Buy hours.
Or hand over a job.
Virtalent vs LeanLoop: a virtual assistant, or software for the job you repeat?
When admin is eating your week, there are two obvious ways out. Get a person to help, or get software to do some of it. Virtalent is a well-known UK virtual assistant service. LeanLoop sets up software for the jobs your team repeats. So it's really the old question, a virtual assistant or AI? They solve different problems, and you may well want both.
Virtual assistant or AI? The short answer
- Hire a virtual assistant when the work is varied and needs a person: your diary, travel, research, a different task every day.
- Use software from LeanLoop when the same job comes round every day or every week, like answering enquiries, typing up orders, chasing invoices or writing up the weekly numbers, and you want it drafted within minutes, day or night, for you to approve.
What a UK virtual assistant from Virtalent gives a small business
Virtalent calls itself "the UK's leading Virtual Assistant service". It was founded in 2014, and its virtual assistants live and work in the UK. You start with a free consultation, and Virtalent picks one assistant for you, who you can speak to before you commit. You hand them tasks by email, messages or the project tools you already use.
Virtalent's assistants take on a wide range of work: your inbox and diary, meeting preparation and travel, research and reports, invoice chasing and expenses, emails and social posts, proposals and keeping your customer records up to date.
You pay for their time. Virtalent sells monthly plans of hours, billed by the hour, and the more hours you buy, the lower the hourly rate. Its pricing page has the current plans, and its terms and conditions set out the notice period.
Hours or jobs: the real difference
A virtual assistant gives you a person's time. In those hours they'll do whatever you ask, and that flexibility is the point. But a job you repeat keeps using hours. Twice as many enquiries take about twice as much of their time, every week.
Software from LeanLoop is set up for one job. It drafts each enquiry, order or invoice as it arrives, the same way every time. It isn't good at a new kind of task each morning, and it isn't meant to be: anything unusual comes straight to you. If the job changes, we change it as part of the monthly service.
So the useful question isn't "person or software". It's "which of my work is the same job, over and over, and which needs a person?"
An alternative for the jobs you repeat
We find the jobs your team does over and over every week, and set up software that does them for you. It puts its work in your to-approve list: you say yes, change it or bin it. We start with a time audit, a fixed price agreed before we start, then set up the first assistant, usually live about 2 weeks after we have what we need. See how repeat jobs work.
Virtalent vs LeanLoop, side by side
| Virtalent | LeanLoop | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | A UK-based virtual assistant's time | Software set up to do one job you repeat, kept running by us |
| Best at | Varied work that needs a person's judgement | The same job, every day or every week |
| How you pay | A monthly plan of hours, billed by the hour | A fixed price for the time audit, then for setting up each job, then a monthly service |
| When the work gets done | When your virtual assistant is working | Drafted within minutes, day or night |
| Who checks it | Your virtual assistant does the work, and you check what you want to | You, or a person you choose, approve each piece before it goes out |
| How it starts | A free consultation, then a virtual assistant picked for you | A free 30-minute call, then the time audit, which usually takes about a week |
When you should hire a virtual assistant
- The work changes every day. Booking travel on Monday, researching suppliers on Tuesday, tidying the diary on Wednesday.
- It needs a person. Phone calls, a supplier who needs a polite nudge from a human, a client who wants to talk to someone.
- You want one person who learns how you like things done, across lots of small jobs.
- None of your repeat jobs is big enough. If a job takes a couple of hours a week, setting up software may not pay for itself, and a few of a virtual assistant's hours may be the better buy. We'll tell you if that's the case on the first call.
When software for the repeat job is the better buy
- The same job eats hours every week: enquiries, orders and bookings, invoices and chasing, following up leads, the weekly numbers.
- Speed matters. A reply to a new enquiry drafted within minutes, even at 2am or on a Sunday, ready for you to approve.
- You want it done the same way every time, with nothing going out until you've said yes.
Using both
This is often the best answer. The software drafts the repeat work, and a person approves it. That person can be your virtual assistant. They spend a few minutes a day checking drafts instead of hours writing them, and the rest of their time goes on the work that needs a person.
Do the sum
Pick the job that eats the most time, and work out what it costs you now: hours a week × what an hour is worth to you × 52. Set that against a year of each option. For a virtual assistant, that's the plan you'd need, times twelve. For LeanLoop, the time audit gives you the set-up price and the monthly service for that job, and its value in your own numbers, before you commit to setting anything up.
Thinking of hiring a freelancer instead? See Upwork vs LeanLoop.
