Finding the best video editing service for your unique needs can be a challenge. Especially since comparing services involves a huge number of factors – from pricing and turnaround times to what’s included in packages and what will be billed separately.
And even then, you don’t really know what the actual video editing experience will be like.
In this article, we compare the experience of having your video edited by two of the major contenders for the best video editing services: Tasty Edits and Upwork.
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Why Compare Tasty Edits vs. Upwork?
Tasty Edits is a dedicated video editing service with editors across the world. The company offers video editing, thumbnail design, and channel management services.
Upwork is the largest online hub of freelancers, many of them offering video editing services with different specializations.
For our comparison, we asked both the team at Tasty Edits and a top-rated video editor on Upwork to edit a vlog of a hiking trip to a lake in the middle of nowhere.
Both editors got the same instructions and the same source footage.
Here’s our in-depth review.
Related: See our video editing services overview page for all our reviews and comparisons!
Navigating the Websites
To begin with, we rated how easy it is to navigate Tasty Edits’ and Upwork’s websites before you hire your editor.
Tasty Edits’ website is a dedicated company site. All the information you need on pricing and services, as well as a portfolio of past projects and reviews by clients, appears on the main homepage. In addition, they have separate pages with details for services like editing vertical video or thumbnail design.
Apart from that, Tasty Edits’ website also features a handy Creators’ Blog, with tons of useful information for video creators. There are also free resources such as a YouTube Starter’s Guide and a Channel Growth Email Series.
Once you’ve scouted out pricing options and testimonials, all you need to do to hire an editor is to hit “Get Started”.
Upwork’s website is a little more complex, since not all freelancers offering their services here are actually video editors. You have to filter for the services you’re looking for using the site’s main categories.
After you’ve navigated to the video editor section, you can refine your search by setting additional criteria. These include star ratings, pricing, experience, availability for immediate work, and others.
Using these filters, you can narrow down the huge pool of contenders to those editors that match your individual needs. Still, the work of comparing the freelancers to find the best candidate remains.
For our test run, we chose the highest-rated, Upwork-certified freelancer in the video editing category.
Let’s now take a closer look at how much bang we’ll get for our buck.
Pricing and Services
The next aspect we compared in depth was pricing options on both websites.
Tasty Edits’ pricing is project-based. You pay a flat rate for a video to be edited. The basic rate for a single horizontal video is $240 and for a vertical video (YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, or TikTok) $50.
There are certain add-ons, like custom-made thumbnails, or vertical exports on horizontal orders (in which case they’re $25, not $50).
Plus, if you purchase a multi-video package, the per-video price goes down significantly, as low as $190 for a horizontal and $40 for a vertical video.
Tasty Edits’ video editing package is comprehensive, including:
- unlimited effects and SFX,
- overlays, titles and burned-in captions,
- motion graphics, including animations, and
- free licensed assets such as music, sound effects, and stock footage.
On Upwork, pricing is much more varied, as each freelancer gets to decide how much they want to charge for their services.
Basic pricing varies significantly depending on an editors’ skills, turnaround times, and included services. Location also factors into how much they charge: For an editor with the same solid skill set, the cost of living is much higher in the US than in India.
The top-rated freelancer we chose has a few different pricing options available. They differ with respect to delivery times, allowed source footage length, the number of revisions offered, and whether services such as motion graphics and sound design are included.
Since our source footage is fairly long, we picked their “Advanced” package.
Submitting Your Order
At Tasty Edits, you submit your order via their custom-built Video Order Management Application (VOMA). The app was developed specifically to meet the needs of both video creators and editors.
As such, you no longer have to hop between multiple platforms during the editing process.
To submit your order, you create an account and enter your contact and payment info. Then, you get access to your VOMA dashboard. This is your personal video editing hub, where you can purchase editing credits, submit orders, message your editors, review drafts, and download finished videos.
Once you’ve purchased the editing credits necessary for your video, submitting an order is easy. All you have to do is create a new order and fill in a form.
You’ll be asked the basic specs of your video, such as:
- its length and format,
- the date you want to publish it,
- creative details like the style and tone,
- and any other instructions.
You can provide your source files either via a direct upload or a Google Drive link.
On Upwork, you first have to create a client account on the main site. Again, your contact details and payment information are required.
Afterward, you have to go to your freelancer’s page to select your package. How many details a freelancer asks you to provide for the editing process varies.
In our case, it was fairly straightforward. All we had to do was paste our Google Drive link and the link to a Google Doc with detailed editing instructions.
And we’re all good to go! Let’s see what the editors come up with.
Communicating With Editors
At Tasty Edits, all communication with your editors happens in VOMA. You can message your editors in the main chat on each of your projects. Plus, you’ll get an email notification if one of your editors messages you, either for more information or to let you know their status on your project.
Soon after we submitted our project, we got a message that an editor, John, had been assigned. And a confirmation from John himself that he’d started work on the project.
On Upwork, communication happens in the chat. Here, you have an overview of all the freelancers you’ve hired before and all the messages you’ve exchanged with them.
After we submitted our order to our editor, we didn’t get a message from our editor, but an automatic confirmation from Upwork that everything was right on track.
Reviewing Drafts
One of the most delicate steps in handling a video editing order is to review drafts and give feedback to your editors.
