Upwork is usually the first thing that comes to mind when looking to hire tech talents for your web development needs. While it’s home to high-caliber coders and programmers, Upwork also comes with flaws. If you’re looking for the best Upwork alternatives that can offer personalized developer recommendations, you’ve come to the right place.
Upwork can connect you to some of the best tech talents remote workers around the world. However, hiring from this site can be expensive for some, bidding can sometimes be frustrating, security features need some upgrades, and since many look for talents here, you might end up limited in options.
In this post, you’ll learn of the best alternatives for Upwork and by the end of it, you’ll be equipped with more options when looking for tech talents to work with for software projects whether in the front-end, back-end, or both.
Upwork Alternative 1: Aloa
We are an outsourcing platform that offers top-caliber and consistent outsourcing experiences for businesses. Unlike Upwork, we directly work with programming firms to offer you the best set of developers to choose from. We have deep relationships with PMs, hiring managers, and even developers at our selected development partners. We can provide you with frontend developers, backend developers, mobile developers, emerging technology developers, eCommerce web developers, UX/UI designers for web design, and other professional services in the web development space.
Portfolios of these developers are given a deep dive and a thorough-vetting process is followed to ensure you’ll be working with coding specialists that can deliver software projects to meet your needs.
Before handing you a list of candidates to choose from, each of those in the selection has undergone code reviews, and interviews and taught about the best practices for the development process. Interpersonal interviews are done to ensure they have good listening skills and are equipped with the ability to explain technical concepts as you work with them.
Additionally, when working with developers outsourced from us, you’ll be able to take advantage of our custom project management platform. It’ll provide you with complete transparency of the status of the project. With that is a consistency check every two weeks for constant re-evaluations and to keep up with the evolving standards for new best practices.
Moreover, we also provide an outsourcing strategist to ensure that the project is going as seamlessly as it gets. Simply said, we handle all the heavy lifting in providing you with the best developer candidates and monitoring the project after the chosen candidates are hired. Whether you’re a startup or a small business, we can match you with the right team to do the job.
Quick Recap Of Aloa’s Edge:
- Thorough-vetting process of developers
- Candidates go through code reviews and interpersonal interviews
- Developers are trained on the best practices for a development process
- Has a custom project development platform to monitor project progress
- Programmers go through consistency checks every two weeks
- Comes with an outsourcing strategist
Upwork Alternative 2: Toptal
Like Aloa, Toptal offers you thoroughly-screened developers for any technology stack anywhere in the world. They are also vetted for soft skills and English proficiency to ensure they work with others well and that they can convey complex concepts with ease to project stakeholders.
To ensure a good fit, a trial period is provided for Toptal’s top talent you’re looking to work with for a project. If you don’t find them to be the best person to do the job, you will not be charged for the initial work they’ve done for you.
This Upwork alternative allows for flexibility when working with their developers. You can easily scale your development team up or down in weeks as the need arises. At the initial stage, you can hire developers for specific roles and as milestones are achieved, you can transition those developers into part-time roles and scale back up during “crunch times”.
Simply tell Toptal what kind of tech talent you need, the tech stack you prefer to work with, and the skills you specifically require. After providing these details, Toptal will analyze your needs and connect you to the best developers that best fit the description.
After reviewing and signing off their recommended developers, they’ll immediately be ready to integrate into your current team and start working. While they usually do remote work in the nearshore or offshore setting, arrangements can be made to have them present on-site.
Quick Recap Of Toptal’s Edge:
- Thoroughly-screened developer candidates
- Ensure proficiency in technical and soft skills
- Flexibility is scaling teams up or down
- Trial period to test out developer’s fit in the team
Upwork Alternative 3: BairesDev
BairesDev is one of the leading technology solutions companies where you can hire expert developers from. They pride themselves on having 5,000+ software engineers who have worked for leading brands. Whether in need of a dedicated team, complete software outsourcing, or occasional staff augmentation, BairesDev can provide your needed developers from any tech stack.
As a software solution company for over a decade, they’ve come up with a rigorous selection process to filter out only the best-experienced software developers and engineers around Latin America. Tech skills levels, credentials, English language and code fluency, test coding scores, as well as references from previous clients are considered when shortlisting developers to refer to you.
While this Upwork alternative can offer software solutions from custom software development down to agile development, their developers are best when you’re looking to work on:
- Blockchain
- eCommerce
- Mobile apps
- QA & Testing
- UI/UX design
- Cybersecurity
- Data analytics
- Cloud computing
- Internet of things
- Artificial intelligence
Whether in need of individual software experts or fully-managed teams, BairesDev can offer end-to-end delivery of custom-made technology solutions in any industry.
