Upwork

Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, is a global freelancing platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. In 2015, Elance-oDesk was rebranded as Upwork. It is based out of Mountain View and San Francisco, California.

Upwork has nine million registered freelancers and four million registered clients. Three million jobs are posted annually, worth a total of $1 billion USD, making it the world's largest freelancer marketplace.

History

Upwork was formed 18 months after Elance and oDesk announced their merger on December 18, 2013 to create Elance-oDesk, an online workplace with a combined total 8 million registered users. oDesk was founded in 2003 by Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis. Elance was founded in 1999 by Beerud Sheth. With the launch of Upwork, the oDesk platform was upgraded and rebranded and the company announced that the Elance platform will be phased out within a couple of years, resulting in a single freelance marketplace.

After the re-branding of Upwork in early 2015, criticism surfaced among freelancers because of various bugs and slow loading speed of the Upwork platform.