Outgrown Upwork? Options for When You Need Someone Full-Time

There is a moment many businesses recognise. A freelancer you found on a marketplace has become indispensable. They are online most of your working day, they know your systems and customers, and you plan the week around them. The work that started as a project has turned into a job. At that point, "which marketplace?" is the wrong question. The real one is how you want to staff a full-time role.

This article is for businesses at that point. It is not a case against marketplaces, which do a specific job well. It sets out the options for full-time work and how to choose.

What Freelance Marketplaces Do Well

Marketplaces solved a real problem: finding skilled people quickly, for exactly the work you need, without a long recruitment process. They suit:

• Defined projects with a clear end, such as a website build, a brand refresh or a data clean-up
• Specialist skills you need occasionally rather than every week
• Testing whether a type of work is worth doing before committing to a role
• Variable demand, where hours rise and fall from month to month

Fees are part of the model and are published by the platforms themselves. They are worth including when you compare costs.

Upwork's help centre explains that clients on its free Basic plan pay a Client Marketplace Fee (opens in a new tab) of up to 7.99% on payments to freelancers, including hourly and fixed-price contracts and bonuses, with a higher fee on its Business Plus plan. Check the platform's current terms for your own account, as fees and plans change.

Signs You Have Outgrown the Marketplace Model

None of these is a problem with the platform. They are signs the work has changed shape.

If most of those apply, the cost of a gap in availability, or of the person moving on to a bigger client, is now higher than the convenience of an open-ended arrangement.

Your Options for Full-Time Work

There are four realistic routes. Each puts the work of finding, engaging and supporting the person in a different place.

Staying on the platform is the least disruption. It can work well if your freelancer wants to commit their full week to you. Be clear with each other about availability and hours, keep fees in your budget, and check the platform's terms if you ever want to change the arrangement.

Hiring directly gives the most control but brings the full cost and administration of employment. If the person is in the UK, our look at the hidden costs of hiring an employee in the UK sets out what that involves. If they are abroad, you also need a lawful way to engage them there.

An employer of record solves that last problem for a person you have already found. It is built for employment administration, not recruitment, so it fits best when you know exactly who you want.

A dedicated-professional provider takes on recruitment and ongoing support as well. This is the model Remoteli runs, and it suits businesses that want the role filled and supported without building that capability themselves. Our comparison of remote hiring models covers each route in more depth.

How the Dedicated Model Differs in Practice

Compared with a marketplace arrangement, the differences show up in four places.

• Focus. A Remoteli professional is dedicated to one client, full-time: 180 hours a month, normally 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
• Selection. You describe the role, Remoteli recruits from a Talent Network of more than 40,000 professionals, and you interview and choose.
• Continuity. If a professional is not the right fit, Remoteli provides a replacement within two full business days of your request, provided Remoteli is permitted to select and vet the replacement.
• Commercials. One monthly rolling subscription per professional, with no setup fees. Fees exclude VAT.

It is not right for everything. If you need ten hours of design work a month, a marketplace is the better tool. Professionals take 21 days' annual leave, and new standard subscriptions do not include automatic leave cover, so plan for absence as you would with any team member.

Prices depend on role, experience level and talent market. Some roles that often start life on marketplaces:

Making the Move Without Losing Momentum

Whichever route you choose, the transition is easier if you capture what your freelancer knows before anything changes. Document recurring tasks, logins and permissions, key contacts and the unwritten rules about how you like things done. That record is valuable whether the same person continues on a new basis or someone new takes over.

Then write the role down properly. A full-time role needs clearer outcomes and decision rights than a project, and our guide to writing a role brief shows how. For a cost-focused view of the same decision, see freelancer vs dedicated remote professional. For the full process from brief to first month, see our guide to hiring remote talent internationally.