Baltic Assist is a virtual assistant company based in Lithuania. They are a relatively new company, starting operations in the beginning of 2015.
They currently supply services to Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, but are open to serving clients throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
About Baltic Assist
All of the company’s virtual assistants are based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and they are currently the only virtual assistant company in their area. The company is run by Andzej Rynkevic, a former employee at Barclays Bank and their MSc of Innovation and Technology Management.
Baltic Assist provides virtual assistance for entrepreneurs, professionals, and SME’s. If you are in a position where it makes financial sense to start outsourcing tasks, or you are in need of support so you can spend more time on other areas of your business, one of their virtual assistants are waiting to help.
They also specialize in providing financial services using the Cloud Accounting Systems. At just over a year old they are a relative newcomer to the virtual assistant space, the company is steadily growing and expanding their reach to more countries across Europe.
Services
Baltic Assist’s services are grouped into two different categories:
Virtual Assistance – Their VA’s can handle a wide range of day-to-day business tasks, such as administration, customer service, personal assistance, and more.
Full-Service Accounting – They have a team dedicated to handling business accounts. You can outsource your payroll, VAT returns, bookkeeping, payments, and more.
The first point of contact is to email Baltic Assist with an outline of the tasks you want to outsource. Their team will decide what kind of virtual assistance you need and discuss your workload to workout the best price.
When you have been assigned a virtual assistant you can chat with them on the phone or over skype to formally meet. From here on you communicate directly with your virtual assistant sending them all the information they need to complete the tasks and set deadlines.
Plans and Pricing
Baltic Assist has a handful of plans available. The first is for on-demand accounting help, which is billed out at €25 per hour.
On the virtual assistant side, you have a couple options. You can choose the pay-as-you-go model for €15 per hour, or you can sign up for a dedicated VA plan and enjoy some cost savings as well as some continuity in personnel.
The 10 hour per week / 40 hour per month Premium plan costs €480, or €12 per hour.
The full-time 160 hour per month Professional plan costs just €1600, or €10 per hour. Compared to rates for other European virtual assistants, these are quite affordable.
Baltic Assist Alternatives
For EU accounting expertise, Baltic Assist is an affordable and reputable provider. On the VA side of the equation, the rates are significantly lower than their more-established competitors such as Boldly or Time Etc.
Both of those companies are very highly rated for communication and quality of work.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Baltic Assist? If so, please take a moment to leave a review below to help others with their decision.
Ellipsis is a relative newcomer to the virtual assistant space with the company starting operations in January 2016. They are offer virtual writing services, enabling you to hire a personal writer to produce content for your blog or website, write compelling press-releases, or create written content for any other needs.
About Ellipsis
Ellipsis is part of the Miles AG family of companies. (The most notable sister company in the VA space is the well-rated eaHELP.)
The company is headed up by CEO Bryan Miles and COO Shannon Miles, with Ivy Sprague as manager of operations. They are based in Atlanta, US, and employ only native English speakers also based in the US.
Their services are aimed at businesses that already have a marketing plan and strategy in place and need help with their written content. Quality content is at the forefront of Internet marketing, and Ellipsis’ staff can help you spread the word of your business through site content and marketing.
When asked what their areas of specialization were, Ivy explained, “We want to be the voice in your head…only better. We’ll write about anything, from accounting to Internet security.”
The kind of answer you would expect from a company that produces creative content, but paints a clear picture of their services.
Services
The company partners with leaders and communicators to create content that will make a difference to your business. Their writers will help spread the voice of your business to a much wider audience. Writing content is a time-consuming process, hiring a writer from Ellipsis Ink means you can free up some times to focus on other areas of your business.
If you find it hard to express your visions, strategies, or convey your business services in words, Ellipsis can help. Their writers produce blog posts, social media content, lead generation copy, email campaigns, eBooks, and more.
The company are keen to keep the content they provide in your own “voice.” They will call you to discuss your current content strategies, previous writers you may have used, what style of writing you want for your business, and aim to provide you with more than just a quote.
Ellipsis Intro Video
Plans and Pricing
The company prices on a flat-fee per project basis. They encourage month-to-month arrangements to ensure the relationship is working and both parties are happy.
They don’t give ballpark pricing estimates on their site, instead encouraging visitors to speak with a member of their team to get a personalized quote for your content requirements. You’ve probably come to learn, as I have, that that means it ain’t gonna be cheap.
In the video above, Ivy explained that a 500 word blog post could be in the $200 range.
BDHire is a virtual assistant company based in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The company was founded in 2008, and has since been providing virtual assistant services to clients and business owners worldwide.
About BDHire
The company is headed up by Abul Kashem. Being in operation since 2008 makes BDHire one of the longer established companies in the fast-paced virtual assistant space.
Their target customers are social media and web design companies, travel, hotels and real estate businesses, as well as individual entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Looking at their in-house experts available for hire, they have a lot of services aimed at the smaller online entrepreneur. This was confirmed when I asked what their areas of specialization were, BDHire said, “full-time webmasters, link builders, SEO specialists, internet marketing experts, SBI webmasters and WordPress developers.”
Services
A lot of the company’s services are directed helping online business owners with their websites through the use of their virtual assistants. Their core services can be summarized as follows:
Link Building – They have a team of dedicated link builders, submitting articles and website URLs to directories and social bookmarking sites.
