Virtual Assistant or a Whole Team? What Small Businesses Should Know

Do you need a virtual assistant, or more than one set of hands?

A virtual assistant is the right hire when you need one steady person for admin. A dedicated team fits better when the work on your plate takes more than one skill. The trick is knowing which spot you're in before you hire.

You get to the end of the week, and the same projects are still sitting on your list. The days got eaten by small stuff.

That's the kind of week that sends people looking for help.

So you decide to get help, and the first idea is an assistant. It's a good idea. It's just not the only one, and I'd want you to see both before you pick.

One note before we start. When I say virtual assistant here, I mean a person who works for you from somewhere else, not a piece of software.

What goes into the price of a virtual assistant?

I'm not going to hand you a rate. I don't have a number I can stand behind, and one number wouldn't fit your business anyway.

What I can do is show you what moves the price.

• How many hours you need each week Where the person lives What they can do, from basic admin up to technical work Whether you hire them yourself or go through a company that finds and manages them

You'll also see it priced two ways. Some assistants bill by the hour. Others charge a set amount each month for a set number of hours.

Here's the part that isn't on the invoice, though: your time. Somebody has to find the person, show them how you like things done, answer their questions, and check the work. If they move on, somebody has to do all of it again. In a small business, all of that lands on you.

None of that makes an assistant a bad hire. It means the hourly rate is only part of what you pay. So when you compare your options, count what comes back finished, not just what the hour costs.

What a technical virtual assistant does

Start with the plain kind. Most of a virtual assistant's work is admin: your inbox, your calendar, booking, data entry, following up with customers.

A technical virtual assistant works inside your tools, not just your inbox. Think updating a page on your website, setting up a form, loading an email into your email software, or cleaning up your contact list. It's still assistant work, and it takes more tech skill.

You'll also see the term marketing virtual assistant. It's the same idea pointed at marketing chores, like getting posts ready, loading emails and updating web pages.

Our teams have technical Virtual Assistants too. Every plan includes 2 of them. They come into the same office as 2 developers and 2 designers. A team leader works there with them, and a North American account manager is your point of contact.

You never have to figure out which person does which task. You send the task. Your account manager reads it and assigns it to the right specialist.

The team takes on websites, development, automation, AI workflows, video, tech support, and design. That includes jobs like these.

• Landing pages, site updates and cleanup CRM setup and cleanup Workflows, pipelines and task automations Form routing, tags and handoff between tools Email sequences and broadcasts

The team works in the tools you already have, too. We plug into your existing tech stack, with tools such as WordPress, GoHighLevel, HubSpot, Mailchimp and Zapier.

The rest of what the team does is on our services page

Three spots where one assistant falls short

One good assistant is plenty when the work is steady and it's mostly admin. If what you need is somebody in your inbox and on your calendar every day, hire the assistant. That's the right call.

It stops being enough in three spots.

The first is when the work takes more than one skill. A website fix is developer work. A set of social graphics is design work. A webinar cut into clips is video work. It's hard to find one person who's good at all three, and it's harder when the people doing it now were hired for something else.

Jillian Ruck saw that from the inside. When she told her story, she was at Child USA, a non-profit committed to ending child abuse and neglect. In her words, “our staff members are not web or tech people” and the site took a lot of time away from the important things they were working on.

So they had our team build every new page and blog post. Here's what Jillian said about her own week: “I was spending about 10 hours a week and now I don’t do that.” The rest is in the Child USA case study

The second spot is when your one person is out. They get sick. They take a vacation. They take another job. With one assistant, the work waits until they're back or you've hired again. On our teams, when someone's out sick or on vacation, the team keeps moving.

The third is when you turn into the manager. You hired help to get time back, and now you spend that time explaining, checking and chasing. We set it up another way. Your account manager assigns the task to the right specialist, manages the timeline, and checks the work before you see it. You don't deal with the team directly unless you want to.

We call it insourcing. Picture one office. The same developers, technical Virtual Assistants and designers come in to work, on new computers, with three different internet providers and two backup power sources. A team leader works in the office with them and holds them accountable. They get to know you and how you like things done. That's the Office-Based Insourcing Model.

