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I got a gig from one of the company via email & interviews and they made me a good offer.

They want me to start this collaboration via Elance and when I looked at the fees/charges on Elance I found 8.75% of the project fees to be on a higher side. I had a discussion with the company folks and they said they are open to other alternatives as well.

So, are there any other alternatives for this type of collaboration without involving any freelance websites and if not any alternative to Elance which are safe & has low charges.

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    Elance is the cheapest. biz30.timedoctor.com/…
    – user152
    Commented Mar 21, 2015 at 10:08
  • Here is a Blog Post from 1stWebDesigner comparing all the Top Freelancing Websites. 1stwebdesigner.com/best-freelance-websites I know posting a link is not the best way to answer a Question, But this link is one of the best comparisons I read. Comparing all prices + commissions etc. Commented Mar 22, 2015 at 17:39
  • As a heads up, this question may be regarded as off-topic in the near future. We've opened a meta topic to discuss whether or not to create this off-topic reason. Please give us your feedback! Commented Mar 30, 2015 at 20:37

2 Answers 2

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Among top ones, Elance is the cheapest indeed.

But if you do not build profile, you do not need Elance. You can easily buy Basecamp account for $25 monthly and use PayPal (I think they take approx 4%).

Or even cheaper, you can use Bitbucket. For files, you can use their repositories. In their free account you have tickets and wiki for free. So use tickets for milestones and tasks. Once they pay a milestone, you simply push changes to the repo.

To save money on payment, you can use direct payments to your bank account. This is usually one-time fee and for larger amounts, it can be a bargain.

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    I'm not sure why the poster wants to use Elance, but it could also be the escrow and dispute resolution services that they provide. Especially with a new client, this can be worth the price. If you just want escrow, there's escrow.com which has fees of 3.25% or even lower
    – Peter
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 13:40
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Elance is dead. It has merged with oDesk and formed Upwork which really is bad. On top of it they have increased their charges to massive 20% and started levying another 2.75% on clients as well. So overall the charges come to 22.75% now excluding the payment processing charges. Not to mention that they take commissions on currency exchange rates as well.

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