Virtual assistant pricing packages: what you actually get

There are roughly three ways to buy virtual assistant help as a US small business. You pay an agency by the hour or in a monthly block. You subscribe to a talent marketplace and hire someone yourself. Or you hire a full-time person overseas directly, usually through a recruiter or a staffing platform. All three are sold as 'VA pricing' and they are almost nothing alike.

The differences that matter are not the headline hourly rate — they are what the rate includes, who absorbs the cost when things go wrong, and how long before the person is actually useful to you. This post goes through each model on those terms.

Hourly and package agencies: what the rate really covers

Managed VA agencies — the kind that advertise bundles of hours per month — are selling a service, not a hire. You pay for completed tasks delivered by a pool of assistants the agency manages. The agency absorbs recruiting, benefits, supervision, and replacement. That overhead is baked into the rate.

The upside is simplicity. The downside is that you rarely build a working relationship with one person, ramp-up time resets every time your assigned VA changes, and the work is generic. If you need someone who learns your business, remembers your preferences, and can be trusted with your inbox, a pooled-hours model is the wrong tool. It is useful for defined, repeatable tasks where the output is easy to check and the person doing it genuinely does not matter.

One thing to read carefully in any agency package: what happens when you use fewer hours than your plan? Most plans do not roll over. And what is the real notice period if you want to cancel? Those two clauses determine whether a 'flexible' package actually is.

Marketplace subscriptions: you do the hiring, they provide the pool

Platforms like OnlineJobs.ph charge a monthly subscription to browse and message candidates. You do the sourcing, the screening, the interviewing, and the hiring yourself. The platform's value is access to a large database of Filipino professionals who have signed up to be found.

The subscription cost is low. The real cost is your time plus the quality of your screening process. If you post a job, collect applications, and hire based on a good resume and a pleasant video call, you are replicating the failure mode that makes overseas hires quit in month two: the brief was vague, the work sample was skipped, and the fit was assumed rather than tested.

Marketplace hiring works well when you know exactly what you need, you have a real work sample to test candidates with, and you have the time to run the process properly. If any of those are missing, the low subscription fee disguises a much higher true cost.

Full-time direct hire: the rates and what drives them

A full-time virtual assistant hired directly in the Philippines runs between $700 and $1,150 per month in our published salary research. A comparable US-based hire runs $3,250 to $4,850 per month. The gap is real and it is not closing meaningfully.

Colombia runs about 25 percent above the Philippine band — useful if you need someone in US Eastern or Central time with no antisocial hours. Mexico runs about 30 percent above, and shares a time zone with most of the US, which matters for roles where fast back-and-forth during the business day is the whole job. South Africa runs about 15 percent above and overlaps European hours well, making it the strongest option for any business with UK-facing work.

The rate is only part of the picture. Add the contractor payment fees, any equipment or software you provide, and the cost of a bad hire if the person leaves in two months. A full-time hire is the highest-upside model and the highest-variance one.

What you are paying for when you use a recruiter

If you hire a full-time VA through a recruiter rather than doing it yourself, you are paying for sourcing, screening, and to some degree quality assurance. The question is how much and on what terms.

Traditional offshore staffing agencies in this category typically charge 25 to 35 percent of first-year salary, roughly $4,500 to $6,300 on common VA roles. That is a percentage-of-salary model, which means the agency's incentive is to place higher-salaried candidates, not necessarily the best-fit ones. HireLATAM, for comparison, lists a flat placement fee of $3,500 on their site as of July 2026.

Flat-fee models remove that incentive problem. Rolemote, for example, runs the search free, and you only pay a flat fee, not a percentage of salary, when you choose to meet finalists. If no candidate clears your bar, the re-run is free. The flat fee is $1,995, against the $4,500 to $6,300 a traditional agency charges on the same roles. The other thing worth checking in any recruiter: what exactly did they screen on? A rubric that is published and checkable is different from 'top 1%,' which is a marketing claim with no methodology behind it.

Rolemote publishes its screening weights: graded work sample 35 percent, scenario judgment 25 percent, experience specificity 20 percent, written English 15 percent, salary-band fit 5 percent. Those numbers are on the /how-we-screen page and are runnable at /try-the-screener. That level of transparency is not standard in this industry.

The failure modes each model produces

Managed agency packages fail when the task volume is inconsistent, when the work requires context that does not transfer across a rotating pool, or when you realize you needed a person rather than an output.

Marketplace self-hiring fails when the brief is vague, the screening skips a real work test, or the founder runs out of time to manage the process and makes a hire based on vibes. The platform did not fail, the process did.

Full-time direct hires fail most often in the first 60 days. The person was hired on a resume and a call, the onboarding was unstructured, and neither side had a clear picture of what success looked like in week one. That failure is almost always traceable to the hiring process, not the candidate.

Picking the right model for where you are now

Say you run a five-person e-commerce brand and you need help with inbox management, supplier follow-ups, and order tracking about 20 hours a week. A managed agency package covers that if the tasks are truly self-contained and you can live with a rotating person. If you want someone who learns your vendors and handles judgment calls, a full-time Philippine VA at $700 to $1,150 per month will outperform a pool in month three, assuming the hire is made well.

If you are an agency owner who needs a dedicated person but cannot absorb a bad hire right now, because you are already stretched, the most expensive mistake is a fast, cheap hire that exits in two months. Whatever you spend on a proper screening process is almost certainly less than the ramp-up cost of starting over.

The pricing package that matters is not the one on the agency's sales page. It is the total cost across the first six months: fee, ramp-up time, any re-hire, and the value of the hours you spent managing the process. Run that number for each model, honestly, and the right answer for your situation becomes fairly clear.