All truth about DesignCrowd.com

payments

There’s a very popular trend to order design not directly from a designer but through “design contests”. I though it would a great idea to try something new and to receive many offers to choose from. And it was very wrong decision! I had a terrible experience with designcrowd.com and I will never try any contests at all!
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At first I was offered to choose a package:

packages

As it was my forst experience with this site and with design contest sites in genaral, I picked 15+ design package. Now I was aked to pay $10 more:
payments

Next days I was spammed with messages from designers. The top list of topics was:
“Dear sir, please kindly make the payment guaranteed” (i.e. you should waive from refund)
“Does your project include supply of designs only or are you also looking for a supplier to develop your site?” (i.e. you should explain once again that if you ordered “WordPress design (uncoded)” you really mean it)
“Thank you for invitation / I have received you invitation / I have accepted your invitation / Please send me the invitation (WTF???) (i.e. we don’t care that you wait for design submission or important questions, we will just flood you with meaningless messages and emails *Who cares about these invites? I don’t!*)
“I’m interested in you project, please check my portfolio” (i.e. go ahead and spend your time to see some terrible works of designer from India who uses Paint.net for producing mock-ups)

After the deadline has passed I have received 7 designs. Not 15+.

The quality was awful. My 8 year old son could make better.

If you want to see original images, get in touch with me and I will email them to you.

If you want to see original images, get in touch with me and I will email them to you.

And the best part.
From the very beginning the’s a “Request refund” button in your account, but you can proceed with a refund only after the deadline is over. OK, let’s try after deadline of over.

Designcrowd.com refund policy

Designcrowd.com refund policy

So, after you have waited and received less than promised amount of substandard works you are eligible only for partial refund. Ha-ha-ha! I guess I know now how the earn money having such a terrible service.

No way, they will get away with my money. I have initiated dispute at Paypal, providing with a lot of screenshots and links to initial agreements.

Lindsay Fares
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Comments: 38
  1. khalil
    November 25, 2013 at 2:41 am

    thanks for the review. so did u get your full refund after dispute ?

    ReplyCancel
    • November 25, 2013 at 12:58 pm

      I had to escalate dispute to PayPal as DesignCrowd never answered. And they didn’t answer even after PayPal officially asked to provide their comments on this situation. So when the answer awaiting time ran out, the dispute was automatically closed in my favor. I have received the full amount yesterday.

      ReplyCancel
      • Andrey A. - Russian designer
        May 15, 2014 at 7:12 pm

        Does this mean that now you get your money back? I am interested because recently DesignCrowd just not paying me for the project won deleted my account.
        Quite a detective story with fake transaction on fake US account of 0.01 cents. Do I wait for money or Mission Impossible?

        ReplyCancel
        • May 18, 2014 at 5:09 pm

          1) I have received my money back, but I didn’t pick a winner.
          2) In your case it’s something different. If you won the contest – you should receive your award. Even if the payment was fraudulent or the client was nuts and made a chargeback (not even claiming for a refund) – the company should cover such cases and designers should receive the agreed amount of $$$.

          ReplyCancel
      • Mo
        January 9, 2016 at 9:22 am

        HI Lindsay,
        Thank you for telling us about your bad experience with Designcrowd. I’ve just had very similar experience to yours. Same issue with amateur Indian so called designers who sent substandard works and when I asked for a refund I only received a partial refund.
        Could you please tell me how to get the rest of my money. Good news is I paid through Paypal so Do you think if I escalate dispute to them I would be able to get the rest of the money and do I just need to write to Paypal to escalate disbute. Your reply is much appreciated
        Many thanks

        ReplyCancel
  2. Steven
    May 4, 2014 at 9:43 am

    Dear Lindsay,

    I had exactly the same experience and nobody replies for a refund!
    Unfortunately I did my payment through my debit card but do you know if there a way I can get my money back?

    ReplyCancel
    • May 18, 2014 at 5:04 pm

      I have started a dispute in my PayPal account and won it. I received the full amount back to my CC.
      It takes some time, but it’s worth it!
      Let me know if you need an advice on how to initiate and complete the dispute.

