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Your team is only as strong as its weakest link, especially for smaller businesses. The importance of having reliable team members makes hiring a critical activity that you must handle delicately.
Luckily, with the help of freelance platforms, you can source freelance experts in the appropriate field.
In some cases, you may be looking for a specialized job board to help narrow down your initial Google search. X-Team is one example. It’s a freelancing hiring board that connects you with developers to give your business a tech-savvy edge.
But is X-Team always the right choice when you need a full-time freelance developer to add to your development projects team?
In this article, you’ll learn more about X-Team alternatives like Toptal and Lemon.io and see what they bring to the table. With this information, you will feel confident to know where to source your next freelance developer.
Toptal does a fantastic job of screening and vetting their developers. This means you get high-quality employees without the added time and stress.
Only 3% of developers who apply get accepted into their program. Further, their hourly rates are what you would expect for hiring a software developer.
To learn more, you can register with Toptal, read our comparison of Toptal and X-Team, or read our full Toptal review.
You should keep in mind that just because you may not find the perfect candidate on a field-specific site, doesn’t mean they’re not out there. Sometimes, scouring the general sites like Upwork or Fiverr can produce the specific person you’re looking for.
You should also have these items pre-determined when choosing a freelancing site:
Keeping these in mind, you’ll be able to narrow your options to the platform that checks off the most boxes for you.
You’ll find many of the answers to these questions in the content below.
Toptal is like X-Team in a few different ways. Both limit their hiring to expert freelancers and serve as a middleman connecting them to clients. They both also personalize their matches.
The main differences that Toptal presents are twofold. In one aspect, Toptal tends to work with name-brand clients like Airbnb and the Cleveland Cavaliers, which gives them an extra boost of high-profile client experience.
Additionally, Toptal requires an up-front payment of $500 from you. This money is credited toward your first invoice or can be refunded if you decide to jump ship. This down payment speeds up the matching process and weeds out clients who aren’t truly serious about finding the best software engineer.
X-Team doesn’t ask for any cash up-front and allows you to pay the developer instead.
If you have the funds and are planning to pay for the work anyway, Toptal is a good bet.
OnlineJobs.ph is a great place to find virtual assistants from the Philippines. With over 500,000 skilled VAs to choose from with skill sets ranging from social media management to WordPress developers, you’re bound to find the right fit.
Rather than match you with the best person as X-Team does, OnlineJobs.ph lets you search through their directory of virtual assistants directly to find whoever you determine to be the person for the job.
They also offer a done-for-you matching service similar to X-Team for a $500 recruitment fee.
One of the best parts about OnlineJobs.ph is that it uses a time-tracking software called Timeproof to keep track of the time your new freelancer spends on their remote work, so you’re never paying more than necessary.
Like X-Team, Lemon.io takes care to vet their developers before adding them to their database. When you’re in a time crunch to find the right developer, this speeds things up, so there’s no time wasted.
One difference between Lemon.io and X-Team is that Lemon.io claims that they can match you with the right developer in as little as 24 hours while X-Team does not advertise any expected turnaround time, which could be an issue for your business.
Additionally, Lemon.io provides a zero-risk replacement guarantee should, for some reason, your original developer match not work out. You can rest assured that Lemon.io will find the best project manager to get your task done one way or another.
Triplebyte is another tech-focused screening and recruiting platform. It’s one of the fastest-growing tech recruiters in the world. However, the company likes to consider itself more of a “hiring marketplace” like Guru or Codementor.
Triplebyte allows the client to sort through hundreds or thousands of job seekers to pick the best candidate. However, it’s also similar to X-Team in that it has a strict, multi-step vetting process before a developer is allowed to join the directories.
Triplebyte uses the information you provide to “fast-track” the hiring process by giving you access to all of the tech job seekers that meet your qualifications.
Since Triplybyte’s vetting process is so strict, it does leave a lot of skilled frontend developers and tech workers out of the running. Higher selectiveness also means that clients can expect to pay any workers found through Triplebyte a higher rate than they would spend one on X-Team, for example.
Gun.io is not the biggest name in tech recruiting platforms, but it has features and a hiring process that helps it stand out.
Similar to X-Team, Gun.io limits its candidates to tech job seekers and uses a rigorous selection process to ensure every candidate has the skills needed to do the jobs well. Using Gun.io, you know that you’ll be choosing among freelancers who are serious about their work.
Gun.io provides a workforce that is made up entirely of software engineers, whereas X-Team offers tech workers in a broader range of experience, like UX designers. If you need a worker that falls outside of the realm of software engineering, X-Team might be a better option for you.
Like X-Team, Andela is a recruitment platform for developers. Unlike X-Team, it hones in on developers in Africa as part of a strategy to maximize the tech talent in Africa.
To keep standards high among the developers allowed onto the site, Andela only accepts the top performing 2% of applicants. X-Team does not limit their hiring in this way.
Andela struggles to maintain its standards because it’s difficult for developers to make a good living. Instead, they turn to sites like X-Team to earn more.
If you’re only looking for support on a small number of development tasks, Andela could work for you. Otherwise, you’re better off sticking with X-Team.
Upwork is one of the most popular freelance hiring platforms, making a good choice when you need to hire short-term workers for small project management.
Because there are so many freelancers available on the site, freelancers must bid low hourly rates to secure work. While this may sound tempting to you as the client, this high level of competition and low rates can lead to lower-quality work. It also makes it more difficult to find high-quality freelancers in a sea of options.
If you need simple work that doesn’t require a high level of tech skills or knowledge of the development process, Upwork is a place to find affordable and fast workers.
If you need someone who can help out with larger project management, it’s safer to go with X-Team. That way, you know you’re working with previously vetted and approved developers.
Finding a high-quality developer to add to your company team can feel like a daunting task. With high standards and expectations, it can be challenging to wade through the sea of options from Google to pick out the cream of the crop for your needs.
While having so many freelancing job boards to choose from is a good problem to have, it doesn’t make the task of hiring any easier.
X-Team is an excellent option for some developer needs. But, it’s not always going to be the best choice for all. If X-Team’s middleman model and lack of reviews don’t feel like the right fit for you, you might like the direct models of OnlineJobs.ph or Triplebyte.
On the other hand, if you want something a little more high level, you should consider using Toptal.
Ready to change your software development team for the better? Get started by looking at the X-team alternatives listed above, and you’re sure to find just what you need.
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