HireBee – A Freelance Marketplace Theme
We’ve been busy working on a couple of awesome new themes and we’re proud to announce the release of HireBee!
HireBee is a WordPress freelance marketplace theme that will enable site owners to connect small businesses (known as “employers”) with freelancers, offering every business service imaginable, allowing you to monetize any niche. Sites like Elance, oDesk, and 99designs are perfect examples of this type of successful crowdsourcing model.
With HireBee you can create your own freelance niche site targeting work on a specific country, or remote work. We’ve worked to include all the major features that make these sites incredibly useful for those who are looking for work and those who need to complete work.
Of course, we didn’t forget the importance of monetization for site owners and so HireBee provides plentiful options to make money while providing a useful service like a freelance marketplace.
Considering the current economy, HireBee makes all sense. Starting today, any site owners with a WordPress install can provide a freelance marketplace in any country, by simply installing our theme!
On Sale Now!
HireBee is on sale for 25% off during the first two weeks (expires July 14th, 2014), after which it’ll jump back to its normal price of $99. Click here to apply the discount code (shows up on the checkout page). Sale is over.
Learn More
- The HireBee overview page outlines all the features and functions, complete with screenshots
- Test drive the theme by visiting the live HireBee demo and admin demo
Main Features
Fast and Easy Project Matching
Through skills, category or location type filters your site users can easily find the most relevant projects for their skills.
Post a Project
Posting a project is fast and simple and besides the usual title, description, category and sub-category fields, includes budget type (fixed price, per hour), budget currency, location (remote or location specific), skills, tags, file uploading (with file limit and allowed mime types configured in the backend) and duration (free projects only, paid projects duration is set in the price plan). Additional fields can be added using the custom form builder.
Dashboard
The dashboard is the nerve center for your site’s users – a single page where they have access to all their notifications, projects, proposals, purchases, reviews, contact info, site stats and favorites.
Notifications
HireBee is our first theme to feature our brand new custom made notifications API. Every user action, like posting a project, applying to a project, making a purchase, etc…, triggers a notification on the user dashboard and is also sent via email.
Workspaces
Each time a project is assigned to a freelancer, it get’s it’s own private workspace only accessible for the project participants. A workspace were each participant can easily control their work.
Monetize your Site
Lot’s of users are looking for sources of income online. A marketplace for employers/freelancers could be a great source of income, specially considering the current economy state. HireBee allows you to generate income with employers or freelancers.
It’s also compatible with our marketplace gateways plugins – Stripe, Authorize.net and 2Checkout – and also coupons.
Flexible Projects and Credits Plans
Still on the monetization topic, whom we believe is one of your most important features, site owners can monetize on employers by setting price plans that need to be purchased in order to post a project. Additionally, employers can pay for addons like: feature on frontpage, feature on project category page or, to mark projects as urgent. Monetization for freelancers work by selling credits that they can use to post, edit or to feature proposals.
Credits Perks
Give something to your users to make them coming back to your site.
Perks in HireBee are represented as free credits for freelancers. Site owners can offer free credits for each new registered user. Credits can also be offered each month.
Foundation Framework
The Foundation framework is one of the fastest and best responsive design frameworks out there, and makes HireBee easily accessible from any browsers or mobile device. Foundation is also very popular amongst developers and designers by virtue of being so easy to work with. Child theme designers be alert!
Much, Much More
These are only a minor fraction of the features that HireBee provides. We suggest reading the theme overview page or checking out the demo to learn more. It’s already one of our most feature rich themes and will only get better in the future.
What’s Included in HireBee 1.0
Most of the features that you expect from a freelance marketplace.