      ReplyCancel
      • Bright N.
        September 9, 2018 at 12:02 pm

        I am a professional graphic designer and web developer… I will help you on your design project and web development…

        Yours faithfully
        Bright N.

        ReplyCancel
  3. May 27, 2014 at 9:06 am

    Hello Lindsay,

    I had the same experience as you do, and also have the refund option. But I can’t find that button!
    Where did you found it?

    ReplyCancel
  4. May 27, 2014 at 9:12 am

    Nevermind Lindsay, I found it. It was the contact DesignCrowd button.

    But they sure do everything that you do not ask for a refund.
    Bad bad feeling about this website.

    ReplyCancel
    • diana
      June 15, 2015 at 2:26 pm

      Hi John, i am having the same problem
      i can’t find the refund button – i know a year passed from your post but any help will be useful.

      Thank you

      ReplyCancel
  5. brokowski
    June 9, 2014 at 8:00 pm

    Wow, you’re just an asshole.

    ReplyCancel
  6. brokwski
    June 29, 2014 at 12:45 am

    haha, what a dumb cunt

    ReplyCancel
  7. Johng864
    September 6, 2014 at 8:47 pm

    Can you add a Blackberry template? This web page is tricky to read otherwise for those of us browsing with cell phones. Otherwise, in the event you can place a RSS link up, that would be good also. dfecdabegbge

    ReplyCancel
  8. Someone
    October 24, 2014 at 4:59 am

    I don’t know what your project was about but for that money chances are you will get crap work and therefore you will want your money back. Good design is expensive, and there’s nothing like a good communication relationship between client and designer, something you can’t get on designcrowd. I highly recommend anyone searching for a creative to browse in a websites like behance.net, deviantart, etc. And for god sake just hire one person. Professional people don’t work for free. Mostly what you get at designcrowd are just kids or designers from developing countries with average level.

    ReplyCancel
  9. Laura
    November 28, 2014 at 12:53 pm

    With all due respect, do you really think that good designers would make you a website layout for 300$? “Expect 15+ designs” means that your request gets a certain amount of exposure – no one can force designers to work for you if you don’t pay them enough.

    You even question those who asked you to make the payment guaranteed. Of course, why would they ever want to get paid for their work?

    You’re completely right as far as the “seriousness” of that site goes (it’s completely based on the concept of working for free, which is SLAVERY), but you have no right demeaning other people’s work – you got way more than you paid for (for 300$ you don’t get ONE good website design, certainly not 15, or even the 7 bad ones you actually got).

    If you want a good design, ask a good designer. It takes up to ten minutes to find as many as you want on google, scan their websites and pick the one whose style you like the most. But of course, if you’re not ready to pay what they deserve, they won’t work for you…

    ReplyCancel
    • Mich
      August 27, 2015 at 8:19 am

      I’m so much agree with you Laura,
      They want to get a best designs, but ther payment not enough.

      ReplyCancel
    • Kuljit Kaur
      May 11, 2016 at 10:03 pm

      Excellent points!

      ReplyCancel
    • Juan
      January 17, 2017 at 4:29 pm

      That’s so right. When a project is payment guaranteed and well paid, you see how designers fight for the price with better works. But if you pay don’t pay enough and you don’t guarantee a winer, then you should expect this.

      ReplyCancel
  10. Ninja
    February 15, 2015 at 5:47 pm

    What you want i mean whole world know this Never ever work for Australians and Never work with Indians/Pakistans and Araps. DC is full with them and about site support i dont even want to comment.

    ReplyCancel
  11. Francesca Doe
    February 21, 2015 at 6:15 pm

    I am terribly sorry you had this kind of work submitted towards your project, as a designer on Design Crowd, I am appalled at this level of work being submitted, I agree that these are awful designs and I do sincerely hope that you got your money back, even though you should have been refunded right away.

