Browse our curated list of Software Development Companies
When a project is bigger than a quick gig, UpBusiness is a Fiverr alternative built for hiring a registered service company to deliver it. You describe the project once and get three partner companies matched to it, each of which has been through a five-step onboarding where our team checks its registration documents, its founder's identity and three real client projects. Buyers pay no service fee, there's no commission on the work, and buyers and companies can be anywhere in the world.
If you only have a minute
- Fiverr adds a 5.5% service fee to every payment, plus $3.50 on orders under $200. UpBusiness charges buyers nothing.
- Fiverr is built around fixed gigs from individual freelancers. UpBusiness matches you with companies that scope and deliver a whole project.
- Every partner company passes a five-step onboarding and needs a TrustScore of 70+ out of 100.
- You get three matched companies free, and can shortlist and compare others side by side.
Why Businesses Look for a Fiverr Alternative
Fiverr is good at what it was designed for: small, packaged services you can buy in a few clicks, like a logo, a short video edit or a set of social posts. The model starts to strain when the work is a business project rather than a task. A website rebuild, an app, a CRM integration or a six-month marketing retainer needs someone to understand the business, scope the work and stay with it, and that's hard to fit into a gig with three package tiers.
The fees add up as well. Fiverr's help centre says it adds a standard service fee of 5.5% of your purchase amount at checkout, plus a $3.50 fee on orders under $200, and that every payment carries its own fee, so extras and milestone payments are charged separately[1].
UpBusiness vs Fiverr at a Glance
| UpBusiness | Fiverr | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A project scoped and delivered by a registered company | Packaged gigs, mostly from individual freelancers |
| How you start | Post one brief and get 3 matched companies | Search gigs, pick a package, order |
| Buyer fees | None, and no commission | 5.5% service fee on each payment, plus $3.50 on orders under $200 |
| Who is checked | The company: registration and tax documents, founder identity, three client projects with evidence | Seller profiles, levels and reviews |
| Best for | Websites, apps, integrations, retainers and anything that runs for weeks or months | Quick, well-defined tasks |
What Fiverr Fees Look Like on a Real Project
A 5.5% service fee sounds small, and on a single large order it is. It grows in two situations that are common on business projects: when the work is paid in several milestones, and when you keep adding small extras.
| How the money moves | What you pay Fiverr | Effective fee |
|---|---|---|
| One $6,000 order | $330 | 5.5% |
| Four milestones of $1,500 | $330 (4 × $82.50) | 5.5% |
| Ten add-on orders of $120 each | $101 (10 × $10.10) | 8.4% |
| Twenty $50 tweaks over a year | $125 (20 × $6.25) | 12.5% |
| Any of the above on UpBusiness | $0 | 0% |
The small order fee of $3.50 on anything under $200 is what pushes the last two rows up, and it's exactly the pattern you fall into when a website or app needs ongoing changes after launch. Sellers pay Fiverr a share of each order too, which you won't see at checkout, but it's part of why gig prices creep up once a project grows beyond the original package.
None of this means Fiverr is overpriced for what it's meant for. A $300 logo with a $16.50 fee is a perfectly reasonable deal. The maths just changes once you're buying a business project in small pieces.
A Gig or a Project: How to Tell Which You Need
A gig works when you can describe the finished result in a sentence and one person can deliver it in a few days. "Design a logo with three concepts" is a gig. So is "edit this two-minute video".
It's a project when the work has moving parts you haven't fully defined yet, needs more than one skill, or has to keep running after it's delivered. "Rebuild our website so the sales team can update it and leads go into our CRM" sounds simple, but it involves design, development, content, integration and someone to fix things in month three. A company that scopes the work with you, puts a team on it and signs one contract for the whole result is a much safer way to buy that, and it's the kind of company UpBusiness lists.
If you're unsure how to describe the work, our software project brief template helps you turn an idea into a brief companies can quote on.
When Fiverr Is the Right Choice
We'd send you to Fiverr ourselves for some jobs. If you need a podcast cover, a product photo edited, a voiceover for a 30-second ad or a quick review of your Google Ads account, a gig is faster and cheaper than talking to a company about it, and Fiverr's packages make the price clear before you order.
