AssistU

AssistU (AssistU.com) is a virtual assistant training and certification service, that also allows prospective would-be employers to tap into their database of pre-qualified VAs. The company was founded way back in 1997 by Anastacia Brice, back when the term “virtual assistant” barely existed.

AssistU focuses on the provider side of the business, rather than the client side. You’ll notice most of the offerings are aimed toward current and prospective virtual assistants.

Services

There are 2 primary levels of service: a self study program and an intensive 16-week Virtual Mentoring Program. Both of these culminate in a 3-day pass/fail final exam, with the VAs who pass earning the title of Certified Professional Virtual Assistant.

From the client side, the benefit of hiring through AssistU means getting paired up with someone you know takes their business seriously enough to invest in the training and certification. Their preparation in their own business readiness makes them all the more qualified to handle your business tasks.

The primary customers for AssistU are coaches, consultants, realtors, info-marketers, and other professionals and solopreneurs.

How it Works

AssistU offers two options for customers looking to hire a virtual assistant. The first option is the free DIY method, in which you fill out a detailed questionnaire of the kind of service you’re looking for, your delegation experience, and more.

You can filter by time zone, certifications, desired hours per month (it would be very rare to request more than 30 hours a month), and even computer platform. Virtual assistants who meet your criteria respond directly to you and you hire and pay them directly. AssistU has no involvement and doesn’t do any payment processing on an ongoing basis.

The second option is Registry Gold. In this option, you work one-on-one with Anastacia and she plays virtual matchmaker for you. The cost for this service is a one-time $750 fee.

If you’re looking for a long term VA, as most AssistU clients are, the recruiting cost is somewhat negligible.

Plans and Pricing

Although AssistU has VAs from all over the world — and there are more than 300 in their database at the moment — the majority hail from the US and Canada. Naturally, that means the rates are higher than you’ll find overseas, through a freelance platform, or even than through many of the US-based VA companies.

On the low end, you might expect to pay $35/hr, with $50 an hour being closer to average. For senior virtual assistants or those with super-specialized skill-sets, you might be looking at north of $100/hr.

All AssistU VAs are bound by a code of ethics agreement and can have their certification revoked if they’re found to be in violation.

AssistU Alternatives?

The virtual assistant candidates you find elsewhere will probably not have the extensive training and certification as those found through AssistU, but that may not matter to you in your business.

If you’re looking to hire a VA in North America but are looking for a little more management oversight, I would consider eaHELP or Longer Days.

For a slightly lower price point to start, you might check out Zirtual or even post your job to Elance. I’m always surprised by affordability of the bids I get back on that platform from candidates in the US and Canada.

Your Turn

Have you hired a VA from AssistU? Please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Outbounders

Posted by Mica Harvey / Virtual Receptionist Services

Outbounders.com is a virtual marketplace for telemarketing professionals. The company was founded in 2010 as an offshoot of Global Sky Inc., a call center operation in the Philippines. Behind the scenes are CEO James Rick Stinson and CTO Rob Rawson (same guy as from Staff.com and the time-tracking software TimeDoctor).

Because of the booming call center industry in the Philippines, many of the professional phone workers you’ll find on the site are from there, but the marketplace of callers on Outbounders is pretty global. When I checked the other day, I found workers in China, India, Central America, and the US.

How it Works

Workers on Outbounders have the advantage of working from home, instead of commuting to an office. Call monitoring software (and of course your business results) will help determine their productivity.

If you’re looking to hire some outbound customer service or telephone sales staff, the hiring process on Outbounders.com is pretty simple.

Like any other freelance marketplace, the first step is to create a profile.
You can browse the listings of available professionals, filter based on rate or other criteria, listen to their recordings, and even see if they are online at the moment for an interview.
You can also post your own detailed job description and collect applications, much like you would if you were hiring a freelancer on FreeeUp.

Outbounders callers have been hired by thousands of small business clients and have made over 2.5 million calls on their behalf!

Outbounders Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

If you already have some phone dialing software or internal software you use to track calls, your Outbounders hire can plug right into your system. Alternatively, Outbounders.com has their own dialer you can use for a small additional fee ($1 per hour).

Outbounders.com keeps the lights on by taking a 10% fee on top of the caller’s hourly rate. It’s free to post a standard job listing, and performance-based jobs carry a $25 fee.

Your agent will use unlimited free VOIP calling to the US and Canada, and discounted rates to other destinations around the world.

