Team Launcher

UPDATE: It appears Team Launcher is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

TeamLauncher.com is a virtual employee service with locations in Miami, India, and the Philippines. Their claim to fame is the ability to source qualified new full-time workers within 48-hours and starting at just $999 a month.

Team Launcher calls themselves a “talent leasing service,” and their unique business was named one of CNBC’s Top 10 Websites for Entrepreneurs. The TeamLauncher name is appropriate, because when you need to scale your business quickly, you may be hard-pressed to find a faster option.

I was impressed by the clean and professional look of the TeamLauncher.com website, which definitely makes them standout over the competition. Isn’t it funny how many of these other outsourcing companies pitch their web-design services on sites that look like crap?

Team Launcher has virtual employees in a variety of disciplines ready to help, including administrative support professionals, social media experts, SEO people, and even designers and programmers. The price varies by education required and technical expertise. Rates start at $999 per month for junior positions, and go all the way up to $3999 a month for a “master programmer.”

Regardless of what kind of job you’re hiring for, TeamLauncher is going to be substantially cheaper than hiring someone local in-house. Virtual employees are available during three shifts so no matter your timezone, you can have support. The company also boasts a “generous” cancellation policy and you have no long-term commitment.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAA50 for 50% off your first month of full-time Team Launcher virtual employee service!

In the spirit of the “talent leasing” theme, Team Launcher also has hourly and weekly plans so you can scale as needed without the big up-front cost.

The other service you might consider is Virtual Staff Finder – they charge an upfront fee for finding your Filipino worker but your ongoing monthly costs will be lower.

Have you worked with TeamLauncher? If so, please share your experience below, positive or negative.

DoNanza

Posted by Mica Harvey / Freelance Virtual Assistants

UPDATE: It appears DoNanza is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

DoNanza is an online job board aggregator and freelance database. The company launched in 2009 and is based in Israel. At the time of this writing they had over 370,000 registered freelancers, and over 170,000 projects or jobs from all over the world.

Where DoNanza differs from the other giant freelance marketplaces is that whey make their money from the workers instead of the employers. Elance and oDesk, for example, process every payment, take a percentage of each project, and pass the rest along to the freelancer.

With DoNanza, freelancers join for free but are encouraged to upgrade to a “premium” membership for as little as $2.17 a month. They offer a 7-day free trial on all paid plans.

Employers can’t even post their own job requirements. Instead, you can search through their database of freelancers based on their self-described skills. The interface for this search feature looks strikingly similar to oDesk, but the frustrating thing for me was that none of the freelancers had even a ballpark estimate of their rates displayed.

However, since DoNanza isn’t concerned with transactions taking place “off-network”, this allows for much more robust freelance profiles than you’ll find on the other sites. Freelancers are free to link to their social media pages and their personal blogs and websites to present a well-rounded view of their professional portfolio and online presence.

There is no built-in feedback or rating systems, though some of the profiles I saw had recommendations imported from LinkedIn.

All in all, I think DoNanza can be a good resource for doing due-diligence from the other freelance sites. For example, you might be able to find out a little more about an Elance applicant if they maintain a profile here as well.

Other than that, I’m not sure I would use it for. It would definitely be a “push” strategy rather than a “pull” strategy, since every virtual applicant you’d find would have to be searched out and identified individually by you, rather than posting the job and waiting for the responses.

The company is pulling in and syndicating jobs listings from a number of sites, including FlexJobs, Monster, Mechanical Turk, CareerBoard, Dice, and more. The aggregation idea is nice, but the weird thing is many of the jobs I found I wouldn’t classify as “freelance.” They were full-time positions in specific locations, although users can filter to only see those that are location independent.

I suspect they’ll add the ability for employers to post a job directly on DoNanza soon. They have an army of freelancers hungry for work — I mean why not feed them directly?

Have you worked with DoNanza either as a freelancer or an employer? What did you think? Please take a moment to leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Renots

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

UPDATE: It appears Renots 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.

Renots is an India-based virtual assistant company operating out of Mumbai. The company started in 2013 and was originally providing digital and media marketing services, then in 2017 they shifted their focus to supplying virtual assistants to individuals and businesses all over the world.

About Renots

The founder and director of Renots is Devesh Chavan, an entrepreneur with decades of experience in brand marketing and online business. You can find the company at PersonalAssistantIndia.com.

Renots say their target customers are anyone from entrepreneurs to large business owners. Basically, any “Busy working individuals trying to reduce the workload,” they said.

They don’t go into a lot of detail about how their service works on their site and didn’t give up any further info when I asked them.

I suggest contacting them for a quote and asking what their process is for finding and matching you up with one of their assistants.

Services

Renots’ virtual assistants are ready to take any tasks off your hands that can be completed remotely.

From managing the day-to-day running of your website, to completing ad-hoc tasks or booking flights. Once you have established a working relationship with one of their assistants it’s down to you to communicate the tasks you want to be completed.

