I had a client tell me he’d spent six weeks trying to hire a Virtual Assistant on his own.
Six weeks.
He posted on LinkedIn. He tried OnlineJobs.ph. He put up a listing on Upwork. He even posted on his personal social media asking if anyone knew someone.
He got over 200 applicants.
And couldn’t hire a single one.
Not because the candidates were all bad. Some were fine. The problem was that he had no system to tell the difference between “fine” and “great” when he was staring at 200 profiles that all said the same thing.
“Detail-oriented.”
“Self-starter.”
“Excellent communication skills.”
Seven-time Formula One world champion recently had a LinkedIn post go viral. And his ghostwriter reduced a year at Ferrari to “developing and redeveloping skills like high-stakes collaboration and adaptability.”
(Bear with me for a second)
“High-stakes collaboration.” That’s called talking to people.
Adaptability. That’s called doing things.
This is the best that a team that is worth close to 7 BILLION DOLLARS can do.
That’s what VA profiles look like.
Generic slop that says nothing.
Next thing they’ll be saying that our grandfathers storming the beaches of Normandy was “a cross-functional team exercise in adaptability.”
Anyways. Back to the client trying to hire the VA…
He told me it was — and I’m quoting — “the most mind-melting task of my entire life.”
That was David, who runs a sales development agency called Outbound Partners. He’d tried LinkedIn, OnlineJobs.ph, Indeed, Upwork, and social media. All of them. None of them worked. Not because the platforms are broken — but because sorting through the flood of applicants without a real screening system is basically a full-time job on top of your actual full-time job.
David ended up hiring through us. We placed an Inbox Manager who unblocked his company’s growth within weeks. But that’s not really the point of this article.
The point is this:
Where you hire a Virtual Assistant matters less than HOW you hire one. And most people get the “how” wrong long before the “where” becomes relevant.
That said — you still need to pick a platform. And they’re not all created equal.
We’ve placed over 1,000 remote workers from Eastern Europe and Latin America into US and European businesses. We’ve competed against every platform on this list. We have had more clients than I’d care to admit come to us after trying most of them. And I have strong opinions about all of them.
Here’s the honest breakdown.
The 3 Ways to Hire a Virtual Assistant
Before I review specific platforms, you need to understand the three models. Every option on the market falls into one of these buckets, and the model you choose matters more than the specific company.
1. Marketplaces (DIY)
You post a job, browse profiles, screen candidates, and hire someone directly. The platform takes a cut or charges listing fees. Examples: Upwork, Fiverr, OnlineJobs.ph.
2. Managed Services (Rental)
You sign up, they assign someone from their pool. You pay the company, the company pays the VA. You don’t own the relationship — you’re renting a person. Examples: most of the “Virtual Assistant services” companies you find when you Google around.
3. Placement Agencies (Matchmaking)
An agency sources, screens, and presents candidates. You interview and hire directly. The person becomes YOUR team member — on your tools, in your systems, dedicated to you. The agency did the hard part and then gets out of the way.
Each model has trade-offs. Let me walk through the actual platforms.
Marketplaces: The DIY Route
Upwork
Upwork is the biggest freelance marketplace in the world. Millions of profiles. Every skill set you can think of. And it’s way too convoluted for hiring a Virtual Assistant.
Here’s the thing:
Everything on Upwork is a “contract.” The whole platform is built around project-based freelancing — someone does a thing, you pay them, you move on. That’s fine if you need a logo designed or a one-off data scraping project.
But a Virtual Assistant isn’t a project. A VA is a relationship. You need someone embedded in your business, learning your systems, understanding your preferences. Upwork’s entire architecture works against that.
And everything is hourly. Think about that for a second. You know who pays by the hour? McDonald’s. Uber. The gig economy. You know who doesn’t? Apple. McKinsey. Any company that wants someone invested in the outcome rather than watching the clock. Hourly pay tells the person “you’re temporary.” Monthly salary tells them “you’re part of the team.” Upwork is structurally designed for the first one.
