To choose a virtual assistant agency, list the tasks and hours you'll hand over, get prices from three agencies that publish them, and compare the effective hourly cost for your real usage, the contract terms, how assistants will access your accounts and use AI with your data, and what happens when your assistant leaves.
The headline hourly rate is the least useful number on an agency's website. What you pay per useful hour depends on the smallest plan you can buy, whether unused hours roll over, minimum terms, set-up fees and surcharges for specialist work. A plan that looks expensive per hour can cost less over a quarter than a cheaper one sized for a bigger business than yours.
Price the work in minutes before you price the agency
Agencies sell hours, so you need to know how many you're buying. Skip the job title and write down each recurring task, how often it happens and how long it takes now. Time five real instances of each with your phone's stopwatch instead of guessing: owners tend to underestimate the small, constant jobs and overestimate the occasional big ones.
Here is the list a two-artist tattoo studio might produce. The volumes are illustrative, and a month is counted as 4.33 weeks.
| Task | Per week | Minutes each | Hours a month | Needs access to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Replying to booking enquiries (Instagram DMs and email) | 40 | 4 | 11.5 | Inbox, Instagram, artists' calendars |
| Booking consultations and sending deposit links | 10 | 6 | 4.3 | Booking app, payment links |
| Handling reschedule requests | 8 | 5 | 2.9 | Booking app, inbox |
| Appointment reminder messages | 20 | 2 | 2.9 | Booking app |
| Day-three aftercare check-in emails | 12 | 3 | 2.6 | Client list, email |
| Supplier re-orders and a stock count | 1 | 30 | 2.2 | Supplier accounts, stock sheet |
| Total | 26.4 |
Make two adjustments before asking for quotes. First, strike out anything software should do. Reminders and aftercare check-ins can usually be sent automatically by the booking app or a simple automation, which removes 5.5 hours and leaves about 21 hours of work that needs a person's judgement. Second, add a learning margin: a new assistant reads your policies, asks questions and makes early mistakes, so budget roughly a quarter more hours in month one, about 26. If most of your own list turns out to be automatable, compare an AI assistant with a virtual assistant before you sign anything.
What three agencies charged on their own price pages
Plenty of agencies quote only after a sales call, which makes side-by-side comparison slow. Three that publish prices show the main models you'll meet. These are USD list prices from each agency's pricing page as of September 2026; they change, so confirm them before relying on them.
| Agency and plan | Hours a month | Monthly price | Per hour | Terms stated on the page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time Etc, 10 hours | 10 | $390 | $39 | No set-up fee, no notice period, cancel any time |
| Time Etc, 20 hours | 20 | $760 | $38 | Unused hours roll over (listed on 20 hours and above) |
| Time Etc, 40 hours | 40 | $1,480 | $37 | As above |
| Time Etc, 60 hours | 60 | $2,160 | $36 | As above |
| Boldly, 40 hours | 40 | $2,600 | $65 | Project management, web development, writing and design billed separately at $79 an hour; 2.9% fee on card payments; change or cancel any time |
| Boldly, 100 hours | 100 | $6,500 | $65 | Plans also at 60 and 80 hours; 160 hours priced on request |
| Prialto, one "unit" | 55+ | $1,500-$1,600 (the page showed both) | about $27-$29 | 90-day minimum per unit; $250 set-up fee in the first month; backup assistant included; says it never charges overage fees |
| Prialto, full-time | 165+ | from $3,600 | about $22 | Three or more units; discounts for annual contracts |
The table hides three different products. Time Etc sells small monthly blocks starting at 10 hours. Boldly's plans start at 40 hours, with a higher rate for specialist work. Prialto sells dedicated capacity in units of 55-plus hours with a minimum term and a backup assistant. None of them is "the cheap one" until your own hours go through the sum, and price isn't the only test: continuity, security and skills matter as much. Freelance marketplaces are a fourth model with lower hourly rates, but you recruit, supervise and replace the person yourself, and the marketplace adds its own client fee, so check its current percentage.
Turn list prices into a cost per hour you actually use
Run the tattoo studio's first quarter through each model: 26 hours in month one, then 21 and 21, a total of 68 hours of real work.
