GlobeTask is an Israeli outsourcing company, staffed primarily by American expatriates. The company was founded in 2007 by Joshua Last.
GlobeTask offers a range of services, including virtual assistant staffing, web design, social media management, and website maintenance. Their specialty seems to be outsourced customer service, which they can provide via phone, email, and live chat. GlobeTask agents can even take care of your copywriting and make outbound sales calls for you if needed.
The way it works is you buy blocks of time each month, and can allocate out that time based on what you need done. The lower-skill jobs start at $8-10/hour, and the higher-skill jobs go from $18-20/hour. GlobeTask has 3 monthly packages, ranging from $99 to $499.
Tasks and projects are billed in 10 minute increments, and when you run out of time for the month, you can simply add more at the same hourly rates. It’s not like going over your cell phone minutes and getting ridiculous overage charges.
Note: When I contacted GlobeTask for more information via email, I got no response. I’m not sure if they’re still in business.
Like most other virtual assistant companies, there is no long-term commitment or contract with GlobeTask. When you sign-up, you’re assigned a dedicated point of contact. If they can complete your assignments, they’ll do the work themselves. If not, they delegate it to someone with the necessary skills and manage the process.
Have you worked with GlobeTask? If so, please share a quick review of your experience and help others with their decision.
Myaa is a global virtual assistant talent pool, based out of their Las Vegas headquarters. The company has been in existence in one form or another for several years but has only begun aggressively marketing since late 2012.
Myaa virtual assistants specialize in higher-end VA services for affordable rates. Beyond that, many customers have engaged Myaa for content writing and customer service help. There are also resources available for more technically skilled work like web development, engineering, and accounting.
They call their platform cloud-based manpower, which is a good description because the VAs (also called Myaas) work on an on-demand, scalable basis from their home offices worldwide. Because the rates are usually in the ballpark of $10 / hour, most Myaas are overseas. (That said, I found a surprising number of US VAs on the site as well.)
Clients can either select their Myaa themselves based on their profile and portfolio of skills, or they can submit an overview of the kind of work they need done and the Myaa team will assign a VA they know will be a good fit. Since the matching service is free, most clients go for that option because they don’t want to stress over making that selection themselves.
Myaa Intro Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivR47zkqCfw
Aside from assigning VAs to clients, the Myaa team also puts each prospective VA through a rigorous screening process before they’re ever allowed on the site. Each goes through a 2-week, 40 hour training course that includes skills tests, role playing, phone calls, dealing with irate customers, and more.
Then, they move onto a short period of on-the-job training doing in-house work for Myaa. Finally, they’re ready for prime time. Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Office Daniel Palladino explained that of every 1000 applications they receive, perhaps only 70 VAs will ever have their profile live on the site.
MyaaWorld
One interesting thing Myaa has set up is their virtual office environment, called MyaaWorld. Here you can see the little green “Nick L” avatar hanging out all by himself in the Myaa Team 4 conference room.
It has kind of a video game feel, but has some cool collaboration tools built in. You can make Voice over IP calls (with or without video), share screens, share documents, and allow for multiple participants to edit the files in real time.
The company is aiming to differentiate themselves from the giant freelance marketplaces with their screening process, training program, free VA matchmaking, and tools like MyaaWorld. They also offer a certain level of management oversight you don’t get at oDesk, for example.
Of course, as it stands now, the talent pool can’t compete with the sheer breadth of freelancers available at an Elance or an oDesk.
Every new Myaa customer gets a 10 hour free trial. When I signed up for mine, I immediately got a welcome call from Daniel, who explained what the company was all about and how they have a different approach to outsourcing. I’m looking forward to using my free trial and will report back on the results soon.
Have you used Myaa? If so, please share a quick review of your experience to help others with their decision-making process.
Task Firm is a London-based virtual assistant company that provides an on-demand assistance service to micro-businesses and entrepreneurs. The company was founded by Natasha Guerra in 2013, after she got fed up with the frustrations of the marketplaces that currently dominate the outsourcing industry.
Her small team of UK-based virtual assistants aim to change that with dedicated email and phone support, in your time zone and in your language.
