What: Broad employment platform to find freelance jobs in administration, design, writing, translation, photography, software development, business systems and more

Expected pay: $10 – $50 per hour

Husl$core: $$

Commissions & Fees: numerous and varied

Where: Nationwide (also worldwide)

Requirements: vary based on the job

Review: Peopleperhour is a long-established platform that purports to find workers part-time gigs in a vast array of industries. Employers can post jobs for workers to bid on; workers can post “hourlies” stating the jobs they can do at a particular price. If both buyer and seller agree to a job, the buyer puts the payment in escrow with the site and Peopleperhour releases the payment when the job is complete and the buyer is satisfied. Peopleperhour also says it has a “limited payment protection” plan, which is supposed to guarantee worker wages. However, there are numerous requirements for the protection plan to kick in.

Theoretically you can earn a good wage working through this site, but worker reviews are largely negative, saying that there are too many low-value sellers to gain decent work and that the site’s fees are exorbitant. And, certainly, a review of the site’s terms and conditions indicates that what Peopleperhour may do best is find imaginative ways to charge everyone who uses the platform in a myriad of different ways. Both buyers and sellers pay a commission, which ranges from 5% to 20% (depending on billings) and is normal for this type of platform. But that’s just the start of how Peopleperhour earns money off of users. Consider the PPH point system. If you’re a worker, you get 15 points per month for free. You use those points to bid on jobs. However, some “high value jobs” require multiple points. If you run out of points, you have to buy more at a rate of roughly $9 (US) per 5-point allotment. (And, no, buying points does not get you out of paying the commission.)

Then there’s a “request for information” fee if there’s a dispute about payment between the buyer and seller; A “fast track” fee ($13), if you want a document reviewed quickly; a “feature hourly” fee: ($15) to promote the jobs you are willing to do; a “featured profile” fee (cost varies) to make listings more prominent; and a $10 monthly fee for inactive accounts that have money in them for more than 60 days.

On the “inactive account fee,” which might otherwise sound like stealing wages: The platform says users will be warned to take their cash before this fee is applied; if they ignore the warnings, the site will charge this fee until the account is completely drained. The site says it “is not a bank” and thus justifies draining inactive accounts, however, we have difficultly understanding why the site doesn’t just automatically remit payments to freelancers like other sites do. Moreover, we think that payment disputes and handling documents in a timely manner should be art of the basic function of the site and not cost more.

Peopleperhour’s fees are all disclosed in the site’s terms and conditions and yet users complain that they feel blindsided by fees that they didn’t expect or understand. We believe there are better opportunities in pretty much every job category. Our suggestion is that you search SideHusl by your specialty and look for $$$-to-$$$$$-rated opportunities.

What their users say: (From Glassdoor)

We were told to deactivate clients accounts sometime as they have funds in accounts and they don’t purchase anything from PPH. Unethical system and everything designed to get more money from clients / freelancers and often we block their accounts by trap them. Don’t steal freelancers’ money by deactivating their accounts without any reason. I don’t think these review help them; I spoke CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou, but he was not happy from me for mentioning it, and next week, I was sacked.

Very high number of freelancers and fierce competetion for each job. CEO with massive ego, thinks he is on heavenly mission to rip people off. (Sorry, connect people together.) Can’t get over zukerberg did better than him.

From Workathomenoscams:

Freelancers only get 15 free bids per month. After that, you must purchase additional blocks of bids. The company does not clearly post how much these block costs on its website. The company charges a fee to freelance sellers for using the platform. The company deducts a 20% handling fee on the first approximate $600 received each month and then 5% thereafter.

From Trust Pilot:

Ambiguous Website, not very clear or user-friendly. You have to pay to send proposals, 30% of your charge out rate and then, in addition, you get charged for a feature profile but then get proposals sent to you that have absolutely nothing to do with your vocation or business model. Either the people inviting you to propose are scammers or the website has no vetting structure. Either way, SCAM, AVOID!!!!!!!

People Per Hour deactivated my account – unexplained. I requested from their support team some understanding to why. A response that didn’t make sense – incoherent sentences which answered a different question. I responded asking for some detail and an answer to my original question – no reply. Regular spam emails which I cannot unsubscribe to as my account is ‘de-activated’ – will be interested to see if these continue considering GDPR is not long off.

I am a top developer in the development category on PPH. I have had a great experience on PPH and never had any issue except with their payment withdrawal system. It states your funds will be transferred within 1 business day and I have requested the funds literally from 21 days ago to the current date and still not getting any tangible date from the support. I am getting this kind of response every time I contact support. “I would kindly like to inform you that our Team is prioritizing the withdrawals based on the date that they have been requested. Unfortunately, there are still a few requests that have been made before yours that have to be reviewed until your withdrawals are approved.I deeply apologize for the inconvenience that you are currently experience but I do not have an update concerning your withdrawal” Later on, I have made another withdrawal request a week ago and have received the funds within 3 days. I am not sure how they are prioritizing the requests if requests are processed based on the date that they have been requested.

Absolutely flooded with creatives from all corners of the world, there is no way whatsoever for new talent to break into the marketplace on PeoplePerHour.