It's also handy for testing the water. If you're not sure you need a full brand identity yet, buying a set of logo concepts for a few hundred dollars is a sensible way to find out what you like before you brief an agency properly.
Where it starts to go wrong is when the gig becomes the project. Signs you've reached that point are that you're on your fourth or fifth order with the same seller, you're writing long messages to explain how the pieces fit together, or nobody but you knows how the whole thing works. That's usually the moment to hand it to a company that will scope it, own it and maintain it.
What Every UpBusiness Company Goes Through
On a gig marketplace, anyone can open a seller account. On UpBusiness, a company has to earn its listing through five onboarding steps that our team reviews by hand.
We start with what the company does: its services, industries, typical client size, minimum project size and rate, location, website and office photos. We then check its incorporation certificate and tax registration, and credit its years in business from those documents rather than from its own "since" date. The founder's identity, email, phone and LinkedIn profile are verified, and any certification or award needs a link or document behind it.
The last step is three client projects, each with the client's name, the services delivered, the size, the dates, a description, evidence of the work and proof of the engagement. If the company shares the client's email, we contact the client to confirm the work. Everything feeds a TrustScore out of 100, and only companies scoring 70 or more are listed. Optional paid plans can raise a listed company in the default "Recommended" order, but no plan gets an unchecked company onto the platform.
Packaged Price or Scoped Quote?
On Fiverr the seller sets the package and you pick one. A company works the other way round: you describe the problem and it proposes a price, and it'll usually do that in one of three ways.
| Pricing model | How it works | Works best when |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed price | One price for an agreed scope, paid in milestones | The scope is clear and unlikely to change much |
| Time and materials | You pay for the hours worked at agreed rates, usually with a monthly cap | You're still working out details as you go |
| Monthly retainer | A set fee each month for an agreed amount of work | Ongoing marketing, support or maintenance |
Fixed price feels safest, but it only stays fixed if the scope does, so a company quoting it will ask a lot of questions first and price change requests separately. Time and materials gives you more flexibility in exchange for watching the hours. For a first project with a new company, a fixed-price first phase followed by time and materials or a retainer is a sensible middle ground.
How Hiring Works on UpBusiness
- Post your requirement: what you need, a rough budget, your timeline and anything specific. It's free and takes a few minutes.
- Get three partner companies matched on their services, industries, project size and verified track record, so the companies you see fit your budget.
- Shortlist and compare them side by side on TrustScore, reviews, industry experience, commercial fit, portfolio and responsiveness, then talk to them directly.
When the quotes come in, our guide on how to compare software development proposals shows how to compare them fairly, even when each company has scoped the work differently.
Post your requirement free and get 3 verified companies
Moving a Project From Gigs to a Company
If you've built something across several Fiverr orders and now want a company to take it over, a little preparation saves weeks. Finish open orders on Fiverr first and keep any follow-up communication within its rules, then collect what the new team will need.
- All source files, not just exports: the Figma or Adobe files for design, the full code repository for software, and the raw footage for video.
- Access to every account in your own name, such as hosting, domain, app store, analytics and ad accounts. If a seller created an account for you, ask for ownership to be transferred before the order closes.
- Font and stock licences, so you know what you're allowed to keep using.
- A short written history of what was built, what was changed and what still isn't working.
A company taking over someone else's work will often want a short paid audit before quoting the rest, and that's a good sign rather than a delay. It means they're pricing what's actually there, not what you hope is there. Our project brief template has a section for exactly this kind of handover.
What You Can Hire
UpBusiness covers more than 5,000 specific services across 10 categories, including AI and automation, custom software, web and mobile apps, SEO and paid ads, social media, branding and UI/UX, content, and business consulting. If your project doesn't fit neatly into one of those, post it anyway, because the matching looks at what you need done.
Other Fiverr Alternatives Worth Knowing
People leave Fiverr for different reasons, so the right alternative depends on what went wrong. If you want hourly freelancers with platform-held payments, look at a freelance marketplace, and our Upwork alternative guide explains how that compares with hiring a company. If you need one senior specialist to join your team, a vetted talent network fits better, which we cover in the Toptal alternative guide. For creative work where the portfolio decides everything, the DesignRush alternative guide explains what to check before you trust an agency's case studies.
