Compared with a virtual assistant
By Daniil, founder of CallMyDesk
A virtual assistant brings judgment, relationships and hands; CallMyDesk brings 24 hours a day, a first-ring answer and a price from $119 a month. Neither does the other's job. Most people reading this will be best served by a person for the things that need one, and the employee you can phone for everything that happens in the car.
Side by side
"Virtual assistant" here means a part-time human assistant, US-based or offshore, bought by the hour or the month. An in-house executive assistant is the same comparison at a higher price.
| A virtual assistant | CallMyDesk | |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | The hours you buy, in office hours, with notice. Ten hours a month is about half an hour a business day. | 24 hours a day, including evenings and weekends. Picks up on the first ring. Unlimited calls and texts with your assistant on every plan. |
| Cost | From about $390 a month for ten hours with a US service, to a median salary of $76,590 a year for a full-time executive assistant, before benefits and payroll taxes. | $119 to $199 a seat a month, flat. No credits, no minute packs, no per-action fees. |
| Judgment | Reads the room, knows which customer is upset, decides what not to send, handles the awkward phone call. | Follows your instruction, reads back what it is about to do, and asks when something is unclear. It does not decide for you. |
| Continuity | Depends on the person staying. Knowledge lives in their head and leaves with them. | Remembers your accounts, your calendar and what you said last Tuesday, per account, rebuilt nightly. Every action is in your audit log. |
| Confidentiality | A person sees everything you give them. You rely on a contract and on trust. | Least-privilege access by OAuth, no passwords stored, audio deleted after 30 days and transcripts after 90, never used for training. Revoke access in one click. |
Cost figures are Time etc's published US plans and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 median for executive assistants, as of October 2026. CallMyDesk prices are in US dollars and exclude sales tax. Unlimited calls and texts between you and your assistant for normal individual business use. To keep pricing flat for everyone we may apply fair-use limits, currently a soft ceiling of 1,000 assistant-minutes per seat per month, and we'll contact you before any limit affects your service. The full breakdown, including a section for the UK, is in the cost guide.
When you need them, and when they are there
A good assistant is worth a great deal between 9:00 am and 5:30 pm. The trouble is where the work happens. If you drive between meetings, the thing you most want to delegate comes to you at 11:55 am in a parking lot, or at 5:50 pm on the way home, or on a Sunday evening when you remember the invoice you meant to chase. A part-time assistant on ten hours a month is not on the end of the phone then, and a full-time one has gone home.
CallMyDesk is a number that answers whenever you call it. You say what happened in the meeting, and it is in the CRM before you have left the lot. You ask what came in while you were in there, and it reads you the two that matter. On the Rep and Team plans it also calls you: at 7:30 am with the day, and at the end of the day to ask whether you want to log the meetings you had. It only calls and texts you because you asked it to. You say yes at signup, we text a one-time code to confirm it's your number, every call it makes to you opens with the CallMyDesk name and a number you can call back, and you can say "stop" at any time. Texts come from a toll-free number for now.
What it will not do is pop into the room, sign for a package, or notice that you look exhausted and quietly move your 2:00 pm.
What each one costs
The cheapest person who knows your business and will pick up when you call is about $390 a month for ten hours with a US service such as Time etc; Double charges $549 for the same ten hours; a full-time dedicated assistant from Athena is $3,000 to $3,600 a month; and the median US executive assistant earns $76,590 a year before benefits and payroll taxes. Those are fair prices for what a person does. CallMyDesk is $119 a month on Solo, $199 on Rep with the CRM, or $179 a seat on Team with three seats or more, and every plan comes with unlimited calls and texts with your assistant. There is no meter: a ten-second question is a ten-second call, and a month of daily debriefs costs the same as a month of silence.
The two are not substitutes, so the honest comparison is not "which is cheaper" but "which hours are you buying". A person's ten hours are best spent on the things in Section 5. The assistant is best spent on the things you would otherwise do yourself, badly, from the car, or not at all. The cost guide has the full table of US and offshore options, with a section for the UK.
