Snappy vs. a VA
Hiring a VA sounds like removing work.
It also creates work: finding someone, teaching them, checking their output, covering their hours, and doing all of it again when they move on. That work lands on you, and it lands before any of the help does.
Snappy is one AI assistant at $150 a month. Here is the comparison, including the work a person should still do.
The catch
Hiring help is itself a job.
“I need an assistant because I don’t have enough time.”
turns into
“Before my assistant can save me time, I need to spend time teaching my assistant how to save me time.”
Everything below is that same problem in its specific forms. None of it is an argument that the people doing this work are bad at it. The work of finding, teaching, checking and keeping someone is real, it lands on you, and it arrives before any of the help does.
What you take on
Six kinds of work that arrive with the hire.
Hiring is work
Before they save you time, you have to spend time finding them.
And more applicants does not make it easier. Owners describe sorting through dozens of profiles that all read well, with no reliable way to tell competence from a good interview until somebody starts.
- Write the role and post it
- Sort applicants and read profiles
- Interview, test, check references
- Compare rates and negotiate
Training is work
Before they know what to do, you have to teach them how you do everything.
Showing up is not the same as being useful. Most of what makes an assistant valuable is knowledge of your business that only you can hand over, one correction at a time.
- Accounts, permissions, tools
- Customers, products, priorities
- How you like email written
- What gets escalated and what does not
Managing is work
You hired an assistant. Somehow you became their manager.
Delegating does not end at handing the task over. You still own the quality, so you review the work, explain what was wrong, and wait for the second version. Every task carries that overhead.
- Assign, clarify, prioritise
- Answer the questions that interrupt you
- Review, correct, follow up
- Check the work before it goes out
Humans have limits
One person. One skill set. One schedule. One task at a time.
You think you are hiring a VA. You are hiring one person's particular mix of abilities: strong at scheduling, fine at research, weaker at writing. And work arrives in a queue, because a person can only do one thing at a time.
- A set shift and one time zone
- Quality that varies by task
- Vacation, illness, life
- More work means another hire
People leave
And much of what they learned about your business leaves with them.
Months in, a good assistant knows your clients, your vocabulary, your exceptions and your routines. A replacement replaces the person. It does not replace any of that, so you start the teaching again.
- Recruit, train, trust, repeat
- Offboarding and access to unwind
- One person becomes a single point of failure
The cheap VA is not that cheap
Salary is the visible part.
Comparing a monthly rate to a subscription price understates it, because the rate is only what you pay the person. The rest you pay in your own hours and in everything around the hire.
- Recruiting and onboarding
- Your management time and rework
- Software seats and payment admin
- Turnover and replacement
Compare
Snappy vs. hiring a VA
| Hiring a VA | Snappy | |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiting | Search, interview, vet | None |
| Onboarding | Training and SOPs | Connect and ask |
| Availability | Set hours | Whenever you need it |
| Management | Ongoing | Only the exceptions |
| Throughput | One task at a time | Many at once |
| Skills | Depends on the person | Every kind of digital work |
| Time zones | Often matters | Does not apply |
| Turnover | Possible | None |
| Payroll and HR | Yes | None |
| Monthly cost | $600 to $2,500+ | $150 |
Price
What each one costs.
A part-time VA at the low end of the market runs about $430 to $800 a month for 20 hours a week. That is the rate. Everything you just read about is the rest of the bill, and most of it is paid in your own time.
Part-time VA, 20 hours a week
$430 to $800a month
Then, on top of it:
- RecruitingYour hours, before they start
- TrainingYour hours, for weeks
- ManagingYour hours, every week, forever
- ReworkSecond versions and cleaned-up replies
- Software seatsEmail, CRM, chat, storage
- TurnoverAnd then all of it again
Capacity is fixed at 20 hours. More work means more hours or another person.
Snappy
$150a month
$250 setup waived
- No recruiting, no interviews, no onboarding project
- Nothing to manage except the exceptions
- All six kinds of work above, not a fixed number of hours
- Works whenever you need it, no shift and no time zone
- Keeps what it learns about your business
- Runs on your own AI account, so you set the model and the budget
- Cancel anytime.
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Stop managing the work you hired someone to handle.
Give Snappy the things eating your day.