- Project listings
- Freelancer listings
- Choosable budget currency
- Choosable budget type: fixed price, per hour
- Projects can be set to a specific location or ‘remote’ (remote work)
- User dashboard to manage projects, proposals, purchases, etc
- User activity – users can view their latest site activity from their dashboard
- Terms negotiation – employers/candidates can discuss terms before agreeing with work
- Favorite projects
- Clarification section in single project page
- Individual project workspaces
- Reviews and ratings
- Full profile pages – include user reviews and rating, and authored projects
- Assign skills to projects
- Assign skills to users
- Assign user price per hour
- Keyword and filters search
- Multi-tier categorization system
- Search engine optimized
- Multiple page templates
- Editable menus in header and footer
- Localization support
- Theme color options
- Separate blog and page templates to promote your site
- Foundation framework
Extras
- Custom forms and custom fields for the projects form through the AppThemes form builder
- Upload media to projects in the frontend through the same WordPress media manager UI used in the backend
- Shared roles capabilities – allow employers to apply to projects and freelancers to post projects
- Refine search features like skills, category, location type and sorting filters
- Easy log in form on every page
- Customize the theme visuals using WordPress builtin Customizer
- Integration with ShareThis social sharing plugin
Sidebars
- Seven fully widgetized sidebars: main, single page, single project, listings (projects and freelancers), post project, post proposal/apply to project, user profile
- One widgetized spot in the global header, perfect for a 468×60 ad banner
- Two widgetized spots for ads in listings – one for project listings and one for freelancer listings
- Two widgetized spots for the user dashboard activity page – one in activity header, the other in activity footer
- One widgetized spot for content bellow the main navigation bar – optionally visible on all pages or only on frontpage
- Three widgetized columns in the global footer
Widgets
- Post a project button is widgetized so you control where it is placed on a page
- Recent projects widget
- Saved Filters – allows users to save search filters
- 125×125 ads widget
- Facebook widget
- Social connect widget – includes most popular social networks
Monetizing HireBee
- Charge a fee for posting projects
- Charge a fee for relisting projects
- Additional fee for home page featured, category featured and urgent projects
- Charge fee for applying to projects (post proposal)
- Charge fee for editing proposals
- Additional fee for featuring a proposal
- View all transactions via admin panel
- Ads in project and freelancer listings
- Widgetized location in the header that is perfect for a 468×60 banner
Taking Payments
- All payment gateways created as plugins
- Comes prepackaged with PayPal
- Uses PayPal Payment Data Transfer for greater security
- Test gateway for testing transactions on your site
Comments (107)
Cant wait to get it up and running! Another great apptheme, thanks guys!
Wow Nice theme
Would love to have seen vantage get this kind of love and care but it seems to be pretty dead in terms of updates. So much potential but really lacks any feature updates that have been mentioned for over a year now which is a shame. best of luck with this theme it does look well made.
@allmyhoney, thanks. We’ve actually got a Vantage update slated for release this month. Just needed to get HireBee out the door first.
Glad to hear it David, i look forward to this release for sure.
I don’t see any mention of escrow? How is payment conducted between freelancer and project owner?
@muzi, currently, there’s no escrow feature. Payments need to be negotiated between both parties. As with other sites that do not have escrow, it’s always recommended to start with low budget projects and use the reviews/ratings to choose a project/candidate.
@Bruno…I understand the negotiating aspect, however I’m not clear then how payment is done between both parties if escrow is not available? Without escrow, it becomes risky since payments are not guaranteed? Freelancer delivers on job and not paid…what next?
@muzi, I understand your point but right now, you do not have that kind of control (escrow) from the theme itself. You will need to use a 3d party service like Transpact to handle payments between both parties.
Looks very interesting but the available color schemes could use done tuning. How will the upcoming taskerr theme be different from this in terms of feature set? Is there overlap between them or is it completely different in focus? Thanks.
@bellboy, while HireBee is targeted to “employers” looking for freelancers to complete projects, as in sites like Elance, oDesk, and 99designs, Taskerr targets anyone that wants to sell services, like Fiverr.
Thanks for your reply Bruno. That is great news. Is Taskerr still quite a while from release or not too far off? Also with regards to Hirebee color schemes do you plan to offer more options in upcoming releases (possibly with more simple color tones?) or will you leave that up to the users to customize via css on their own?
Congratulations on your new release!
Taskerr should be ready very soon. We do not plan to offer additional color schemes as we already provide 5 colors. Customers can create their own color styles using child themes.