Keyword Research – They can find and provide a list of keywords in your chosen niche. As well as preparing a content creation blueprint.
On-Page SEO – They can analyze your existing content and ensure you are optimized for relevant keywords and your content is SEO friendly.
Niche Site Creation – BDHire have a team of experienced niche site builders. They can start a site for you either by choosing a niche or following your guidelines.
WordPress Services – Complete WordPress support, so you can invest your time in other areas of your business and leave the technical support to their experts.
SBI Services – Their experts will build a site from scratch or work on a site you already have. They can also move your site over to WordPress with a “smooth and successful transition.”
Plans and Pricing
Their rates vary per project and expert being hired.
Their minimum hourly rate is $17 per hour to give you a good idea of how much you will be paying and how they compare to other virtual assistant companies. BDHire representatives are happy to discuss each project’s individual needs and give you a more accurate quote.
In addition to rates that are 2-3x higher than their geographic neighbors, they also charge a one-time $250 set up fee, which is actually pretty uncommon in the industry.
BDHire Alternatives
What sets BDHire apart from general VA companies is their expertise in SEO, WordPress and niche sites. If you’re looking for support in these areas I would discuss you needs with them and get a quote.
If your needs are more varied or don’t require that type of specialization, you can probably save money by checking out competitors like My Tasker or VA Talks.
Your Turn
Have you worked with BDhire? If so, please leave a review below and share your experiences as it helps others with their decision.
Brickwork India is probably the most famous of all virtual assistant companies. Brickwork India was featured prominently and favorably in two bestselling books: Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, and Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week.
Started as a 5 member start-up in 2005, Brickwork India today is 350 strong and caters to over 20,000 clients across 116 countries. They are India’s first ISO 27001: 2013 certified Virtual Assistance company.
About Brickwork
The company is based in Bangalore, India, which has become a true technology hotbed – India’s Silicon Valley. From their modern facilities in Bangalore, Brickwork India has attracted customers ranging in size from busy sole proprietors to Fortune 500 companies.
Services
Brickwork India virtual assistants are diligent and focused professionals who can accomplish a wide variety of tasks, including everything from basic administrative work, to human resources, database management, and even social media marketing campaigns.
Because of India’s deep talent pool of educated workers, you can get well-qualified help that knows how to get the job done with little additional training.
The service menu consists of 3 main areas of service:
Admin Services: Here a team of executive assistants specialized in business support, accounting & taxation takes care of all your day-to-day routine back-office work, sales & marketing support, web based support, HR support, office management support, report generation, social media support, secretarial help, accounting and bookkeeping services, etc.
Knowledge Services: The team consists of highly qualified & experienced business analysts who are qualified MBA’s, CPA’s and Engineers, specializing in providing insights and solutions to clients through business research, investment research, procurement and sourcing services.
Technical Services: This team is populated with professionally qualified software engineers and graphic designers with expertise in a wide range of technologies offering technology assistance ranging from simple technical support to creative web and graphic designs, web applications, desktop and database applications, Ecommerce solutions, CRM & ERP solutions and Mobile apps.
Sponsored Link:
Brickwork India Intro Video
Plans and Pricing
Beyond the category of services needed, you also have the flexibility to choose from several engagement options:
subscription-based
retainer model
project-based
a la carte hourly
Subscription rates start around $15/hour, with dedicated assistant plans at the 40, 80, and 160 hour per month levels.
Rates improve with the more hours you buy. The time you buy does not rollover if you don’t end up keeping your virtual assistant busy, so it might be best to start at a lower amount.
For project-based tasks, Brickwork India will provide a bid specific to your tasks so you can compare with other options.
Brickwork India Alternatives
Make no mistake; their rates are higher than other virtual assistant companies in India. In fact, their hourly rates are higher than you might expect to pay for a local US high school or college-aged intern.
The difference is you get the well-known “brand name” of Brickwork, along with their infrastructure and security, and you don’t have to worry about additional payroll tax and employment filing requirements.
For a couple lower-priced alternatives in India, check out MyTasker or VMG BPO.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Brickwork? I encourage anyone who has used their services to rate and review their experience below.
Where’s the best place to hire a rockstar freelance virtual assistant?
Two of the largest platforms for online workers are Upwork and FreeeUp. Both of these sites have a deep talent pool and your diamond-in-the-rough virtual assistant is probably out there somewhere — it’s just a matter of finding them, or them finding you.
Note: This article focuses on the employer’s perspective. If you’re a freelancer looking for work, the information below will give you some insight into the hiring process, fees, and protections on each of the platforms, but doesn’t speak to how difficult securing work is or the types of clients you might encounter on either Upwork or FreeeUp.
Fordisclosure, links to FreeeUp are affiliate links.
Intro to Upwork and FreeeUp
While the two platforms share some similarities, there are a few key differences you should know about.
Upwork is the love child of Elance and oDesk, two Silicon Valley startups that helped pioneer the virtual freelance marketplace model, starting back in the late 1990s.
When these one-time competitors combined forces in 2015, they rebranded as “Upwork” and created the world’s largest freelance marketplace, with more than 12 million registered freelancers.
FreeeUp is the newcomer, the upstart rookie in this fight. They burst onto the scene in 2015, and have grown quickly to become a leading contender when it comes to hiring freelancers.