How it Works
TaskFirm currently operate across four sectors: Sales, Finance, Marketing, and Admin. Common tasks include blogging, booking business trips, social media management, expense reports, preparing presentations, generating sales leads, following up on invoices, data entry, and a whole array of administrative tasks.
At the moment, their customers are mostly in the tech start-up space. With no employment contracts, no overhead costs, and no payroll hassle, the Task Firm set-up is ideal for companies looking to add some efficient and lean support.
The company only accounts for hours, not for tasks — which means you don’t have to worry about chunking bigger projects into 15-minute segments.
Also, they’ll make every effort to assign you a dedicated virtual assistant, but for urgent tasks another VA with availability may jump in and help out. Task Firm offers a personal service by not only hand-picking each assistant, but also by managing each task.
Plans and Pricing
Task Firm runs on subscription model where customers can choose the package that best suits their needs. Plans start at 5 hours for £89 (£17.80/hour), which includes next-day turnaround time.
The most popular plan is the 10 hour package for £159 (£15.90/hour), which includes phone support and evening hours as needed.
Naturally as you buy up more time, the effective hourly rate decreases. For instance, 20 hours of Task Firm VA time is £279 per month (£13.95/hour), and a 40-hour VIP package is offered at £479 per month (£11.96/hour).
All plans include a 100% money back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with Task Firm’s work.
Task Firm Alternatives?
The UK VA market is still emerging with plenty of room for growth. The big freelance marketplaces are a popular choice for finding qualified remote help, but come with the drawbacks of having to place your own wanted ad and screening the masses of candidates to find the right one. Sometimes, for very small tasks, the process can take longer than it would if you just did the job yourself! finding genuine talent on these platforms is becoming increasingly difficult.
In the US, the most similar company to Task Firm is Zirtual, which offers similar monthly assistance packages.
Have you worked with Task Firm? If so, please be sure to share a quick review of your experience with their service below to help others with their VA decision.
Ziptask.com is an innovative way to send your computer tasks out for specialized completion without the trouble of finding a freelancer yourself. There is only one point of service to deal with, because Ziptask has their team of professionals in place.
Its headquarters are in Anaheim, California, but their employees come from all over the globe and have backgrounds in multiple disciplines from research and PowerPoint presentations to graphic design and programming.
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About Zip Task
Two enterprising techs, Shawn Livermore & Jeff Sherwood, came up with the concept for Ziptask. Both men have intensive backgrounds in software and information technology, and each worked for mega-companies before joining forces.
They founded Ziptask.com in 2010, and have about one dozen employees to run the business, aside from their virtual assistant task experts.
Services
Virtually any computer job, including creation of ads, translation services, tutoring, editing, and video-design can be handled by Ziptask experts. Formatting resumes, graph and table conversions, creating company letterheads and hundreds of other jobs are handled quickly and easily. Creating company presentations are another function of Ziptask, including use of PowerPoint, animations and translation to other languages.
Privacy and safety for all work is through use of symmetric-key encryption with 128-bit certificates. All employees sign non-disclosure contracts and are well screened prior to working for Ziptask, and their systems are monitored by security.
Small and large businesses love getting back the time it once took to outsource their work. Consequently, Ziptask.com is poised to meet the next challenges presented by the digital workforce.
How it Works
This is the first service of its kind, and its design gives the utmost efficiency to the client. Additionally, with the per-minute fee structure, Ziptask believes that more people will use their services. After downloading their Ziptask Assist for Windows, clients just click once, submit their order and they are done.
Later, downloading the free iPhone App lets the client see how their work is progressing. It is the first of a new wave of hyper-specialization, which theorizes that experts, who focus on their own niche of technology, perform more efficiently and more competitively. The customer is the big winner in this fast-developing wave of digital business.
Ziptask Intro Video
Plans and Pricing
So how much does it cost? The service starts at $0.39 cents per minute for most basic jobs. That calculates out to a little more than $23 an hour, which isn’t outrageous for a talented virtual assistant, but definitely isn’t a super-bargain either.
