I originally signed up with Elance on October 2007
I originally signed up with Guru on December 16, 2007
On Elance, I pay a monthly membership of $24.95 which allows me 45 connects* with which to bid for the month.
Guru Annual Membership of $149.95 which allows 100 bids per 30 day cycle. (This basically brakes down as follows: $12.50 per month CHEAPER THAN ELANCE and almost 50% more bids/connects.
Too bad IMHO that Elance offers better jobs (not to mention I like their setup in terms of allowing writers to post their portfolio on their site).
Just an observation I made.
* connects are the equivalent to bids. Each project (based on the amount) costs a certain number of connects, i.e. lower paying jobs = 1 connect
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January 30, 2009 at 9:10 am
Saurabh
IMHO Guru fares much better than Elance. Its cheaper, the service is excellent. The categories are better organized. Searching for the work is a lot easier. I find myself lost on the Elance site.
Regards
March 3, 2009 at 9:26 am
Consultant
I have done lots of business on Elance and recently signed up with Guru. The Elance interface is better. I have the overall feeling that Elance is sort of crooked. They used to invoice for the entire Awarded amount and make you pay that whether the Buyer ever paid you that amount or not. This changed a couple of months ago. I was invoiced for their percentage of a $1,600 award and the Buyer only paid me $400. After they changed their policy, they gave me the money back. I no longer trust Elance and leave $0 in my account there. I transfer everything out immediately because otherwise money disappears. They even make mistakes with their software and I have had to call and ask why I was charged for something when it made a double entry or something. I DO NOT TRUST ELANCE. And their customer service is very poor. Sometimes it takes them days to respond, and sometimes they do not even respond to you if they don’t like your question.
Guru is VERY good on customer service and I just got my first contract, so I will see how the rest goes.
Do not leave any money in your Elance account. Trust me, some of it will disappear.
June 18, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Lav
I personally prefer Elance from the buyer perspective. I find the categories of providers and programmers is divided much more intuitively. Also, the whole structure of the website is more user-friendly, again from the buyer perspective. I think it is easier to manage projects, set milestones and monitor what the provider is doing. But I can’t say I have used Guru in the last 6 months, and I noticed that they re-vamped the website. Maybe it’s better now than the way it was when I used it.
September 8, 2009 at 11:25 am
Linda Donahue
I’ve had terrible experiences with both services, not as a provider but as an employer. Last year, I hired a U.S.-based developer via Guru to build my website, paying him $3,500 (2/3 the fee) through Escrow. When he failed to deliver a website and, instead, absconded with my money, Guru refused to help me recover my money.
Last month, after an extensive vetting process I hired another developer on Elance to develop additional functionality for my website. After two weeks (and a week from the project completion date), the developer suddenly quit after I asked for a status update. Fortunately, I was able to recover my Escrowed funds and not lose money, but I did suffer a significant setback in time.
As a provider, I find both services to be hit or miss. Because I’m a highly experienced writer, I can’t possibly compete in the rock bottom pricing offered by people who are clearly not professional writers, so I find my monthly dues to be difficult to justify.
October 6, 2009 at 9:53 am
Mark
We have been hiring programmers through Elance for a while now and find that it is a great place to find relatively in-expensive and talented professionals. From the buyers perspective it is great. Not so sure how it works from the providers perspective though. We tried Guru too but didn’t much like the interface.