The three things people worry about
Judgment. A person reads the room. They know the customer who sounds fine in email and is not, they know when a reply should wait until Monday, and they can handle a difficult conversation on your behalf. CallMyDesk does not have that judgment and does not pretend to. It does what you ask, reads back anything it is about to send, and when your instruction is ambiguous ("send it to Dave"; you know three) it asks.
Continuity. The thing you pay a long-serving assistant for is that they know everything: who is who, what was promised, which supplier is slow. That knowledge walks out the door when they do, and good assistants are hard to find. CallMyDesk keeps its memory per account: the people, the open deals, the calendar, what you said last week. It is the same assistant tomorrow. You can ask it at any time what it did today, and every action it has ever taken is in your audit log with the words that authorized it.
Confidentiality. A human assistant sees your inbox, your bank letters and your HR file, and you trust them, usually rightly. The assistant sees only what you connect, through least-privilege access with no passwords stored, and you can revoke it in one click. Your data is never used to train models, ours or anyone's. Call audio is deleted after 30 days and transcripts after 90, or sooner if you ask. The service is US-hosted, with a published data processing agreement and sub-processor list, and UK customers get a UK GDPR annex; the detail is on the security page.
What a person is still for
Plenty. If you have an assistant, keep them, and if you are about to hire one for the reasons below, hire them. CallMyDesk is in addition to the people you have, not instead of them.
Keep a person for
- Anything involving money moving: payments, bank, payroll, expenses
- Relationships: the client who needs a human voice, the supplier you are negotiating with
- Judgment calls, HR matters and anything confidential about staff
- Travel when things go wrong, events, venues, gifts
- Being in the room: visitors, mail, the office itself
- Long, screen-heavy work: a 40-page proposal, a spreadsheet, a deck
Hand the assistant
- Inbox triage and replies from the car
- Logging the meeting in HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce the same day
- Moving the 3:00 pm and telling them you are late
- Chasing the three invoices over 30 days, politely
- The brief on the account before you walk in
- The 7:30 am call, and the end-of-day "want to log those?"
It can brief your assistant
If you have an assistant or an office manager, the best arrangement is both. You phone CallMyDesk from the car with what was decided, and it emails the office with the note, the quote to send and the appointment to move. Your assistant starts the morning with your decisions already in writing instead of reconstructing them from a voicemail. It works the other way too: at 7:30 am it calls you with the day your assistant has set up, and anything that came in overnight.
For an owner with office staff, the plan is usually Solo for you alone, or Team when the office wants to be on it too. See who it's for.
- “Note for the file: the Peterson job needs scaffolding first. Tell the office, and ask Jan to get a quote from the scaffolding company before Thursday.”
- “To Jan Kowalski at the office, subject ‘Peterson job: scaffolding first’. ‘Jan, the Peterson job needs scaffolding before we start. Please get a quote from the scaffolding company before Thursday. Geoff.’ And I'll add the note to the Peterson file. Shall I send it?”
- “Yes.”
- “Sent to Jan, and the note is on the Peterson file. Anything else?”
Where CallMyDesk is early
This is a founder-built product in early access. It speaks English, connects Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for mail and calendar and HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce for customers, and nothing else yet. Google Workspace is in early access with limited places while Google reviews our app. It replies in about a second to conversation and takes a few seconds when it reads an inbox or a CRM, and it says so. It is a one-to-one call between you and your assistant. It never joins or records your meetings, and it never calls your prospects. It is, in short, an assistant you can phone, and a person is still a person.
Sources
- Wishup : Time etc pricing, US plans from $390 a month for ten hours
- VirtuHire USA : Time etc virtual assistant pricing, 2026
- Wishup : how much an executive assistant costs, including Double's $549 for ten hours
- Carly : Athena review, $3,000 to $3,600 a month for a dedicated assistant
- PlanningTank : US executive assistant salary, citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 median of $76,590
Checked on October 8, 2026. If something here is out of date, send us a message and we will correct it.