What started as a site almost exclusively for e-commerce support (that’s where the extra “e” in the name comes from), FreeeUp has expanded into a broad range of available skills and only lets in the “top 1%” of freelancers who apply.
On both sites, you might be surprised at the breadth of skills and workers available for hire. If the role you’ve envisioned for your virtual assistant can be done remotely, you can find someone to do it on Upwork.
The site has several broad-strokes categories of remote work, including design and creative work, programming and development work, administrative support, marketing and sales work, and more. And of course beneath each of those are dozens of highly specialized areas of expertise.
For example, here are some of the skills listed under Sales and Marketing:
Once you click on any one of those skills, you’ll be presented with a pretty-looking grid of freelancers in that category. For example, when I click on SEO Specialists, this is what I see next:
These little profile previews will show you how many hours the freelancer has completed on Upwork, their hourly rate, where they’re located in the world, and an indicator of how well they’ve performed for past clients.
Once you create a free Upwork account, you can contact these professionals directly, or post your own job to see what kind of bids you get back.
Similarly, FreeeUp divides its workers into several high-level categories, with more specific skills under each of those.
For instance, you’ll find categories like:
Business Operations
eCommerce
Digital Marketing
Web Development
Under Digital Marketing, the unique subject matter areas of expertise are shown:
When you click on one of those skills, like SEO & Adwords Expert, for example, you’re taken to this page which invites you to create a free account, submit a worker request, and “get introduced to a [qualified] freelancer within hours.”
Unlike Upwork, FreeeUp doesn’t show you the names, faces, or rates of their workers before you sign-up, and you can’t reach out to freelancers directly to invite them to your project.
Both platforms have a number of “safeguards” in place to protect both workers and employers. In this section I’ll walk through those and why they’re important.
Ratings System
The hallmark of many peer-to-peer platforms is a two-sided rating system, in which buyers rate sellers and sellers rate buyers — popularized by ebay in the mid-90s.
Upwork has been building its rating system for more than a decade, and you can see the feedback each worker has received from past clients.
Because workers tend to be hired for shorter-term projects, there is a lot of client turnover, which amounts to plenty of opportunity to collect positive (or negative) feedback.
One thing to be aware of, beyond the cumulative 5-star score, is the number of jobs completed with no feedback given. Many employers (myself included sometimes) subscribe to your mom’s old adage of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
(A $66 job still “in progress” from 2012 probably isn’t a good sign either.)
Upwork also shows you the “job success rate” of each freelancer, which measures the percentage of gigs they’ve done resulting in “a great client experience.” Naturally, the higher the percentage, the better.
Although I had a successful project with the developer shown, a 59% job success rate is pretty poor and I’d be hesitant to hire someone with that kind of track record.
On each freelancer’s profile page, you’ll also find a summary of their work history on the platform, which is meant to give you an indication of the “safety in numbers” of how many other people have hired them and how experienced they are.
In contrast, here’s an example of an excellent profile page. Her “in progress” jobs are hourly and have hundreds or thousands of hours completed, and she has a 99% job success rate:
Take all these metrics with a grain of salt. They’re here to help you with your hiring decision, but past performance is no guarantee of future results and every job is different. I’ve found great workers with almost no feedback or work history, and had horribly painful projects with contractors with glowing reviews.
On Upwork, freelancers also have the opportunity to review you, the employer. These metrics aren’t visible to you in aggregate, but you can view your client feedback on each contract.
When you post new jobs, potential candidates can see some of your employer metrics. For example, before people bid on your job or project, they’ll be able to see what previous hires said about you as well as how much money you’ve spent on the platform and the percentage of job postings you’ve made that have resulted in a hire.
These are designed to protect the freelancers; if you only hire for 1 out of every 5 job postings you make, it might not be worth their time to submit an application since your performance on the platform makes it look like you’re not that serious.
On the flip-side, if you’ve spent thousands of dollars on Upwork and each posting results in a hire, you’re a very attractive employer to apply with.
On FreeeUp, worker ratings and profiles are strangely non-existent.
Workers introduce themselves via an email cover letter, and they’re free to link to a portfolio or website of their own creation, but there’s no standard profile page on FreeeUp they can point to.
And unless workers have specifically collected testimonials and feedback from past clients (and included those in their self-created portfolio/website), there’s no rating system at all.
Where to see your applicants in one place? I found this under the “Ticket” tab in my account:
Here’s where the level of trust in FreeeUp’s “top 1%” pre-screening really comes into play. It’s like they’re saying, “Look, we’ve already done the vetting for you. Why are you stressing about it?”
They’re trying to make the process as seamless as possible by limiting the amount of information going into your decision, but part of me wanted a little more insight into who these people are!
Pro Tip: For quick, one-off, inexpensive projects, it probably isn’t a huge deal, but if you’re hiring for a long-term position on either platform, ask for references and actually call them.
Pre-Screening
Upwork historically has been a mostly open platform, allowing just about anyone to create a profile and begin bidding on work. Recently though, they’ve begun throttling that growth, at least in certain crowded categories, turning away freelancers where they already have enough supply.
Meanwhile, FreeeUp claims to only let the top 1% of applicants into their system. How does that work in practice?