The fee structure is messy. Upwork takes a percentage from the freelancer (which means the best people either inflate their rates to compensate or avoid the platform entirely). There’s a “connects” system where freelancers pay to apply to jobs. The interface is cluttered with badges, certifications, and ranking systems that tell you almost nothing about whether this person will actually be good at managing your inbox.
And then there’s the applicant flood. Post a VA job on Upwork and you’ll get 50-100 applications in the first 48 hours. Most of them are templated cover letters from people who didn’t read your job post. You’re back to the same problem David had — how do you tell the difference when everyone sounds identical on paper?
When Upwork works: If you need someone for a specific, short-term task (data entry project, research sprint, one-time content batch) and you already know exactly what you’re looking for. If you’ve hired before and know how to spot quality fast.
When Upwork doesn’t work: When you’re looking for a long-term Virtual Assistant who will become a real part of your team.
Click to watch our “Don’t Hire on Upwork” video
Fiverr
Fiverr is pure chaos.
The original concept — everything costs five dollars — is long gone. Now it’s a marketplace where pricing is all over the place. Want a graphic? $5. Oh, you want it in color? $50. You want it this week? $150. You want revisions? $200.
Every single service has a different pricing structure, different add-ons, different delivery timelines. You practically need a trained AI just to do an apples-to-apples comparison between two sellers offering the same thing.
For Virtual Assistant work specifically, Fiverr attracts a lot of churn. People offering the cheapest rates to get volume, delivering the bare minimum, and moving on. The sellers who are actually good tend to have their rates jacked up to the point where you’re paying more than you would through other channels — and you’re still dealing with Fiverr’s clunky platform and dispute resolution process.
When Fiverr works: One-off tasks. You need a quick turnaround on something simple and disposable. Emphasis on disposable.
When Fiverr doesn’t work: For anything ongoing. For anything that requires context, judgment, or a relationship. Which is basically the entire point of hiring a VA.
OnlineJobs.ph
OnlineJobs.ph is the go-to platform for hiring from the Philippines specifically. It’s been around forever, it’s cheap, and the candidate pool is enormous.
That enormous pool is both the advantage and the problem.
The Philippines has 100+ million people, and English is essentially a national language. So the volume of applicants you get is massive. But when everyone speaks English, it becomes incredibly hard to distinguish who’s truly exceptional versus who’s just OK. You’re looking for a shark in an ocean of minnows.
The website itself is stuck in the stone age. The interface is janky. The filtering tools are basic. The candidate profiles are inconsistent — some are detailed, most are not. And half the time you can’t even get on the site. It’s constantly getting DDoS’d, throwing errors, or just straight up not loading. You’ll be mid-search and the whole thing goes down. For a platform that’s supposed to help you save time, you spend a surprising amount of it refreshing the page.
I’ve had multiple clients come to me after trying OnlineJobs.ph. Kanon Clark, who runs a lead generation company in Texas, told me he’d been using “the typical online jobs PH” and similar platforms before working with us. His bottleneck? “Just getting quality candidates who could do the role I needed. The time spent sifting through each candidate, conducting interviews… it just took a lot of unneeded resources and time spent on candidates who shouldn’t have even been in the hiring pool to begin with.”
He also specifically said he was looking for someone who could “think outside the box” — and that’s where the regional difference matters. His experience with the Philippines was that candidates would follow instructions to the letter, but the moment anything fell outside the script, they’d freeze. He ended up hiring from Eastern Europe through us and found exactly the kind of independent thinker he needed.
Another client, Logan Fitz, a content creator who’d previously used Filipino editors through OnlineJobs, described the same pattern: “They do a decent job, but it’s because you literally, extremely, to the T, to the letter, wrote out exactly what needs to happen. And then they’ll do exactly that.” He wanted someone who could read between the lines and add creative input without being told every single step.
When OnlineJobs.ph works: When you have extremely clear SOPs, you’re hiring for straightforward execution-only tasks, you have the time to screen thoroughly, and budget is your number one priority.