The rates seem to start around $5 an hour, and go up from there depending on experience, geography, and level of English skills. It seems to be an affordable way to get your outbound calling campaign started. At that rate, your rep doesn’t have to make many sales to deliver a huge ROI.

This home-based model means less overhead and significant cost savings over a traditional call center set-up.

Then, when you’re ready to scale up and add more seats, or move to an in-office call center environment, you can engage Outbounder’s parent company, GlobalSky.com.

The company provides training in their dialer software, but as with any other hire, any job-specific training is on you to provide.

Why Outbounders?

Targeting entrepreneurs, Outbounders aims to woo customers away from other job sites like Elance, oDesk, and Guru.com. The gameplan for doing so is to focus on just one area of specialization — to become THE marketplace for outbound phone support.

If you find yourself in the position that getting on the phone and dialing for dollars helps drive new business, but then you get caught in the cycle of actually delivering the work for those clients and not feeding the funnel, maybe a dedicated outbound sales rep could help.

The advantage may be the speed of hiring and the quality of applicants. Have you hired any callers from Outbounders? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Remote Staff

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees

Remote Staff, or remotestaff.com.au, is an Australia-based staff leasing company that specializes in virtual employee recruitment. The company was founded in 2007, and has placed nearly 4000 workers in remote jobs since then.

Remote Staff will find you a home-based worker in India or the Philippines, and then you can work directly with them. Despite the workers not punching the clock at a traditional office, the company maintains a pretty substantial brick-and-mortar presence, with more than 60 full-time employees in their Philippines home office.

How it works is you submit your job details and detailed requirements, and Remote Staff hunts through their talent pool of thousands of jobseekers to present you with qualified applicants for you to interview. Then, you can hire them and train them as needed, and Remote Staff will handle all the payments and paperwork.

Because this recruitment service is free, unlike Virtual Staff Finder, for example, you can expect to be paying slightly more on a monthly basis than you would without a middleman because the company has to make some margin somewhere. Still, the rates are likely to be attractive compared to those of an office-based virtual assistant company.

Sponsored Link:

If you don’t want to take advantage of Remote Staff’s in-house recruiters, you can do the candidate search on your own on their site. You can filter by skills, availability, and hourly rate. One cool feature they’ve added is an audio snippet of each candidate, so you can hear them in their own words and get an idea of their English language skills too.

With Remote Staff, you’re looking at one-month minimum commitment, but the aim is for long-term mutually beneficial relationships. In fact, if you’re not happy with your worker, they have a 6-month staff replacement guarantee.

One downside is you have to pre-pay for the month’s work, which is the opposite of traditional hiring. But in this case, you still have some protection in place if your virtual employee flakes on you. Plus, you don’t have to worry about paying for holidays or sick time; only accountable for the hours actually worked.

In exchange for their handling fees (a minimum of $1 an hour), Remote Staff moderates any disputes that come up, and logs all working hours in their system to ensure the workers are putting in the time they say they are.

The closest competitors that comes to mind are Staff.com and Virtual Coworker. If this model is appealing to you, you might want to check out those guys too.

Have you worked with Remote Staff (remotestaff.net)? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Taskbarge

Posted by Mica Harvey / India Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Taskbarge is a virtual assistant company in Bangalore, India. They were founded in 2011 by CEO Chaitanya Krishna, who assembled a small team to start serving clients on their own.

Taskbarge has grown slowly over the last couple years, investing in training their people rather than expensive marketing campaigns and unneeded costly infrastructure.

I had the chance to speak with Krishna, a former employee of a well-known outsourcing giant, about his new company. He explained that Taskbarge is focused on a small and medium-sized entrepreneurial client-base.

So far, they’ve been able to achieve impressive client retention — “no one has left us yet,” by delivering timely and high-quality service at low prices. Taskbarge clients typically rely on them for outsourced business process support, but the capabilities are there to handle of variety of virtual assistant tasks, including scheduling, online research, travel arrangements, and more.

The only limitation at the moment is on the technical side of things, as Taskbarge doesn’t have any web development or IT support talent in-house.

The company offers an array of pricing plans to fit anyone’s needs and budget. Plans start at $55 for a 5 hour block of virtual assistant time. These are perhaps mislabeled as “monthly” plans, but you actually have two months to use up your 5 hours, and won’t be billed again until you want or need a “refill.”

