Your inbox has 200 unread messages. Your calendar is triple-booked. Your to-do list has its own to-do list. And somewhere between answering a scheduling request and formatting a spreadsheet, it hits you: this is not what I signed up for.
That moment, equal parts defeat and relief, is usually the one right before everything gets better. Because it means you're finally ready to ask the question that changes how you work: How do I find a virtual assistant?
It's the right question. And unlike most things in business, the answer is actually pretty straightforward once you know where to look.
What a Virtual Assistant Can Actually Do for You
Before diving into platforms and processes, it's worth getting specific. A VA isn't just someone to "take things off your plate", they can own entire categories of your work. Common tasks include:
- Administrative work — email management, calendar scheduling, travel booking, data entry
- Customer communication — inbound calls, chat support, follow-up sequences
- Social media — content scheduling, community management, DMs and comments
- Marketing support — blog formatting, newsletter distribution, basic graphic edits
- Sales assistance — lead research, CRM updates, outreach follow-ups
- Industry-specific tasks — real estate transaction coordination, e-commerce order management, healthcare intake, and more
The clearer you are about what you need before you start searching, the faster and more successful your hire will be.
Top Websites for Finding Virtual Assistants
Find A Virtual Assistant through Wing
Wing Assistant Wing connects businesses with dedicated, fully-managed virtual assistants for a flat monthly fee. Every Wing VA is college-educated, fluent in English, pre-vetted, and trained before they ever touch your workflow.
What sets Wing apart is the structure around the hire. You're not just handed a profile and left to figure it out, a Customer Success Manager works with you from the start to understand your business and match you with the right VA. If something isn't working, your CSM makes it right.
Wing VAs specialize across industries including e-commerce, real estate, healthcare, digital marketing, IT, and social media. You can also request a VA with specific skill sets like bookkeeping, content marketing, sales support, or reception. VAs communicate through whatever platform works for you, Slack, email, WhatsApp, text, and respond within minutes during working hours.
Wing offers full-time and part-time plans, billed monthly at a flat rate.
Best for: Startups, small businesses, and growing teams that want a dedicated VA without the overhead of sourcing, vetting, and managing on their own.
Get Your Next VA on Upwork
The platform gives you maximum flexibility and a huge talent pool, but all the vetting is on you. Quality varies significantly, and with no centralized screening process, you're relying on reviews and gut instinct. Upwork also charges fees to both clients and freelancers, which can be a hidden cost and can push top talent toward other platforms.
Best for: One-off projects or businesses with an internal HR process comfortable doing their own screening.
Find a Virtual Assistant through Fiverr
It's less suited for ongoing VA relationships. There's no hourly contract structure, screening tools are limited, and reliability can be inconsistent. For recurring work that requires someone to understand your business over time, it's not the right tool.
Best for: One-time tasks with a defined deliverable and a tight budget.
Use Freelancer.com to Find a VA
The platform's customer support has received mixed reviews, and it consistently ranks below alternatives in user satisfaction. Worth exploring for simple projects, but do your research before committing.
Best for: Budget-conscious hiring for well-scoped, one-off tasks.
Onlinejobs.ph is a Good Place to Find a Virtual Assistant
Onlinejobs.ph connects hiring managers with virtual assistant Philippines. A specialized job board connecting employers with virtual assistants based in the Philippines. Talent pool is strong in areas like SEO, data entry, content writing, and lead generation, often at highly competitive rates.
Time zone differences and communication styles are practical factors to weigh. If you need a VA with strong familiarity with the US market specifically, or bilingual English-Spanish capability, you may find those harder to come by here.
Best for: Cost-effective hiring for defined administrative tasks, particularly for businesses comfortable managing internationally.
People Per Hour is a Good Place to Find a VA
People Per Hour is a UK-based freelancing platform with a broad range of skills including design, digital marketing, audio, and animation. The project stream feature lets you track freelancer activity and communication in real time.
Fees are a common complaint, and newer freelancers get fewer bids, making it harder to find fresh, cost-effective talent over time.
Best for: Businesses looking for creative or specialized skills alongside administrative support.
Guru is a Good Platform for Finding VAs
Lacks the managed structure of dedicated VA services but is straightforward for businesses that want to handle their own talent sourcing.
Best for: Small businesses comfortable with DIY hiring who want a clean, simple interface.
