If you realize your approach across the toolbox, you’ve seen many platforms promising to show your expertise right into a viable aspect hustle. Two of the preferred of those websites are Taskrabbit and Handy.
Each promise to attach you with prospects who want a wide selection of in-person companies, from cleansing to electrical work. The websites discover the purchasers, bill and accumulate for you. The query is, which is the higher website for freelancers to seek out work? Right here’s a side-to-side match-up of Taskrabbit vs. Useful. And one website wins by a mile.
Right here’s why.
Similarities: Taskrabbit vs. Useful
Each Taskrabbit and Handy are nationwide platforms that cowl each U.S. state. So, you may signal as much as work, irrespective of the place you reside.
Additionally they present an analogous sign-up mechanism the place you create an ordinary profile and checklist your expertise. On each websites, you’re required to undergo an in depth identification and background test to get the required clearance.
When you’re all arrange, the location — or the location’s prospects — will contact you with job alternatives.
However that’s the place the similarities finish.
Variations
Taskrabbit and Useful diverge in nearly each different approach. Most significantly, TaskRabbit provides freelance employees vastly extra management over their charges and the kind of jobs they take. With Useful, most points of the gig are decided by the platform. This consists of what you do, how a lot you’re paid, and when you’ll want to present up for work.
However there’s extra. Listed below are their greatest variations with Taskrabbit vs. Useful:
Scope
Useful connects contractors with a variety of bodily duties, together with cleansing, plumbing, electrical, and portray jobs, in addition to landscaping, furnishings meeting and shifting gigs.
Taskrabbit does too.
However Taskrabbit additionally permits folks to checklist their availability to buy, ship, run errands, wait in strains, present vacation and occasion assist, baby-proofing and private helping, amongst different issues. Actually, you might have numerous freedom to checklist unconventional companies — like cooking for dinner events or making crafts — on Taskrabbit. This flexibility simply doesn’t exist on Useful.
Furthermore, Taskrabbit permits you to set completely different hourly charges for every service. So, you would possibly cost $50 an hour for deep cleansing, however simply $20 an hour to attend in line.
Transparency and Assist
Taskrabbit permits purchasers and Taskers to message straight in regards to the job. That reduces the possibility that you simply’re blindsided by the quantity of labor concerned or what you’ll be doing. This additionally permits Taskers to reschedule tasks with the consumer, if the employee is sick or has a automobile downside.
At Useful, the assignments are dealt with by the platform with no direct communication between the freelancer and the consumer. Freelancers steadily complain that they’re given too little details about jobs after they take them. And the platform expects them to deal with the work, on the preliminary pay charge, irrespective of how a lot further time a job entails.
Pay
Pay is one other fundamental level of divergence. On Taskrabbit, you set your individual charges. The location offers steering, providing you with and concept of what folks along with your job description and stage of expertise sometimes cost, says Tasker Emely Cepeda. Nonetheless, it doesn’t dictate your charges. Generally, freelancers cost between $25 and $75 per hour.
With Useful, charges are set by the platform and communicated to potential freelancers with an outline of the work. Whereas the pay varies by the kind of job, freelancers say charges are stingy — starting from $14 to $40 per hour. And the $40 per hour jobs are restricted to these requiring critical contracting expertise.
Charges and commissions
On Taskrabbit, freelancers are required to pay a $25 set-up payment, however all the opposite charges are lined by the consumer.
Useful doesn’t cost something to arrange on the platform. But it surely imposes a collection of charges on contractors who have to cancel a job after they’ve taken it. When you cancel with lower than 48 hours discover, you pay $10; with lower than 24-hours discover, you pay $20. You pay $40, in the event you cancel inside 4 hours of the job’s begin time. And also you pay $50 in the event you don’t present up in any respect.
Notably, Useful imposes these charges whatever the cause to your cancellation. It doesn’t matter whether or not you cancelled since you found the job was misrepresented, or in the event you cancelled since you got here down with the flu.
Cancellation charges are additionally imposed on a per-job foundation. So in the event you had a automobile downside on a day while you had a number of jobs lined up, you would owe vital penalties to the platform. Some housekeepers, who earn $15 an hour, say a bout of the flu can price them $200 due to Useful’s cancellation charges.
As talked about above, cancelations will not be a difficulty on Taskrabbit as a result of you may reschedule appointments straight along with your purchasers.
Each websites additionally take a portion of the income introduced in by every job. However these commissions are paid by the purchasers, not the freelancers, and will not be clear at both website.
General: TaskRabbit vs. Useful
TaskRabbit will not be a flawless platform, but it surely serves freelancers nicely.
The primary grievance we see about Taskrabbit is the dearth of regular work, significantly in sure rural areas. The location is making an attempt to deal with this by working with its algorithms to raised combine and match assignments. However no freelance platform guarantees regular work to everybody.
Nonetheless, by and huge, freelancers say they just like the platform and may earn good cash right here.
Freelancers are far much less glad with Useful for clear causes.
They’ve little management over what they do, after they do it, or how a lot they cost. The pay is poor. And the lack to reschedule a job with out penalty while you’re sick or going through an emergency is ridiculous.
It’s one factor as well contractors in the event that they’re unreliable. It’s one other to superb a constant employee just because they caught the flu or had a automobile downside.
Our recommendation
When you’re in search of a spot that will help you discover enterprise for in-person companies, reminiscent of cleansing and contracting, Taskrabbit is the much better alternative.
Nonetheless, there are different websites that may assist, as nicely. Contractors might need to additionally try ToolBelt and JiffyOnDemand and cleaners might be able to discover extra work by way of Turno and Nextdoor.
8/12/2024
