How Much Does it Cost to Develop the Upwork Clone – An Online Freelancer Marketplace

Upwork is the largest marketplace for hiring talent worldwide. You can hire various skills freelancers for your small business to enterprise business needs.

Have you ever wondered how much it cost to develop Upwork clone for your industry as per your expectation?

Yes, It’s possible with a limited budget. I know you might be thinking that Upwork has many features which might have taken many years of iterative development, backed by world class team. To find the solution we did the research over the Upwork clone development at techuz with our team of business analyst, designers, and developers.

Suggested Approach

1. Mistakes which you should Avoid

Upwork is building for a unique need and it’s serving the purpose really well. But every business has a unique need and directly jumping and buying a clone script like Upwork will not help you. We strong recommend avoiding that.

2. Explore Idea

Every successful product was a just idea before it’s implemented in the world, so ask many questions to yourself, friends and your trusted people around you and prepare the list of a questionnaire for your idea which will help you to identify the key aspect of your concept then you can prepare the rough word or Excel document of a statement of work (SOW). These steps help you to identify what different you like to create compared to Upwork. Also, many features which are in Upwork you might not need and you might need some of the features which are not in Upwork.

3. Ask for a rough quote

Based on your SOW you can ask agency, IT consultant or freelancers to provide the quote but please note that it will be a ballpark figure as it’s not possible to provide the precise estimation in this stage so ‘Beware and avoid the false promises which can trap you’.

4. Prepare an MVP

Next, we are recommending to develop the MVP with key features important for your concept, for that you should start with the planning and conceptualisation to make proof of concept by designing the wireframe and prototype. It will help to identify the risk and visualising your concept before you invest in it. You should break it down it in various phase.

Now you can ask for the precise cost for your idea but don’t share wireframe without NDA,

5. Detail Cost Estimation

Ask for detail cost based on wireframes to different agencies. Once you will ask for a quote to you local agency, IT consultant or Freelancers on a marketplace like Upwork you will get a variation on the number($). it will depend on the following factors:

• Location – Where you are looking for hire i.e USA, India etc.
• Technology Stack – Which technology stack you select to develop your idea i.e MEAN stack, ROR base solution will cost much higher than PHP and CMS base solution due to lack of skilled professional in the respective category.
• Third Party solution – In your proposal somebody will suggest third-party scripts in order to develop some of the features which ultimately reduces the cost but it will have it’s pros & cons.
• Timeline – If you want fast turnaround of your portal to market in the competitive timeline then you have to hire multiple resources or a team so it can affect the budget.
• Deployment – Nowadays cloud based hosting is so popular which charges based on bandwidth used so you need to very sure that if somebody recommending AWS or google cloud hosting then you should ask your provider about test performance so you can get a rough idea about the server cost.

At techuz, we have worked on 4 marketplace solutions which are very different in nature. By past experience, we can share valuable thoughts for your idea which contribute towards product direction, cost saving, and phases implementation planning. Contact us