Turns out, there is some science behind it, or at least a consistent process. They put every candidate through a 4-part interview process that was developed in part by founder and CEO Nathan Hirsch while hiring freelancers to help with his own booming e-commerce operation.
Step 1: Application
The first step is for workers to apply on FreeeUp.com. (Want to apply? Mention me, Nick Loper, to expedite your application.)
Workers submit a resume, portfolio, answer a few questions, and share some logistics information like their Internet speed and typing speed.
After that, the FreeeUp worker onboarding team makes a decision based off of strict marketplace standards if they will be given a skills interview.
Step 2: Skills Interview
The first FreeeUp interview (conducted over phone or Skype) is a skills interview. Candidates are expected to answer specific questions about their expertise and participate in role-playing scenarios to see how advanced their knowledge is.
Only those who can showcase “absolute expertise” make it through to the second segment of the interview.
Step 3: Attitude Interview
In this phase, workers are asked about how they solve problems, work with clients, and uphold strong communication.
I think this is an often over-looked segment of the hiring process, because I’ve seen firsthand how the most technically-proficient person isn’t always the best team member.
Step 4: FreeeUp Communication Guidelines
The fourth step is for the candidate to review and accept the FreeeUp Marketplace Guidelines and terms. In this 15-page rulebook is all the fine print about time off, emergencies, daily updates, using software, and communicating with clients.
Freelancer Tests and Self-Ratings
On FreeeUp, really on the tests on the front-end of the application process are the Internet Speed test and the typing speed test — not necessarily relevant to the skills you’re hiring for.
(Of course the “real” test is how well they can make their email cover letter stand out from the crowd.)
In contrast, Upwork gives workers a chance to beef up their profile by taking certain skills tests. For instance, here are the test scores of Marjorie, who we met above:
If you click on the Details link, it will show what specific subcategories were included on the test and how they performed on each of those.
As someone who was “an A-student” and a good test-taker in school, these tests and their results appeal to me as an employer, even though I know in real life I didn’t always make the best employee.
On Upwork, I might use these tests as a “tiebreaker” between two equally talented candidates, but wouldn’t necessarily rule someone out on the basis of their test result or their lack of taking the test in the first place.
Like some of the other metrics mentioned, it’s almost more of an indicator of how much effort they’re putting toward their online job search. Upwork gives them this extra opportunity to showcase their skills so it’s only natural the “hungriest” candidates will use that to their advantage.
Work Monitoring
Upwork provides a “Big Brother” work monitoring solution in the form of a screen capture software tool. They call this Work Diary, which takes screenshots of your virtual assistant’s screen at roughly 10 minute intervals while they’re on the clock.
On FreeeUp, workers are simply asked to “Punch In” to the system and “Punch Out” when they’re done with the project or done for the day. They’ll also be able to add notes of what they accomplished during that time, and Freeeup automatically bills clients the agreed-upon hourly rate each week.
You don’t get the “over the shoulder” screen view that you do with Upwork unless you ask your assistant to install another monitoring software like TimeProof from OnlineJobs.
In practice, you probably have better things to do than pore over these screenshots every day or every week, but they’re nice to have if you notice a dip in productivity or if things are just taking longer than you think they should.
Escrow Payments
Upwork offers escrow payments as a way to protect both you and the virtual assistant in the deal. For fixed-price projects, you’ll deposit the funds into an escrow account controlled by Upwork, and release payment to your freelancer when certain milestones are completed.
This shows the freelancer you’re serious about putting up the money and paying them, while still giving you some protection if they flake and don’t deliver the goods.
With FreeeUp, there’s no escrow payment option, but you’re paying hourly and on a weekly basis so there’s less risk for both parties.
Dispute Resolution
One advantage of Upwork is their dispute resolution service. With FreeeUp, they say they help resolve disputes and payment conflicts between workers and employers but don’t really detail what that process looks like.
However, on Upwork, if you and your freelancer can’t come to terms on a particular project or you think they may be fudging their hours, you can file a dispute through the Upwork platform.
A mediator will review both sides of the story and potentially help you get some of your money back or stop payment altogether. One thing to note though is the mediator isn’t necessarily going to be a judge of the quality of the work, especially for hourly jobs. Instead, they’ll look at the Work Diary logs and make a decision accordingly.
FreeeUp Replacement Guarantee
One advantage of FreeeUp is their worker replacement program. If your assistant quits, moves on, or just isn’t a great fit, they’ll quickly find you a new qualified VA from their bench — at no charge.
Of course you have any specific processes they need to be trained on, that’ll be on you, but at least you’re not back starting at square one.
What Happens After You Hire?
When you hire a virtual assistant through Upwork or FreeeUp, you pay them through the respective platforms, and the companies take a cut for facilitating the connection. See below for more information on pricing.
For project-based work on Upwork, it’s standard to pre-pay a portion of the total project into an escrow account. With FreeeUp, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, you’ll get an invoice (and be automatically billed) each week for the hours your VA has worked.
My Interview with FreeeUp Founder Nathan Hirsch
Advantages of Upwork
Wide global talent pool, and more control over the recruiting/screening process.
Robust freelancer profiles and ratings.
No upfront costs.
Best for one-off projects or super-specialized support.
Advantages of FreeeUp
Pre-screened workers — the “top 1%”.
Quick and easy to hire.