When OnlineJobs.ph doesn’t work: When you need independent thinking, when you don’t have time to sift through hundreds of applicants, or when you need someone who can push back and offer ideas — not just follow instructions.
Managed Services: The Rental Model
I wrote an entire article about why most Virtual Assistant services are terrible, so I won’t rehash all of it here. But here’s the summary:
Managed VA services work like this: You pay $2,000-$3,000 a month. The company keeps 50-70% of that as their cut. The person doing the actual work gets paid a fraction of what you’re spending.
You’re paying for convenience — someone else handles recruiting, payroll, and management. The problem is what that convenience actually costs you.
The markup problem: When you pay $2,500/month and the VA gets $800, you’re getting $800-level talent at a $2,500 price tag. The extra money doesn’t make the person better. It makes the company richer.
The dedication problem: Many managed services use shared or rotating VAs. If you’re buying 10 hours a week and someone else is buying 30, guess whose tasks are getting priority? Not yours.
The ownership problem: The VA works for them, not you. If they leave, get reassigned, or the company decides to shuffle things around — you start over. All the institutional knowledge that person built up about your business? Gone.
The “plug-and-play” myth: These services market themselves as turnkey. Just show up and delegate. In reality, you still have to onboard and train this person on YOUR business, YOUR systems, YOUR preferences. The “pre-training” most services offer is generic platform tutorials (Google Calendar, Slack, basic email management) that any competent person already knows or learns in a week.
When managed services work: If you genuinely only need a few hours per week of simple, repeatable work and you want zero involvement in the hiring process. If you’re testing the concept of having a VA before committing to a full hire.
When managed services don’t work: If you need someone dedicated, embedded, and invested in your business. If you care about where your money actually goes. If you want to build a real working relationship with a real person.
For a much deeper dive on the markup math, the factory model, and the red flags to watch for, read the full breakdown here: Virtual Assistant Services: What 50 Identical VA Agencies Won’t Tell You
Placement Agencies: The Matchmaking Model
This is the model we use at HireUA, so I’m obviously biased. But I’ll explain why I built it this way.
A placement agency does the hard part — sourcing, screening, vetting — and presents you with a shortlist of qualified candidates. You interview them yourself, you make the decision, and you hire them directly. They become your team member.
The agency doesn’t sit between you and the hire forever, clipping a percentage every month. They find the person, make the introduction, and get out of the way.
The advantages:
You own the relationship. The person is dedicated to you — on your tools, in your systems, showing up every day for YOUR business.
The screening is done by people who do this all day, every day. Instead of you spending six weeks sorting through 200 applications, a good placement agency presents you 3-5 pre-vetted candidates who’ve already been scored, tested, and filtered.
Phillip from Punch Media, an e-commerce agency based in Ireland, described the process:
He’d been trying to hire a video editor on Upwork and couldn’t find anyone up to standard.
“I had put up a couple of posts over time but I just never thought that when people did some of the tests that we asked them to do that it was up to our standard.” He came to us, got candidates presented with completed test tasks within days, hired his top pick, and was working with him by the end of the week.
The disadvantages:
You’re responsible for managing the person once they’re hired. This isn’t a “set it and forget it” situation. You need to invest in onboarding, training, and building the relationship — just like you would with any good hire. If you want someone else to handle management entirely, a managed service might be a better fit (with all the trade-offs mentioned above).
There’s also typically a placement fee or a monthly management fee. At HireUA, our monthly model is transparent: the contractor’s cost plus a flat 35% management fee that covers payroll, replacement guarantee, and support. No hidden markups. You see exactly what the person earns.
What Kind of Virtual Assistant Are You Actually Hiring?
Before you pick a platform, make sure you’re hiring the right role.
About half the people who come to us asking for a “Virtual Assistant” actually need something different. And the other half want something specialized but really just need a solid VA at VA rates.
Here are the most common roles companies hire for remotely — and many of them get called “Virtual Assistant” even when they’re not:
→ Virtual Assistant: Generalist admin support — email management, scheduling, data entry, CRM updates, basic research. The swiss army knife of remote roles.