Glad you liked the theme!
Hi Bruno,
Awesome theme! I aleardy downloaded and will play with it soon. By the way, does HireBee offers similar features like Codeable?
Can it also be used for non-technical services like say buying products or household services? For example, looking for event planners, caterers, the best mortgage rates, etc? Does it offer geolocation and location filters? If not, will it be added in future releases or can it easily be added as a plugin? It will be nice if you can post a roadmap.
Glad you like HireBee @Mike. What features from Codeable are you referring to?
You can use the theme for any type of buyer/seller service. Currently, it provides simple location filters.
We will be listening to customers for additional features. No specific roadmap yet.
@Mike , just rename “employer” to lets say “specialist” or “caterer”, and this theme gets a whole different point of view. Services are there, its up to you give it a twist! I recently created a website which was a Q and A theme, to a Domainname appraisel service. 🙂
How would you go about replacing “employer” and “freelancer” ?
@bradley, that’s something to ask our support team in the forums.
Hi Bruno,
I am about to purchase this, but i need to make sure this 2 things first.
1. The payment gateway provider seems limited, what if i buy this theme but i cannot use with my payment gateway? Will this support WooCommerce? How can i make my payment gateway can be used in this theme?
2. About the monetization, besides paying for the listing or get featured, how can i make the listing free, but i want to monetize by taking some percentage of the project price. Maybe i set 10% of the project price. I don’t believe people want to pay for listing anymore since many free listing website out there.
@Dolz, answering your questions:
1. HireBee is compatible with the following gateways:
– PayPal (integrated)
– Bank Transfer (integrated)
– 2Checkout
– Authorize.Net
– Stripe
2. You can create free plans and charge only for addons (featured in frontpage, featured in category or urgent). To get a percentage from the agreed price you will need to use a 3d party escrow service like Transpact. An escrow service keeps the buyer’s money held securely until the project is finished and delivered, and then release the money to the seller (freelancer). At this time the site owner (You) can get a percentage of the budget price. See Transpact’s use case here.
Hi Bruno,
1. Still payment gateway that support my country banks is not in the list. I bet the Bank Transfer you mentioned need to be done manually, right? If i can integrate the payment gateway that supports our local banks, customers can pay via online banking.
2. Using 3rd party like transpact means they also need some fees right? If commission can be managed via this theme, then we can save more money, no need to pay Transpact. Besides, how to integrate Transpact during the payment process?
@Dolz,
1. Yes. Bank Transfer works manually.
2. Even with an integrated escrow service, and unless you act as the middle man (the person that helds the money), you would need to pay fees to the escrow service – much like PayPal.
To integrate an escrow service in the payment process you need to inform employers that they need to transfer the money to the escrow service and agree with the freelancer that the money will be transferred when the project is completed. At this time you should get a percentage of the agreed price.
Hello Bruno, While I’d really like to purchase the HireBee theme, I am seriously concerned that a range of free (already installed) payment gateway options – to cater for international customers – are not included in the HireBee asking price.
Specifically as I live in South Africa and have (a long-standing) account with PayFast, i.e., a local (free) financial services company, and would like to be able to buy themes with this facility already built-in.
PS: I bought a Classipress theme from App themes a few years ago, but was reluctant to charge for ads via PayPal – as it is does not make payments to South Africans possible, and also found the other Bank Transfer option very limiting.
Thus, in order to make it possible for my local customers (and target market) to pay for ad-postings in our local ZAR/R currency, I had no choice but to purchase the PayFast plugin (now offered by App themes) – which, I am happy to say, is now installed at my site and working very well.
However, at a cost of some R400.00, I am presently not in a position to purchase the HireBee theme, plus another* PayFast plugin. And Q. wonder if its possible to use *the same PayFast plugin for more than one App theme site?
Thanks very much.
RoyalStar
http://survivorsa.mobi
Southern Cape, South Africa.
@royalstar, it’s fine to use your existing PayFast plugin with HireBee.
As I had payment problems as an employer with Fiverr, i.e., being charged by contractors for tasks not carried out.