    Design Crowd across the past couple of years has become a lot better with a lot more designs being submitted to every project, however, as a designer, I also have problems with it. For example, clients don’t necessarily pay for the designs as they aren’t a guaranteed client. This means even when they like my work and designs, I have to be extra careful, there have been numerous occasions where I have been promised pay and they never do, instead just give me 100% feedback, then cancel the project for a refund. Also, after they cancel, some have the cheek to still use logos you have designed. It is a painstaking process to get paid from the clients, even from Design Crowd, therefore I have to spend money on keeping every single design I make copyright off of my own back until they are paid for.

    ReplyCancel
  12. Alex
    June 16, 2015 at 8:07 pm

    You are such an idiot. If you really think that crowdsource can help you out with that. If you really needed a great design which even your kid and you has never seen. Then, You should’ve selected the bigger package so that quality designers can work on your project. But I guess you wanted the best designs in lowest payment.. WOAAH.. Your ideology is quite different.

    I have worked with design crowd and before placing an order, i checked out the reviews from internet about them. Upto Now, I have completed 7 projects with them. Though it wont hide the fact that there are some low quality designs as well.

    But, If you think you can get the best out of your lowest budget then, you are foolish to even think so.

    Second thing is that, You have to connect to designers and give them feedback about what actually you’d like to see. If you think designer is something who can catch everything whats’ going on your mind, then you are dumb to even think so.

    I saw this thing on designcrowd. Most of Clients like you who are thick headed and just go there to place an order without any guarantee of payment and when project get closed. They withdraw their money and post such nonsense like you did on internet. Didn’t you even think what was happening with designers also ?

    One more thing, My best designers are from India and Malaysia. I didnt find anything bullsh*t in their designs. I mean their designs are much better than some of our Canadian and US designers.

    If you really want to see a perfect design, Then, Go get some Hourly paying designer and work with him.

    ReplyCancel
    • Mich
      August 27, 2015 at 8:23 am

      I agree with you dude….

      ReplyCancel
    • OceanEarth
      June 5, 2017 at 2:40 am

      What a load of jibberish! The OP didn’t create the option she purchased. It was a package offered by DesignCrowd. You seem to believe that there is no way you can get a quality web design using that package. If that is so, why is DesignCrowd selling this service? Why don’t they remove those packages and keep the one’s that will provide satisfactory results? You can’t have it both ways and say that people shouldn’t purchase that package because they won’t get a decent result, and then not criticise DesignCrowd for selling it in the first place. You are the idiot: a hypocritical, nasty one at that!

      ReplyCancel
    • Michael
      November 8, 2017 at 5:01 pm

      So true

      ReplyCancel
  13. Ami
    July 6, 2015 at 7:16 am

    I am a designer on designcrowd.com, and I agree that sometimes there are not very good designs submitted. I am sorry you had a bad experience there.

    However, I have found that you get a LOT of designs and of good quality if you follow some simple rules:

    1: pay for what you want. If you pay only $300 for a design, the serious designers are going to ignore you. You literally get what you pay for.
    2: if you do not clearly state everything you want and need, with proper colors, dimensions, and formats specified, you will not get what you want. Be overly clear in what you desire. Jobs with little to no direction fester.
    3: if you ignore the contest until the end, you will get crap for not responding to artists. You must engage with each artist and give proper and critical feedback.

    I hope that others who read this essay understand that graphic designers aren’t work animals but people. And that there is a level of respect and exchange that must occur.

    ReplyCancel
    • Mich
      August 27, 2015 at 8:27 am

      If you want to get a best designs just pay them enough , $300 for website design? Ohhh…just keep your money on your wallet and go out….

      ReplyCancel
  14. john
    August 3, 2015 at 5:50 pm

    design crowd is good. Lindsay fares – you are so cheap

    ReplyCancel
  15. Tina
    November 22, 2015 at 4:02 am

    I’ve tried Designcrowd for practising some projects. What I found can be frustrated is that some clients have a low taste, heaps of the contest in the final display, the organiser picked the best design, which is classy and stylish but was not the winner, sometimes it can be the one that got withdrawn. This can drew good designers away from the site as well.