→ Executive Assistant: Manages a CEO’s entire workflow — anticipates needs, makes decisions, owns the calendar. Significantly more expensive, significantly more impactful.
→ Inbox Manager: Converts cold email replies into booked calls. A specialized role for anyone running outbound campaigns.
→ Social Media Manager: Creates, schedules, and manages social content. Most businesses actually need a content poster, not a strategist — important distinction.
→ Operations Manager: Builds systems, documents processes, manages team workflow. This is the person who makes the messy parts of your business run.
→ Project Manager: Keeps projects on track, chases deadlines, coordinates between people. The person who makes sure nothing falls through the cracks.
→ Client Success Manager: Owns client relationships and communication. The person between you and your clients.
→ Customer Service Representative: Handles customer inquiries, complaints, and support tickets.
→ Bookkeeper: Tracks expenses, manages invoices, prepares financial statements.
→ Content Writer: Produces articles, blog posts, and web content.
Call the role what it is. Set expectations accordingly. Hire at the right level and pay the right rate. Everyone’s happier.
Once You Pick a Channel — Pick a Region
Choosing a platform is only half the decision. The other half is WHERE in the world you’re hiring from.
This matters more than most people think. The country you hire from affects communication style, independent thinking, timezone overlap, pricing, and whether you’ll spend your days writing step-by-step instructions or having actual conversations with your VA.
We wrote an entire guide breaking down the 13 best countries to hire a Virtual Assistant — with real pricing, cultural context, and the insider dynamics most agencies won’t tell you about.
Read it here: Best Countries to Hire a Virtual Assistant (2026 Guide)
The short version: HireUA started in Eastern Europe.
I lived there for nearly a decade, married a Ukrainian, and built the company from the ground up in the region. We’ve since expanded into Latin America. Both regions produce independent thinkers who communicate directly and treat remote work as a career — not a gig.
How to Actually Hire (Regardless of Platform)
No matter where you source candidates, these principles will save you time and heartbreak.
Use a Loom video in your job posting. Record a 2-3 minute video explaining the role, your company, and what you’re looking for. Ask candidates to respond with their own Loom. This single filter eliminates 80% of low-effort applicants immediately. The people who bother recording a video are the people who actually want the job.
Understand inbound vs. outbound. A Virtual Assistant role is an inbound hire — you will get flooded with applicants. This means you have leverage. You can be selective. You can set high bars. You can require test tasks. This isn’t like hiring a senior engineer where you’re competing for candidates. For VA roles, the candidates are competing for you. Act accordingly.
Give a real trial task. Not a hypothetical. Give them an actual piece of work from your business and see how they handle it. A 90-minute trial task will tell you more than a 45-minute interview.
Don’t hire the cheapest option. A $500/month VA who needs to be micromanaged and makes frequent mistakes costs more than a $1,500/month VA who works independently and gets things right the first time. You get what you pay for — always.
Define “done” before you delegate. The single biggest reason VA relationships fail is unclear expectations. “Update the CRM” is not a task. “Enter all new leads from today’s calls with full contact info, set deal stage to Contacted, and paste call notes in the activity log — done means every field complete, no blanks” — that’s a task.
Pricing: What a Virtual Assistant Actually Costs in 2026
These are real numbers from what we see in the market:
Marketplaces (DIY):
- Philippines: $4-8/hour ($640-$1,280/month full-time)
- Latin America: $7-12/hour ($1,120-$1,920/month full-time)
- Eastern Europe: $8-14/hour ($1,280-$2,240/month full-time)
- US-based: $18-35/hour ($2,880-$5,600/month full-time)
Managed Services:
- $1,500-$3,500/month (but remember — 50-70% is markup. The person doing the work might be earning $500-$1,200)
Placement Agency (HireUA rates, transparent):
- Latin America: $400/month (10 hours) | $700-$900/month (20 hours) | $1,200-$1,600/month (40 hours)
- Eastern Europe: $500/month (10 hours) | $900-$1,000/month (20 hours) | $1,300-$1,800/month (40 hours)
These are what the person actually costs. Not a number buried under a 70% company markup.
