LongerDays is a team-based virtual assistant company located in Michigan. LongerDays’ business clients communicate with a Team Lead who delegates tasks seamlessly with specialist VAs on the team. LongerDays unique model allows them to deliver a broader array of services than a solo VA. Their structure ensures that clients always have access to a person who can assist them, even if the Team Lead is out for the day. Additionally, all LongerDays VAs are W2 employees, not contractors.
LongerDays was founded in 2007 and has grown to become one of the most sought after virtual assistant companies in the US. Demand for LongerDays can be high, particularly in January, so new clients may face a short waiting list for a spot as a LongerDays client.
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How it Works
LongerDays virtual business assistants work as a team, so you get the benefit of a dedicated assistant as well as an entire office worth of experience and specialization. LongerDays VAs are capable of much more than just administrative tasks, including CRM configuration, business process consulting, writing/editing, graphic design, and task automation.
LongerDays makes significant investments in helping their clients document their business processes. The resulting process documentation belongs to the client and is useful even if a business ends up growing and hiring in-house staff.
LongerDays is picky about who they work with. You have to apply to become a client. Upon acceptance, clients are assigned a Team Lead who writes detailed task processes, delegates work to the in-house VA team, and oversees productivity and quality control.
As a Better Business Bureau accredited business, they are held accountable for delivering on their promises.
LongerDays Services
LongerDays provides assistance in five main areas:
- Business process documentation
- Admin & Invoicing
- Graphic Design
- WordPress and Web
- Content writing and book editing
Much like an in-house employee, they can be trained to accomplish just about anything you need done.
LongerDays Review
A LongerDays Virtual Assistant is not for everyone. They aim to provide a premium service for business clients with premium standards. They’re best suited for business owners who are looking for a wide variety of skills from a single source.
If you are looking for a personal assistant as a luxury service, this company is probably not for you.
LongerDays Plans and Pricing
LongerDays virtual assistant plans start around $90 per week — an 8-hour monthly plan is $375 ($46.88/hr).
As you might expect, as you commit to more hours, the rates get better. Their 16-hour a month plan is $675 ($42.19/hr) and the 32-hour plan is $1,275 ($39.84/hour).
A LongerDays Team Lead is assigned based on a brief interview that you complete shortly after signing up. The LongerDays Team Lead reaches out to the client to get started on building processes and executing tasks within one business day.
Of course, these rates are significantly higher than what you’ll find in India or elsewhere overseas. The rates are on par with what you’ll find at other VA companies in the US.
LongerDays Alternatives
For American virtual assistants, you might consider Virtual Assist USA or RemSource. Time Etc has earned plenty of positive feedback lately.
Your Turn
For those with experience working with LongerDays, please feel free to share a quick review of the service below.
LongerDays continues to amaze us with the outstanding customer service, follow thru, and excellence in best practices they provide for the Michigan Irish Music Festival. Often times they are the first contact for our patrons (via phone calls or response to ticket purchases) and they never disappoint. We are fortunate to have LongerDays on our team!
LongerDays has been a huge help to our business, helping us improve our billing, increase our collection rates, and clean up our inbox. It is such a nice relief to work with people who understand what needs to be done and are willing to go the extra mile and do whatever is needed for their clients. Highly recommended!
Jason and his crew helped me put together an affordable and quick plan to launch my online business. Rob was very adaptable with any changes I threw in the plan and helped build what I envisioned. Great people to work with.
If you are looking for a Virtual Assistant Company, Longerdays is it! I have worked with Longerdays for approximately four years, they are proactive, professional and easy to work with. Strongly recommend.
I’ve worked with Longer Days for over two-years.
I’m very detailed and border-line OCD…so it goes without saying I’m quite picky.
Simply put, LongerDays is excellent.
They plan my complex travel schedule, manage my calendar, and help with day to day operations. Plus they run point for my customer service through phone, email, and Infusionsoft.