    I saw some winner but didn’t think he is deserved the prize, for some better options didn’t get chosen. The winning design can be very cluttered, unprofessional and cheap looking. Anyway I guess that’s life. And sometimes designers need to choose clients as well.

    ReplyCancel
  16. Jawwad
    March 31, 2016 at 6:40 pm

    I have recently signed up with designcrowd.com and had a very bad experience. Their so called quality team rejected my work without even reading the project details where the client specifically wants to use a symbolic icon which I used and they said I used the clipart and rejected.
    Now my account is deleted but the experience was so bad. I will NOT recommended designcrowd to anyone.

    ReplyCancel
  17. Anil
    May 11, 2016 at 6:33 am

    Here is my bad experience!
    I got job invitation from someone and started to work for illustration. She asked lot of revisions so I asked help to someone for $80 to help at least 50% of work..
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/gcyq417e5h97jtn/Ly3.png?dl=0
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/dyyoopuq96wkbmz/L3.png?dl=0
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7ksu1mz549zijh/L1-01.png?dl=0
    All of above are only some samples of work. Finally she was out of communication and got refund from DesignCrowd although the project was guarantee.
    The embarrassing part is DC did not consult with me and did not send a single email also. When I checked the link of project It was removed by DC. I almost worked from 15 days and loose $80 also. Nobody can do @ free like above illustrations. Its hard and tough. DC doesn’t care about Designers also.

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  18. someone
    May 26, 2016 at 3:50 pm

    They are now $160 logo design contest on DesignCrowd. Pepsi paid $1,000,000.00 for they logo, and they are some that post a $160 logo contest and ask for a Pepsi logo like? Realy!? :O. And another truth: this is a contest basic website. I work for a lot of contest and winning only few, verry few. And is not realy because of me, because they are some style you can design a logo (clean, minimal, hand draw tipe, cartoon style, etc), so the client looking for something, but he realy not know what. And they are some that they realy not know nothing about design, so they choase a stupidity as the winner.
    But again, you can’t post a $160 design logo !contest! and then espect the best, That’s loto. If you want a good design you pay a lot more and attract the best designers from this website, in not, espect some designs according with your payment. Do you think that when I go in a $160 contest, that I am not sure if I will winnig it, I will do my best? Be sure that not. If you open a contest like this hope for a original symbol that you can use for your business, and if it will be more that is loto prize.
    I am not from India, or any contry you mention, but talent is talent anywhare in this world. They are some basic program for logo design, that any one can use, so, is more about talent.
    Again, if you want quality be ready to pay for it. For a good logo, from a well know designer you will pay maybe $1000+…. For a website, I don’t know, but sure not $300.

    ReplyCancel
  19. Silvestre Cajigan Jr.
    August 17, 2016 at 9:29 am

    I’m a new designer from design crowd wow… DC gets much they get extra from you and extra from our payments okay….

    and actually as I am new I give good designs to my clients plus extra designs and unlimited revision until satisfied… base on my experience after the expiry date where you will choose to the given designs from the designers… that does not end there… after you pick the design you will go to hand over page where the two of you have private conversation which you can even ask from the designer for a revision or just ask the crowdflower a help for refund if the designer did not satisfy what you wanted… and surely you can get good designs actually cause there are billions of people in the world so expect that even for 300 dollars you can get good design from a designer from a third world country…

    ReplyCancel
  20. John
    September 30, 2016 at 11:52 am

    I laughed so hard at this post primarily because people like you just don’t ‘get it’ at all. What were you expecting? You actually expect to get a real PROFESSIONAL task completed by paying some third-party site to act as the middle-man between you and a developer?

    You get a crappy job because you settled for a cheap-ass solution. I mean, I get it, you probably just didn’t have the money to hire a real professional.. who the hell does? Unless you are already raking in the dough, who’s going to pay $80 an hour for someone with 20- 30 years experience?

    People start off cheap and work their way up. If you can’t afford an actual experienced developer to do the work, then fake it until you make it. Simple do it yourself, accept the crappy newbie designers or have your 8 year old do it.

