Hiring the best freelancer for your website or app project can be a tough job. You need someone with the right job qualifications and years of experience to create a comprehensive and seamless user experience.
Perhaps you’re looking for a UI developer who can:
If you don’t do thorough research on your options first, you could end up with someone who won’t get the job done right.
This article will go through eight of the best websites to hire UI developers. Each site has upsides and downsides, so we’ll make sure to touch on these pros and cons in the article below.
Toptal is a great place to start to hire UI developers. This site only employs the top 3% of freelancers (hence the name Toptal). You’ll end up looking at only the best UI developers in the world. As you might expect, this means you’ll quickly find skilled programmers and developers who understand the development process.
However, this also means that Toptal’s freelancers will almost always demand higher wages. This site may not be appropriate if you’re looking for entry-level UI developers. It might not be the best for you if your budget is small, either.
Toptal works by first connecting you with an industry expert who will listen to what you need. Then, the expert picks freelancers who they think will be great fits for you. This makes the hiring process even easier since you’ll only be looking at the best options right from the beginning.
FlexJobs is one of the best places for flexible and work-from-home jobs. As such, it’s an excellent place for both freelancers and those hiring them to connect. FlexJobs is not a service like Toptal, but rather a job “board” site where potential hires mostly come to you.
This means you’ll be sorting through more potential hires than you would be with Toptal. You might also end up sorting through applications for underqualified or overqualified individuals. However, this broader range of quality can be a good thing, too, especially if you’re on a budget.
Since FlexJobs is all about flexible work-from-home jobs, you may not have as much luck finding applicants for on-site work. FlexJobs is best for those who are looking for telecommuting or remote freelancers.
Like FlexJobs, GoLance is a job board that connects businesses with freelancers looking to work. You can target individuals with resumes on GoLance and extend invitations to your jobs. Alternatively, you can post your jobs and wait for applicants to come to you.
You will have more applicants to sift through with GoLance. However, GoLance does give you a list of qualified freelancers to look at immediately after you post a job. This is great for helping you hit the ground running right away.
GoLancer works on transparency. They make it so the freelancer can see everything on your business profile, but you can also see everything on that freelancer’s profile. This means less wasted time for both you and your prospective hires.
ZipRecruiter is a traditional job board website similar to industry standards like Indeed. However, ZipRecruiter is newer and comes with a few more useful features. The main benefit of ZipRecruiter is its size. It has hundreds of thousands of candidates and jobs to sort through. However, that can also work to your disadvantage.
A more prominent job posting site means more people will see your job post, but it also means that your job will get swallowed up in the sea of competing positions. To stand out on a site like ZipRecruiter, you may have to pay extra for premium spots and superior advertising. Your job post could fail if you don’t offer competitive pay, either, as applicants will just apply to other better-paying jobs.
ZipRecruiter does have a screening process that makes it easier to find quality candidates, saving you time over similar job boards.
FreeUp is a job matching service similar to Toptal that matches employers with freelancers who have the skill set they need. Instead of making profiles and job boards, FreeUp vets and screens every freelancer and keeps a database of them handy. After you complete the sign-up process, FreeUp will match you with a qualified candidate within a single business day.
This one business day promise is excellent for those who need a web developer candidate right away. As a nice bonus, FreeUp can take the specialties you need into account. This means that whether you need to hire UI developers or back-end developers, they will have what you need.
FreeUp also lets you filter by entry-level, mid-level, and expert-level candidates. While you may still need to pay fees to FreeUp for their services, this can be great for those working under a budget.
Gun.io is a specialized freelancing website that only deals with engineering and technical freelancers. This means that Gun.io may not be for you if you need a freelance writer to make content for your website. However, if you need a freelance UI designer for your site or blog, then you’re in luck!
Gun.io is a job matching service that vets their freelancers before becoming part of Gun.io’s database. As a bonus, freelancers who are new to Gun.io are “mentored” by more experienced members before they can work independently. This helps ensure that the freelancer that you hire is high-quality and able to handle your projects.
Like many job matching sites, Gun.io also has a refund guarantee that kicks in if your freelancer does not provide quality work, meaning you can rest just a little easier.
Like Gun.io above, Triplebyte is another job platform that specializes in software engineering and design. They also screen their applicants before allowing them to enter the database. This means you’ll deal with a much higher quality level of freelancers than you would with traditional job boards.
Triplebyte allows you to filter your candidates by their specialty and their proficiency levels. They also offer assessments that you can use to test any freelancers you want to hire. For example, they may have a UI development assessment that can test their familiarity with different platforms.
Triplebyte also has a blind screening algorithm that helps eliminate any unconscious biases you may have during the hiring process. This is ideal if you would like to add more diverse applicants to your business.
If you’re looking for a freelancer to work with your business, you have probably heard of Upwork, one of the biggest freelance job boards on the web. Like ZipRecruiter, Upwork is a great place to go if you’re looking for a large volume of applicants, but the quality of those applicants can be unpredictable.
Upwork does an excellent job of screening both scam and inactive freelancers from your results, but keep in mind that they don’t vet their freelancers as carefully as specialized job matching sites do.
The thing to keep in mind with Upwork is that freelancers and businesses can both review each other. If you get just one freelancer who decides to be vindictive or mean, it could end up ruining your rating on Upwork for future hires.
Do you have a question we still haven’t answered? If so, we may be able to address it within these frequently asked questions below.
A UI developer is someone who works on, designs, and builds the user interface (UI) of a system or program.
Before you hire anyone, make sure you have a good idea of your project requirements, the level of experience you’re looking for, and how much you’re willing to pay. You should also determine whether you’re looking for full-time or part-time development services from a freelancer.
Having a good idea of these things beforehand will help you narrow down potential hires once you start the process.
The process to hire UI developers can be a long and difficult one. However, the process becomes easier when you take your time and vet your available freelancers carefully. Using a trustworthy website to hire through like those we listed above is always a good idea, too.
Now that you have all of the knowledge in this review at your disposal, your hiring process should be more straightforward. We hope you’ve emerged with the knowledge to hire the right freelancer the first time.