15 Best Sites To Hire Remote Designers

August 2020 · 5 min read

These top 15 list of remote job sites bring a wide range of experience when it comes to hiring remote designers. Use these to hire a designer for your next project.

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Marketing strategies and plans don’t give the desired results until the message is clearly communicated to the target audience. Design is no doubt an essential part of marketing. While beautiful design can increase your overall ROI, poor ones can jeopardize even the best of ideas. This is why good design and talented graphic designers, product designers, UI/UX designers, visual designers and more are crucial for any organization.

Companies today are being pushed towards a more remote work setup, whether that’s intentional or circumstantial. Therefore, it’s beneficial for organizations to hire remote designers who can communicate your marketing and branding messages to the world in a clear, coherent, and beautiful way.

The benefits of hiring remote designers, however, are not limited to just beautiful designs. Here are a few reasons why you should consider hiring remote designers:

  • You can get the best talent sans the location restrictions
  • You can save business cost by hiring remote designers
  • You can expect better flexibility and good quality work
  • You can hire someone with a broad range of experience

Our top 15 list of agencies and remote job sites are global companies that bring a wide range of experience when it comes to hiring remote designers. Some are all remote companies; others may offer a hybrid and still other companies may be open to only a few remote teammates. They all have a system and procedures, and they are some of the top experts in helping businesses build a strong remote network.

Long story short -- these folks have the expertise to understand whether you need a design team or just one talented designer and offer some of the best candidates for your remote design jobs.

1 Toptal

Toptal is a matching service that initially started out primarily for helping businesses with top-quality tech talent. However, over the years, Toptal has expanded its pool of talent to include designers, writers, and finance experts. If you want to hire remote designers who are vetted, qualified, and up to the job, finding someone from Toptal is likely your best option. That’s because Toptal’s trademark system for vetting talent allows for only the best to become a part of their community.

Whether it is designing the front-end of your e-commerce Shopify store or designing social media posts for your SaaS product, Toptal can solve your hiring problem.

pros

  • Thoroughly vetted remote designers, developers, and product managers
  • Great talent from across the world
  • Pay only when you’re satisfied with your hire
Visit Toptal

2 Upwork

Upwork is one of the top freelance marketplaces. The platform offers various features such as unlimited proposals, remote designers’ work history verification, reviews, built-in collaboration tool, and more. To hire remote designers, you could browse their marketplace or post a job and wait for designers to apply. You could even ask the Upwork team to help you find a good fit.

pros

  • Among the top freelance marketplaces
  • Free to post a job on the platform
  • Multiple features and great user experience
Visit Upwork

3 Freelancer

Freelancer is another hiring platform where companies can meet their potential remote designers. The platform offers a wide range of remote profiles that include highly qualified remote designers along with junior and mid-level experts. It’s worth mentioning though that Freelancer doesn’t provide the extra layer of vetting that platforms such as Toptal provide. Still, it is quite effective as you can post your job requirement and choose from the remote designers offering their services.

pros

  • Large database of remote designers of all experience level
  • Vetting of the candidate is up to the employer
  • Free to post a job on the platform
Visit Freelancer

4 RemoteOK

RemoteOK’s model is slightly different from that of Upwork and Freelancer. Here, instead of browsing the profiles of remote designers, you send your job offer to potential candidates. As of July 2020, there are over 1,200 remote design jobs listed on the website. The job board is trusted by some of the world’s top brands such as Namecheap, Amazon, Microsoft, ESPN, Airtable, Starbucks, and more.

pros

  • The platform charges to post a job
  • Trusted by some of the world’s top brands
  • Offers various packages for multiple job listings
Visit RemoteOK

5 Remote.com

Remote.com offers multiple job posting plans that range from sharing a free posting with basic menu opportunities along with a paid variant option that opens you up to a larger base of remote designers with modern AI assistance, designer’s contact details, and more. The platform also offers a custom pricing alternative where you pay after you successfully hire remote designers or after work fulfillment. These plans can be discussed case by case with the team.

pros

  • Multiple job posting plans
  • Custom pricing alternative
  • Among the top freelance marketplaces
Visit Remote.com

6 Fiverr

Fiverr is another popular marketplace that connects businesses with remote designers. The platform offers hundreds of categories to choose from. To hire remote designers, all you have to do is browse the selection of designers and place your order in just a few clicks. You could also send a message to the designer explaining your project and asking for a custom offer. A service on Fiverr is called a gig and it can be as low as $5.

pros

  • Browse profiles and reach out to remote designers
  • A gig on Fiverr can be as low as $5
  • Vetting of the candidate is up to the employer
Visit Fiverr

7 Guru

Guru is another great marketplace to hire remote designers. Posting a job to hiring a designer is completely free. The platform offers SafePay payment protection feature wherein designers feel confident that they will get paid for their work and employers feel secure that they can review the work before paying an invoice. Guru charges a minimal handling fee which is refunded 100% if you do your transactions via e-check or wire transfer.