    All I heard throughout this entire post was something akin to “Boo Hoo.. I wanted a brand new Mustang and offered to pay $300 for it but all I got was a bunch of morons trying to sell me a knock-off that they built with popsicle sticks”.

    The cheapest EXPERIENCED web developer these days can run you a minimum of $35 an hour and that is considered below minimum wage for most of us who actually do this. People do not understand what a real developer goes through in order to produce such quality material and it doesn’t consist of utilizing the free programs that come on every windows installation either. This also means keeping up with new as well as depreciated code that changes DAILY. I myself know more than 14 coding languages and that’s a lot to keep informed about. It’s like never EVER leaving school while trying to make a full-time living out of it at the same time. Then add the cost of software and updates to that and anything under $35 an hour may as well be charity work.

    If you can’t get a professional to do your project for you then settle for what you can get or find another profession that doesn’t require it. Your lack of intelligence on the topic is expected from most people… However, it is also expected that you do some actual research on the topic before complaining like someone’s grandmother who just discovered the Internet yesterday. Hell, you don’t even know how to archive a 3 year old blog post.

    ReplyCancel
    • October 7, 2016 at 11:19 am

      Dear John, I don’t want to archive this post, but thank you for your help LOL

      ReplyCancel
  21. Buddha
    January 4, 2017 at 4:12 pm

    LINDSAY FARES what do u accept for 300$ a masterpiece u talkin as if u paid a big amount, u should be interacting with designers and u talk about spending your time to see some terrible works of designer from India who uses Paint.net for producing mock-ups) and ur My 8 year old son could make better, try it out n stop crying n complaining. U cheap.

    ReplyCancel
  22. Scott Holburn
    January 18, 2017 at 3:30 pm

    “Lindsay Fares is 26 year old KU (KS, USA) graduate. Lindsay works as freelance writer for 8 years and is a great expert in in copy-writing, editing and marketing.”

    “expert in in copy-writing”

    “in in”

    I take it proof-reading isn’t one of your skills?

    I echo the points above – you offered a pittance but expected the world then complained when you didn’t get it. Imagine if I tried to get a 2000 word article from you for $30, will I receive an award winning piece of journalism? Crap which is full of typos and mistakes? Or even more likely, you just don’t bother at all. Now imagine I wouldn’t decide whether to pay you or not until AFTER you’d written it.

    Also, the listing fee is made up of the prize to the designer and the fee to Design Crowd to cover their costs/turn a profit. They did their bit, uploading your contest and so got paid their cut. Your refund is of the designer prize as you didn’t like what you were sent.

    Had you guaranteed the project and increased the prize, more (and better skilled) designers would have taken part as the potential payout would have been worth the time invested AND there is no risk of you just clicking the refund button and buggering off leaving a lot of people having wasted their time for nothing (which is exactly what happened).

    Don’t archive this post, delete it. You look like an ass.

    ReplyCancel
    • May 22, 2017 at 11:18 am

      1) Thank you for pointing out the typo “in in”, I will correct it.
      2) Professional level 2000 word article from me costs $152, not $30.
      3) If I will fail to provide what was promised – a refund is the only way out of this situation.
      4) If my client hadn’t received what was promised and couldn’t receive a refund – I would not be surprised that he/she is pissed off. Moreover I would totally understand the reasons and wouldn’t try to convince the client that he/she is an idiot:
      – What did you expect paying this price?
      – But this is the price that sell your services for!
      – So what? It’s not the price that I actually like, so I don’t think I should provide what was promised.

      If you want to compare design service with article writing service (despite that Ad hominem is a logical fallacy) here’s the full picture:
      1. I have chosen 8 pages, but received only 6 pages.
      2. I have ordered text written from scratch but receive plagiarised work.
      3. 6 out of 8 pages that were delivered were the copies of themselves.

      ReplyCancel

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Lindsay Fares

Lindsay Fares is 26 year old KU (KS, USA) graduate. Lindsay works as freelance writer for 8 years and is a great expert in copy-writing, editing and marketing. One of the top writers at PaperHelp.org.

October 31, 2013 38 Comments Life hacks