Additionally, a monthly user fee applies to on-going clients who desire multiple user capability. The fee also covers additional built-in services, such as API access, enterprise integration and developer phone support. No monthly fees apply for individual users who submit common computer tasks. Furthermore, they offer a free 90-day trial period and a 100 percent money-back guarantee if the work takes longer than expected.
Pricing goes up in increments of .10 cents per minute for more advanced types of work. Programming may run approximately $0.69 per minute. However, work only starts after the client gives their okay. Clients also have the option of selecting a time limit for the ZipTask crew to better manage their budget.
Ziptask Alternatives
The closest comparison I can think of is it’s like Mechanical Turk, except for jobs that require a higher level of thinking and expertise. The advantage over oDesk and other freelance sites is you don’t have to weed through candidates and do interviews.
Your Turn
Have you tried outsourcing with ZipTask? If so, please share your experience below.
SuperTasker was created by the founder and CEO of PeoplePerHour and provides a platform for customers to hire curated experts to complete high-quality digital tasks in just one click.
There is an emphasis on keeping the process of outsourcing tasks quick and simple with Supertasker. Submitted tasks are picked up by a freelancer on a “first come first serve” basis and turned around very quickly.
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About SuperTasker
SuperTasker and parent company PeoplePerHour were founded by current CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou. While PeoplePerHour dates back to 2008, SuperTasker was launched in August, 2014.
The main difference between these two platforms is that SuperTasker is a much faster way to get your tasks completed. There is no bidding from freelancers and developing relationships, instead your task gets assigned to a freelancer that has been screened by the Supertasker team and picked up on a “first come first serve” basis.
Prices for different tasks are fixed, this makes pricing up your workload a lot easier and helps to standardize the process.
You can request up to 5 revisions for each task, and if you’re still not happy you can resubmit the task to be picked up by a different freelancer so you have a decent level of protection.
Although as a customer you have no say in the selection process when your task is assigned, there is a reputation system in place based on feedback from customers. SuperTasker manage their freelancers and review their ratings to ensure the highest quality work is being carried out on their side.
Services
SuperTasker cover almost any form of digital task you can think of. There isn’t a client/virtual assistant relationship, so you can’t work on large projects back and forth with communication, but you can break down your project into smaller tasks and submit them.
Some of the most popular tasks they handle include:
Photo retouching
File conversion
WordPress Fixes
WordPress migration
Logo creation
Infographics
SEO
Presentation formatting
If you have any digital task, from HTML to help with Facebook posts, you’ll find a freelancer picking you task on the Supertasker platform.
Plans and Pricing
Each type of task has a set price and turnaround time. Some of the more popular tasks are:
File Conversion – $5 per file, in 1 hour
3 logo variations – $45 in 2 hours
3 banners in standard format – $45 in 24 hours
Infographics – $150 in 24 hours
WordPress migration – $49
Magento Fixes – $49
Having the set price model instead of buying hours has the advantage of giving you a clear picture of how much your tasks are going to cost.
Some people may prefer the consistency of working with the same virtual assistant and developing a working relationship, but for one-off tasks Supertasker are reasonably priced and their turnaround times are impressive.
SuperTasker Alternatives
Another service that allows you to outsource tasks on a job-by-job basis with an emphasis on speed is Speedlancer, which promises a 4-hour turnaround time for marketing related tasks.
Fiverr runs a similar model where you can order tasks à la carte, but turnaround times vary by seller.
Your Turn
Have you submitted tasks to SuperTasker? If so, please leave a brief review below to help others with their decision.
CloudFactory is a distributed workforce company that utilizes large numbers of virtual assistants in developing countries to complete large amounts of work quickly, efficiently, and at a reasonable price.
The company was founded in 2009. Their headquarters are located in Durham, UK, and their workforce spans more than 30 countries, with Nepal and Kenya providing the bulk of their staff.
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About CloudFactory
The company was founded by Mark Sears and Tom Puskarich. Mark Sears has a background as a software developer and experience raising venture capital for startups.
What separates CloudFactory from a lot of the other virtual assistant companies is the volume and speed of the work they can complete.
Instead of having the more traditional approach of assigning a virtual assistant to a client, CloudFactory has a huge pool of staff and mobilize them in volume to work on large data-intensive tasks.