pros

  • 24x7 customer support for all your concerns
  • SaftPay payment protection feature
  • Offers a 100% return on the handling fee
Visit Guru

8 Outsourcely

Outsourcely is a good platform for hiring remote designers, especially for long-term projects. The platform offers multiple categories such as web design, writing, video editing, customer service, software development, and more. Depending on the plan you choose, you can manage your remote designers with real-time communication including email, private chat, phone call, and live video. Outsourcely uses a third-party work history verification system to ensure employers can vet the designers before hiring.

pros

  • Use a third-party candidate verification system
  • Multiple paid plans options to choose from
  • Offer real-time communication with the designer
Visit Outsourcely

9 Envato Studio

Part of the Envato network, Envato Studio is a freelance marketplace that offers hand-picked remote designers, developers, and digital talents such as video production, web development, and more. You can compare prices, portfolios, and look for community recommendations to hire remote designers that fit the bill. The platform also provides inbuilt messaging and job management tools to better manage the job. With respect to the hiring process, Envato Studio is similar to Fiverr where you reach out to the designer, explain your project, and ask for a custom quote.

pros

  • Hand-picked remote designers
  • Browse profiles and reach out to remote designers
  • Vetting of the candidate is up to the employer
Visit Envato Studio

10 99Designs

99Designs is a platform specifically for designers. You can hire remote designers to build your logo and brand identity, for web and app development, for advertising and marketing, and more. You have the option to run contests with fixed-priced packages and then pick your favorite design from all the entries. You can also hire remote designers from varied skill sets. All you have to do is filter designers by category, level, recent activity, and specific search terms. The platform charges a minimal platform fee.

pros

  • One of the top platforms to hire remote designers
  • Host design contests and pick the best entry
  • Professional designers in dozens of design skill sets
Visit 99Designs

11 DesignCrowd

DesignCrowd is another remote design marketplace where you can host contests or search from their database to hire remote designers. The platform boasts almost hundreds of thousands of designers. To get started, set project packages with a budget starting from $99 and turnaround time for as little as three days. DesignCrowd also offers a money-back guarantee if you do not like the quality of the design.

pros

  • Host design contests and pick the best entry
  • Set projects for as low as $99 and three-day turnaround time
  • Money-back guarantee if you don’t like the designs
Visit DesignCrowd

12 Gigster

Introduced in 2013, Gigster is an online network of skilled designers, project managers, web, app, and software developers around the globe. The platform facilitates building and managing effective remote teams of highly qualified designers for big corporations as well as small businesses. Gigster’s wide industry experience has helped them create a simple process that makes it easy to form a liaison between the company and the designer.

pros

  • One of the top platforms to hire remote designers
  • Thousands of experts in sought-after fields
  • Fills digital roles in under 10 days (on average)
Visit Gigster

13 Ramotion

Ramotion is a California-based digital design agency that specializes in designing web software, mobile apps, and visual brand identities. The company was founded in 2009 and has worked with some of the top brands such as Oracle, Oppo, Netflix, and more. They have a team of 34 design experts backed with several years of experience.

pros

  • 10 years of industry experience
  • Worked with top brands such as Netflix and Oppo
  • Distributed team of 34 design experts
Visit Ramotion

14 CrowdSpring

CrowdSpring is a diverse community of designers that are skillful in various design fields. The process of working with them is straightforward where you tell them what you need and then work one-on-one with the designer on your project. Their pricing is pretty flexible with no hidden costs post project completion.

pros

  • Work one-on-one with the designer
  • A large community of designers spread across the globe
  • No hidden costs
Visit CrowdSpring

15 DesignHill

Designhill is one of the many great graphic design marketplaces with affordable services. To get started, you could create a contest by including a brief, prize, and duration. Then wait for entries to come in from designers across the globe. Pick your favorite from the set and work with the designer to hone the final product. In terms of pricing, you could either choose one of their design contest packages or choose a one-to-one project where the platform takes a small commission.

pros

  • Affordable and suitable for low-budget projects
  • Option to host design contests
  • 5% commission on one-on-one projects
Visit DesignHill

Which Remote Designer Is Right For You?

When it comes to hiring remote workers for your web design project, there are a lot of factors that you need to consider and these platforms can be a good starting point. Having a clear idea of the design job will make your search for the remote designer a lot easy.

Depending on the project, consider what matters the most to you--is it their portfolio, years of experience, budget, location, or something else. All these websites offer some of the best remote designers for hire.

However, there are other factors that you must consider when making a pick such as:

  • What is the reputation of the platform and its designers?
  • What kind of clients have they catered to in the past?
  • What is your budget for the project?
  • How quickly do you need to hire remote designers?
  • Do you need someone at the entry level or highly experienced senior designers?
  • Do you need someone full-time or part-time?
  • Can you manage remote positions well?

Having a clear objective in mind will help you hire the best remote designer for your project.