Quick Recap Of BairesDev’s Edge:
- Rigorous selection process
- Have worked with leading Fortune500 companies
- Caters to needs of individual specialists, dedicated teams, full outsourced software, or occasional staff augmentation
Upwork Alternative 4: Upstack
Upstack is a platform where you can choose from vetted and experience-proven freelance developers you can add to your team. Their hiring procedure involves an 8-point rigorous screening to ensure developers they’ll connect with potential clients and have the experience, tech skills, and personality needed to get the job done.
In just a couple of days, you’ll get an expert programmer assigned to you. They leverage an AI technology’s algorithm to match you with the freelance developers that best fit your needs and requirements so you don’t have to browse through every candidate you see unlike what you’ll be doing with platforms like Upwork.
Developers hired from this platform are tracked by a Slack bot to ensure main tasks and deadlines are met. It also comes with a comprehensive onboarding process to bring new hires up to speed with the needed information about the company, project, and team.
Quick Recap Of Upstack’s Edge:
- The 8-point rigorous vetting process
- Leverage AI technology to connect you with developers that best match your skill requirements
- Comes with a Slack bot to track developers
- Has a comprehensive onboarding process for new hires
Upwork Alternative 5: Flexiple
Flexiple is another platform where you can hire pre-vetted freelance developers, programmers, and software engineers who are proven to have strong technicals skills including WordPress expertise, have worked extensively on software projects, have good communication skills, show consistent performance, and has top-notch reviews from previous employers and clients.
The developers they approve to be part of the Flexiple solution start with a screening process of their past work with a 45.4% pass rate. After passing the initial screening, their communication skills are evaluated to ensure they can communicate articulately and seamlessly explain complex concepts to their clients. Then their technical abilities are tested through one-on-interview followed by a skill-specific problem-solving skills test.
Once passed, they go through a background check verified by their previous clients and employers. Upon approval to be part of the Flexiple developers, consistent exemplary performance is conducted to ensure Flexiple standards are maintained with all their customer engagements. This thorough vetting process will cut down your time in assessing the capabilities of a developer and can get them to start working once chosen and onboarded.
To ensure you get the best value for your money, developer rates are categorized depending on their skill levels:
- Individual Contributors ($30-$50 per hour): are those who have at least 3 years of experience and work with a single tech stack.
- Multi-faceted Contributors ($50-$80 per hour): those who have 3-7 years of experience on multiple tech stacks have mentoring positions, and have worked on niche-specific skill sets.
- Leaders and Diverse Contributors ($80+ per hour): are those with more than 7 years of experience and have worked on multiple tech stacks with the leadership skills levels to manage a team of developers.
Quick Recap Of Flexiple’s Edge:
- Rigorous vetting process
- Regular performance checks
- Categorized hourly rates
Upwork Alternative 6: Gun.io
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Gun.io provides you with a talent pool expertly vetted by senior engineers that will match the tech talent you’ll want to include in your remote team. When seeking developers to hire on this platform, you’ll see that the talent profiles are designed to answer the most common questions you’ll want to know about someone you’re looking to work with like their work titles, years of experience, skills, and work preferences.
Added to that is information on what other colleagues, employers, or clients say about the candidate. In getting to know the candidate better, a video intro is provided that aims to highlight their communication skills so you can assess if the messages of the project will come across as expected both ways along with other important details you want to know about them at a professional level.
Gun.io has also crafted a WorkStyle Assessment to see how each developer approached their work. There are also comparison features where you can stack developers you’re eyeing with other candidates to see who fits your needs best.
Best of all, Gun.io offers more security features when hiring freelancers than Upwork provides. Transactions are run through payments systems like Stripe Connect API for incredible security.
Gun.io offers vetted talent where you can choose developers to work with using a simple process to match you with your preferred candidates.
Quick Recap Of Gun.io’s Edge:
- Expertly-vetted developer candidates
- Comprehensive profiles
- Video intro and workstyle assessment
- Ensured transaction security
Upwork Alternative 7: Lemon.io
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Lemon.io is a playful out-of-the-box developer hiring solution that allows you to quickly and effortlessly hire freelancers who are mostly from eastern Europe. Like the first six on the list, Lemon.io comes with a thorough vetting process to shortlist your options to only the best developers. It starts with DV and portfolio checks, followed by a soft skill screening then a hard skills check, and ends with work ethics check.
