A Detailed Comparison of the Top-Ranked Virtual Assistant Companies

Delegating specific tasks to a Virtual Assistant is a popular practice for a good reason—these remote experts save businesses a ton of time and money. 

Outsourcing part of the work to a Virtual Assistant ensures that all tedious, menial, recurring tasks are completed on time, by a professional, while giving you more time to focus on scaling your business and generating a profit. 

The trouble is, there are hundreds of websites where you’ll find Virtual Assistants, and it goes without saying that not all of them are created equal.

In this article, we’ll give you a breakdown of the five highest-rated Virtual Assistant companies millions of executives, entrepreneurs, and small businesses use. You’ll learn their strong suits and weak points, as well as the pricing range for the services they provide.

Best Virtual Assistant Companies of 2022

There’s a myriad of agencies that offer VA services. Their members typically pass multi-level screening and must demonstrate proficiency in carrying out a variety of administrative and technical tasks.

Unlike traditional job boards where you choose a Virtual Assistant based on their profile and the submitted application, VA companies act as mediators that work to find the ideal match for your business needs and goals, making them an easier—if not better—option. While unaffiliated VAs dictate their own rates, most Virtual Assistant companies offer you a selection of packages you can choose from with fixed work hours or number of tasks and projects.

We scaled a team from 1 to 45+ members in just 18 months, working with a dozen VAs and freelancers along the way. Here are our top 5 VA agencies entrepreneurs and businesses turn to time and again:

• Time Etc
• Prialto
• BELAY
• WoodBows
• Magic

Time Etc

Time Etc is an award-winning U.S.-based agency that has consistently proven the quality of its VAs—all college-educated native English speakers who offer services in other languages as well. Here are a few reasons to choose Time Etc:

• Money-back guarantee for every project
• Access to hundreds of U.S. workers
• Clients get assigned a dedicated account manager

Time Etc offers you four flexible plans to choose from, switch, or cancel at any time:

1. Ten-hour plan—$310 per month
2. Twenty-hour plan—$600 per month
3. Forty-hour plan—$1160 per month
4. Sixty-hour plan—$1680 per month

Time Etc at a glance:

Prialto is a U.S.-based VA agency that provides you with a team of managed, dedicated Virtual Assistants who work seamlessly alongside your team and support your business operations remotely. Prialto

What makes this agency stand out is that you are fully backed up in case the VA you chose takes PTO or sick leave—Prialto’s team, made up of a primary assistant, an engagement manager, and trained backups, takes over the VA’s duties. The team-based approach enables you to outsource even high-value tasks such as prospect development, lead generation, expense reporting, and document preparation.

Some of the benefits of working with Prialto include:

• Live support available during your local business hours
• Ongoing training of VAs for business-specific tasks or software, at no extra cost
• Personalized onboarding services to review your needs, requirements, and goals

Prialto offers three unique pricing plans to choose from based on the size of your enterprise:

1. Yourself for 1 unit—55 hours at $1350 per month
2. Your Team for 3+ units—165+ hours at $4050 per month
3. Your Organization for 8+ units—440+ hours at a negotiable fee

Prialto’s pros and cons:

Belay

Apart from administrative services, Virtual Assistants on Belay specialize in bookkeeping, website design, content writing, and social media strategy. The agency employs U.S. college graduates who are top-tier professionals adept at collaborating with your team and supporting its daily functions. 

Belay will thoroughly study your business needs and goals to assign you the most fitting VA. On top of recurring administrative services, the company’s VAs can also assist you with travel arrangements, calendar management, data presentations, C-level support, and project research.

Here are some of the reasons professionals choose Belay:

• VAs come with a relationship manager you can discuss the VA’s performance and potential issues with
• Services offered in a variety of languages
• Belay trains VAs in the particular software your business uses at no cost to you

One of Belay’s downsides is that it doesn’t make the cost of VAs public. Pricing is done on a quote basis linked to the experience of the VA—you have to complete an online form to get a callback for the quote.

Consult the following table for more information on Belay:

WoodBows is a VA service company that offers clients a “200% money-back guarantee”—something the agency doesn’t regularly resort to, given its 98% client retention rate. This doesn’t mean you’ll get your money back on the off chance that you’re unsatisfied with their VA’s services. Instead, they’ll work double the time you paid for and ensure you’re completely satisfied with the final result. WoodBows

WoodBows prides itself on the quality of its VAs, claiming it recruits only the top 1% of candidates who apply for the position.

