Clients are often in a hurry to find the right freelancer and get started. You may increase your chances of getting a contract by quickly responding to new messages and invitations.
Successful freelancers often try to respond within 24 hours, and best practice is to respond within two hours. Being continually unresponsive to clients in your active contracts may result in account restrictions.
Policies around unresponsiveness:
To ensure smooth collaboration, it’s important to respond to clients on active contracts within seven days, as outlined in our Optional Service Contract Terms. Keeping communication timely helps maintain trust and keeps projects on track.
If you repeatedly miss this response window, we may take the following steps: first, a friendly reminder, then temporary account restrictions, and in some cases, a permanent block. This may also result in a refund to the client for any unreleased funds. Learn more about how we enforce our standards here.
To avoid any interruptions to your work, we recommend staying on top of your messages and responding as quickly as possible.
Fast response times can also help you:
- Show clients that you’re likely to respond to them
- Build your reputation as someone who is dependable and professional. Even if you’re not interested in the job, let the client know so they can move forward in their search for a freelancer
Communication tips:
- Check Upwork Messages as part of your regular routine. Consider setting a reminder on your personal calendar to make it part of your schedule.
- Adjust your profile notification settings. Here’s how:
- From your profile, select Profile Settings > Notification Settings
- For Messages, select Important activity only for your desktop, mobile, and email messages, and select the frequency you want for emails
- For Other Upwork Email Updates, check the boxes under Freelancer and Agency Proposals to get notifications about your proposals and invitations
- Turn on notifications for your mobile or desktop devices. Learn more about managing your notifications.
- Update your availability — if you’re taking a break or too busy for more work, mark your profile as Not available for new work. Here’s how:
- From your profile or Find Work page, select the ✎ Edit icon next to Hours per week
- Choose None and enter the date you expect to be available for work again
- Choose Save
You can also set your profile to private if you don’t want to get new invitations. Don’t worry, this setting will still allow your current and past clients and other Upwork users to contact you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Under Upwork’s Optional Service Contract Terms, you are expected to respond to client communications on active contracts within seven days.
After a contract is in place, you and your client can agree on new communication terms. Ensure any new agreements are documented in writing, ideally through Upwork messages. Remember that prior to your contract starting, all communication must remain on Upwork per our Terms of Service.
Let your client know in advance so they can plan. While it’s smart to let them know well in advance, you should reach out at least 24 hours before any agreed-upon deadline if you won’t be able to meet it.
No, we don’t actively monitoring message threads to enforce responsiveness. However, if a client reports to us that you’ve been unresponsive, we may take action based on that report. We do monitor messages for other reasons, such as ensuring compliance with our Terms of Service, including issues related to circumvention.
Responsibility for communication delays will fall on the freelancer who is working with the client. The agency itself won’t be impacted unless the client has been primarily interacting with the agency owner.