To be frank, most of the negative reviews I read above seem to be from folks who are disorganized and expect a VA to fix that. As a business owner, it’s our job to come up with the strategy and employ others – like LD – to help us execute on it.
My wife and I are both small business owners and we have found LongerDays to be a great partner and resource. Their understanding of and attentiveness to our business’ needs has proven to be invaluable. Professionalism, understanding, and an assistance is what we were hoping for, and our expectations have been exceeded.
I would highly recommend Longer Days. We have used their service for the past 6 months and found them to be highly professional and willing to go the extra mile. We use Longer Days virtual reception service to answer our phone and provide customer service to our callers. They have done an outstanding job of learning our business and product line. We have also used their services for content marketing, which has also been outstanding. This company may not be the cheapest VA service you will find, but we did not want the cheapest. We wanted a company that we could trust to care for our customers like we would- Longer Days has provided that and more. Not only do we have excellent phone coverage now, we have a team that knows our business and is ready and willing to provide help as needed with a host of other tasks.
I can’t recommend LongerDays. The assigned team-lead seemed very defensive and tired/annoyed the day my partner and I had our initial conversation with her on Skype.
I usually get along fine with other people, so I don’t know what went wrong. Based on my limited experience with outsourcing, I’ve been happy with Time Etc and Upwork (formerly oDesk) although the latter really requires a bit of initial research, finding the right one for the job.
Oliver, we felt you were not a good fit for us and declined to work with you after completing an initial phone call. I’m sorry if that upsets you. I wish you the best of luck in finding a VA company to work with.
Need to speak to Chad Lawie.
Linda Feldhorn
Hi Linda, I think Chad sold the company or at least is no longer active in the day-to-day management.
The Longer Days Team is AWESOME! We have Longer Days answer our phones, publish our weekly newsletters, make website changes/updates, troubleshoot technical issues, monitor Zendesk, resolve customer service issues, and keep our CRM up-to-date… and that’s not counting the ad hoc projects that we constantly throw their way.
The beautiful thing about Longer Days is flexibility. Unlike when I hire an employee, I can increase my plan when we hit a heavy time of the year or reduce my service is times are light. Furthermore, because Longer Days works as a team, I’m never hit with a loss of productivity due to sick days or vacations.
Here’s the kicker… If you’re looking for help so you can get more done, you probably need a person that can do a variety of things. Do you need an administrative assistant, or an IT expert, a customer service rep? The answer is probably “yes!” Good luck finding an employee that fits that description that’s only looking for 10-15 hours per week. With Longer Days, you get all of that!
Furthermore, when you pay an employee for 20 hours of work per week, you’re probably alos paying for the time they spend at the water cooler, running to the restroom, taking a call from their child’s school, buying a birthday gift for their sister, etc. But, when you pay Longer Days to do a task, you are paying for high quality output with no “down time.” You’re only paying for the acutal minutes they spend on your project/business. So that means that 40 hours a month goes a LOT foarther than you’d think when that’s ACTUAL WORK being done. 40 Hours with Longer Days is like 80 hours from an internal employee. So, when you see Longer Day’s published hourly rates you can almost cut that number in half when comparing it to what you’d effectively pay an employee.
I have been working with LongerDays for more than 3 years. Andrew and his team have performed countless miracles for me, doing outstanding work and saving me time on money on all kinds of projects, often on very short notice. I previously tried other services, but LongerDays is far better than anyone out there. I highly recommend them.
I started working with LongerDays in 2012… The first month, we started with a mere 10 hours a month, and quickly progressed to as much as 120 hours a month. I could tell you a million reasons why I enjoy working with the company – but the results of my ongoing investment into their company speaks for itself. They employ a “together we’re better” attitude and go above and beyond to exceed their clients’ expectations. They’ve become a linchpin in my organization and one of the most prized assets of my team. Without any reservation or hesitation – I highly recommended them.