- Small blocks with rollover. The 40-hour Time Etc plan covers month one ($1,480) and 14 unused hours roll forward. The 20-hour plan ($760) then covers months two and three, drawing 2 hours from the bank. Three months cost $3,000 for 68 hours used, with 12 hours still banked: about $44 per used hour, falling towards the $37-$38 plan rates once the banked hours are spent. This assumes banked hours carry across a plan change, which is worth confirming before you rely on it.
- Larger monthly plans. Boldly's smallest plan is 40 hours at $2,600. Its pricing page doesn't mention rollover, so ask; if unused hours lapse, three months cost $7,800 for 68 used hours, about $115 each. At a full 40 hours a month the figure is the listed $65.
- Dedicated units with a minimum term. One Prialto unit for the 90-day minimum plus the set-up fee comes to $4,750-$5,050 depending on which of the page's two figures applies: about $70-$74 per used hour at this workload, and about $29-$31 if the studio used the full 55 hours.
At roughly 21 hours a month, the small-block model wins on price by a wide margin. If the studio grew to 50 hours a month, or needed a dedicated person with a guaranteed backup, the ranking would change. That's the point of running the sum with your own numbers instead of comparing hourly rates.
Questions to ask on the sales call, and the answers worth hearing
Ask every agency the same questions and write the answers in one sheet. Vague answers are information too.
The person doing your work
- Who exactly will do my work, and can I speak to them first? A good answer names the assistant or offers two profiles. "Whoever is available" means re-explaining your business every week.
- What happens when they're ill, on holiday or leave? You want a named backup who has read your notes, and no charge for a replacement's learning hours.
- Are assistants employees or contractors, and what confidentiality terms bind them? Either can work. What matters is that the person reading your inbox is bound by the confidentiality clause you sign with the agency.
- Which hours and time zone do they work? For enquiry replies, an assistant who finishes before your evening peak misses the messages that matter most.
Hours and billing
- How is time tracked, and in what increments? Time Etc says its assistants keep a running total by the second. If an agency rounds every task up to a larger block, a day of two-minute replies turns into hours. Ask for a sample timesheet.
- Do unused hours roll over, and do they expire? Get the rule in writing, including what happens to banked hours if you cancel.
- What happens in a month when I need more? Extra hours at the plan rate, a forced upgrade and no overage fee at all are all in use.
- What are the minimum term, notice period and set-up fee? Compare these alongside the price, not after it.
- Is there a fee if I later hire the assistant directly? Some contracts include one. Better to know now than once you rely on the person.
Access and security
- How will the assistant get into my accounts? Look for delegation or the assistant's own login, with shared passwords only through a password manager.
- Who receives the multi-factor codes? Codes arriving on your phone at 7am every day are a sign the access set-up needs rethinking.
- What happens in the first hour after an assistant leaves your account? The agency should have a written offboarding routine it can send you.
- Is there an independent security report? Prialto's pricing page mentions SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, for example. A report doesn't make an agency safe, but it shows someone outside has checked its controls.
AI tools
- Which AI tools will the assistant use on my work, and on whose account? "Their own free account" is the answer to probe.
- Is the model-training switch off on those accounts, or are they business plans? The section on AI further down explains why this matters.
- Will I be told when a reply was drafted with AI, and who checks it before sending? For anything customer-facing, a person should read it first.
- Who owns the saved replies, templates and prompts built for my business? They should be yours and live in your accounts, so they survive a change of assistant.
A quote request that gets comparable answers
Send the same email to three agencies. Attaching your timed task list stops each one quoting a different imaginary workload.
Subject: Quote request: about 21 hours a month of admin support
Hello,
We're a two-artist tattoo studio looking for ongoing admin support.
Attached is our task list with weekly volumes and timed minutes per task
(about 21 hours a month, plus a learning month of about 26 hours).
Please reply with:
1. The plan you'd recommend for these hours, its monthly price and what
happens to unused hours
2. Minimum term, notice period, set-up fee and any card or overage fees
3. Who would do the work, their working hours and time zone, and cover
for holidays and departures
4. How your assistant would access Gmail, Instagram and our booking app
5. Which AI tools your assistants use on client work, on whose accounts,
and your rules on customer data in those tools
6. Whether any fee applies if we later hire the assistant directly
Thanks,
[first name]The replies tend to sort themselves. One agency answers all six points in writing; another sends a calendar link and a brochure; a third recommends a plan twice your hours "to allow for growth". The first is easy to compare. The third might be right, but ask them to show the sum.