For larger plans, you have even more time to use up your hours. Krishna explained that the TB-40, or 40-hour plan, is their most popular option at $320 ($8/hr). In this case, you can spread the 40 hours out over the course of 3 months. That gives some flexibility in the event of an inconsistent outsourcing workload.

Naturally, the rates improve as you buy bigger blocks of time, with a 150-hour block going for $825, or just $5.50 an hour. Overall, the prices are quite competitive with other virtual assistant companies in India.

Exclusive Offer: Mention referral code VAA10 in “Message” box in the Taskbarge contact form for 10% off your first plan!

Once your hours are gone, you can renew at the same level, or jump around to any other suitable plan.

With each option, Taskbarge assigns a dedicated virtual assistant to be your sole point of contact with the company. This VA is assigned based on their expertise relative to your anticipated tasks, as well as the working time zone required.

They offer a 7-day free trial on all their plans, so you can test out the service risk-free. For alternatives, My Tasker or 24/7 Virtual Assistant might also be worthy of your consideration.

Have you worked with Taskbarge? If so, please leave a quick review using the comment form below to help others with their decision.

Mint Lifestyle Partners

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Task-Based Virtual Assistants, UK/Europe Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

Mint Lifestyle Partners is a virtual concierge service aimed at high-powered high-lifestyle individuals. The UK-based company was founded in 2010, and also maintains an office in Dubai.

Mint specializes in lifestyle assistance, originally created to serve the needs of the growing expatriate community in the Middle East. They’ve since expanded and accept clients globally.

This is kind of a white-glove service for people with a lot of money to spend. Mint will take good care of you social calendar, domestic arrangement, and corporate needs, all with a quiet diligence and discretion.

Mint clients are assigned a dedicated “lifestyle manager” who acts as their well-connected virtual concierge for any need that arises.

They’ll do all the traditional virtual assistant tasks — I love how I say “traditional” for a job that’s been around for only 10 years — from making reservations and managing your calendar, to online research, to event planning, and more.

Mint has several different pricing levels. An ad hoc membership is available without any ongoing monthly commitment, and concierge time is billed out at £39 per hour.

Users can buy blocks of time in 5 and 15 hour increments to enjoy a discount on the standard hourly rates. A 5-hour block is £175 and a 15-hour block is £465. The nice thing about these plans is the hours are good for a full-year from the purchase date.

Heavy users who can commit to a minimum of 30-hours a week of Mint usage qualify for the “Creme de Menthe” plan, which further discounts the hourly rate to £25. Standard VAT tax applies on all plans.

As you can see, Mint Lifestyle Partners is not cheap by any means. The closest competitor in the US I can think of would be Red Butler, which positions itself as a premium service but is still priced within reach in terms of their monthly plans.

In the UK, DailyPA offers a competing service with a lower entry price point. Time Etc would be another one to consider.

Have you worked with Mint Lifestyle Partners? If so, please leave a quick review using the comment form below to help others with their decision.

Virtuworx

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies, Virtual Employees

Virtuworx is a virtual assistant and outsourcing company in Bangladesh, with a sales office in Southern California. The company has been in business since 2007, and has served clients of all shapes and sizes from all around the world.

The company owns and operates their own building so you don’t have to worry about subcontractors or infrastructure issues. I like how they’ve made some investments in making sure their own web presence looks professional and appealing.

Services

In terms of services, Virtuworx offers an array of capabilities including data entry, bookkeeping, website maintenance, social media, online research, general administrative tasks and more.

If you need some more technical help, like programming or software development, they’ve got you covered there too.

Virtuworx Intro Video

Virtuworx operates on a virtual employee model in which you’re assigned a dedicated VA and can train and manage them directly. One advantage of hiring a company over a freelancer is they’re in charge of finding a suitable replacement if your VA is out of the office for any reason.

Plans and Pricing

Of course, there’s a price premium for that extra level of service, and Virtuworx is priced slightly higher than some of their competitors in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

A 10-hour per week plan with an entry-level VA is $378 per month, or $9.45 an hour. Half time plans (20 hrs/week at $597/mo) and full-time plans (40 hrs/week at $997/mo) are also available. That full time plan is the equates to an hourly rate of $6.23. Obviously these rates are still a great value for any quality staff.

Note: the rate of $5.60 mentioned in their intro video is available when you pre-pay for 3 months of service in advance.