And as oDesk offers possibly the best payment system – although they, too, do not make it possible for me (as a virtual assistant/contractor) to transfer funds earned to my local PayFast account (and not, e.g., only to an internationally based PayPal or Skrill* account, etc., *which charges a relatively enormous commission in Euro).
Intending to add a commission percentage on to the payments made by employers to contractors – should I finally decide to purchase the HireBee theme – I would (a) like to make local/int. employer payments directly into my PayFast account possible, and (b) also need some way to ensure that contractors will indeed be paid for successfully completed assignments, i.e., without being personally obliged to pay a third-party an additional fee for their escrow/other services.
Therefore, perhaps insisting upon a 50% up front payment from employers (deposited and held in my PayFast account – for and on behalf of contractors hired to work on various fixed-price only projects) may be the best, all-round route to travel. PS: in instances where tasks are not completed or unsuccessfully completed – I would then (wholly or partially) refund the 50% banked and “held in trust” (less my administrative commission) to the employer – according to his or her contractor payment or non-payment instructions.
Regards,
RoyalStar.
Great job with Hirebee this is the first appthemes theme that I have purchased and love it.
Just hope you guys in the future ad features such as milestones, better messaging system. and let employers hire contractors for private job. Some type of escrow system using paypal adaptive or delayed payments built in would be great.
Also I can’t wait for Taskerr to come out I been waiting for u guys to come out with a theme like this for awhile. I downloaded one from a competitor and it was junk.
@gocards86, thanks and glad you’re enjoying it! For any new feature requests, please submit them to our Ideas Exchange.
Oh great, you used foundation ! 🙂
The demo site does not appear to display responsively.
@bellboy, why do you say the demo site is not displaying responsively?
When attempting to view the hirebee demo site from an IOS device is does not appear responsive, it appears in desktop mode.
@bellboy, make sure you remove the top frame on the demo site.
Thanks for your reply David. I cannot see anyway via IOS to remove the top frame. Also the Classipress demo, even with the top frame, appears in responsive mode.
I am going to:
http://demos.appthemes.com/?theme=hirebee
Perhaps I am missing something obvious, if so my apologies.
Here is a screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/BIG9Skr.png
@bellboy, yeah try going directly to the HireBee demo instead. http://demos.appthemes.com/hirebee/
Off topic I realize, but will Taskerr have custom fields support and also will it have linked fields in the case of Country -> State -> City? By this I mean if a user selects a country it would then populate the state field options with the states (predefined by the site admin) for that country and then the same for the city field once the user selects the desired state.
I think this is would be a feature that would be vital to theme. I hope it is considered as a feature. Thanks.
Hello!
Taskerr theme will not support custom fields in initial release 1.0.
We planned to provide a core set of fields and programmatic possibility to add new ones via filters and actions. We are also considering possibility to connect the Custom Fields module in the future (depending on the demand of users).
As for the “dynamic fields”, so our module “Custom Fields” can not provide this feature, unfortunately.
Thank you!
I did not realize you were involved in the Taskerr development. That is exciting to hear! Thank you for your response.
I certainly hope that the customs field feature will make it into Taskerr as it will make it a much more flexible product with greater appeal for potential customers.
Is release for 1.0 of Taskerr in the near term or is still a way off? Thanks again.
Hello! I took ‘Custom Forms’ question to the team discussion.
I can not give an exact release date, but we are doing everything to ensure that it took place in the next few weeks.
Thank You!
Thank you very much for doing so. I sincerely hope that this is integrated to taskerr. To not include the ability to make custom fields would really cripple it in terms of flexibility. I hope that all appthemes products include this custom fields going forward (if not natively then at least as an add-on).
It sounds like a decent idea, but I really question the monetization concepts. You reference elance and odesk, but both of those take a cut of the project cost.
I find it hard to believe that clients and freelancers would pay to list and bid on projects. Do you guys have some knowledge/rationale to support why this monetization model would work?
Thanks in advance!
@bradley, we try to add as much choices as possible for monetization. It’s up to the site owners to choose the best option according to their user target.