Even the best video editor can’t see inside your head and divine exactly what you want out of a finished product. They’ll do their best to hit the tone and style you want. After that, it’s up to you to let them know what they can improve to match your creative vision.
How you submit that feedback varies.
At Tasty Edits, you’ll get a message when a draft is ready for you to review. On your dashboard, you’ll see the status of your project has changed to “Draft”. Then, you can scroll down to the deliverables section of your VOMA dashboard and leave feedback directly.
The video will open in a new Frame.io window. This is an environment that allows you to comment on different parts of a video. If there’s a sequence at 2:32 that you don’t like, you can easily leave a timestamped note for your editor to change it.
Once you finish your notes, you can shoot your editor a quick message and update the status of your project on VOMA to “Revision Needed”.
On Upwork, the process is less integrated since the platform doesn’t provide an in-built review tool. Instead, we got a Google Drive link from our editor for our first draft. We reviewed everything and left extensive comments in the chat.
Delivery Times
At Tasty Edits, the guaranteed turnaround time is 48 hours for the first draft of your video and 24 hours for revisions. Since their team is spread out across the globe, there is always a video editor ready to jump on your edits.
Plus, since you can pick your target publication date from a calendar during order submission, you’ll know exactly when your video will be good to upload.
In the case of our trial video, everything went smoothly. We submitted our order on Sunday and picked the following Wednesday as our target delivery date. By Monday evening, we had a first draft. By Tuesday evening, all revisions we requested were done. Shipshape and Bristol fashion.
On Upwork, things went sideways pretty quickly. The delivery time our editor guaranteed for Advanced Package customers was 5 days. We submitted our order on a Friday. By Wednesday – the due date! – we got irritated. Still no word on any draft.
Finally, the first message from our editor trundled in – asking for more time.
Worse: The editor has questions about the raw footage – making it perfectly clear that they hadn’t even started the edits.
After another six days of radio silence later, we follow up on the project. We get promised a first draft by the end of that day. It eventually comes another day later.
The editing quality was mediocre at best (as you’ll see below). So our revision notes were long and detailed. Already when submitting them, we dreaded to think how long revision will take.
In the end, we needn’t have worried. Our editor tells us that what we got is the best they can do. And promptly cancels the contract.
Fifteen days after submitting our order, we’re left with no finished video. Just a few metric tons of frustration.
Overall Editing Quality
Comparing the videos, it’s fairly evident that the editing quality at Tasty Edits is superior.
The video is short and snappy, has an eye-catching opening sequence, and makes use of diverse transitions, overlays, VFX, animations, and pop-ups. It’s funny, upbeat, and keeps the viewer engaged during its entire six-minute run.
In contrast, the Upwork edit – which never saw a second draft – drags on. Early on in its 12 minutes, it becomes monotonous and boring.
The edits are simplistic – no animations, VFX, overlays or anything of the kind. An uninspired opening sequence, wildly oscillating audio volumes, off-beat background music, and odd color grading all irritate the viewer.
The absolute low point of this edit – and that’s saying something – comes at 7:25, when the editor transitions to slow-motion. Suddenly, the video looks laggy, choppy, just plain unpleasant to watch. That’s because our footage was shot at 30fps, so you can’t just slow it down much without losing fluid motion.
There are ways to compensate for this, but our editor evidently didn’t use any.
Comparing the Video Edits
Our shorter, snappier edit.
The freelancer’s dragging draft.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line of our Tasty Edits vs. Upwork comparison is that Tasty Edits undoubtedly comes out on top.
In terms of website navigation and order submission, the two video editing options are on par. When it comes to pricing and the diversity of services, Upwork even has a slight edge because you can find a massive range of freelancers with varying pricing models.
However, for every aspect of the actual video editing process, Tasty Edits wins hands-down. Not only does it centralize all video workflows on your personal VOMA dashboard, making it a breeze to communicate with editors and review drafts. Its video editing quality is also vastly superior and its delivery times lightning fast.
Partly, that’s because it’s a video editing service. One of the big advantages of submitting your order to a good video editing company is that there’s always someone there to make sure that your video will be delivered on time. If an editor falls sick, for instance, one of their colleagues can take over and finish your project.
We don’t think our Upwork editor left us hanging just because they felt like it. More likely than not, something came up in their personal lives, they were overworked, or simply sick. That happens.
Still, we were the ones left taking the hit.
At the end of the day, the video editing experience at Tasty Edits is light-years ahead of Upwork. It’s smoother, more personal, and free of delays and frustrations.
FAQs
After our in-depth comparison, and submitting the same video order to both services, Tasty Edits came out on top, both in terms of editing quality and experience. Our editor from Upwork – one of the highest-rated on the platform – delivered a mediocre draft, 11 days after the promised date.
The basic choice when hiring a video editor is between a video editing company and freelancers. For freelancers, platforms like Upwork and Fiverr are great places to start. Some of the top video editing companies include Tasty Edits, Video Husky, and Dava Marketing.
One of the big advantages of submitting your order to a video editing company is that there’s always someone there to make sure that your video will be delivered on time. If an editor is sick or overwhelmed with work, one of their colleagues can take over and finish your project.
Upwork has a huge variety of video editors, with varying pricing models, skills, and specializations. However, you need to keep in mind that these are freelancers: They may not always be available for work, and you may face delays if something comes up in their personal lives.
