Virtual Assistants · Vetted · Employer of Record
Most Virtual Assistant Companies Sell You Hours. We Place a Senior Hire.
The VA industry runs on $8-16/hour generalists you have to train, manage, and too often replace. GetGuru places senior, vetted specialists — and employs them properly, with real payroll and benefits — for $1,275 bi-weekly, flat.
What goes wrong with budget VA companies
The lottery hire
Every resume looks identical and 'vetting' is a typing test. You find out whether you drew a good VA in week three — after you've already granted access to your inbox and your customers.
You become the trainer
A junior generalist needs an SOP for everything. You save dollars per hour and spend your own evenings recording Loom videos, reviewing output, and re-explaining the same task.
Churn you can't see coming
Underpaid contractors leave the moment something better appears — some VA companies respond with screen-tracking software instead of better pay. Either way, the turnover cost lands on you.
What a dedicated Guru handles for you
Inbox & calendar ownership
Triage, drafting, follow-ups, and scheduling handled end-to-end — you review exceptions, not everything. Most clients reclaim 10+ hours in week one.
Operations & admin
CRM hygiene, data entry done right, document prep, invoicing and AR follow-up, reporting — the recurring back-office work that quietly eats your team's week.
Customer support
Email, chat, and phone coverage in fluent English, with your tone and your escalation rules. Response times drop from days to minutes.
Sales support
Lead list building and enrichment, appointment setting, pipeline updates, and follow-up sequences in GoHighLevel, HubSpot, or whatever CRM you run.
Project coordination
Chasing deliverables, updating project boards, prepping meeting agendas and minutes — someone finally owns the follow-through.
Systems & automation
SOPs written as they work, plus light automation in Zapier and workflow tools — so the process outlives any one person, including them.
Budget VA company vs. GetGuru
Cheap per hour is not the same as cheap.
| Typical budget VA company | GetGuru dedicated Guru | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $8-16/hour — full-time coverage adds up to $1,400-2,800/month | $1,275 bi-weekly flat (about $2,550/month), full-time and all-in |
| Seniority | Junior generalists working from scripts | Senior specialists, 5+ years experience, skill-tested |
| Training burden | You write the SOPs and train them yourself | Works independently from day one — and documents SOPs for you |
| Employment model | Contractor with no benefits — churn is structural | Employed by GetGuru with health + vision insurance and a provident fund |
| Oversight | Screenshot and keystroke tracking software | Output-based accountability — no surveillance-ware |
| If it's not working | You restart the hiring lottery | Free replacement, re-onboarded in days |
| Compliance | Misclassification and payroll risk can sit with you | GetGuru is the employer of record — you get one clean invoice |
Ranges reflect typical published rates across budget VA providers; individual companies vary. Compare total cost of ownership — your training time and churn included — not the hourly rate.
Senior assistant. Flat price. Properly employed.
$1,275 bi-weekly — about $2,550/month for a full-time, dedicated senior hire. Near the price of full-time budget-VA coverage, at a completely different level of seniority.
- Hired and onboarded in 14 days
- Pay nothing until you hire
- Free replacement if it's not working
- Bi-weekly billing, cancel anytime — no annual contracts
- GetGuru is the employer of record — payroll, taxes, health + vision insurance, provident fund
- Full-time, dedicated to you only, timezone-aligned, English-fluent
“We went through three VAs from a cheap provider in six months — every reset meant retraining from zero. Our GetGuru hire ran our entire back office within a month: inbox, scheduling, CRM, invoicing follow-up. A year later she's still here, and she wrote the SOPs herself.”
Anonymised at client request. Details available under NDA on discovery call.
How to choose a virtual assistant company
Whoever you hire through — us or anyone else — these four questions separate the real staffing companies from the resume brokers.
1. Ask who actually employs the assistant
Many virtual assistant companies are brokers: they introduce you to an offshore contractor, take a margin, and leave the employment relationship — payroll, taxes, benefits, legal classification — undefined. That's where misclassification risk, sudden disappearances, and 'my VA quit over the weekend' stories come from.
GetGuru is the employer of record. We legally employ every Guru: payroll, taxes, health insurance, vision insurance, and a provident fund for retirement are all handled on our side. You get one clean invoice and a stable hire — no contractor paperwork, no compliance exposure, and none of the churn that comes from treating people as interchangeable hours.
2. Vet the vetting
Ask any VA company what percentage of applicants they accept and what the tests actually measure. A typing-speed test and a webcam interview is not vetting. Look for live skill assessments in the actual work — inbox management, CRM operations, written English under time pressure — and insist on interviewing the finalists yourself before anyone starts.
Our bench accepts a small fraction of applicants, every Guru has 5+ years of professional experience, and you always interview your shortlist before choosing. If a company won't let you meet the person before you commit, that tells you how confident they are in the match.
3. Match seniority to the job
An $8/hour VA can be the right call for pure, high-volume data entry with an airtight SOP. But the moment the work touches your customers, your calendar, or your revenue — support, sales follow-up, billing, executive admin — a junior hire costs more than it saves: in your training hours, in errors, and in the opportunities a script-follower misses.
Price the role honestly. If the job description includes 'uses judgment', hire senior. That is the entire premise of a Guru at $1,275 bi-weekly — senior quality at a price near the top of the budget-VA range.
4. Check the exit terms before you sign
Read the fine print on three things: what happens if the assistant isn't a fit (is replacement free, and how fast?), what the contract minimum is, and what you pay before anyone starts working. Long minimums and upfront deposits shift all the risk onto you.
Our terms are the short version of that checklist: you pay nothing until you hire, replacement is free if it's not working, and billing is bi-weekly with the ability to cancel anytime. If a company's terms are worse than that on all three, ask why.
Virtual Assistant Companies — Frequently Asked Questions
Skip the job boards. Hire your Guru in 14 days.
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