They also use artificial intelligence and human intelligence to assure accuracy. CloudFactory uses automation tools and algorithms to handle some of their workload and finishes with a human review of the work to ensure accuracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjBDa9nhmmc
Services
CloudFactory said, “We specialize in helping companies offload data-oriented work.” They have a large workforce available to tackle all kinds of data crunching and large volume tasks and are able to get a lot of work done quickly.
They also say themselves that tasks requiring a particular skill like graphic design or accounting are not a good fit for their workforce. So if you’re after a specific skill their service is not for you.
Their subscription model is called a “WorkStream.” Each WorkStream includes a Cloud Team lead by a Team Leader to handle the tasks you’re outsourcing.
They say that all of their staff have been vetted, trained in-house, and are professionally managed. So, you can leave the management side of things to CloudFactory and focus on your own business and selecting tasks to outsource.
CloudFactory use a custom-built WorkStream browser so you have a direct channel to the team working on your tasks. This makes it easy to communicate with them or check on their progress.
Plans and Pricing
CloudFactory’s pricing is calculated based on the number of hours you want per month. They then give you an hourly and monthly rate breakdown and give you an idea of how many members will be in your “Cloud Team.”
For example, 800 hours a month costs a total of $5,220. This works out at $6.33 per hour, and you will have between 8-17 members in your team working on your tasks.
If you want 2000 hours or more a month, the hourly rate is as low as $5.49/hr.
It’s worth noting that you save 10% by paying for a yearly subscription up front.
They also offer a Flex Pass, which is set amount of hours to be used over a three month period.
An example of the pricing on a Flex Pass is $21,600 for 2,400 hours. That works out to $9 an hour, and you’d have a team of up to 50 staff working on your tasks.
The Flex Pass option is better suited to one-off projects or tasks expected to be wrapped up within the three-month period.
CloudFactory Alternatives
Matching the effective hourly rates from CloudFactory isn’t hard to do at other virtual assistant companies, but what’s tough to duplicate is their scale. If you’re looking to ramp up an overseas team quickly, you might consider a company like TaskUs.
Your Turn
Have you worked with CloudFactory? If so, please be sure to leave a brief review of your experience below to help others with their decision.
Remote.com (formerly Outsource.com, a platform that generated less-than-positive feedback from freelancers) is a virtual assistant company based in Burlingame, CA. They have been in operation since January 2017 and match business owners with virtual assistants from all over the globe.
They use an AI-powered matching system to match up clients with the best suited virtual assistant from their database, helping to establish that first point of contact and continued support with the working relationship.
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About Remote.com
Remote is headed up by CEO Nick Macario. The interesting thing about Remote that separates them from other VA companies is the way they find virtual assistants for their clients.
They leave the matching process up to their own AI algorithm. Saying, “Our AI-powered matching technology ensures that job seekers are able to access the best-matched opportunities based on their preferences and qualifications.”
As a client looking for an assistant, you fill in all the details about yourself, your company, and what skills you’re looking for in an assistant. You are then offered assistants based on your requirements.
What’s not yet clear is whether this is just a buzz-wordy way to accomplish what other VA companies do by filtering their database based on skills and resume keywords.
Once you get your match, you can start working together, communicate through the Remote.com platform, and send payments through their secure escrow system.
Remote’s target customers are anyone finding themselves too busy working in their businesses with routine tasks that could and should be outsourced.
Services
Remote say you’ll be able to find an assistant for any tasks that can be completed remotely. They also facilitate partly-remote and full-time assistants, so it’s possible to find someone willing to relocate.
Some of the tasks their assistants commonly handle include:
Administrative tasks
Accounting and bookkeeping
Online research and data entry
Customer service
Marketing
Content management
Development
and more
A nice feature on their website is that you can search their database by skills as a direct route way to find a candidate capable of handling your tasks.
Plans and Pricing
When hiring a full-time assistant, you can post a job for free as a basic listing, or upgrade for a premium listing and some additional perks.
The available plans are as follows:
Free Job Post – A basic 30-day listing, company profile, and basic AI-powered outreach.