No upfront costs. (Other companies charge $500 to present you w/ a handful of “pre-screened VA candidates.)
Better for ongoing hires or e-commerce work.
Pricing Comparison
Both sites represent huge talent pools, and earn money by playing matchmaker by taking a fee on every payment processed through their system.
Upwork makes the bulk of its money by charging a fee on every project completed on its site. This fee ranges from 5-20%, depending on how much work (in dollars) a particular freelancer has done for you. This fee is baked into the price you pay, but comes out of your virtual assistant’s pocket.
Theoretically, they pass that cost on to you, the employee.
For instance, if you sign on for a $1000 engagement, the first $500 will have a 20% Upwork platform fee, netting the freelancer $400, and the next $500 will carry a 10% platform fee, leaving them with $450. In total, they’d earn $850 and Upwork would earn $150.
This graduated pricing structure makes sense, as it rewards Upwork early on in the relationship for making the connection, and rewards the freelancer with lower rates for continuing to run work through the platform (vs. “going rogue” and taking the relationship offline).
On top of your $1000 payment, Upwork will charge you 2.75% as a payment processing fee.
FreeeUp works similarly, taking a flat 15% fee (or a minimum of $2) on every hour worked. That means if you hire a worker at $20 an hour, they’re really pocketing $17.
Although this fee is somewhat invisible on the client side, it’s theoretically getting passed on to you in the quoted hourly rate from your freelancer.
If you really have a long-term hire in mind AND don’t mind doing more of the upfront screening/legwork, you’ll save money on a platform like OnlineJobs.ph (the largest job board in the Philippines).
They charge a $49/mo fee to post jobs and communicate with candidates, which you can cancel once you’ve made your hire, and after that you just pay them directly with no one else taking a percentage.
My Experience w/ Upwork
My most successful Upwork project hire was actually for the late-2012 redesign of this site. If you go to the Wayback Machine and check out the old version you’ll get an appreciation for how big an improvement it was.
The developer was awesome – super responsive on Skype, hammered out the changes really fast for what I thought was a very good price.
I re-hired him later for another small project, which was also very well done, but when I needed something else done a few months after that, I couldn’t find him. He’d disappeared. Poof.
I’ve also used Upwork for some low-cost web research, which was OK, but nothing like mind-blowingly amazing or anything.
For ongoing work, some of my best hires have come from Upwork (actually back when it was Elance). Even though it’s primarily a project-based platform, I found a couple long-term hires that worked out really well for almost full-time employment, including one virtual assistant I ended up working with for more than 2 years.
On the flip-side, I’ve also been burned for north of $10,000 on this platform for web development projects that never got fully completed. It was an incredibly painful, stressful, and expensive experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
In the first case, the dispute resolution safeguards didn’t apply because I foolishly agreed to work with the developer “off-platform.” In the second case, we agreed to end the contract after a few of the milestones were met (albeit not on time) but technical incompetence prevented the development company from finishing the job. It sucked.
Note: To check out what other users have to say, check out the other reviews here.
My Experience w/ FreeeUp
After reading the positive feedback on FreeeUp and starting to see the platform gain some traction on this site, I decided I better give it a shot myself.
If you’ve attempted to hire on any other platform that doesn’t pre-screen candidates, you have an immediate appreciation for the potential time-savings of FreeeUp’s “top 1%” promise.
One of my biggest hangups right out of the gate with FreeeUp is you’ll notice (at press time at least) it’s a very minimum-viable-product-style interface. Though comparing it with the robustness of Upwork is perhaps a little unfair since the two platforms have different aims — and Upwork has at least a 15-year head start.
Still, I was somewhat frustrated by the lack of worker profiles and feedback on the site, to the point I asked Nathan about it. His response was that they want to build a 5-star platform. If someone sucks, they get kicked off, he said.
To find out how the system worked and if FreeeUp could deliver on the promise of pre-vetted 5-star workers, I posted 3 jobs — roles I was actually looking to hire for — to see what came back.
The first was for a writing position and this was the one that generated the most matches. The hourly rates ranged from $18-30 an hour, which I thought was fair, but a couple of the cover letters stood out with the most relevant experience and writing style.
I hired the guy that looked like the best fit and gave him a couple articles to tackle. I provided him with:
the proposed title
a rough outline of where I wanted him to go
a target word count
The articles came back both totally passable, but my control-freakness got the best of me and I heavily edited the second one. I should know better after dozens of attempts to outsource writing over the years that I have a hard time signing my name to something that’s clearly not in my voice.
In the end, the content was just fine, I edited, formatted, and added images to make them look nice for the blog. Because of FreeeUp’s hourly billing, they ended up costing around $60-70 each, which I thought was fair for articles in the 1500-2000 word range. It would be a great value if you’re not as picky as me!
I’ll probably use the guy again for similar projects in the future.
The next job posting was a dud. I was looking for someone with experience in creating awesome looking graphics specifically for Pinterest. I got only a couple applications, both with pretty weak cover letters, and no Pinterest-specific examples in the portfolio.
I’m sure they were talented graphic designers yes, but I didn’t feel like taking a chance on somebody who’d never done the exact thing I was looking for before. Hourly rates for that one were $12-19/hour.