They promise a 24-hour matching with developers of preferred description and also handle the hiring process and onboarding process to take most of the weight off your shoulders.
To protect the exchange of information and sensitive data, you will be asked, together with the chosen freelance developer/s to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Compared to Upwork, Lemon.io offers more reasonable hourly rates for its developers.
You can choose to hire part-time developers or full-time developers from this platform. When you feel that the initial developer you chose to work with wasn’t a good fit, after all, Lemon.io also offers a replacement guarantee.
After onboarding a developer to work with, Lemon.io organizes weekly reports so you’ll get a list of accomplishments and milestones achieved by your hired developer, including the total time they dedicated to finishing the tasks.
Lastly, for a custom pricing plan, you can add in a chief technology officer or CTO as some call them to manage the software project at hand.
Quick Recap Of Lemon.io’s Edge:
- Has a vetting process
- 24-hour matching
- Replacement guarantee
- Organizes weekly reports
- Offers time tracking
Upwork Alternative 8: Guru
Unlike the first seven on the list, Guru offers freelancers outside the tech industry. They have freelancers from the design and art industry, to content marketing, to the SEO field, and down to the digital marketing industry. Currently, they have over 300,000 freelancers in the programming and development space giving you enough options to choose from.
If you’re looking for an Upwork alternative that can also offer you the option to hire freelance writers, freelance designers for logo design, and other freelance professional services, this is a platform you can look to.
Vetting is not as rigid as the first seven platforms so you’ll have to exert double the effort when looking for the best fit freelance developer to work with. The customer support is also not as responsive as the developer-focused platforms mentioned earlier. With the security features they implement, they still get a 99% satisfaction rate from their clients.
Since this freelance website is more of a job board, you need to sign up and post a freelance job listing which you can do for free. You can also go through their categorized list of freelancers and skim through the profiles to find the developer that has your preferred skills.
Some freelancers aren’t as truthful as they should be so you need to beware of scams. They might claim to have years of experience when in reality they’re still beginners. This is one of the downsides of open marketplaces like this platform, Freelancer.com, PeoplePerHour, and Credo as well.
Similar to Upwork, they also have a bidding arrangement giving you 10 allowable bids if you are a free member. If you plan to hire two or more developers, you can take advantage of Guru’s collaboration space called WorkRooms.
As to payment terms, Guru offers a fixed price, an hourly rate, a task-based rate, or a recurring rate. They leverage SafePay to assure freelancers' funds are available for their payment.
Quick Recap Of Guru’s Edge:
- 300,000 developers and programmers to choose from
- Has payment security features
- Offers collaboration spaces for multiple developers hired from this freelance platform
Upwork Alternative 9: Fiverr
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Last on the list is Fiverr, one of the largest open freelance marketplaces in various industries. You can take advantage of freelance services like content marketing, graphic design, copywriting, social media management, and digital marketing. You can either create a job listing or search through gig offers. Compared to Upwork, Fiverr is more flexible. You can connect with freelancers before placing a job order.
This Upwork competitor doesn’t use a bidding system. With this freelance platform, you search through freelance gigs, and if you like their proposal, you post a job order for the software you’re looking to build. Depending on the task at hand, you can find offers for as low as $5.
The downside of Fiverr, like Guru, is that it doesn’t have a thorough vetting process. You filter out the best-fit developer candidates yourself.
It’s a platform you can consider if you’re looking for a fast project turnaround at a very affordable rate. However, if you want to get assured of a high-quality outcome, the first seven options in this list are worth considering.
Quick Recap Of Fiverr’s Edge:
- Affordable project rates
- Fast turnaround
Conclusion
While Upwork is the initial place many turn to when looking for developers and programmers to work with, your options shouldn’t be limited to this platform. If you’re looking for other open marketplaces, you can check out Guru and Fiverr as Upwork alternatives.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for developer-focused hiring platforms, you can turn to us at Aloa, Toptal, BairesDev, Upstack, Flexiple, Gun.io, and Lemon.io. Choosing as at Aloa provides you with benefits you shouldn’t miss.
Other than a meticulous screening process for developers that ensures you are the right freelancer to do the freelance work, we also provide you with a custom project management platform so you’re always in the loop for progress and milestones achieved in the software project.
Additionally, to allow you to focus on other areas needing attention within the business, we also provide you with an outsourcing strategist to ensure the project progresses seamlessly leaving you worry-free until the job is done.
If you want to learn more about how we can assist you, feel free to contact us at [email protected].