Premium Job Post – $295 – You get a featured listing for 30 days, 10x the exposure, and advanced AI-powered outreach and recruiting tools.
Elite Placement – Custom Pricing – You can work with a dedicated “talent specialist” at Remote to find the perfect assistant, you’ll need to contact them directly for a quote.
Once you make your hire, there is a 10% charge of the project cost when you start working with an assistant.
Remote.com Alternatives
While Remote is unique in the way they match up clients with assistants automatically, there is no shortage of virtual assistant companies waiting to match you up with an assistant to meet your requirements.
For a much wider candidate pool, you might consider Upwork, one of the largest freelance marketplaces online. If you need tech-specific help for a larger project, TopTal or Gun.io might be worth a look.
For US-based companies that will find assistants for you, Boldly and Time Etc are two highly rated firms.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Remote.com? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.
vWorker.com is a company designed to bring employers and virtual workers together so that everyone can find the work and workers they need. Based in Tampa, Florida, vWorker has been in business since 2003.
The company was formerly known as RentACoder.com, however they have expanded their services beyond freelance software coding and web development projects.
Under the new vWorker name, they now offer a way for businesses to contract freelancers for a huge variety of jobs, including virtual assistance, copywriting, data entry, search engine optimization, transcription, and much more.
The company boasts that they have over 350,000 workers on the site ready to bid on whatever job you post. This makes vWorker a notably smaller community than Elance with 550,000 workers or oDesk with 1.4 million workers.
vWorker aims to separate themselves from the competition with a number of innovations. First, they offer a free money-back guarantee on every project. Hiring a virtual worker can be intimidating so that’s a nice protection to have. Second, they offer crowsourcing and “trialsourcing” services – something the other freelance sites haven’t touched yet. This means if you have a short project, several workers attack the job for you and you simply pick the winner.
For hourly jobs (like most virtual assistant gigs), vWorker utilizes an AccuBilling system where people are able to log the time that they worked on a particular project, similar to punching a time clock. The system also includes screen captures of your VA’s computer so you can verify they’re really working when they say they are.
If you’re struggling with where to post your virtual assistant job, vWorker has put together a very detailed comparison chart highlighting the differences between their company and their competitors.
vWorker.com claims their virtual workers are more affordable, accountable and capable than traditional workers. It’s free to sign-up and post a job, so you might as well check it out and see for yourself.
Each contractor will have their own feedback history as well, so I would pay close attention to that.
Have you worked with anyone from vWorker? If so, we’d love to hear about your experience below.
UPDATE: It appears Web Virtual Assistants is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives or see below. If you own this listing or this information is incorrect, contact me here.
Web Virtual Assistants is a virtual assistant company based in Mumbai, India. The company was founded in 2016 and they provide remote workers to clients across the globe at competitive prices.
Their target customers are small businesses and entrepreneurs, and their assistants are ready to handle just about any task that can be completed remotely.
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About Web Virtual Assistants
Web Virtual Assistants say they started the business, “With the idea of providing remote workers to clients in the US, UK, Europe, and around the world for just a fraction of what an in-office employee would cost!”
Based in Mumbai, India, and having their virtual assistants working out of their offices they are able to offer very competitive rates starting at $4.99 per hour.
The company was founded by entrepreneurs and brothers Javed and Samir Pathan, with the goal of helping small business owners and entrepreneurs streamline their processes and take work off their hands by providing virtual assistants.
When you sign up with Web Virtual Assistants you’re assigned an operations manager who will contact you to introduce themselves and discuss your requirements.
They will then send you details of a number of their assistants that are best suited to carry out your tasks. You can talk to the assistants and pick the one that you feel is best suited.
From there you can start sending tasks and communicating with your assistant via email, phone, Skype, or any other preferred method.
Services
As with most virtual assistant providers, Web Virtual Assistants say their VA’s are ready to take on any tasks that can be completed remotely.
They list their areas of specialization as follows:
At press time, Web Virtual Assistants have only two different hourly rates, and they’re both very affordable: $6.99 an hour or $4.99 an hour.
The $6.99 an hour option is only for their lowest tier plan, which offers 10 hours of work for $70, and all other tiers are priced at the almost too-low-to-be-true $4.99 hourly rate:
$70 for 10 hours, Pay-as-you-go.