To help give you an idea of the areas they specialize in Renots break down their services into the following categories:

IT solutions
Tech and call support
Dedicated personal assistant
Digital marketing services
SEO
Campaign management
Custom software and website creation

Plans and Pricing

The hourly rates for Renots virtual assistants start at $8.99/hr for their 10-hour a month plan, and goes as low as $5.98/hr if you purchase their 160-hour plan.

This means you can have a full-time assistant working a 40-hour week for a month for just $958.20.

Their hourly plans scale up as follows:

Micro Plan – 10 hours, $89.90 per month ($8.99/hr).
Mini Plan – 20 hours, $159.80 per month ($7.99/hr).
Small Plan – 40 hours, $279.60 per month ($6.99/hr).
Medium Plan – 80 hours, $519.20 per month ($6.49/hr).
Large Plan – 160 hours, $958.20 per month ($5.98/hr).

The rates are similar to other VA services in India.

Renots Alternatives

There is plenty of choice if you’re looking to work with a virtual assistant company based in India.

MyTasker and AskSunday are two of the most well-established companies in the space. Their hourly rates are a little higher than Renots, but it may be a fair reflection on the experience and quality of the assistants these companies offer.

Your Turn

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

Genie Desk

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

UPDATE: It appears Genie Desk is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

Genie Desk is Kolkata, India based virtual assistant company. The company was founded in 2012 and began sourcing clients through a variety of the freelance work platforms.

The management team brings years of experience in management consulting and business process outsourcing to Genie Desk.

Their VAs were largely recruited from other Fortune 500 BPO centers in India, meaning they have previous experience in working with international clients. Genie Desk aims their service at busy individuals, small businesses, and entrepreneurs.

What do they do?

Genie Desk virtual assistants can handle a variety of personal and business outsourcing tasks. You’ll find they perform everything from remote administrative duties all the way up to more technically skilled work like web development.

Common tasks include bookkeeping roles, document creation and editing, transcription, online research, and even serving as your virtual receptionist.

The VAs (the “genies”) work from a modern office that’s open 24/7, and use a team-based approach as needed to deliver the best client results. Depending on the nature of your task, you can use your assigned dedicated genie or allow any of the available VAs to handle it.

For ongoing processes you outsource, an on-site Six Sigma certified manager helps document them and oversee their execution.

Genie Desk doesn’t charge by tasks; only by the actual time used. That means you don’t have to worry about chunking up big projects into 15-minute increments.

Plans and Pricing

Genie Desk has 3 main plans:

Pay As You Go — Billed at a rate of $15.95 per hour, with a 10 hour minimum you can use over the course of 3 months. Once your time is depleted, just add more. No contracts or commitments.
Plan 10 — 10 hours of support per month for $129.50. ($12.95 / hour)
Plan 20 — 20 hours of support per month for $219. ($10.95 / hour)

The company offers a 3-hour free trial so you can test out their service, and will also quote custom plans if you have something in mind that doesn’t quite fit into one of the plans above.

An online dashboard allows you to track your usage throughout the month and plan accordingly so you maximize your return on investment.

These rates are competitive with the industry, if not slightly higher than what you’ll find at My Tasker or 24/7 Virtual Assistant.

What sets them apart?

When I spoke with John, their General Manager, he seemed quite aware of the high-flying promises made by Genie Desk’s competitors. What sets them apart, he explains, is:

Reliability, transparency, and accountability.
Not having VAs saying, “Yes I understand” and then wasting hours of your time when they really meant, “No, I need clarification.”
Industry-leading quality assurance standards.

Have you worked with Genie Desk? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision-making process.

iMysecy

Posted by Mica Harvey / India Virtual Assistants

UPDATE: It appears iMysecy has become unresponsive. Please consider one of these alternatives.

iMysecy is an around-the-clock virtual assistant service based in India. The company was founded in 2009 by a group of entrepreneurs from the United States, England, and India. The sales office is in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. I’m thinking the name is like “i – my – secretary” — but I could be way off.

According to their website, the founders of iMysecy are engineering graduates from the best Ivy League universities as well as holders of MBA’s from the “top 5 B-schools on the planet.” However, it looks like they want to remain anonymous because no names are listed.

Service wise, iMysecy runs a unique hybrid model of dedicated assistance and team-based support. You do get assigned a dedicated point of contact, but the actual work may be completed by someone else on their team or a qualified freelancer, depending on the expertise required.

Commonly outsourced tasks range from content creation to all aspects of administration, the latest in technological issues, and various forms of marketing and even accounting.

iMysecy is quite affordable, offering up five different pricing plans that can suit you, regardless of what your needs and budget are. They are keenly aware of the fact that many folks in the initial phase of their endeavors cannot afford to break the bank when seeking out virtual assistance services.

You can get your feet wet with a Pay As You Go plan at a rate of $8 an hour. Then there are the Silver Plan at $49 monthly in a 7 hour pack, Gold at $99 for 15 hours, Platinum at $149 monthly for 25 hours and lastly the Super Saver, which will get you 35 hours for a very affordable $199 (less than $6 an hour).