Now the fair warning about a team. It needs enough work to be worth it. Maybe you're wondering if you'd have enough for them to do. That's a real worry.

Here's the rule of thumb. If you can describe it clearly in a written brief or a short Loom video, there's a good chance we can do it. And if handing work off is the part that has you stuck, there's a longer post on how to delegate tasks

Cost of one virtual assistant vs a team

I can't put an honest number on the assistant side, so I'm not going to put a made-up one next to ours. What I can do is show you what's inside each price.

With one assistant, you're paying for one person's hours. Add your own time to manage them. Then add anybody else you bring in for the skills they don't have, like a developer for the website or an editor for the video.

With our team, it's one flat monthly rate. There are three plans.

• Entrepreneur: $1,497 a month, 1 task at a time Marketer: $2,994 a month, 2 tasks at a time Agency: $4,491 a month, 3 tasks at a time

Every plan includes a North American account manager, a team leader, 2 developers, 2 technical Virtual Assistants, 2 designers, and me on 2 weekly group calls. Tasks are unlimited. The plan sets how many run at the same time.

So "1 task at a time" isn't a cap on how much you can send. The team finishes a task and starts the next one, and you can line up as many as you want. Most tasks ship in 1 to 3 business days.

Here's a made-up example, so you can picture it. Say you need a landing page, a short video for that page, and a form that sends new leads into your CRM. With one assistant, that might be one job they can do and two you hire out. With our team, it's three tasks in one queue, and your account manager sorts out who does what.

There are no contracts. It's month to month, and you can cancel any time. The service is online. We serve any US state, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Is that more than one assistant costs? It might be. I'm not going to tell you it's less, because I don't know what your assistant costs. What I'd look at is what you get back for it, in finished work and in hours you're not managing anybody.

Which is right for you?

An assistant is probably your answer if these sound like you.

• The work is mostly admin It looks about the same every day You want one person who's part of your day

A team is probably your answer if these do.

• The work takes several skills, like website, CRM, video and design You have projects that have sat half done for months You've had helpers disappear on you You don't want to be the manager

It doesn't have to be one or the other, either. An assistant can run your inbox and your calendar while a team does the building.

And we're not the answer for everybody. We're here to execute, not consult, so if your main problem is strategy, we're not it. You bring the words, unless you help us train AI on your voice, and then the team can write. We set up ad accounts and build the ads, but we don't manage them. We make social content and graphics, but we don't reply to comments and DMs for you. And if you want a price for each project, a flat monthly rate isn't that.

Our page for small businesses picks up from here. It's for the owner who went looking for a virtual assistant for small business work and found out a team was the better fit.

If you'd like to see how a task moves from your desk to the team and back, it's laid out step by step on our How It Works page

Questions about a virtual assistant vs a team

What is a technical virtual assistant?

In general, it's an assistant who works inside your tools, like your website, your CRM and your email software, not just your inbox. Our teams include technical Virtual Assistants, 2 on every plan, and your account manager assigns each task to the right specialist.

How many technical Virtual Assistants come with a DeskTeam360 plan?

Every plan includes 2 technical Virtual Assistants. You also get 2 developers, 2 designers, a team leader and a North American account manager.

What's the difference between a virtual assistant and a dedicated team?

A virtual assistant is one person, and most of the work is admin. A dedicated team is a group with different skills that works on your tasks every month. Ours is a dedicated production team on a flat monthly rate, with unlimited tasks and no contracts.

Do I manage the team myself?

No, your account manager assigns each task to the right specialist, manages the timeline, and checks the work before you see it. You don't deal with the team directly unless you want to.

What if I don't have enough work for a whole team?

That's a fair worry. Here's the rule of thumb: if you can describe it clearly in a written brief or a short Loom video, there's a good chance we can do it. I'm also on 2 weekly group calls where you can ask me anything. And there are no contracts. It's month to month.

Know what you're short on

A good assistant gives you back your inbox. A good team gives you back the projects you keep putting off. Figure out which one you're short on, and the choice gets a lot easier.