The 3rd job was maybe the most interesting. I was looking for a dedicated Pinterest marketing specialist and actually got a couple really well-qualified candidates right away. I had a call with one and she was speaking my language, all up until I asked for an estimate or quote to manage my account on a monthly retainer basis.
She couldn’t tell me, and instead pointed to the quoted rate of $35/hr inside of FreeeUp. I was like OK, so how many hours do you think it would take? And she wouldn’t say, so we kind of just awkwardly left it there.
The other quote actually was for a monthly retainer, but it was $470 a month, which was over my budget.
In the end, there does appear to be a method to the 1% pre-vetting claim, as only one of the candidates was an immediate no-go in my book (a writer with 2 typos in the first line of her cover letter … oops!).
Compared to the percentage of candidates that immediately get round-filed on OnlineJobs for example, FreeeUp did a great job of weeding those out.
The other thing to note is that I found the rates generally a little higher than other platforms, which probably makes sense because if the people really are the top 1%, they probably expect to earn more too.
Note: To check out what other users have to say, check out the other reviews here.
Which Should You Choose?
For project work where you need a specific niche skill or a wider talent pool, probably Upwork.
For faster hires for smaller projects or ongoing work, or something specific to e-commerce probably FreeeUp.
Your Turn
What do you think? When hiring virtual assistants, do you prefer to work through Upwork or FreeeUp? Or another platform entirely?
Neyox is a virtual assistant company based in New Delhi, India. The company was founded in 2010, and have since matched up thousands of customers across the globe with virtual assistants to help with their businesses.
About Neyox
The company is headed-up and run by Neeraj Parnami. They have a team of virtual assistants all based in New Delhi. They operate with a project manager supervising projects, so you have a point of contact above the virtual assistant if necessary.
Neyox list their target customers as, IT and ITES companies, law firms, doctors, accounting firms, web design and social media companies, real estate companies, and travel companies. If you don’t fall into any of those categories, don’t let that put you off contacting them.
There is often a good deal of negotiating space with virtual assistant companies, and only after explaining your business and your own requirements can you gauge how well-matched the relationship is going to be.
Neyox has a number of guiding principles. One that stood out to me was, “At Neyox, customer satisfaction is essential to our success. We always first understand the customer’s requirement and deliver it flawlessly to achieve complete customer.”
It’s always reassuring to hear companies saying all the right things.
Neyox Intro Video
Services
In-line with most virtual assistant companies, Neyox covers a wide range of tasks that their virtual assistants are capable of taking on. They list IT and software consulting as their area of specialization, but have a long list of skills on their website, including:
administration
writing
marketing
online research
graphic design
social media
mobile app development
and much more.
Their virtual assistants are available from 20 hours a month upwards. There are no additional fees, just a flat rate per pricing plan. Each task you submit is overseen by a line manager, and you will have updates reported back to you.
To get the most out of the relationship with a virtual assistant company you need to be as detailed as possible with your requirements. Communication is key to the mutual success of you as the customer, and the company.
Plans and Pricing
Neyox has four different price plans.
They start with a Trial Pack, which costs $240 for 20 hours of virtual assistant time in the month. This works out at $12 per hr, with no extra fees added on.
Their Economy Plan works out at $10 per/hr with an upfront cost of $400 for 40 hours.
Their Standard Plan is $9 per/hr with a cost of $720 for 80 hours, and finally they offer an Executive Plan at a total cost of $1280 per/mth. This give you 160 hours of virtual assistant time at $8 per/hr.
Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAANEYOX for 10% off your first month!
It should be noted that their Trial Pack allows you to get started for just $240 and does not come with any contract commitment. However, the Economy and Standard Plans come with a two month contact, and their Executive Plan requires a three month commitment.
My suggestion would be to reach out to two or three companies on your short list and see how you like your interactions with them. Will they let you interview your prospective assistant(s) in advance? Do they have someone on their team who can handle your specific needs?
Your Turn
Have you worked with Neyox.com? If so, please leave a review below for the benefit of others making a decision.
Outsourced.ph is an Australian based virtual assistant company with employees in both Australia and the Philippines. The company was founded by Mike Larcher, who has over 15 years’ experience in the digital space and also runs an award winning digital agency in Australia.
The company was founded in May 2012 to serve a core client base of small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs. They specialize in providing high quality technical virtual assistants to assist businesses with outsourcing tasks.
About Outsourced.ph
The Outsourced head office is in Sydney, Australia. They specialise in providing offshore virtual assistants based in the Philippines to businesses all over the globe. The company has a quality assurance directive, stating:
“We are dedicated to delivering quality assurance and are committed to providing staff of the highest standards, all backed by our award winning management in Australia with over 16 years technical staffing experience.”
The company recruit their virtual assistants in the Philippines to supply skilled staff at the lowest possible cost to the client. Allowing busy business owners to outsource time consuming tasks at an affordable rate, freeing up their time to work on growing their business or other areas.
Outsourced.ph: How it Works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KyCQb0OOOc
Services
The company provides virtual assistants who are trained across a wide range of job roles, but as you might infer from their logo, they specialize in technical roles like web developers, QA testers, and IT support.
You can choose a virtual assistant based on their skill set to meet your requirements. They also have accountants, telemarketers, customer service reps, graphic designers, and many more roles.
This narrows down the selection for you. It’s then down to you to communicate your exact requirements and see how their virtual assistants match-up.