I used PPH as a representative for my own creative studio which I co-founded in 2015, and since our establishment we have worked with a long list of clients across the UK on all sorts of branding, illustrative, promotional, animation and motion graphics projects. Our established portfolio is already pretty significant, so we weren’t starting from scratch on PPH – sadly however our previous work counts for nothing, as there is an exclusive on-site review and awards system which seemingly overrules any other form of credential, qualification or accolade. I filled out our profile to a T, uploaded a huge amount of existing work, and even made changes to our public portfolio based on feedback from PeoplePerHour. We have applied for a huge number of graphic design and animation projects over the past 12 weeks and not even received a single written response from any of our applications. Potential clients never get back to us, and always seem to pick a competitor who has fulfilled one of two unwavering criteria: 1 – International bidders massively undercut our fee to a point where no graphic designer in the UK could possibly compete and make a living.2 – The chosen designer is in fact UK or USA-based, but is in the top 10 or 5 percent of sellers on PPH and have a gigantic track record of on-site work with reviews to back them up. Since our 3 month ‘trial’ is now over, PPH are asking £9.95 a month to renew our membership. Sadly, I can’t say I’m even considering using this site any more especially at such a monthly fee for absolutely zero work off the back of it. I won’t be returning to PeoplePerHour as there are far better and fairer platforms out there for creatives to find freelance work from around the world.

Posted a request on their website to locate the money that was not put in my people per hour wallet and no one is replying to me on the platform. I earned £70 from a client and £18 was put in my account after, where has the remaining £52. To me this is stealing and now no one is responding. You just ignore freelancers when they ask for money back which was taken from their account without any prior notice, without their consent and before they are able to provide proof a job was done.

A buyer hired me to organize some electronic documents, which I did. When raising an invoice for the work, he rejected it, first saying his pc had broken and then saying he had changed his mind and decided not to pay me anything. After raising a dispute with PPH, they suspended MY account giving a reason that I got paid outside of PPH! I most definitely have not and now I get paid zero. I’ve tried contacting PPH to say they must of made an error, but they are ignoring my email. Don’t trust the buyers as they can easily turn payment down after you have completed their work and PPH are not honest, reasonable or protect their sellers from doing honest, hard work.

There are still some areas I take issue with (such as having to pay a fee to dispute a rejected invoice; and my clients have mentioned fees being charged above the rates I have advertised to them, even alongside the commission charged to me!). It’s not perfect, but they are constantly improving, and this dedication towards positive change puts them head and shoulders above the competition.

It’s a good idea and kinda works, but will be very much a last resort when I can’t get work by other means. Out of £485 earned, I get to receive £368.60: I make that a stonking 24% for them. However, I still haven’t received my cut because they’re constantly refusing to verify any of my bank accounts.
When you purchase services, they charge you more than is displayed. Even when you click on buy/pay, the final price is not displayed. I though that according to e-commerce regulations as a company you have to display the final price when you click on ‘pay’. Also, when withdrawing money and changing it to a different currency, there are always a few euros disappearing, sometimes I have had 40-50 euros less than expected, which cannot be accounted for by any exchange rate or transaction fees displayed. I also believe this must is illegal as these are hidden fees not justified in the terms and conditions.

Garbage Service. First of all they charge my clients extra for even placing orders. Then they charge me extra for doing the service through their platform. My clients are not that digitally literate so they forgot to verify their accounts. So what do they do? They permanently banned me instead.

Terrible and a complete waste of time. Too many bogus jobs there without really much idea of what even people like to get out of it, I mean I know my superpower but I don’t need to be set up to fail. Last time I found a job that involves selling on eBay as a 3rd party and I realized I was apart of a fraud ring. Poor monitoring and many of the jobs here are dangerous and very demoralizing of someone’s ability to help. I don’t see this site ever been friendly, and the people are far from good to work with people. I also don’t need so much stringent moderation of content because that is just plain stupid and really doesn’t make it feel like a site that can be easy to use such as the hourlies.
Here is how peopleperhour really works now:

1. Register 2. Send proposals, win a project 3. Complete the project, raise the invoice 4. The buyer pays. The money are now in pph escrow. 5. Both seller and buyer are requested to upload documents to prove their identities. This takes up to 7 working days. For 13 USD, they say they will verify in 24 hours. I’m not sure what happens if the documents are rejected. I guess another 7 days or 13 USD. If the buyer wants the money back, they will apply a fee (10% I think)

I don’t know what happens next, I am the middle of this process. I use this platform for a few years but this is something new, Customer Support says: “Recently there has been a change in UK legislation regarding online financial transactions. PPH have been obligated to run verifications to all unverified members prior to any financial transaction”. Well, I guess “prior to any financial transaction” has a different meaning for them.

From FitSmallBusiness:

They are stealing money. They will deactivate any account when it will have a big amount inside it.

Customer service is really bad.They never read emails or tickets properly before replying and so send you replies that are completely useless and often nothing to do with the question you asked. The fees are quite extortionate. They take 25% of everything I earn for doing literally nothing and on top of that charge the seller 10% transaction fee.they are so greedy, that if you are not earning them enough money, they will charging you a monthly fee to use their site as well.