If you’re a business that wishes to reduce its workload, reaching out to a virtual assistant is a solid option.
These professionals operate remotely to help you offload a range of tasks. From admin duties to niche-specific activities—a virtual assistant can help you with everything that comes in the way of your productivity.
But then again, finding an efficient VA turns out to be a tedious task, especially if you turn out to virtual platforms like freelancer websites and networking platforms. This is where specialized VA services come in handy.
Why turn to specialized VA services?
There are many advantages of turning to a matching VA company:
- The chances of trials and errors are less
- You get a VA that is hyper-personalized to your needs
- These platforms are highly reliable and provide constant support
What is BELAY?
Headquartered in Atlanta, BELAY is a platform that lets you hire remote professionals for your business. It hosts a team of over 2,000 US-based experts that mainly consists of virtual assistants, accounting professionals, and social media managers. All of BELAY’s experts are vetted, experienced, and fully remote. Moreover, they are also fully managed.
What does BELAY offer?
BELAY primarily provides three types of remote employees:
- Virtual assistants: BELAY’s VAs can assist in all kinds of administrative and operational business activities. This includes calendar management, email management, project research, etc. Besides this, they can also help with financial, marketing, and personal tasks management.
- Accounting professionals: BELAY’s accounting experts can assist you in creating GAAP-compliant financial documents. They mainly offer bookkeeping, controller, tax support, CFO, payroll, and clerk services. When you opt for BELAY’s accounting service, you get an accounting professional, a talent specialist, and a client success consultant.
- Social media managers: BELAY’s social media managers offer a range of services related to content, brand development, and analysis. For example, creating content calendars, copywriting, creating KPIs, creating brand conversions, email marketing, and so on.
What are the pricing plans that BELAY offers?
BELAY’s pricing is not explicitly mentioned on its website. To receive a quote, you need to contact its sales representative.
However, reviews from clients and other websites claim that BELAY charges approximately $3,600 for 80 hours and $7,300 for 16 hours of work per month. This is quite pricey, especially compared to services like Leverage Assistants, that charge $2600 per month, for unlimited hours/tasks.
Where are BELAY VAs from?
All of BELAY’s VAs are based in the US. The platform also claims each of its experts is pre-vetted, college-educated, and skilled in their domain.
How credible is the company?
Despite its roster of clients, its Trustpilot ratings aren’t very convincing. With just 1 client review, BELAY has a Trustpilot score of 3.7/5.
How do I hire a VA with BELAY?
Here’s the process of hiring a VA with BELAY:
- Sales call: First off, you’ll need to get on a call with BELAY’s Solutions Consultant to discuss your needs. If your requirements fall within the scope of BELAY’s expertise, you will be asked to sign an agreement and matched with a Client Success Consultant.
- Discovery call: Now, you will get on a call with your Client Success Consultant to discuss your requirements in detail so that they can pair you with a suitable VA.
- Placement process: After the call, your Client Success Consultant will search through BELAY’s pool of VAs to recruit an expert with the right skills and experience required for your job within a week.
- Kickoff call: Now, your Client Success Consultant will get on a kickoff call with the chosen VA to discuss your requirements and formulate a plan of action.
- Onboarding: Finally, your Client Success Consultant will guide you through the final VA onboarding process.
What are some pros and cons of BELAY?
Upon assessing BELAY closely, here are some pros and cons we discovered:
Pros:
- US-based experts: BELAY’s VAs are entirely based in the USA. So, the chances of you facing timezone difficulties working with them are minimal.
- Fully managed VAs: The platform manages the VA on your behalf. This makes it much easier to work with them.
- Intentional matching: BELAY closely matches you with a VA based on your needs. This takes off the load of individually vetting candidates.
- Highly flexible: As a business, you only need to pay for what you need, and you can tailor your requirements from time to time. This fractional approach makes BELAY a cost-effective choice.
- Ongoing support: BELAY conducts timely check-ins to evaluate your experience with the recruited VA. This sets the platform apart from other VA platforms available in the market.
Cons:
- Limited service diversity: BELAY only assists in accounts, social media, and basic virtual assistant tasks. This limited service diversity makes it an apt choice only for a handful of businesses.
- No pricing details: BELAY does not clearly mention its pricing on its website. So you never know if the platform will be able to help you find a professional within your budget.
- Elaborate onboarding: BELAY’s onboarding process is very long and complicated. Definitely not a suitable choice for businesses seeking urgent help.
Our review—what do we think of BELAY?
BELAY is a popular virtual assistant service provider. With a talent pool of over 2,000 experts who are entirely US-based, it makes for an ideal choice for businesses looking to delegate their tasks to vetted professionals.
However, BELAY’s service range is quite narrow, and its VAs are [priced quite steeply, which makes it a bit of a hassle for organizations with heavy workloads or specialized work streams in need of a VA. But since all its experts are US-based, our guess is that their services would be slightly expensive.
You should consider BELAY only if your requirements fall exactly within the scope of their services and if you have no major budget concerns.
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Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a Ph.D. student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.