Plans and Pricing
Outsourced price their service with an hourly rate per position of the virtual assistant.
The least expensive option for example is a Customer Service Assistant which will cost you $8 per/hr. While a Mid Developer is $14 per/hr, or a Senior Developer is $22 per/hr.
Outsourced state on their website that their pricing is only a guide, there is some room for negotiation based on your own unique requirements and the skillset of their assistants. If you want to secure the best possible price, have all of your requirements clearly laid out and be prepared to discuss this with a customer service rep.
Understand that as a recruiting agency, Outsourced.ph is making a markup on these salaries (just as any 3rd party VA company would).
If you prefer the do-it-yourself route, you may be able to find similarly skilled staff through a jobs board like OnlineJobs.ph and save quite a bit on your hourly rate by hiring directly.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Outsourced.ph? If so, please be sure to share a brief review of your experience below to help others with their decision.
Alfred (HelloAlfred.com) is a shared neighborhood real-life butler service. Members have a personal butler who visits their home each week to carry out chores as directed. The company gets its name from Batman’s personal butler!
The company was formed in 2013, and at the time of writing this, the service is available in New York and Boston, and coming soon to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Austin.
(I’m in the San Francisco suburbs and got a “coming soon” message when I tried to sign-up.)
About Alfred
The company assigns a staff member, known as an ‘Alfred’ to each client that signs up to their service. Their Alfred then carries out everyday chores from both a preassigned list, and any spontaneous requests.
The company is best described as a “shared neighborhood butler service.” Chores can include picking up your groceries, putting them away in your kitchen, taking out the trash, doing your laundry, and so on.
The company’s objective is to take care of those many small but time consuming tasks, freeing up more of your time to spend with your family, work on your business, or do with as you wish. Alfred has recently secured a large amount of capital through Series A Funding and are looking to “step on the gas” as CEO Marcela Sapone stated, so expect the company to expand into more cities.
Hello Alfred Press Video
Services
The service is broken down into two plans. You can either have your Alfred visit your home once or twice a week. They do a tidy up of your home and take care of your errands as directed.
The core services they carry out include:
Picking up and dropping off groceries
Taking care of your laundry
Cleaning your home
Tailoring
Posting out mail and packages
Pharmacy collections
Special requests
The limit to what an Alfred can do for you is almost endless (within reason of course). The rule of thumb that you shouldn’t expect your Alfred to do anything you wouldn’t be doing without their help.
Plans and Pricing
There are two different plans.
Alfred Basic, which costs $32 per/wk. With this plan your Alfred visits your home once a week to tidy up and carry out some basic chores. You can also use them to carry out other chores by submitting the request.
The other plan is the Alfred Service, which costs $59 per/wk. For this you get two visits a week instead of one.
If you are using your Alfred to pick up your groceries the company works in partnership with large retail stores like Whole Foods, CVS and Walgreens. They don’t mark up the price of any items or charge a service fee.
Additional services do of course come with a fee. For example, cleaning services range from $65 for a one bedroom apartment to $105 for a four bedroom home. The prices for individual items being washed and dry cleaned, tailoring and other bespoke tasks are all listed on their website.
The subscription fee is charged every four weeks. You are also billed for any goods or services you have received weekly. They provide all the receipts along with the invoice, so you know exactly what you are being charged for.
Alfred Alternatives
Hello Alfred seems to be a combination of on-demand services like TaskRabbit, Instacart, Handy, and others, though squarely aimed at busy urban working professionals for the very specific functions listed above. If keeping your fridge stocked and your home tidy is a constant challenge, Alfred may be worth checking out as they expand across the country.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Alfred? Please be sure to leave a review of your experience below to help others with their decision.
The company was founded in 2010 and is headed up by CEO Taso Du Val. Toptal has been expanding their network of talented designers and software engineers based all over the globe.
About Toptal
Toptal was started by co-founders Taso Du Val and Breanden Beneschott, two engineers with a wealth of experience in the online engineering world, as well as with company start-ups and consulting. They recognised it was difficult for talented engineers around the globe to connect with large companies and entrepreneurs in need of specific skillsets, and set up Toptal as a solution.
The New York-based company was formed in 2010 and boast a client roster with brands like Airbnb, Gucci, Ideo, Zendesk, J.P. Morgan, and more. They hire engineers and developers from all over the globe, putting them through a rigorous five step screening process.
Their screening process is one of the most detailed I have seen.
Applicants need to pass language and personality tests, an in-depth skill review, live screening, test projects, and are then monitored for continued excellence. Toptal states that only 3% of all applicants make it through to their team. (The company’s name is short for Top Talent.)
Toptal Press Video
Services
If you don’t have engineering or design skills yourself or within your own team, Toptal can provide you with a freelancer on an hourly, part-time, or even a full-time basis. You liaise directly with the freelancer as you would any member of your team.
The skillsets of their freelancers fall into four general categories:
Using the Toptal platform is simple and quick to use. There are just three basic steps to go through:
Tell them what type of technical support you need.
They will find you the perfect freelancer to match your needs.
The freelancer becomes part of your team and you can start working together.