I’ve been very disappointed with Longer Days. I’ve worked with three other virtual assistant companies and they are, by far, the least helpful. I found their poor work quality surprising given the fact that, relatively speaking, they charge more than other virtual assistants. Often poor attention to detail, calls were missed, poor customer service, and questionable number of hours billed.
What other VA Companies have you worked with? And, why have you worked with 3 others? I’m curious why you’ve switched companies / services so much? What are the pitfalls of this service in general, not just Longer Days?
I’m debating using a VA company, after just losing my in-house assistant to be a stay at home / home school mother.
I have been working with Andrew at LongerDays for the past 2 years and I am so thankful for his dedication and commitment to my business. He’s flexible, responsive, looks out for my business like it’s his own, is conscientious of my budget and hours and will go out of his way to help me resolve a business issue. I have worked with other VA services in the past (that have cost more than double the hourly rate of LongerDays), and LongerDays blows them all away.
I am pretty happy with LongerDays. I’ve been with them a couple months now and have handed off my blog and newsletter to them, as well as researching leads for speaking engagements. I wouldn’t recommend them for higher level tasks such as web development, landing pages, or ghost writing, but they can handle basic graphic design and administrative tasks very well.
I have only been using LD for a few weeks and cannot even begin to explain how impressed I have been with the high level of service we have received. Not only is my lead dependable, responsive, and amazing with my clients, but she has picked up on so much about our company and our processes that most of my clients assume that she is just a new hire within the company. After a few weeks of using Longer Days I am finding my weekly meetings with my lead to be super valuable and the service the she provides essential to taking our company to the next level. I have tried several other companies and have been consistently disappointed with the level of service that I received and their inability to complete tasks. I can depend on LD to not only complete the task at hand, but to exceed my expectations and provide follow up.
I worked with Longer Days on our website & we were very happy with the outcome. They were very knowledgeable and helpful when I had an idea but was not sure how to make it happen. They were also able to give me tips, ideas, etc. to make our site exactly how we wanted it. I’m glad they were able to help us out & they are always willing to help still with any questions I might have.
I loved working with LongerDays. My VA Emily was awesome, proactive and polite. Unfortunately I need more hours on a lower budget and I made the decision to stop working with them. However I do wish to come back to LongerDays in the future and I am very glad for all the good work they have done for me so far. Wish you guys all the best, and till soon!
I’ve been with LongerDays since about 2007 after unsuccessfully trying several less expensive VA services. LD is the first service I tried that was able to perform high quality work that actually helps me instead of just causing problems. Furthermore, they’ve been willing to take on responsibilities I would not expect a VA service to take on, thereby not only expanding their value greatly, but actually creating business capabilities I could not have without them.
The Michigan Irish Music Festival is “thrilled” with the service that we receive from LongerDays. The handling of our online ticket sales (and communicating w/ any of our customers on our behalf) has been so valuable to our organization. The ticket fulfillment aspect that they handle for us has saved us literally hundreds of hours of work. The graphic design work that they have done for an International Conference that we hosted in Muskegon was also TOP NOTCH!! The turnaround time is better than we could have expected. From Andrew Z. (who is our main contact) to the designer and the owner Chad, we couldn’t be more happy with the relationship we have with LongerDays!!
I have been using Longerdays for over 4 years now, and they have been vital to the growth of my company. I started out with just a couple of tasks and they handled them all with ease – professionally and on-time. I now use them for any task that I do not have time for, or frankly just don’t want to do. They handle answering phones, responding to emails, bookkeeping, updating our web site, creating shipping labels for outgoing orders, and several other miscellaneous tasks that come up from time to time. They are especially great at handling tasks that must be performed on a daily (or regularly scheduled) basis. I set up the task for them, we go over how I want it to be performed, and then they do it – every single day. I love it! It has literally changed my life and allowed me to take a company previously struggling to survive to one that is thriving and extremely profitable! Thank you Longerdays!!!
