This company is all about hype. Job offers are scarce, and when a translation agency contacts you, they want you to work for peanuts. For example, a company once offered me $0.015 per word to translate from English into Portuguese! Despite branding themselves as "ProZ," they are far from professional. The Kudos platform is full of translation errors, and they don’t seem to care. Recently, I disagreed with a colleague on several of his translation answers. He filed a complaint against me, and ProZ placed a peer-comment restriction on my account—meaning he’s now free to post translation absurdities to his heart's content. When I appealed, they claimed the restriction was due to "repeated violations of site rules and discussions that appeared more personal than linguistic." Yet, they provided only one example of a violation. That’s ridiculous. I always back my disagreements with linguistic reasoning. Who needs ProZ anyway? The jobs I get through their platform are negligible, and their membership fees are absurdly high for what they offer: a glossary full of mistakes, a community of know-it-alls and wannabes with little academic background in translation (except for a small minority), and a flood of ads for overpriced CAT tools. I recommend not wasting your time with this platform. It’s not worth it. Instead, focus on building your resume, website, and working directly with potential clients. You’ll get a better return on investment and avoid the hassle of dealing with amateurs.
I haven't even registered, and I won't. As soon as I press the button, it shows me three subscription plans. And not monthly or quarterly ones, NO, yearly. I check to compare the benefits each one has to offer, clearly they want you to pay for the most expensive one. I've been a translator for over 15 years, I won't pay these blood suckers £200+ a year to "possibly" get a job. Next!
Proz.com is the Best Platform to work as a freelancer. Its support team is cooperative. I appreciate Pro.com
What a waste of time and 3 months worth of paid membership. I have not received a single job. One of the Interpreting recruiter was an absolute discrace and rude.
Grafix dhai
Terrible company. They are nice only when you pay for membership and after they can easily disconnect your profile. Discriminate interpreters, and a Complaince officer is so stupid:), his name is Saint Machester. Do not recommend this company to anyone
They think they're unattenable and they don't give any damn care about customers who pay their membership. I hate them particularly Yana Dovgopol. This women is a devil in person. Please don't use anymore this website and don't pay for their membership.
I've heard many times that ProZ.com is good for beginners, however I can't say this is true. At least not for me. When I had a profile I couldn't apply to jobs because I: a) wasn't paying membership b) didn't have certain years of experience. Not paying membership had another disadvantage: I couldn't look up information about agencies I wanted to message privately. Although this isn't big of a deal because I can always google them, it's still stupid... I don't see how beginners can find work there if the majority of posts are for members only and for people with a lot of experience.
The site is filled with stuff to the point of being overwhelming. I signed up and paid membership for the year on April 28 and then, after reading the reviews (too late), I wanted out. I managed to find a telephone number, which the voicemail says it's full. Then, I tried the "chat" and it didn't work because it kept taking me to the same page after "verifying my email". I, somehow, wrote a message in customer assistance saying that I want to cancel my membership and my money (portion) refunded, but nobody responds. I will keep myself to the American Translators Association. They are very serious and professional.
It literally does nothing for the translator. The site filled with scammers, job postings with no moderation so most of it is people asking for selfies to train their AI. Then there are people who wants you to work for FREE, or *almost* for free, the false advertisements, the so-called trustworthy companies trying to talk you into giving them a free "translation test" of giant proportions.. There are once in a while more solid looking ads and they tend to be only for the overpriced membership, which makes me doubt their authenticity. Their ratings also are untrustworthy as I (and many others, I've seen) had terrible experiences with companies with 5 stars blueboard rating - but wildest is that they don't even show you the reviews if you're not a paid member. Overall, terribly moderated, they just want you to get membership so maybe you'll stay in for the sunk-cost, the fact we resort to it is a sad reflection of what this business has become because of people with no standards who thinks you'll deign to work like some sort of slave and the ones feeding them with google translate.
Impossible to get in touch with a support staff. My account has not moved since 24 March - no offers whatsoever.
Extremely untrustworthy with lying outsourcers who aren't professionals but scammers. Proz facilitates scammers by letting them not pay you when they find your work low quality. So outsourcers like Daniel Shamebo take advantage of that. He lies that you're impersonation of sworn translator and rushes you without paying a fee and even paying at all. When you've done the best and made time to work on the project for him(you also have other better paying jobs to work on) he complaints without reason that your translation doesn't match when it's correct and you have checked everything double. So you delivered service and get paid nothing. This is unjust; nothing is paid when nothing is done but when something is done you should at least be paid something. Nowhere in the world you hire someone and not pay that. But at proz.com that's what happens. DONT WORK WITH/DO BUSINESS PROZ.COM; THEY'RE RULES DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE AND WILL YOU WORK TEN PLILUS HOURS FOR NOTHING FOR SCAMMERS WHO TAKE YOUR HARD WORK AND JUST SAY THE QUALITY IS LOW SO TO NOT HAVE TO PAY. MEANWHILE THEY OF COURSE USE EVERY BIT OF YOUR HARD WORK WHICH IS OF "LOW QUALITY" TO THEM.