How the agency's assistants use AI on your customers' messages
Many agencies now advertise assistants trained in AI tools, and for drafting replies that saves real time; assistants who use AI well can serve more clients without dropping quality. The risk sits in which account the assistant uses. Consumer ChatGPT and Claude plans have a model-training switch in their privacy settings, while business plans such as ChatGPT Business and Claude Team don't train on business content by default. An assistant pasting your clients' messages into a personal free account is a data decision you didn't get to make.
If you want the assistant working inside your own AI workspace, the cost is modest but has a catch: ChatGPT Business and Claude Team both need at least two seats. A ChatGPT Business Standard seat is $25 a user a month billed monthly or $20 billed annually, so an owner plus one assistant pays roughly $40-$50 a month. If an agency offers to build you a custom GPT, decline politely: OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs, which stop running on 11 December 2026. A shared Project holding your house rules and price list does the same job. Sharing your own login with the assistant isn't a workaround either: Anthropic's consumer terms, for one, forbid sharing login details.
Whatever tool they use, give the assistant written house rules to paste in with every draft. A studio's version might read:
House rules for enquiry replies (paste above every draft request)
- Never quote a price. Say pricing is confirmed at the free consultation.
- Never promise a date. Offer only the slots shown in the booking link.
- Deposits are taken when the tattoo is booked, not for consultations.
- No exclamation marks, no emojis, sign off with the studio name.
- Anything about skin conditions, allergies or pregnancy: don't answer,
flag it for the artist.
- Never paste card details, phone numbers or health details into the AI tool.The difference shows quickly. An illustrative first draft from an assistant using AI without the rules:
Hi!! Thanks so much for reaching out, we'd LOVE to create your dream sleeve! Prices start from $100 an hour and we have availability next week. Pop a $50 deposit over to secure your slot!
Three problems: a made-up price, invented availability and a deposit for the wrong thing. The same enquiry answered with the rules applied:
Hi [first name], thanks for the reference photos. A half-sleeve starts with a free 30-minute consultation so the artist can plan the design and quote properly. There are consultation slots on [day] and [day] in the booking link below. The deposit is only taken once you book the tattoo itself.
Access without handing over your passwords
The safest set-ups give the assistant their own way in, so you can remove it in a minute without changing anything else. For email, Gmail's delegate access lets someone read, send and delete messages in your account without your password; they can't change your password or chat as you, and their own address shows when they send. On a work account your admin has to allow delegation first, which is worth checking before day one (Google's delegation help page has the steps). Most booking apps let you add a staff login with limited rights; use that instead of your owner login.
Some tools make this harder. Zapier's Free and Professional plans allow one user, so an assistant working in your Zapier means sharing your login; either keep automation changes with you or move to the Team plan, which allows 25 users with shared app connections. For anything that can't be delegated, share credentials through a business password manager, never by message; the steps are in sharing AI tool logins safely. Plan the exit on day one as well: the checklist you'd use for staff, in offboarding AI tools and shared accounts, covers a departing assistant too.
A two-week trial scorecard, filled in
Agree a trial fortnight and score it against targets set in advance. The studio's sheet after two weeks, with illustrative figures:
| Measure | Target | Week 1 | Week 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enquiries answered within 2 working hours | 90% | 71% | 88% |
| Drafts the owner had to correct | Under 10% | 9 of 40 (23%) | 4 of 42 (10%) |
| Consultations booked from enquiries | No drop | 11 | 12 |
| Hours logged against the estimate | Within 15% | 7.5 vs 6.0 | 5.2 vs 4.9 |
| Errors that reached a customer | None | 1 | 0 |
The one error is typical of a first week. The assistant quoted an old deposit amount from a PDF price list saved in a shared folder months earlier. Nobody had deleted it, so it looked authoritative. The fix took ten minutes: one current price sheet, the old files archived, and a line in the house rules naming the sheet. Week one's correction rate also looks alarming until you read the notes: most fixes were tone, which improved once the assistant had twenty approved replies to copy.