Plans and Pricing
Toptal’s pricing reflects their stringent screening process and highly skilled freelancers. Their pricing is outlined as follows:
$1,800 – $3,200+/week per full-time Front-End or Back-End Engineer
$1,000 – $1,600+/week per part-time Front-End or Back-End Engineer
$1,800 – $3,200+/week per full-time Digital Designer
$1,000 – $1,600+/week per part-time Digital Designer
$1,200 – $1,800+/week per full-time Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer
$600 – $1,000+/week per part-time Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer
They are keen to point out that there is a lot of flexibility, so don’t take these prices as set in stone. Contact Toptal directly and discuss your requirements for more accurate quote.
The platform is designed so that you can hire pre-qualified help quickly and move ahead with your projects, without long, drawn-out candidate searches or hassles with finding the right freelancer.
Their invoicing plan is twice monthly with Net 10 terms, so you have time to review the invoice and the charges before paying. Each hire is eligible for a 2-week probationary period and TopTal is so confident you’ll love your match that if you don’t, you don’t pay.
As far as minimum hours and project commitments go, you’re looking at a 2-hour per week minimum, which shouldn’t be too hard to hit. Toptal does have a $5000 minimum project budget to take on new clients, which helps filter their workload to companies that are serious about hiring the best.
Toptal Alternatives
For project-based technical help, I usually turn to Upwork, though lately have found it to be a bit of a crapshoot in terms of the quality of applications you get back on your posts. I will say this though: the bids you receive will likely be much lower than Toptal’s quoted price structure.
I also recently ran a project through Codeable, which specializes in WordPress development support.
The company is headed up by Rob O’Byrne. All of their VAs are based in the Philippines, and they have been in business since February 2012.
About Virtual Done Well
The company is fully owned and managed by Filipino entrepreneurs. All of their virtual assistants are based in the Philippines and work out of their company offices in Davao to maintain a cohesive company culture and quality of work.
The company directive at Virtual Done Well is to form long lasting relationships with their clients by matching up full-time dedicated virtual assistants.
Their website states they work with Australian businesses and, ‘carefully selected ‘external’ clients’. So the Australian market is clearly their area of specialization, but they work with clients all over the world.
It makes sense since Australia and the Philippines are in similar time zones so it can make communication and work scheduling a little easier.
Services
Virtual Done Well offers a wide range of professional business services including;
Internet Marketing
Virtual Assistance
Web Development
Bookkeeping
Social Media Marketing
These are just the titles of the packages they offer. Within these titles they provide a long list of the services you would expect from the job titles.
As with any virtual assistant provider, the more questions you ask and the more specific you are with your requirements, the better the understanding you will get about how well they can match you with an assistant.
The company always aims to match clients with the most suitable virtual assistant, creating a “win-win situation,” as they call it.
Virtual Done Well Intro Video: Why Outsource?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWltVfIhUNg
Plans and Pricing
Virtual Done Well have several plans to choose from, all of which are monthly plans for a full-time virtual assistant. Their prices are in Australian dollars, but I will give you the approximate American equivalent at the current exchange rate.
Internet marketing virtual assistant – starts at $750 AUD ($545 USD)
General virtual assistant starts at $997 AUD ($725 USD)
Web development virtual assistant starts at $500 AUD ($360 USD)
Bookkeeping virtual assistant starts at $1,500 AUD ($1,090 USD)
Social media marketing virtual assistant – price upon request.
With a general virtual assistant working out at around $4.50/hr this is within the industry norm for a Filipino virtual assistant.
The plans on their site don’t seem to offer the flexibility to pay for less than a full-time VA. Something to think about before committing to a plan.
Virtual Done Well Alternatives
With no shortage of virtual assistant companies based in the Philippines there are a number of alternatives. For office-based staff, I’d take a look at Carve or VA Staffer.
If you’re comfortable with a home-based worker and doing the recruiting and screening yourself, OnlineJobs.ph is the place to go. And finally, if you want a hybrid of the two, with some upfront recruiting help but the ongoing cost-savings of a solo virtual employee, check out Zen Virtual Assistants Finder.
Your Turn
If you have worked with Virtual Done Well please leave a review below to help others with their decision.
All of the company’s virtual assistants are based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and they are currently the only virtual assistant company in their area. The company is run by Andzej Rynkevic, a former employee at Barclays Bank and their MSc of Innovation and Technology Management.
The company is headed up by Abul Kashem. Being in operation since 2008 makes BDHire one of the longer established companies in the fast-paced virtual assistant space.
The company is based in Bangalore, India, which has become a true technology hotbed – India’s Silicon Valley. From their modern facilities in Bangalore, Brickwork India has attracted customers ranging in size from busy sole proprietors to Fortune 500 companies.
The company is headed-up and run by Neeraj Parnami. They have a team of virtual assistants all based in New Delhi. They operate with a project manager supervising projects, so you have a point of contact above the virtual assistant if necessary.
The Outsourced head office is in Sydney, Australia. They specialise in providing offshore virtual assistants based in the Philippines to businesses all over the globe. The company has a quality assurance directive, stating:
The company assigns a staff member, known as an ‘Alfred’ to each client that signs up to their service. Their Alfred then carries out everyday chores from both a preassigned list, and any spontaneous requests.
The company is fully owned and managed by Filipino entrepreneurs. All of their virtual assistants are based in the Philippines and work out of their company offices in Davao to maintain a cohesive company culture and quality of work.