Real Results: What Happens When You Hire Right
Kanon Clark ran a lead generation company in Texas and was drowning in tasks he kept pushing to weekends. After trying OnlineJobs.ph and other platforms, he came to HireUA. We placed a data scraper / EA hybrid who saved him 15-20 hours per week. His words: “She makes my life a whole lot easier.” He’s since come back to hire a second person — a Client Success Manager.
David Shamula, CEO of Outbound Partners, tried LinkedIn, OnlineJobs.ph, Indeed, Upwork, and social media before coming to us. He called hiring “the most mind-melting task of my entire life.” We placed an Inbox Manager who unlocked the growth his company had been bottlenecked on for months. He’s already planning more hires. When asked if he’d recommend us, he joked: “No — because having you guys is like my secret weapon. I don’t want my competitors to know about you.”
These aren’t hypotheticals. These are real businesses, real placements, and we have the video testimonials to prove every one of them.
The Bottom Line: Where to Hire a Virtual Assistant
Here’s what nobody in this space will tell you:
The platform doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does. I’ve seen people hire great VAs off OnlineJobs.ph. I’ve seen people waste two quarters on Upwork. I’ve seen managed services charge $3,000 for $600 worth of talent. And I’ve seen placement agencies — including mine — nail it in under a week.
The variable isn’t the platform. It’s the process.
If you have a clear role definition, a real screening method, a trial task that tests actual work, and realistic expectations about what you’re paying for — you can hire well from almost anywhere.
Most people don’t have any of that. They post a vague job description, get overwhelmed by applications, pick someone based on vibes, and wonder why it didn’t work out.
That’s not a platform problem. That’s a hiring problem.
If you want to solve it yourself, everything in this article will get you there. Use Looms. Require trial tasks. Define “done.” Understand the difference between inbound and outbound hiring. Screen for personality, not just skills.
If you want someone else to solve it — someone who’s done it over 1,000 times across 13 countries — that’s what we built HireUA to do.
One discovery call. Candidates in 5 days. Hired in 3 weeks or less. Transparent pricing. Replacement if needed.
Book a call here: Hire-UA.com
FAQ on Where to Hire a Virtual Assistant
What’s the best platform to hire a Virtual Assistant?
For budget-friendly execution roles with clear SOPs, OnlineJobs.ph gives you the biggest pool at the lowest cost. For short-term project work, Upwork can work if you know how to screen. For a dedicated, long-term hire without doing the recruiting yourself, a placement agency like HireUA gets you vetted candidates fast. Avoid Fiverr for anything ongoing.
How much does it cost to hire a Virtual Assistant?
From the Philippines, expect $4-8/hour. From Latin America, $7-12/hour. From Eastern Europe, $8-14/hour. US-based VAs run $18-35/hour. Managed services charge $1,500-$3,500/month but keep 50-70% as markup. Through HireUA, full-time VAs from LatAm start at $1,200/month and Eastern Europe at $1,300/month — and that’s the actual cost, not an inflated number.
Should I hire a US-based Virtual Assistant?
For most businesses, no. At $20-25/hour in 2026, the US talent pool for remote admin work is thin — hamburger places pay $20/hour these days. That same budget gets you a highly motivated professional from Eastern Europe or Latin America who treats the opportunity as a career. US-based makes sense when the role requires native English for phone work or specific regulatory knowledge.
What’s the difference between a marketplace, a managed service, and a placement agency?
A marketplace (Upwork, Fiverr, OnlineJobs.ph) is DIY — you do all the screening and hiring yourself. A managed service assigns you someone from their pool and takes a large cut of what you pay. A placement agency (HireUA) does the sourcing and screening, then you hire the person directly. The difference: control, cost, and who owns the relationship.
How long does it take to hire a Virtual Assistant?
Through a marketplace, it depends on how fast you can screen — could be a week, could be six weeks if you’re doing it properly. Through HireUA, we present candidates within 5 business days and most hires are completed within 2-3 weeks. Some have been done in under a week.