Senior level workers with more experience are available for approximately 35-40% more for each of the above plans, and technically advanced virtual staff can be had for around $1200 a month half-time and $2000 a month full-time.

Virtuworx offers a 30-day money back guarantee to minimize your risk in signing up. There are no set-up fees or long-term commitments, but obviously the company hopes to keep you happy long-term and develop a lasting outsourcing partnership.

Virtuworx Alternatives

In addition to Virtuworx, you might consider long-time VirtualAssistantAssistant.com partner A to Z Tasks (also in Bangladesh). In neighboring India, My Tasker and 24/7 Virtual Assistant have earned positive reviews from clients.

Have you worked with Virtuworx? If so, please leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision. Many thanks!

Zylun

Posted by Mica Harvey / Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees

Zylun is an outsourcing center in the Philippines, catering to small and medium-sized businesses. The company opened their doors in 2010, and now employs more than 150 programmers, content writers, Internet marketing specialists, and virtual assistants.

Where many other Filipino VA companies use a work-from-home model, everyone at Zylun works from the company’s modern facility in Cebu. Zylun also maintains a US-sales office near Salt Lake City, Utah.

The specialty here is for clients looking to outsource some of their operations on a long-term basis to realize the cost savings. Zylun’s rates are quite high relative to other VA companies because they’re targeting customers who are deciding between an on-site person or an offshore person, vs. the typical VA customer, who’s deciding between an offshore person or no one at all.

And of course relative to hiring an in-house employee, a dedicated full-time Zylun team member is a more affordable option. Virtual assistants for administrative and non-technical roles start at $1200 a month. Your VA will be a college graduate with solid written and spoken English skills, that you can train on any specific tasks needed for your business.

Zylun also provides customer service reps from $1500 a month and programmers from $2000 a month. While these rates are significantly higher than you’d find with a home-based VA, you do have the benefit of a modern office with a reliable connection, on-site support, and US-based leadership.

Most of Zylun’s clients start with between 1 and 3 employees to staff their outsourced office operation, and some customers have built large teams of 20 or more. As you can imagine, the ability to quickly scale up staff without minimal recruiting expenses if pretty attractive.

There are no hourly or part-time plans, but strictly full-time dedicated workers on demand. Zylun requires a 2-month minimum engagement, and offers price breaks for longer contracts and larger teams. For each position filled, there is a one-time $500 set-up fee.

Virtual Assistant Assistant exclusive:

Want to try them out? Mention referral code VAA for 10% off your first month of Zylun service.

If you’re a smaller company or a one-person shop interested in outsourcing, you might consider Virtual Staff Finder. The company is also based in Cebu but acts a virtual headhunter. You’ll face a similar one-time fee, but have substantial savings each month if you’re comfortable with a home-based VA and paying them directly.

Wondering about the Zylun name? Co-founder Brigham Tomco explains it has no meaning, but just happened to be a pronounceable and available 5-letter domain name!

Have you worked with Zylun? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

YourRemoteAssistant

Posted by Mica Harvey / Dedicated Virtual Assistants, Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees

YourRemoteAssistant is a virtual assistant company in the Philippines. The company maintains a sales office near San Francisco, but all the work is done overseas. They’ve got their start in 2008.

YourRemoteAssistant specializes in administrative tasks such as calendar management, data entry, and transcription. Their virtual assistants can also do web research, event planning, customer support, and more.

The rates are competitive, with a 20 hour a month package starting at just $209, and a full-time 160-hour package running $1149. The company gives a discount on your first month of service for some of the higher hourly plans, and there are no set-up fees or long-term contracts.

While these prices aren’t crazy high (like those from Pepper Virtual Assistant), you’ll still be able to find a better deal from other Filipino virtual assistant companies.

YourRemoteAssistant.com will also quote one-time projects on an a la carte basis.

Sponsored Link:

How it works is the company assigns you a VA based on your job description and requirements. In a way, it’s nice not to have to do any interviewing, but in another way, you might not be getting the best fit candidate.

You’ll get to work primarily with a dedicated virtual assistant, but the team environment allows for a backup at no additional charge.

Initially I thought the company might have been out of business because I didn’t hear anything back after contacting them via email, but it looks like the response just got lost in the ether; I just got a note from the founder Alex Brutin saying they are indeed alive and kicking!

Have you worked with YourRemoteAssistant? If so, please share your experience below and help others with their decision.

