Virtual Assistants offer their services to anyone who is willing to pay out their salaries, which can be very lucrative in this drone world. Look at any freelancing site, and you can find $300 to $500 a month, post and manage social media, email correspondence, customer invoicing and payment reminders, etc.
However, a good amount of small business owners do not need a Virtual Assistant to start, when, in fact, they actually need a minimum of six free resources, and a focused couple of hours to assemble.
It’s not that Virtual Assistants are not good, yes, at what they do, yes they can be highly productive, yes, I have done what a Virtual Assistant does, however, if you are spending $500 a month to have someone Remote Record and App Switch, you are wasting money that can be done a lot better in places like your inventory, marketing, or actually to do something to grow your business.
What a VA Actually Costs vs. What Automation Costs
A basic VA charges around £400-600 monthly for 15-20 hours of work. That covers scheduling posts, sending invoices, booking appointments, updating spreadsheets. Standard admin stuff.
Automation tools that do the same things? Most are free. The premium versions rarely cost more than £50 monthly combined.
Automation tools that do the same things? Most are free. The premium versions rarely cost more than £50 monthly combined.
| Task | VA Cost (Monthly) | Automation Cost | Time Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social media posting | £80 (4 hours) | £0 (Buffer free) | 4 hours/week |
| Email responses | £100 (5 hours) | £0 (canned responses) | 5 hours/week |
| SEO rank checking | £60 (3 hours) | £20-40 (AI tracker) | 3 hours/week |
| Appointment booking | £80 (4 hours) | £0 (Calendly free) | 4 hours/week |
| Invoice sending | £40 (2 hours) | £0 (Wave free) | 2 hours/week |
| Total | £360 | £20-40 | 18 hours/week |
That’s £320-340 saved monthly. Over a year, you’re looking at £3,840-4,080 back in your pocket.
The catch? You need to set these up yourself. Most take 20-45 minutes each. One Saturday afternoon handles the lot.
12 Tasks You Can Actually Automate
1. Social Media Scheduling (Saves £80/Month)
Posting daily across three platforms eats time. Buffer’s free plan handles Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter). You get 10 scheduled posts per channel monthly.
- How it works: Batch-create a week’s content on Sunday. Queue everything. Buffer posts at your chosen times. No daily logging in.
The free version caps you at 30 total posts monthly. If you’re posting multiple times daily, upgrade to Buffer’s Essentials for £5 monthly. Still cheaper than a VA.
Adobe Express also has a free scheduler now. Same idea, slightly different interface. Pick whichever feels less annoying to use.
- Limitation: These don’t respond to comments. You still need to check mentions and DMs yourself. But the posting itself? Automated.
You can also try Sintra.ai for social posts.
2. Basic Email Responses (Saves £100/Month)
Most customer emails ask the same five questions. Shipping times. Return policy. Product specs. Order tracking.
Gmail has canned responses built in. Takes five minutes to enable. Write template answers once, insert them with three clicks whenever those questions arrive.
Setup:
- Settings → Advanced → Enable Templates
- Compose your standard replies
- Save each as a template
- When an email arrives, click the three dots → Templates → Insert
Mailchimp’s free tier (1,000 contacts) handles automated follow-ups. Someone buys from you? Auto-send a thank you email two days later. Newsletter signups get a welcome sequence.
- What this doesn’t do: Handle complex complaints or angry customers. Those need your personal attention. But “when will my order arrive?” emails? Three clicks and done.
3. SEO Monitoring Without Spreadsheets (Saves £60/Month)
Paying a VA to manually check where your site ranks for keywords is mental. They’re opening Google in incognito mode, scrolling through results, updating a spreadsheet. Three hours weekly.
Google Search Console is free and shows which search terms bring traffic, where you rank, click-through rates. Connect your site once, check the dashboard weekly.
For more detailed tracking, an AI rank tracker tool monitors keyword positions automatically. Let’s say for our site I set it to watch “Debenhams discount code” or whatever terms matter to your business. When rankings drop or climb, you get alerts.
- Cost comparison: VA manually tracking 20 keywords = 3 hours weekly at £20/hour = £240 monthly. AI rank tracker = £20-40 monthly. That’s £200+ saved.
