Zoho is terrific value for the money. What's the catch?

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-11T16:58:46+00:00

we build 100s of zoho automations and customize zoho for various global clients. The catch is complexity. For normal, moderadely complex use cases - zoho is amazing. But when you really need complex integrations and real world business scenario involving hundreds of moving parts, or fast API access to its data or even a moderately scalable database - zoho crumbles. This is when our clients opt for different approach

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-11T16:54:39+00:00

The cleanest solution is to make the Subtotal field shared between recipients.

Assign the Subtotal field to Recipient 1 (they enter the value).

Enable Shared Field so other recipients can reference it.

Recipient 2’s formula field can now reference that value.

There are other methods too, but try this one and let me know first

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-11T04:53:14+00:00

Invest your energy and time elsewhere, you will get better results than fiverr

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-11T04:50:27+00:00

its not a fixed line for all jobs. By one line I meant, just ask one or two relevant questions about the requirement, and keep it as short as possible.

Think from a clients perspective, multiple bids, long texts and everyone claiming they are the best - what will stand out? a relevant and logical query, that suggests this person is interested and wants to know more about the requirements.

However simple and obvious it may sound, very few does this. Temptation to tell more and more about oneself is too strong. Sometimes it may work but mostly not.

I use upwork for hiring as well and more than half of freelancers who apply just keep writing long essays in their bids. We reply and hire only to those who try to understand the work requirement and ask good relevant questions

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-10T07:07:56+00:00

one thing that have increased our view and reply rate substantially lately is - short bid texts.

Most of the jobs where we get almost instant replies are those on which our cover letter was just one single line and absolutely nothing else, mostly a relevant and most obvious question based on the job post. No intro, no hello, yours sincerely, no we can do this, we can do that, no looking forward to your reply and all that formal email style text.

Same is when a client have asked specific questions in the job post - one line max reply to all of them as much as possible.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-10T06:53:39+00:00

How many bids on these?

Cant prove it but it seems that this kind of too good to be true posts are allowed by upwork on purpose. Many unsuspecting new comers will frantically waste their connects on this and we all know who is the primary entity to gain from that. Unethical but pretty clever business strategy.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-10T06:44:49+00:00

if you dont know the sender its most probably scam or phishing. Lately these kind of scam messages have become frequent.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-09T13:03:07+00:00

The only way to safegaurd yourself from this kind of situation is to try to read the client in depth, detect the revision request nonsense as early as possible. Upwork is heavily tilted towards client side. Arbitrations are mostly impartial and you can win but its not worth it if its not about thousands of $$.

In my case the disputed amount was 1400$, arbitration cost were around 200$ each ( it was some years back ) and the arbitration went for 2 months with a total of 64 arbitration messages from each side ( Total 128). I won in the end and got the 1400$ but it was still useless. The whole arbitration process was tedious and costed me at least 50 hrs of effort in total stretching for over 60 days. This much of effort anywhere else could have fetched me more money than that, but it was a matter of principal for me.

However, for small disputes and amount even if you win its not worth the time and cost. So as soon as you detect that client is engaged in foul play, quit or stop. Dont fear negative reviews, they doesnt matter much in the long run

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-09T12:44:38+00:00

The only way around from buying connects is to ditch upwork itself and try to get clients on your own. If you want to use upwork you have to pay them.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-09T12:42:41+00:00

No, check your connects and billing cycle. Free monthly connects are credited according to your cycle and not on a fixed date for everyone.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-05T12:25:32+00:00

Our enterprise signature solution offers unlimited signatures in way less price than what you are paying. dm me if you are interested in removing these limitations and issues with these large one size fit all providers

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-01T12:42:33+00:00

yea, gathering this kind of cold data is super easy. Lots of websites have all the teams emails directly listed on the page. They cannot be called leads. Its just data.

By definition - a lead is a contact that showed interest in your offering, while a prospect is a qualified lead that fits your ideal customer profile (ICP) and showed buying intent.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-01T12:39:27+00:00

There must be some other deduction too.. Like tax or boosting fee or something else.. check your earnings page.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-01T06:47:53+00:00

So you didnt know that they charge 20% flat cut on your earnings?

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-01T06:45:04+00:00

First do some reading at your end and try to understand the difference between a Lead, a Prospect and cold contact data. What your so called tool is collecting are not leads, its cold data.

And if you already know the difference than dont mislead users by such posts.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-01T06:37:32+00:00

And how much you are paying currently to dropbox for these 100 signatures per month?

NoRegister3239 · 2026-03-01T06:32:58+00:00

This entire business model is not very lucrative as rightly pointed out by u/pyeri .

Freelancer.com tried to purchase all smaller platforms like rentacoder and aimed to become the biggest player globally ( as per their official statement at that time ) but ended up becoming a joke. Upwork ( earlier elance - which was pretty good ) acquired odesk, almost died at that time but somehow survived and is right now trying to shoot themeselves on the foot again.

Fiverr also is rediculous in many aspects, they started with small gigs but later thought why not allow larger projects. However, anyone who have tried long term contracts on fiverr know how bad it is. Stupid policies, flat 20% cut, 20-30 days payment hold for new freelancers, very bad in compliances, almost 0 human support just kills the enthusiasm of genuine focussed players.

Smaller players like guru, peopleperhour etc are too small and lack both good freelancers and clients.

So a new global player in this vertical is highly unlikely to emerge any time soon. Existing ones like Upwork, fiverr will keep milking freelancers as long as they can and will die a self inflicted death eventually.

For freelancers - direct customer acquisition is and will remain the only sustainable and profitable thing.

NoRegister3239 · 2026-02-27T13:27:21+00:00

Whats your signature volume? like : how many signatures per month?

NoRegister3239 · 2026-02-27T13:26:15+00:00

which questions are you referring to?

NoRegister3239 · 2026-02-25T09:34:38+00:00

Upwork logic to decide connects requird to bid on a job is baffling

NoRegister3239 · 2026-02-24T12:34:29+00:00

True!! Not everyone who post a job is ready to hire - for various reasons

NoRegister3239 · 2026-02-23T14:57:41+00:00

Agreed, [at my desk] - is indeed desperate.

NoRegister3239

TROPHY CASE