Big or small….simple or complex, LongerDays service team provides us with solid support for our growing North American security company. They’ve become a valuable business partner and have gladly addressed our unique business model with dedication and spirit. Their communication is thorough and precise and they’ve been very responsive to our deadline-driven projects. We trust them to have our back. 5-stars.
We use them as a back up service and I’m really impressed with their client-focused attention to detail.
Woops! Forgot to put the stars on my last review. Here they are!
I’ve been working with LongerDays.com since November of 2010 and am absolutely thrilled with their service. I love having one company that I can work with to handle my customer support, website updates, Infusionsoft work, email broadcasts, fixing technical glitches, graphic design, travel arrangements and even writing content. I work through Mike Olsen and he pulls in lots more resources on the LongerDays team to take care of my site and my business.
I know that if I delegate something to them it will get done in a timely manner and with high quality. Recently I was incredibly impressed by their web team figuring out a bug that my website visitors had with Internet Explorer. This problem had been there for a while and I had tried to get three other people to fix it. LongerDays took the initiative, figured out the problem and fixed it. My customer satisfaction has gone up and my return rate has gone down because of the great quality work that these guys do for me.
I highly recommend LongerDays. It’s great to have a team supporting me in the U.S. with great communication and technical skills. Working with them is like having a team of incredibly talented and highly skilled people at your beck and call.
I have had Tari Follett as my team lead and point person for about 8 months. She has been excellent. She is smart, organized, friendly and extremely professional. I love working with her.
I just read the above review from Dwayne W. and have a completely different experience of Longer Days and Tari Follett. I have been working with Tari as my lead for the last 6 months. I think she is GREAT, very responsive and proactive in taking initiative. (For example, she took the initiative to create a one sheet brochure because she thought it would be beneficial and she was right on.) She totally understands our company which is a start up called the Conscious Leadership Connection http://www.CLConnection.com. We have calls at the beginning of the week where we coordinate on priorities for the week and she delivers. Longer Days is a GREAT value to us. So feel free to contact me if you have any other questions about my experience. mark@CLConnection.com.
Forgot to include a star rating…
I could not disagree more with Dwayne’s comments re: Tari Follett. She was brand new to Longer Days when we started with her and it has been a happy relationship ever since. Tari has stayed late on a Friday night to complete work for us that was time sensitive (even when I asked at the last minute!). We have some complicated billing issues in InfusionSoft and Tari has been able to figure out the best solution for us. Best of all, when I ask her to do something, IT GETS DONE! Period. I think she’s great – with WordPress and website issues, autoresponders, copy — we will be with her a long long time. Thanks, Longer Days!
DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!! I have found LongerDays very non-beneficial and a major waste of time and money. Especially their VA Tari Follett!! Whatever you do, make sure you do not get assigned to her!!! She will promise you things that she can not deliver and will bill you for hours unworked and not communicate with you at all of the “supposed” hours worked! Additionally, don’t provide them with your credit/debit card info because they will bill you whenever they desire without reason or notice! Moreover, after billing you for additional hours unworked, she will send you work that is incorrect and will blatantly show that she literally only spent 20mins on it right before sending it to you! Save your money and go with someone else. Matter of fact, you are probably better off figuring out the problem yourself!!!
Trust me, please don’t waste your money!
I love working with Lou! He’s awesome. Only thing I’d like to see is I wish they would do more webinars or video animation. Other than that, great service!
Overall I’m very satisfied and plan to continue with LongerDays. My work is really complex so I didn’t expect it to go totally smoothly. Indeed there were some glitches, but Joe worked hard and stayed after hours to make it right, which I think speak volumes and was tremendously appreciated.
As a long time client, I feel like the communication and customer service could be better – not that they’re bad, but maybe I’d just like to feel the love like when I was a new client.
The Longer Days team is competent and fast-working. When I’m on a tight deadline they are able to jump right in and get done what’s needed.
I’ll echo the reviewer above: Mike is great and seems to be on top of everything.