Exactly my point @Bradley, both Elance and oDesk, the core essence of their business model is referral commission on every job they generate. That element should not be optional, but embedded on the theme…rather theme owner decides to disable option or not. Right now I buy theme and still have to jump another huddle at integrating escrow.
David and team, please seriously look into this urgently…this theme will fly with that option.
Thanks for the reply Bruno! I do appreciate options, so thanks for thinking in that way.
I think you’ll quickly realize that for most people using this theme (and most end-users / target audience), an additional monetization option is needed. The % of project option.
That’s the only option I can point to and say works across the board, regardless of target audience. It’s been proven to work, whereas the other options have not. But please prove me wrong if that’s the case.
Many thanks,
Bradley
I agree that the % (percentage) of project option is in fact a must. Additionally, as App. themes are made available to purchasers all over the world, a local* (free) payment gateway needs to be offered and pre-installed by App. themes, i.e., I live in S.Africa and my preferred choice of local payment gateways is PayFast; however, I ultimately needed to buy this gateway plugin for my Classipress site, as I was not happy using PayPal to charge local customers for paid ads, and did not wish to go the free ad route.
My potential employers and service providers are both local to each other (within a certain mile/kilometer radius). HireBee might work nicely for digital type services such as web design but what about local or on-site services that require the physical presence of service providers?
Will there be location and geolocation filters in the near future?
@Mike, no plans at this time. If it’s a popular feature request (hint: submit it to our Ideas exchange), then we’d certainly consider it.
Thanks, David. I already submitted it yesterday. 🙂
Hi David,
Can you integrate HireBee with Paypal Adaptive so site admins can offer a percentage-based pricing in addition to the existing pricing options?
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/products/adaptive-payments/
Sitemile offers it with their Project Bidding Theme.
http://sitemile.com/products/wordpress-project-freelancer-theme/
Site also have an integrated escrow feature. Please just email me if you prefer not to post this publicly.
If you can’t do it, will you offer it in the near future? If there’s no hope for us, how many hours do you think a good developer can integrate paypal adaptive and escrow? I am willing to hire someone.
@Mike, we’re currently considering all the available options to include an escrow feature or a percentage-based pricing, including PayPal adaptive.
Awesome! Thank you, Bruno. I will wait for the future version that offer those features. I hope it will be on the next one. 🙂
Hi Bruno,
Do you now have an idea if escrow and paypal adaptive will be added? If so, will it take too long? I just like to know if I need to wait since I already have HireBee but I can’t use it until it has escrow payments.
If it’s going to take too long, I will just go ahead and try the other theme from the other vendor. Appthemes is my first choice and I hope I don’t end up regretting using the other theme. 🙂
@Mike, I can confirm that adaptive payments are planned for HireBee. We’re working to have it available soon. No specific date yet. You won’t regret the wait.
I would def not purchase anything from Mile all the themes that vendor produces has tons of bugs and and complaints. They are all in beta form and are not usable waste of time and money. I know because I bought the fiverr knock off from them and it was awful.
I am interested in escrow as well, but I have another question. If I already have an existing database of marketplace users and jobs, is there any way to import them into Hirebee? What kind of database does Hirebee use?
HireBee uses the existing WordPress tables to store projects and users. Projects are stored on the posts table and users on the users table. Additional fields are stored in the posts and user meta tables. If your jobs and users are also stored in the posts and users table you can import them, but you will loose all custom fields. You’ll need to manually add that information.
Hello, when we create a draft in hirebee :
At the first step, can we let only 3 currencies and delete the other possibilities for the users ?
At the last step, when we have to pay to finalize a draft for example, it’s possible to let only paypal and delete “bank-transfer” when we have to choose a way of paiement ?
Thanks
@kodjoe,
Currently, this is not possible but we’re planning to add this functionality in the next update (coming very soon).
In Payments > Settings > Installed Gateways you can enable/disable the gateways that should be displayed on the dropdown.
thanks a lot mate 😉
Thank you, Bruno. I will wait then.
@gocards, thank you for the warning.