Most AI rank trackers also spot competitor movements. If a rival suddenly outranks you, you know immediately rather than discovering it three weeks later when traffic’s already tanked.
- Free alternative: If you’re only tracking 5-10 keywords casually, Google Search Console covers it. But for serious monitoring across 50+ terms, you need something automated.
4. Appointment Booking (Saves £80/Month)
Email tennis kills productivity. “Are you free Tuesday?” “No, how about Thursday?” “Morning or afternoon?” “10am?” “Actually 11am works better.”
Five emails to book one meeting.
Calendly’s free plan shows your availability. Clients pick a slot that works for both of you. Google Calendar syncs automatically. Confirmation emails send without you touching anything.
Setup takes 10 minutes:
- Connect your calendar
- Set your available hours
- Add buffer time between meetings if you need it
- Share your Calendly link in your email signature
People book themselves. You show up at the agreed time. No back-and-forth.
- Limitation: Free version only allows one event type. If you need different meeting lengths (15-min calls, 1-hour consultations), you’ll hit the limit. Upgrade to Calendly’s Essentials for £8 monthly if that matters.
5. Automated Invoicing (Saves £40/Month)
Wave is completely free for invoicing. Unlimited invoices, recurring billing, payment reminders.
You create a template once. When you complete work, duplicate that template, change the date and amount, click send. Wave emails it to your client with a payment link.
Set up recurring invoices for retainer clients. Wave automatically sends them monthly. Chase late payments without nagging personally—Wave sends polite reminders after your chosen number of days.
- Why this saves money beyond VA costs: Faster invoicing means faster payment. You’re not waiting three days for your VA to send invoices when they get around to it. You send them immediately after finishing work.
Invoice Ninja does the same thing if you prefer a different interface. Both are free, both work fine.
6. Task Reminders (Saves £20/Month)
Trello’s free plan handles project tracking for small teams. Create boards for different projects, add cards for tasks, set due dates.
When a deadline approaches, Trello emails you. No one needs to manually remind you that the supplier payment is due Friday.
Google Calendar does this too. Put recurring tasks in as events with notifications. Insurance renewal in 60 days? Calendar pings you at 30 days, 7 days, and the day before.
- Why this matters: VAs often charge extra for “proactive deadline management.” You’re paying someone to look at a calendar and tell you what’s coming up. Your phone does this for free.
7. Data Entry Between Apps (Saves £60/Month)
New email subscriber signs up on your website. You want them added to your Mailchimp list, logged in a Google Sheet for tracking, and notified to your Slack channel.
Zapier’s free tier handles 100 tasks monthly. That’s 100 times it moves data between apps automatically.
Real example:
- Trigger: New WooCommerce order
- Action 1: Add customer to Mailchimp with “Recent Buyer” tag
- Action 2: Log order details to Google Sheet
- Action 3: Send Slack notification to your sales channel
No VA copying and pasting between systems.
Limitation: 100 tasks monthly is tight for busy shops. If you’re processing 200 orders monthly, you’ll need Zapier’s paid tier (£25/month). Still cheaper than VA hours for data entry.
IFTTT is the simpler version. Fewer apps supported, but also free for basic automations.
8. Content Repurposing (Saves £50/Month)
You write a blog post. Now you need social media content from it.
Notion’s free AI summarizes long articles into bullet points. Paste your blog post, ask for “5 key takeaways for social media,” get instant snippets.
Copy those snippets into Buffer or Adobe Express. Schedule across your channels. One blog post becomes a week of social content.
- Without AI: A VA reads your article, writes social posts, sends them for approval, schedules after you approve. Three hours of their time.
- With AI: You spend 15 minutes. Same result.
ChatGPT’s free tier does this too. The paid version (£20/month) gives faster responses and priority access during busy times, but the free version works fine for occasional repurposing.
9. Lead Capture Forms (Saves £30/Month)
Someone downloads your free guide. You want them on your email list with a welcome sequence.
HubSpot’s free CRM includes forms and email automation. Embed a form on your site. When people submit, HubSpot automatically:
- Adds them to your contact list
- Sends a welcome email immediately
- Triggers a follow-up email 3 days later
- Logs everything for tracking
- Setup: HubSpot’s form builder is drag-and-drop. Create the form, grab the embed code, paste it into your website. Enable the automated email workflow using their templates.
