A full rebuild in its 22nd year: @SOHO, the crowdsourcing site with no commission, ships seven new features in ten days

@SOHO, a crowdsourcing and freelance job matching service that has been running for 22 years since 2004, was rebuilt from the ground up on March 16, 2026. The platform was moved to React and ISR, and within ten days of the relaunch seven new features were released in succession: a blog with more than 700 articles, a salary database covering 38 job types across 47 prefectures, a job guide covering 100 occupations, a qualification guide covering 79 qualifications, a database of roughly 3,800 listed companies, a search across more than 6,400 courses eligible for the government training benefit, and RSS feeds. The principles held since the founding, no transaction fees and direct deals welcome, are unchanged, and the service now sets out as an integrated platform supporting freelancers from finding work through building a career.

LIFE SCAPE, K.K. (head office: Chuo City, Tokyo; representative director: Hisashi Hirajo), which operates crowdsourcing and freelance job matching services, began the full rebuild of @SOHO, the freelance job platform it has run since 2004, on Monday, March 16, 2026.

Background

@SOHO was born in 2004, before the word crowdsourcing was in common use in Japan. Since then it has stood for no fees and direct deals, offering a place where freelancers and clients can connect freely. Supported by more than 300,000 registered members over the years, it has been the starting point of many freelance careers.

The crowdsourcing industry has grown considerably in recent years, and freelance work has become widely accepted. At the same time, the environment around it has changed a great deal, with generative AI spreading quickly and the people doing the work becoming more varied.

To answer those changes, we set out to design from scratch what a platform freelancers genuinely need should be, which is what led to this full rebuild.

About the service

@SOHO is a job platform that matches freelancers with clients. Its defining features are that it takes no transaction fee at all, and that it actively encourages freelancers and clients to deal directly. The rebuild replaced the technical foundation, and seven new features were released within ten days.

Three things that set it apart

• 1. No transaction fee whatsoeverNothing is deducted from what a freelancer is paid. On a 100,000 yen job, the full 100,000 yen arrives. This has been the policy since the founding.
• 2. Direct deals are welcome, and encouragedPeople who meet on the platform are entirely free to exchange contact details and sign a contract directly. External links and social accounts may be listed freely. We believe a healthy freelance market is one where freelancers build their own brand and long-term trust directly with clients.
• 3. Seven new features within ten days of the relaunchA blog with more than 700 articles, a salary database covering 38 job types across 47 prefectures, a job guide covering 100 occupations, a qualification guide covering 79 qualifications, a database of roughly 3,800 listed companies, a search across more than 6,400 courses eligible for the government training benefit, and RSS feeds, released one after another. Together they support freelancers from finding work through building a career.

What comes next

@SOHO aims to become more than a job matching site: an integrated platform supporting the whole of a freelancer's work. Bilingual Japanese and English support, stronger real-time messaging, a fuller portfolio feature, better matching through AI, and links to related services for electronic contracts, invoicing and task management are all planned.