Hours don’t roll over month-to-month.

As you can see, there is something for everybody, regardless of their budget. The Pay-As-You-Go plan might be a good way to start out so you can see if their service meets your expectations. At the time of this writing, no free trial is available.

The primary targets of iMysecy are small to medium sized businesses worldwide. Some clients are also individuals who find they are too busy with other demands and need to strike some kind of balance. This is especially important as many entrepreneurs, especially when first starting out, experience some form of burnout and sometimes strife in their personal life as well.

Some things that really stand out about iMysecy are that they have experts from different cultural backgrounds, as well as the unique team-based way tasks may be assigned.

The disappointing thing was that someone from the company attempted to post spam comments on this site promoting the business. Poor form!

Among other virtual assistant companies in India, you might consider My Tasker or VMG BPO.

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

MobileWorks Premier

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

UPDATE: MobileWorks Premier is now LeadGenius, a specialized service offering lead generation for B2B sales and marketing teams. Please consider one of these alternatives.

MobileWorks is a California-based outsourcing company that was founded in 2011. Specifically, they brand themselves as “socially responsible crowdsourcing,” connecting a network of skilled workers around the globe with businesses in need of a flexible talent-pool.

Indeed, the young company has already attracted big name-brand clients like eBay and Xerox.

Behind the scenes at MobileWorks is a robust technological platform that distributes work to the human cloud in smart and innovative ways. This technology was developed at UC Berkeley in conjunction with their Computer Science crowdsourcing research program and the Information, Communication, and Technology for Social Enterprise department.

And while MobileWorks primarily focuses on enterprise-level crowdsourcing projects, their personal and small business offshoot, Premier, is definitely worth a look for people interested in hiring a virtual assistant.

MobileWorks Premier

Built on top of MobileWorks’ crowdsourcing technology is an innovative virtual assistant service called Premier.

With Premier, you buy blocks of time each month that can be used for any virtual task. Basically you submit your “project” to the Premier cloud, and a qualified VA takes care of it for you.

In that sense, it’s similar to Fancy Hands, except they can handle tasks and projects longer than 15 minutes and requiring more specialized skills. CEO and co-founder Anand Kulkarni explains:

“We’re a heck of a lot more sophisticated than Zirtual and FancyHands – we can carry out complex, open-ended projects; all our staffers have college degrees; we draw from an international workforce of thousands of people, and we can source a dedicated team of people with specialized skills like programming, translation and writing.”

Because you’re not relying on a dedicated assistant, but instead a global on-demand workforce, Premier is a 24/7 on-call service. (Or rather, “on-email” since phone support is not available at this time.)

In addition, each Premier staffer is certified in Microsoft Office and has signed a strict non-disclosure agreement to protect clients. It’s like a higher-level Mechanical Turk.

The Work

So what kind of work can you get done?

Some examples of tasks and projects MobileWorks Premier has been used for include software testing, document editing and preparation, online research, personal assistant type tasks, and more. Essentially anything that can be done remotely and doesn’t require extensive personal training or explanation.

Pricing

Pricing plans start at $49 a month, for 2 hours of virtual assistant service, and go all the up to a full-time level 160 hours a month for $1499. That is the equivalent of a full-time employee for just over $9 an hour, except it’s not just one employee; it’s a pool of thousands of qualified workers you can tap into as needed.

Premier’s most popular plan is called “Plus” and comes with 20 hours a month at a rate of $299. This is perhaps most similar to the service offered by 24/7 Virtual Assistant, only without a dedicated point of contact and a wider talent pool.

Exclusive Offer: Get 5% off your first month of Premier when you sign up through this link.

If you find one particular Premier VA does exceptional work, you can request him or her on subsequent project submissions.

You’ll also be able to try out the service risk-free, because they offer a 100% money-back guarantee during your first week of membership.

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

GlobeTask

Posted by Mica Harvey / Virtual Assistant Companies

UPDATE: It appears GlobeTask is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

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.

These rates place them somewhere in between the virtual assistant companies in India and the Philippines, and the freelancers and companies in the US and Europe.

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

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

UPDATE: It appears Myaa is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

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 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.

myaaworld

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

Posted by Mica Harvey / UK/Europe Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistant Companies

UPDATE: It appears Task Firm is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

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 terms of virtual assistant companies in the UK or Europe, Task Firm’s rates are quite attractive compared with some of their UK competition such as DailyPA.

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

Posted by Mica Harvey / Freelance Virtual Assistants, Project-Based Virtual Assistants

UPDATE: It appears Ziptask is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.

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.

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.

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Virtual Assistant Blog

About Renots

Services

Plans and Pricing

Renots Alternatives

Your Turn

What do they do?

Plans and Pricing

What sets them apart?

MobileWorks Premier

The Work

Pricing

Myaa Intro Video

MyaaWorld

How it Works

Plans and Pricing

Task Firm Alternatives?

About Zip Task

Services

How it Works

Ziptask Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

Ziptask Alternatives

Your Turn