$199 for 40 hours of VA time.
$399 for 80 hours of VA time.
$798 for 160 hours of VA time.
$1197 for 240 hours of VA time.
All of their plans include a dedicated virtual assistant, and you get the chance to speak with their assistants before committing.
One thing that’s not clear though is whether you’re buying a bucket of 160 hours of support one-time, or signing up for a monthly subscription.
But you can change your plan at any time and Web Virtual Assistants offer a 100% satisfaction and money back guarantee.
Each plan includes a 5-hour free trial.
Web Virtual Assistants Alternatives
When I asked Web Virtual Assistants what separates them from the other VA companies in their space they said their competitive pricing is hard to beat — and they’re right, they have one of the lowest hourly rates.
If you’re looking for a more established virtual assistant company based in India however, MyTasker and VA Talks are two with a decent amount of positive feedback.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Web Virtual Assistants? If so, please take a moment to leave a review below to help others with their decision.
UPDATE: It appears Hubberly is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives or see below. If you own this listing or this information is incorrect, contact me here.
Hubberly is a virtual assistant company based in the UK with their focus being mainly on the UK market. They have virtual assistants based in Europe, the US, and India.
The company has been in business since 2012. Their target customers are busy individuals, entrepreneurs, and small to medium-sized businesses looking to outsource some of their workload.
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About Hubberly
The company is run by Alexis Mathai and Dave Ng. Hubberly’s headquarters in the UK and they focus mainly on UK clientele.
However, having most of their virtual assistants in India allows them to offer much more competitive rates than the UK companies with UK-based assistants.
When you sign up with Hubberly you will have a consultation with a member of their management team. The goal of that chat is to establish your requirements, estimate how many assistant hours you need per month, and match you with the most suitable member of their team.
They then have a Client Success Team in place to help facilitate a smooth relationship with new clients or anyone working with a virtual assistant for the first-time.
You are then introduced to your assistant and can start communicating what tasks you need done. A member of their management team is also available as a point of contact if you have any issues.
Services
Hubberly’s virtual assistants can perform any tasks that can be completed remotely.
You can either pay for a set number of hours per month and work with your assistant 1-on-1 on a variety of tasks, or pay an hourly rate for a specific skill such as logo design or e-commerce support.
Here are some of the common types of tasks Hubberly offers support for:
Data Entry
Virtual Assistance
Writing and Editing
Social Media Management
Logo and Graphic Design
Mobile App Development
Website Development and Maintenance
Plans and Pricing
Hubberly currently has 4 different plans for their virtual assistants. These range from £8.00 per hour for their smallest plan of 20 hours a month, to £5.50 per hour for their full-time assistant plan.
They also have an extensive list of hourly rates and set prices covering all their other services, enabling you to pay a for the exact service you use if you don’t need to hire an assistant.
An overview of their prices are as follows:
Virtual Assistant Services:
20 hours a month, £160 per month (about £8.00 per hour).
40 hours a month, £280 per month (about £7.00 per hour).
80 hours a month, £520 per month (about £6.50 per hour).
160 hours a month, £880 per month (about £5.50 per hour).
E-Commerce Services:
Prices start at £4.99 per hour for product uploading.
Data Entry Services:
£5.99 per hour for data entry, data mining, and back office services.
Programming Services:
Hourly rates range from £12.99-29.99 per hour.
Graphic Design Services:
All of their plans come with a dedicated virtual assistant, a choice between a North American or Europe-based assistant, 1-hour complimentary launch meeting to get started, and there is always a backup assistant in place.
Hubberly Alternatives
Although Hubberly is a UK-based company and they focus on the UK market a lot of their assistants are based in India, which allows them to offer more competitive prices than other UK-based virtual assistant companies.
Therefore, I’d check out Indian-based virtual assistant companies like My Tasker and VA Talks for comparable services and prices. You’ll find they have experience working with businesses in the UK and will likely accommodate your time zone if you speak with them.
Your Turn
Have you worked with Hubberly? If so, please leave a brief review of your experience below to help others with their decision.