I’m a newbie when it comes to outsourcing so I’d like to see a more consultative approach or learn about some best practices from within LongerDays. I’m happy with the results but I can’t help but feeling there would be a better way to leverage all their cumulative experience. Maybe it’s just me.
Mike O. is fantastic. My only suggestion would be to have some backup in place for the occasional time he’s on another line. That, and I’d like to see them add a bookkeeping service because I hate accounting. But for the work they do for me, I’m very pleased. Thanks!
I think the strength of Longer Days is in their flexibility and communication. For me, I was swamped and living abroad, and could really only engage via Skype and email – and it was no problem at all. I was also able to take advantage of their website, which is very self-serve.
The team was super and followed my directions to the ‘T’, I just didn’t have enough work to justify the monthly expense on an ongoing basis. Still, I continue to recommend the service with enthusiasm to anyone who needs the help, and will definitely be back again as the need arises.
My main point of contact at Longer Days is Lou, and I’ve found him to be both pleasant to work with and extremely efficient. I’m looking for opportunities to expand the relationship to support additional business growth and development. One area in particular I could use some help with is marketing. I’d love to get their help in attracting more Facebook fans and using a stronger social media presence to generate more prospects and sales.
The only problem that has come up so far was a blog post that had some strange coding in it. One of my readers notified me about it. Not a huge deal but kind of embarrassing – it would be great to have some checks in place to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m not super-technical so not sure what the cause was and I understand it’s probably impossible to avoid these issues completely.
Overall though I’m extremely pleased with Longer Days and looking forward to continuing to work with them.
I’ve found LongerDays to be an invaluable addition to my team. They respond quickly to my requests and handle tasks with a careful attention to detail. I’m happy to recommend their service to any small business looking for professional and friendly support in the US.
I’m happy with the performance of the LongerDays team. I’m relatively new to the service but so far they’ve done great work and understand instructions without a lot of micromanaging.
Great work so far. All of the bottlenecks and issues have been on our end. We may be the only ones who have experienced this but a more versatile IT infrastructure may help Longerdays interface with larger companies.
So far, I really enjoying working with LongerDays. They are friendly but effective. I like how I can assign a task to my team lead Mike and know I won’t have to worry about it. I’ve found this especially useful for recurring tasks!
I’m very happy with him, but when the work is delegated to his other team members it seems the quality and thoroughness of following instructions suffer a bit.
I have found LongerDays to be not only incredibly professional and attentive, but also possessing a high work standard, work ethic, and all with a good dose of human kindness. They work with you, work for you, and help you get on to the bigger picture thinking. I’ve been pleased with their output, have learned from them, and plan to continue to use their services indefinitely as needed.
Let me say in the most gracious way possible, that LongerDays is saving my ass and I am very appreciative.
We have come to depend on LongerDays as an integral part of our virtual team — they’re a perfect match for our 6-person virtual company. We’ve been working with Longer Days since 2009, and they have been providing vital support on day-to-day tasks as well as on larger projects requiring deeper involvement and multiple skill sets. It’s obvious they really care about customer service. Prejects are delivered quickly with great attention to detail and outsanding communication.
After long deliberation, I decided not to renew my LongerDays services. The decision was not reflective of the quality of services I received, but rather it was indicative of my confidence in LongerDays being able to handle the complexity of current and future requests that I would need done. I was appreciative of their effort level, since it without a doubt helped lay the foundation for what I will do with my business.
If I am looking for a more sustainable solution in the future, LongerDays will be on my short list of places to search.
LongerDays has allowed me to put myself back in my sales role for more hours….which is what I need to be doing to grow the company. I really feel like the LongerDays team is holding together the parts of the business that I need help with. It’s great, I’m thrilled with what they’re accomplishing.
I had a 6 month backlog of work I could not get anyone else to do, and didn’t have time to do myself. In one month LongerDays handled it all in a very professional, timely, detail-oriented, responsive way.