Hired a virtual assistant from a big agency, then tried a solo freelancer in Manila, and the difference was wild

Anna West · 2026-10-01T03:15:04.987087+00:00

I run a small ecommerce shop out of Columbus and was drowning in customer emails and order tracking stuff last fall, so I signed up with one of those big outsourcing agencies that charges $18 an hour. They gave me a "dedicated" person but I never talked to the same human twice, and every question about my own products had to go through a ticket system that took two days. After 4 months of that mess I switched to a solo freelancer I found through a referral, paying her $9 an hour directly, and within a week she knew my return policy better than I did. She sends me a quick voice note every morning with what she handled, and when I need something urgent she just does it instead of asking which department owns it. The agency had all these fancy dashboards and account managers, but the actual work was slower and sloppier because nobody had any real stake in my store. My chargebacks dropped from 11 in one quarter to just 2, mostly because she actually reads the angry emails and responds like a person. If you have used both models, what made you stay with one over the other?

Talk Freely

Loading…

Hired a virtual assistant from a big agency, then tried a solo freelancer in Manila, and the difference was wild | Business Services - Talk Freely