Decide in advance what fails the trial. For the studio, any mistake involving a health question, or response times still under 80% in week two, would mean ending it and trying the next agency on the list.
Contract terms that quietly raise the price
- Minimum terms. A 90-day minimum turns a trial into a quarter's commitment. Ask whether the first month can stand alone.
- Set-up fees. $250 is small, but it belongs in the comparison.
- Unused hours. Lapsing hours are the biggest hidden cost for businesses with seasonal work.
- Specialist rates. Agencies define specialist work differently. Boldly's page lists project management, web development, writing and design at $79 an hour, against $65 on its plans. Check which of your own tasks would fall under a higher rate before comparing totals.
- Card fees. A 2.9% fee on card payments adds about $75 a month to a $2,600 plan.
- Direct-hire fees. Know the figure before you grow attached to the person.
- Renewal and price-rise wording. Monthly contracts rarely fix prices. The questions you'd ask a software supplier, set out in the tutorial on auto-renewals, price rises and notice periods, apply here too.
When a personal trainer should skip the agency altogether
A solo personal trainer with 30 clients might list weekly check-in messages, session reminders, payment chasers and programme updates: perhaps 12 hours a month. Reminders and payment chasers belong in the booking and payments app, which can send them unprompted. Check-in messages can be drafted in batches with an AI assistant on a $20-a-month individual plan, then personalised in a few minutes each. What's left, perhaps five or six hours, sits below the smallest plan of any agency above, and the trainer's own voice is what clients pay for. For a list like that, a weekend setting up automations beats a quarter of fees for hours nobody uses.
The same test works in reverse. If your timed list comes to 40 hours or more after automation, the larger plans and dedicated units start to make sense, and the questions about backup cover and security matter more than a few dollars an hour.
Hiring a VA through an agency: follow-up questions
Is a freelance virtual assistant cheaper than an agency?
Often per hour, but compare the whole cost. With a freelancer you recruit, check references, cover holidays and replace the person yourself, and a freelance marketplace adds its own client fee on top of the rate. An agency charges more per hour for matching, backup cover and supervision. If your work can't stop for a week when someone leaves, that cover is what the extra money buys.
How many hours a month should I start with?
Start from your timed task list, remove anything software can send automatically, then add a learning margin of about a quarter for the first month. Pick the smallest plan that covers that figure, ideally one where unused hours roll over, and review the timesheets after 60 days. The real figure usually differs from the estimate in one direction or the other, so avoid long minimum terms at the start.
Can an agency's assistant use ChatGPT with my customers' details?
Only if you agree the rules first. Ask which AI tools and which accounts they'll use. Business plans such as ChatGPT Business and Claude Team don't train on your content by default, while consumer plans have a model-training switch in privacy settings that should be off. Put in writing which details may never go into any AI tool, such as payment details or health information.
What should happen on the day my assistant leaves?
The agency should give you a named replacement and a written handover note covering open tasks, saved replies and where every template lives. On your side, remove mail delegation and any logins created for the assistant, change passwords shared through your password manager and check which apps still have access. Doing it the same day matters more than doing it perfectly.
Further reads
- How to Hire an AI Automation Freelancer on Upwork or Fiverr — Hiring through a freelance marketplace instead: vetting, briefs and fees.
- AI Consultant vs Agency vs Freelancer: Which Should You Hire? — How agencies, freelancers and consultants compare for AI-related work.
- How to Write a Job Advert for an AI-Savvy Admin Assistant — If you'd rather employ an assistant directly, start with the advert.
- Can AI Manage Your Calendar and Book Meetings for You? — Diary jobs AI tools can handle before you pay a person for them.
- How Much Does a Fractional Operations Manager Cost? — When you need someone to run the processes, not just do the tasks.
- SOC 2 and ISO 27001 Explained: Checking an AI Vendor's Security — What security reports like SOC 2 do and don't prove about a supplier.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Time Etc, Boldly and Prialto pricing pages (checked September 2026); Gmail Help, Delegate and collaborate on email; Zapier pricing page; ChatGPT Business and Claude Team plan pages; OpenAI's help page on custom GPT retirement and migration; Anthropic's consumer terms.