The agency has offices in the U.S., India, and the Philippines. Aside from general services, their Virtual Assistants also specialize in graphics design, real estate, and app and software development. WoodBows also provides you with a dedicated account manager, a daily status update, and 24/7 phone and email support.

In addition to a custom-hours plan, WoodBows offers clients three pricing plans on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual basis:

1. Forty-hour plan—$499 per month
2. Eighty-hour plan—$899 per month
3. Full-time plan—$1399 per month

You’ll find more details on the advantages and drawbacks of choosing WoodBows in the table below:

Magic is a service that provides on-demand assistance with both personal and professional tasks. This company boasts a transparent approach, with a fully-disclosed pricing structure. It enables you to sign up for free and matches you with a suitable VA within two days, who provides 24/7 support and whose services you don’t have to pay for until you use them.Magic

Magic offers global services every day of the year for one-off tasks—it enables you to outsource non-recurring tasks to its VAs at $35 per hour, an option best suited to personal needs.

Here are the main benefits of choosing Magic for your business:

• Communication with VAs can be conducted via text, email, telegram, Slack, or an iOS app
• Amount of work can easily be scaled up or down as needed
• Full availability of a dedicated assistant
• Security and confidentiality are strictly enforced at every level

Magic gives you the option of two pricing plans:

1. Dedicated plan for individuals and businesses at $10 per hour—an unmanaged dedicated assistant
2. Business monthly plan for growing businesses at $2,000 per month—an assistant team with an account manager to supervise it

Check out the following table for more information on Magic:

Why You Should Hire a Virtual Assistant

The services VAs offer range from the general clerical tasks to the more technical ones that focus on narrow areas of expertise, but typically include:

• Telemarketing
• Email and phone management
• Audio and video transcription
• Web development
• Content writing
• Blog and social media management and marketing
• Graphic design
• SEO and link building
• Calendar management
• Research

There are numerous reasons you should hire a Virtual Assistant—they are a much more cost-effective option than full-time employees and they can benefit your business in an assortment of ways. No matter which VA company you opt for, a Virtual Assistant will:

• Increase business efficiency—If you outsource tedious recurring tasks to a VA, such as answering emails or following up on leads, you and your team can focus on more business-critical activities that don’t stifle creativity or cause a delay in the completion of assignments.
• Reduce operational expenses—The average salary of a Virtual Assistant doesn’t come even close to what you pay your full-time staff. Additionally, you don’t have to provide remote contract workers with costly equipment, a physical workspace, or benefits such as PTO or sick leave.
• Save you valuable time—It can take anywhere up to two hours in the morning to catch up on clerical work. The more time-consuming functions you delegate to a VA, the more hours you’ll gain to focus on more important issues, scale up your company, and develop greater flexibility.

Hire an Experienced and Affordable Virtual Assistant Faster

Turning to a VA agency is one of the quicker ways to hire a Virtual Assistant, though there are certain drawbacks you should be aware of. These companies present you with fixed pricing plans that don’t leave much room for negotiation. 

Additionally, many agencies don’t allow you direct contact with a VA—they typically allow you to correspond with them via text only or through a representative. The most crucial issue is that you have no say in recruitment—agencies either match you with a single Virtual Assistant they choose for you or let you opt between two or three final candidates.

Most entrepreneurs opt for the agency approach because they don’t have the time to manually evaluate each Virtual Assistant or don’t want to deal with hundreds of applications. 

But what if there was a way for you to set up a fully automated hiring funnel, cut hiring costs by up to 50%, and have all the say regarding which VA you want to work with?

Workello lets you do just that! Everything’s pre-configured, so you can set up your hiring funnel in less than 3 minutes. You’ll see all the candidates in one place—your Workello dashboard, and will be able to evaluate and test them, invite for interviews, reject or extend offers—all with a single click. 

Each candidate status update triggers an automated email, so you won’t have to waste a single second on email correspondence. Simultaneously, all your candidates will receive email updates in real time, whether it’s good news and they’re moving on to the next stage or if they didn’t make the cut.

Here’s how Workello streamlines your hiring funnel and saves you both time and money:

• Automates every stage of the recruitment—testing, interview scheduling, correspondence
• Gives you a clear layout of each applicant and the stage they’re in with a single dashboard
• Enables you to reject bad candidates with good portfolios with a single click
• Moves applicants through the recruitment phases 10 times faster

Sign up for Workello now to test 5 Virtual Assistants for free!