- Why most people don’t use this: HubSpot looks overwhelming at first. Too many features. But you only need forms and basic email automation. Ignore the rest.
10. Automated Reporting (Saves £40/Month)
Google Sheets pulls data from Google Analytics, Search Console, and other tools using add-ons (all free).
Set up a template once. Every Monday morning, you get an email with last week’s traffic, sales, top pages, conversion rates.
How:
- Google Sheets → Extensions → Add-ons → Get add-ons
- Install “Google Analytics” add-on
- Configure which metrics to pull
- Set schedule for automatic updates
Your VA was logging into each platform, copying numbers into a spreadsheet, calculating changes, emailing you the report. Four hours monthly.
Automation does it while you sleep.
Caveat: Initial setup takes an hour if you’ve never used Sheets add-ons. But once it’s running, it’s hands-off forever.
11. File Organization (Saves £20/Month)
Google Drive’s free 15GB auto-syncs across devices. Create a folder structure once:
- Invoices (subfolders by year)
- Contracts
- Product images
- Marketing materials
- Tax documents
Save everything to the right folder as you go. No manual filing. No VA spending two hours weekly organizing documents you should’ve filed properly yourself.
Dropbox does the same thing. Pick whichever you already use for other stuff.
- The actual time-saver: Search. Type “invoice November” in Drive’s search box. Every November invoice appears instantly. No digging through folders. No asking your VA to find it.
12. Customer Follow-Up Emails (Saves £50/Month)
Someone buys from you. Seven days later, send a “How’s everything going?” email. If they reply positively, ask for a review. If they have issues, solve them before they leave a bad review.
Mailchimp’s free automation handles this. Create a customer journey:
- Day 0: Purchase confirmation (WooCommerce sends this automatically)
- Day 7: Follow-up email asking about their experience
- Day 14: Request review if they responded positively to day 7
- What a VA would do: Log into your store daily, check recent orders, manually send follow-up emails. Spend 30 minutes daily on this task.
- What automation does: Runs 24/7. Never forgets. Never sends a follow-up to someone who’s already complained.
5 Tasks That Still Need Humans
Angry Customer Emails
Chatbots make furious customers more furious. “I’ve been waiting 3 weeks for a refund and your bot is asking if I’ve tried turning it off and on again.”
Complaints need empathy, judgment calls, and authority to actually solve problems. Automation can’t read between the lines when someone’s threatening a chargeback.
Strategic Decisions
Tools show you data. Humans decide what it means.
Your best-selling product is out of stock for two weeks. Do you:
- Push a similar item harder?
- Wait it out and risk losing momentum?
- Find a new supplier at higher cost?
No automation makes that call. You need someone who understands your business model, margins, and customer base.
Creating Original Content Ideas
AI suggests blog topics based on search volume. It doesn’t know that your customers are obsessed with a specific colour this season, or that a competitor’s scandal created an opening.
A good VA who understands your niche spots opportunities that algorithms miss. They read your industry forums, notice trends, pitch ideas that actually work.
Negotiating With Suppliers
Automated emails don’t haggle. You can’t set up a Zapier workflow that says “counteroffer with 15% less if they quote above £500.”
Getting better prices requires relationship-building, reading tone, knowing when to push and when to back off. Humans excel at this. Software doesn’t.
Building Real Relationships
Follow-up emails automate. Actually caring about customers doesn’t.
When someone’s been buying from you for two years, remembering their preferences and checking in personally matters. That’s what turns customers into advocates who refer friends.
You can automate the mechanics of communication. You can’t automate giving a damn.
When to Actually Hire a VA
After you’ve automated the repetitive stuff, you’ll have a clearer picture of what remains.
If you’re still spending 20 hours weekly on tasks that genuinely need human judgment—customer service, content creation, relationship management—then yes, hire a VA. But you’ll get better value because they’re doing skilled work, not data entry a robot could handle.
Pay humans for human skills. Let software handle the robotic bits.
Start by automating one task this week. Pick the most annoying one—probably appointment booking or invoice sending. Set it up Saturday morning. By next month, you’ll wonder why you waited.
The £320+ monthly saved? Put it toward stock, paid ads, or finally fixing that bit of your website that’s annoyed you for six months. Just don’t waste it paying someone to do work that software handles while you sleep.
