At some point every growing business faces the same fork: post a job and hire an employee, or bring in a dedicated virtual assistant. The instinct says employee: someone in the building, fully yours. The spreadsheet usually says otherwise.
This is the honest version of that math, including the cases where a full-time employee genuinely is the right call.
A full-time US administrative hire costs far more than the salary line: payroll taxes, benefits, equipment, software seats, paid leave, and the 8–12 week hiring cycle to find them. That adds up to a fully loaded cost typically past $70,000 a year for roles a VA covers.
| Hyperstaff | Full-time hire | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $5,760–23,040/year depending on tier, all-inclusive | $73,000+ fully loaded for a comparable admin role |
| Time to productive | Days. Pre-vetted, pre-briefed, managed onboarding | 8–12 weeks to hire, plus ramp-up |
| Hiring risk | Free replacement; engagement is month-to-month after the first 30 days | A mis-hire costs months of salary, severance, and a restart |
| Management burden | Account manager runs check-ins, reviews, documentation | Entirely yours: 1:1s, reviews, HR, morale |
| Flexibility | Scale 40→160 hrs/month, change roles, pause between projects | Fixed cost regardless of workload |
| Coverage | Timezone-matched, including evening/weekend coverage options | One timezone, standard business hours |
| Knowledge retention | Operations Vault documents the role permanently | Walks out the door with the employee |
Third-party details reflect each provider's public website and widely reported figures at the time of writing and may change, verify current terms directly with the provider.
Hire employees for judgment, presence, and leadership. For the recurring digital work that fills most delegation lists, a managed virtual assistant delivers the same output at a fraction of the fully loaded cost, with faster starts, lower risk, and none of the management overhead. Most growing businesses eventually run both; the mistake is using a $73,000 employee for $6,000 work.
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