Look for Your Next VA on Remote.co
Remote.co is a job board and community resource, not a VA-specific platform. Over 140 companies post remote roles there and it has solid press coverage. But it's DIY from start to finish: the employer identifies, vets, and hires without any platform-level support.
Best for: Companies with a full internal recruiting process looking for an additional sourcing channel.
Zirtual
Limitations include no rollover hours and no project-by-project hiring option. Wing offers a comparable dedicated VA model while also providing proprietary task management software, a built-in messaging platform, and add-on tools like Sales Boost and Pie by Wing for social media.
Best for: Businesses that want a dedicated VA and don't need a flexible billing structure.
Belay
One key difference: many Belay VAs work across multiple clients simultaneously. For businesses that need deep familiarity with their processes, brand voice, or industry — a VA split across several accounts may struggle to develop that. Wing VAs are dedicated to one client at a time.
Best for: Businesses comfortable with a shared VA model and willing to invest in a more premium price point.
Wishup
If your work doesn't fit neatly into those hours, or you need asynchronous support across time zones, the fixed schedule may be limiting. Wing VAs work on a flexible schedule based on your needs.
Best for: Businesses with predictable, standard-hours workloads.
Virtual Staff Finder
Virtual Staff Finder has placed over 8,000 VAs across 45+ countries, with talent sourced primarily from the Philippines. Employer does the vetting from a curated shortlist.
Requires more involvement from the hiring side compared to fully managed services.
Best for: Businesses that want a pre-screened shortlist but prefer to make the final call themselves.
Support Shepherd
Support Shepherd connects US-based businesses with talent from Latin America and the Philippines across industries including agencies, e-commerce, real estate, and media.
Useful for cost-effective offshore hiring with a focus on industry alignment.
Best for: Companies prioritizing budget efficiency and Latin American talent pools.
How to Find a Virtual Assistant: Key Considerations
As with any new hire, there are many considerations that you must take into account before hiring a VA or online assistant. Here are a few considerations to finding the right VA from a virtual assistant agency:
- Interviewing/Screening
- Experience
- Reviews
- Trial Periods
There’s no substitute for experience in any role, and virtual assistants are no exception. Assessing experience begins with a thorough resume review and an interview with the candidate. Then look at performance reviews and seek out previous employers or clients for candid assessments.
Before committing long-term to a VA, you’ll want to screen them properly. This process can include several rounds of interviews and meetings with key stakeholders within your organization. There may be technical skills you want to test, or a trial period you want to enforce. Establishing a process and checking virtual assistant websites for VA onboarding can itself be time consuming.
Once the interview and screening process is in place, you’ll need to execute it. That’s where a managed virtual assistant services like Wing Assistant can save you invaluable time. After all, the whole idea of getting a VA is to save time, so why should the search for the right VA take even more time?
You might consider giving virtual assistant companies and your new VA a trial period of a few weeks to ensure its a good fit. Unfortunately, if it’s not, you may have to go back to the drawing board and find new talent.
Learn more about remote personal assistant.
Key Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Hire
Before you post a listing or book a consultation, a few honest questions will save you time:
What tasks am I actually trying to hand off?
List them specifically. "Help with admin" is not a job description. "Manage my inbox, respond to meeting requests within two hours, and update my CRM after every client call" is.
How much management bandwidth do I have?
Some platforms hand you a profile and walk away. Others, like Wing, provide a Customer Success Manager who handles matching, escalations, and adjustments. Know which model fits your capacity.
Do I need someone dedicated to me, or is shared fine?
A VA split across multiple clients will have less institutional knowledge of your business. For work that requires nuance, judgment, or deep familiarity with your voice and preferences, dedicated is almost always better.
What's my real budget?
Cheap per-hour rates often hide hidden costs, time spent vetting, retraining after a bad hire, productivity lost to miscommunication. Calculate the total cost of the hire, not just the hourly rate.
Find the Best Virtual Assistant for You at Wing
Wing Assistant is built for exactly this: businesses that want a dedicated, vetted, fully-managed virtual assistant without the overhead of sourcing and training one from scratch. Your Wing VA is matched to your needs, supported by an ops team, and ready to contribute from day one.
If you're ready to stop doing everything yourself, and start spending your time on the work that actually moves your business forward, talk to a Wing Customer Success Manager today.
Dan Eder writes about digital marketing, SaaS, and eCommerce, with experience as an SEO writer, eCommerce specialist, and journalist.