VAhut

Posted by Mica Harvey / Virtual Assistant Companies

VAhut is a newer virtual assistant company in China, but they may not have survived their first year. I reached out to them on two occasions and never got a response.

The company is based out of Hangzhou, a city with a metro population over 20 million — a city that in typical ignorant-American fashion I’d never even heard of. They maintain a US-presence and sales office in South Carolina. VAhut.com began operations in 2012.

It was really only a matter of time until some entrepreneurial Chinese began a VA company to compete on an international level. At the moment, the only other one I’m aware of with any significant market presence is BPOVIA, but they seem to be aimed at larger corporate clients.

Naturally, the environment in China makes it a great place to build a virtual assistant firm catering both to the massive and growing domestic market as well as the mature worldwide VA market. The workforce is young, educated, and still has relatively low wages compared with more developed countries. The only real obstacle to international success is the language barrier.

VAhut offers the familiar administrative virtual assistant services, but much of their work is China-specific. For instance, they really specialize in travel assistance to China, sourcing and managing the relationships with manufacturers and suppliers, factory audits, and helping clients enter the Chinese market.

The company offers three levels of service: pay as you go, a monthly subscription, or project-based engagement.

The Pay as You Go plan allows you to pay an hourly rate for services on-demand. As I mentioned, when I inquired about what their hourly rates might be, I was greeted with silence.

Monthly subscriptions are available in 10, 20, 40, 80, and 160-hour packages. Again, prices are unknown at this time.

VA Hut will also quote one-off projects, and could be a good resource perhaps for initial research into the Chinese market or some other job that requires local expertise on the ground.

For most cases, VAhut uses a team-based approach where tasks are handled by different VAs on an as-available basis.

I wish these guys success because they have a well-designed site and seem poised to tackle to the giant opportunity of being the first real Chinese virtual assistant company aimed at small businesses and individuals. But until they figure out how to respond to customer inquiries I’m afraid we’ll have to keep looking for a better solution.

Have you worked with VAhut? If so, please share a review of your experience below so others can make an informed decision.

SG Solutions

Posted by Mica Harvey / Philippines Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

SG Solutions is a virtual assistant company that connects you with a growing global network of VAs. This modern, cloud-based set up utilizes primarily home-based virtual assistants in the Philippines and India, but also some North American staff in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Although the company is decentralized, they maintain a US presence from their Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sales office. SG Solutions has been in business since 2007 and supports a number of entrepreneurial and small business clients.

Aside from the basic virtual assistant services, SG also offers graphic design, content writing, customer service phone agents and virtual receptionists, along with bookkeeping and social media marketing services.

New clients who sign up for SG Solutions are assigned a dedicated team leader, but have access to their entire network of talented professionals in case there are specialized tasks that need to be done. If you have a repetitive process to outsource on a predictable and ongoing basis, a dedicated VA will be assigned to handle that job and report directly to you.

I had the chance to speak with Troy McCauley, the Director of Business Development at SG Solutions, and I appreciated his straightforward approach to outsourcing. Like Elance and oDesk, he believes the best combination of talent and affordability you need for your business is not always located near your office.

But unlike those freelance sites, he explained, SG Solutions offers a more hands-on management and oversight when it comes to the performance of your virtual team members.

Rates for SG virtual assistants begin at $255 for 30 hours a month ($8.50/hour). A half-time plan of 20 hours a week is just $600 a month ($7.50/hour), and a 30-hour per week plan is priced at $1120, or just $7 an hour. No full-time plan is listed, but my guess is you could negotiate one if you wanted to engage their services on a full-time basis.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAA for 10% off your first month!

One cool thing about SG Solutions VA plans is that for all but the lowest option, a portion of the hours roll over the next month if you don’t use them all. Since most virtual assistant companies operate on a use-it-or-lose-it system, that can be a nice feature to have if you don’t anticipate having a consistent workflow.

The company also sells graphic design and web development work at the bargain rate of just $12 per hour. In addition, they’ll quote 1-time project-based work for you as well.

Have you worked with SG Solutions? If so, please take a minute to drop in a quick review below and help others make an informed decision.

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Virtual Assistant Blog

Services

How it Works

Plans and Pricing

AssistU Alternatives?

Your Turn

How it Works

Outbounders Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

Why Outbounders?

Services

Virtuworx Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

Virtuworx Alternatives