Excellent platform for freelancers. Staff is always friendly and ready to help. Nothing short of an awesome!
It's hard enough to be a freelance translator, but ProZ takes advantage of you. You can't find a job unless you pay for a membership. There is NO control by the site whatsoever, so the companies trying to hire you are often not offering better than minimum wage. After you paid ProZ to get a job, that's what you get?! Direct applications are the only way to get a job. At least you won't be robbed of your money.
I got a business account there and I got scammed by someone pretending to be a member of the BlueBoard companies in the platform. We submitted 5 projects for them but they suddenly disappeared after the second reminder of the invoice. I sent all evidence to a ProZ team member but they were unresponsive. I contacted the mother company and they said I was scammed big time. I am not sure how to get my money and the freelancers' money who worked for me on such projects to get their money back.
LAUGHABLY TERRIBLE SITE. Used to at least be helpful to a beginning translator. I have all kinds of complaints about Proz.com. First of all, Proz.com shows tremendous favoritism and defends “bad actors” all over the place. First of all, there are all these fellow members of Proz.com who are rude as can be. Usually older translators like Kim Metzger who are meaner than a snake in the forums to particularly younger translators new to the industry. Kim, for example, really isn’t a translator. He’s more like a troll who spends all day long on the website. There is no doubt whatsoever that you can find even thousands of examples in the forums of him being extremely insulting to fellow translators. If you try to defend yourself, then the owner Henry rushes to his defense and threatens YOU with expulsion. RIDICULOUS. I think there are many people who rarely come by anymore because they tired of all this crap. The moderators are usually the meanest of them all who need reined in themselves!!! Proz.com also defends bad agencies. If an agency complains about your work and doesn’t pay you in full, you aren’t allowed to leave a negative rating – which is absolutely ridiculous. Many agency owners are COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT and can’t speak English to save their lives! (Ironically, most of the people WHO WORK FOR PROZ.COM seem to speak very poor English themselves.) Why aren’t you just allowed to give your opinion (truthfully, of course) and allow the agency to respond if it wants to? Why all the censorship and brow-beating? Many of their rules are completely nonsensical and enforced even more nonsensically with lots of favoritism. For example, non-paying agencies are supposed to be banned after two negative entries. But some get very quickly banned even if their numbers are overall quite good, but then others have negative entry after negative entry after negative entry, but they haven’t been banned and are still even allowed to post jobs. ????? THE JOB BOARD IS COMPETELY WORTHLESS. I do specialized types of translations and used to get on average probably one job a week from the Job Board. These days, I average probably one job EVERY TWO YEARS. The Job Board has become the haven for sleazy agencies looking to scam translators or to get people to work for one-tenth of what any self-respecting translator from the West would work for. They also don’t update the Blue Board directory of agencies very much at all. Many links lead to empty pages or you get a notification from Avast not to proceed because it’s a risky likely scammer’s site. I don’t even bother to research my translations via the Kudoz term search. The searches seem to produce very bad results. Again, they are rarely updated. I have received notifications that entries involving myself were updated FIVE OR TEN YEARS LATER – well, I guess better late than never. DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY.
I am a freelance translators and have enriched my clientele by means of proz.com. I think that some of the other reviews are misleading. If someone is electrocuted due to one's negligence, it is not the fault of the electricity.
Despite its user base mainly made up of freelance translators, the site exploits this base in its bid for income, and arguably also makes the job market worse for them, by contributing to downward-sticky prices for established, professional translators in what is a race to the bottom. Don't be fooled -- they are on the side of outsourcers with paid accounts. Support tickets raised for outsourcers who have rejected your Blue Board WWA rating with lies (and substantiated with evidence to the contrary) will be closed with no action taken. In other words, the one thing that ProZ is possibly useful for these days -- the Blue Board -- has been grossly compromised. Won't name names here, but ask around. There are smaller, paid rating boards that don't ask for very much, which are much better and ethically managed, and which provide far more reliable insight into the trustworthiness of a potential business partner.
They show lots of racism and discrimination towards members from 3rd world countries, muslims, and members paying less annual fees and they recruit lots scammers... Also they have very strange rules, that work just fine for unreliable clients or scammers. Recently we faced non payment issues with few companies we met through proz, we still weren't allowed to report the matter on the blueboard record, and proz moderators are always taking side with those with better membership or from the same nationality, race or religion... They do not treat freelancers in the same manner. Very cheap customer service. Not trustworthy. Thank you
Rebeka Boldi
Feb 12,2025I subscribed to ProZ.com's paid membership expecting transparency and fairness, but my experience has been disappointing. The Blue Board, which is supposed to help freelancers make informed decisions, appears to be heavily biased—negative but honest reviews about certain companies are not allowed, raising questions about its authenticity. As a paying member, I expected better value. What exactly am I paying for if I can't even share a truthful review based on my experience? It seems like a case of "who pays more" rather than genuine support for freelancers. I have canceled my membership, as I no longer see the benefit of staying on a platform that prioritizes businesses over its users.