from our talent matching team
3. Onboard them seamlessly: Standard contracts, invoicing, and project tracking.
Basically, tech companies should only focus on building their products and not worry about hiring. Similarly, freelance talent, ensures they get to work with quality startups instead of wasting time in the job search.
Conclusion:
An IT outsourcing company ensures that you get only handpicked candidates to choose from. This not only saves time but also ensures that only specialist teams are working on your projects and providing you with precise delivery for your project.
Hence, if you are trying to hire a freelancer where you can outsource companies like Valuecoders at the same price then think twice. We provide excellent development services in India with the following benefits-
1) Zero billing guarantee
2) Pro-level Teams
3) Guaranteed SLAs
4) Flexible Hiring Models
