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Upwork or Linkers

A freelance marketplace, or a team member.

Freelance marketplaces are genuinely good at some things. Long-term, ongoing roles are not one of them. Here is the honest comparison.

Short answer
A one-off projectUse a marketplace
A few hours of design workUse a marketplace
An ongoing role, 20+ hours a weekManaged team member
Someone in your tools dailyManaged team member
You have no time to vet 40 peopleManaged team member

We will tell you to use a marketplace when that is genuinely the better answer. It happens.

Side by side

What actually differs.

Both are legitimate ways to get work done. They are built for different problems.

What matters
A managed Linkers team member
A freelance marketplace
Who sets the role up
We write the role with you, test for the skills and hours you need, check references, and you meet two or three people with intro videos
You post, you sift the applications, you interview, you decide
Your time to fill a role
An hour or two of interviews across two to four weeks
Often 10 to 20 hours of sifting and interviewing per role
Working hours
Agreed hours in your time zone, tracked and managed
Whatever the freelancer chooses to work, often across several clients
Contracts, NDA and IP
In place before day one, drafted for the country they are in
Platform terms, which you can supplement yourself
Payroll and compliance
Handled: we pay them in their country and hold the employment
Yours to think about, especially once someone is effectively full-time
Time off and cover
Tracked for you, with notice and a plan
They disappear or they do not, and you find out either way
If it is not working
One free replacement in the first three months, handover included
Start again from the beginning, at your own cost in time
Retention
People stay: regular check-ins, proper employment and a career path
Freelancers leave for better-paying clients, often without warning
Cost per hour
Higher than the cheapest marketplace bid, and all in
Can be lower, especially at the bottom of the market
Speed for a tiny job
Too slow: we are built for ongoing roles
Hard to beat for a few hours of work this week

If your honest need is forty hours of work in total, a marketplace will serve you better and we will say so. The comparison changes completely once the role is ongoing. Accurate as of October 2026, and based on each company's publicly described service. These companies change what they offer, so check their current terms before you decide.

The cost nobody counts

The hourly rate is not the price.

The reason marketplace hiring looks cheaper is that the expensive part is paid in your own time, and nobody invoices you for that.

For one ongoing role you are typically reading dozens of applications, running interviews that go nowhere, setting up trial tasks, chasing invoices, and then doing it again in four months when the person leaves for a better rate. If your own time has any value at all, that is the real cost, and it recurs.

The second cost is turnover. A freelancer who has five clients has five reasons to leave and no particular reason to stay. Someone who is properly employed, checked in on, paid on time and treated as part of a team tends to stay for years, and the knowledge they build up stays with you.

From clients

People who stopped sifting freelancer applications.

It is a pleasure working with Linkers; they are always very responsive and source excellent staff in a timely manner. All in all, I would 100% recommend Linkers to manage any offshore staffing needs.
JJonCo-founder, DealsAway
Working with Linkers has been an excellent experience. They have provided us with fantastic remote staff across South Africa and the Philippines, all of whom have been high-quality, reliable team members.
JJuliaCOO, Global Work and Travel
Questions

Upwork, freelancers and managed teams: your questions.

Marketplaces are built for projects with an end. For an ongoing role the model works against you: people juggle several clients, rates move, good ones get busy, and every departure sends you back to reading applications. If the work keeps coming, you want one person on your hours with the contracts, payroll and compliance handled for you.
Per hour, usually yes, and the comparison is not quite like for like. Our fee covers setting the role up, testing for the skills you need, contracts, payroll, compliance, time off tracking and regular check-ins with your team member. On a marketplace you do those yourself, in your own time.
Yes. We encourage a short paid trial task before you decide, which is the same way sensible marketplace hiring works, except we have already tested the skills and checked the references.
Then a freelance marketplace is genuinely the better tool and we will tell you so. We are built for ongoing roles, not one-off tasks.
Yes, exactly as you would an employee. They work your hours in your tools and report to someone on your side. We handle the employment, payroll and welfare side.
That is the problem we exist to remove. Your team member is employed and managed, we check in with them regularly, and if something is wrong you have a named account manager to call rather than a support ticket.

Rather talk it through?

Tell us the role and the hours you need covered. We will come back with a straight answer, usually the same working day.

Book a call
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