Upwork Team Proposals

Upwork Team Proposals update has been running for a month already. And we are only writing this post now because we honestly were trying to find a real value in it. But it was really hard in this case, so read our opinion at the end of the post.

Firstly, the details of the update if you missed it:

After posting a job, clients now have the option to select ’I am open to teams’. The option also appears for clients with two or more jobs open.
Top Rated freelancers (who have a network) will see Team opportunity label next to such jobs in the Search page.
On the Job Post page – there will be a blue banner that says Create a team proposal. Note that you can also send a regular proposal if you want.
Freelancer can add up to four people from their network to partner with on a proposal. These people will be notified through email, and a draft proposal is accessible under My Proposals.
In order to submit the proposal ALL the people you invited need to enter their rates (or decline the invite).

The first freelancer who started the proposal is considered team lead. He or she can:

submit the finalized version once everyone entered their terms;
see all the team’s rates, while teammates can only see their own rates;
add teammates up until the proposal is submitted or remove teammates at any time.

6. If clients hire a team, they pay each teammate separately and manage their work individually.

Our opinion about Upwork Team Proposals

We believe that for individual freelancers this feature is really meaningless because it just delays sending the proposal, decreasing their chances of getting the job. There is no jobs history of the created adhoc team, which means that there is not much trust in the team by the client either as it works in the case of agency proposal. It can be useful for the agency though just to show the client that we have a team for the project. But in general, it’s kind of pointless.

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