Hi guys, is their a chance Taskerr will be released next month. I’m really anticipating this theme, thanks.
@gocards86, we plan to have it released in August.
No disrespect to the current design, but are there any child themes currently available for HireBee? I didn’t see anything in the marketplace.
@gr8wan, not at this time. We’re hoping to have some sellers create a couple soon. Make sure to subscribe to our Marketplace so you get notified of any new items.
What is everybody’s thoughts on setting one of these sites up, I mean what if the two parties have a disagreement how would you legally handled such situations
@muse1982, it’s always up to each site to create their policies for these situations. Although, HireBee does not currently offer any specific actions to handle them, Employers and Freelancers can leave notes when ending a project and reflect their experience on each other reviews. If there’s a need for a 3d party (you, the site owner) to be involved to handle the disagreement you can inform both parties that they should contact the site owner/manager.
Hi Bruno,
Sorry for asking again if you already have a rough idea when to expect the arrival of escrow and paypal adaptive. Is there a chance we can have it in the next version?
We’re currently working on adding PayPal Adaptive for escrow payments. This option should be available on the next feature release (not scheduled yet). We’ll post more info soon.
I have purchased this theme, but it doesn’t seem to have a registration setup, is this right? And if so, why wouldn’t it? And is this something coming soon?
@Jay, yes it comes with the default WordPress registration system. Please post your question in the HireBee support forum so someone can assist you further.
I think this theme has some great potential. I too am interested in moving my existing marketplace to wordpress but until hirebee no real solution existed for me. Hirebee seems to have the majority of what I need with the exception of escrow as many have noted and a few monetization features. Personally instead of papal I would like to see Balanced payments http://www.balancedpayments.com added as a payment gateway plugin. Balanced Payments is a marketplace payments gateway that has all the payment features marketplaces need for collection and disbursement of payments from buyers to sellers allowing for you to take your percentage along the way. Also supports memberships and more. This gateway would make hirebee the best marketplace theme period.
@jgalileo, thanks for the suggestion on Balanced payments. While we’re working with PayPal adaptive, other gateways are not out of the question.
OK is there any ETA on when these features will be added, i am tittering on the edge of going for another theme producer’s product as it has everything i need. I am however happy with the quality of the themes i have purchased so far from appthemes. I don’t see much activity in the marketplace as i did when the jobsapp theme came out and this concerns me
@muse1982, no ETA yet. We know how important this is for our customers and we are doing our best to have this feature added as soon as possible.
Do you have a ETA for adaptive payments?
ok are there any theme developers creating plugins for this theme?
@muse1982, we’ve got our standard AppThemes plugins that will work. Since the theme is so new, our Marketplace sellers need some time before they can release something. Is there a particular plugin you’re thinking about?
Will you be adding a hirebee Catagory to marketplace so we know which plugins are compatible. Right now only one or two are listed as compatible with. Hirebee.
Yes. We will be adding a HireBee category to the marketplace. Although there isn’t currently a specific category for HireBee there are already some products available for it, like all AppThemes gateways (2Checkout, Authorize.Net, Stripe) and AppThemes Coupons.
Hi Dave,
Will Critic work seamlessly with HireBee or do we need to do some coding? If we do, would you mind to share the code?
I read somewhere that offering HireBee completely free to freelancers and employers is an option. If we go this route, how can we monetize the site? Would you mind to provide some suggestions? I am thinking to just launch my site and offer it 100% free until Paypal Adaptive becomes available. If it’s coming out very soon, I will just drop the idea.
@Mike, HireBee uses it’s own review system with some code taken directly from Critic. There’s no need for an additional plugin to have reviews in HireBee.
You can set up HireBee to be completely free for employers and/or freelancers. It’s your choice. As for PayPal adaptive payments, we’re working to have it available soon but we don’t have an ETA yet.
Thank you, Bruno. How about Daddy Like and Starstruck plugins? Are they recommended for HireBee?
Those should be a good fit for HireBee since they work with any theme and are mainly used for pages, posts and comments.
Discussion is closed.