Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links and I may earn a commission at no cost to you. It does not change what I recommend or what the research found.
Time etc publishes an hourly rate on the front of every plan card, and the hourly rate is the least useful number on the page. I read the whole of timeetc.com this week, all 343 URLs in its sitemap plus the terms of service, and the things that decide what you actually pay are not on the pricing page at all. They are in the contract you agree to by registering, and in a few cases the contract says the opposite of what the pricing page says.
Here is the short version. Four plans, $390 to $2,160 a month, $39 an hour down to $36 an hour. Unused hours roll over to the next month, which is published in four places. The pricing page says there is no notice period to cancel. The terms of service say you must give notice of not less than one full monthly billing period. The pricing page promises your money back if you are not happy. The terms say refunds are at Time etc’s sole discretion. Both of those pairs are on the same domain, published at the same time, and I am going to show you both rather than pick one.
I run a high-ticket dropshipping store selling products in the $1,000 to $5,000 range, and the jobs I would hand a virtual assistant are specific: chasing suppliers for stock and lead times, following up quote requests, chasing freight delivery windows, and processing dealer applications. Those are relationship tasks. Whether you get one named person or a rotating pool matters more than whether the rate is $36 or $39. So this article works through the plans, the terms, a real monthly bill for a store owner using 10 to 20 hours, and what the premium over hiring someone directly comes to in dollars per hour.
Get supplier chasing off your desk without hiring anybody
Ten hours a month is $390, which is $39 an hour, with no setup fee and the first month discounted by $150 if you run the task wizard first. One dedicated assistant, based in the US, matched to you before you pay.
Time etc Pricing in 2026: the Four Published Plans
Time etc runs a prepaid hours model. You buy a block of hours each month, your assistant tracks time against it, and the per-hour rate falls as the block gets bigger. These are the figures on the Time etc plans and pricing page as I read it on 16 September 2026, in US dollars on the .com site.
| Plan | Monthly price | Rate the page states | Rollover stated on the card |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time etc Ten hours | $390 | $39 per hour | Yes |
| Time etc Twenty hours | $760 | $38 per hour | Yes |
| Time etc Forty hours | $1,480 | $37 per hour | Yes |
| Time etc Sixty hours | $2,160 | $36 per hour | Yes |
That is four plans, and I counted the cards on the page rather than trusting a number in my notes. Below them the page says Time etc also does bigger plans and points you at a consultation, with no figure attached, so anything above 60 hours a month is unpublished and you will get it on a call.
Each of the four cards carries the same seven feature lines: a dedicated US assistant, expert matching, free extra assistants, free team sharing, a complete satisfaction guarantee, unused hours rollover, and switching or cancelling any time. That matters because older write-ups of Time etc, including one still live on this site, say the ten-hour plan has no rollover. On the live page today the ten-hour card carries the rollover line exactly like the other three.
The $380 that is not a plan price
Further down the same pricing page there is a comparison table headed Time etc vs hiring. It gives a monthly cost of $380+ for Time etc against $3000+ for a hired assistant. No plan on that page costs $380. The cheapest is $390. It is a small thing and it is probably a stale figure from a previous price, but it is the second number on the page and it does not match the first, so I am publishing both rather than averaging them or quietly picking the one I like.
US dollars, and the UK site is a different shop
Time etc runs two storefronts. The .com site serves the US and everywhere else, and the hreflang tags on the pricing page name timeetc.com as the en-us and x-default version. There is a separate timeetc.co.uk, and its plans and pricing page sells the same four tiers at £310, £600, £1,160 and £1,680. If you are a US buyer, every figure in this article is the one on the .com site, which is where the affiliate link and the country switcher both send you. Do not budget off a pound figure you found in a UK review.
Where the Pricing Page and the Contract Disagree
This is the part nobody reads and it is the part that decides what a bad month costs you. Time etc’s terms and conditions page opens by telling you there is no signature involved. It states that no signed agreement is required and that using the service denotes complete agreement with the terms. So these clauses bind you from the moment you register.
On cancellation, the pricing page FAQ says cancelling is very easy, that there is no notice period, and that one email or call to the team is all it takes. Clause 14.2 of the terms says something different. It reads: “Either party may terminate a Brief or the agreement constituted by these Terms or both at any time by notice of not less than one full Monthly Subscription Charge period.” The clause then explains that notice given part-way through a billing period ends the agreement on the billday after the next billday. In plain terms, budget for one more month’s charge after you decide to stop. On the ten-hour plan that is another $390 and on the twenty-hour plan another $760.
On refunds, the home page and the why-you-need-an-assistant page both carry the same promise: “If you’re not 100% happy that we’re the right service for you, we’ll give your money back.” Clause 8.2 of the terms is one sentence long: “Refunds are at the sole discretion of Time Etc.” Clause 8.1 sets out what you actually get as of right, which is either the work redone at no further charge or a credit of the time charged, at Time etc’s option. A credit of hours is not money back.
On minimum commitment, clause 1.3 states the terms apply from the date you register for a minimum period of one month. The FAQ page asking how Time etc’s pricing compares with similar services says the opposite flavour: “Our virtual assistants’ hourly rates contain no hidden fees or long-term minimum contracts.” Both are technically survivable together, since one month is not a long-term contract, but a reader who took the marketing line at face value would be surprised to find a minimum period in clause one.
Rollover: What Time etc Publishes and What It Does Not
Rollover is where most of the money is lost in this category, so I went looking for it properly rather than reading the plan card. The word appears on five pages of timeetc.com. The plan cards say unused hours rollover. The bundled feature list on the pricing page says hours you do not use roll over to next month. The how-it-works page says if you do not use all your plan it will roll over to the next month so you will not lose out. The pricing FAQ says the hours you do not use simply roll over into your next month.
Every one of those says next month. Not banked, not carried indefinitely, not rolled twice. And here is the part that matters: the terms and conditions contain no rollover clause at all. I searched the full text of the terms page and the only match for the letters “roll” is inside the word “Controller” in the data processing section. The document defines a Monthly Subscription Charge as representing an agreed allocation of time to be spent each month, and it never says what happens to time you did not spend.
So the honest statement is this. Rollover into the following month is published four times on Time etc’s marketing pages and is not in the contract. What happens to hours still unused at the end of that following month is published nowhere on the site. If you are buying 20 hours a month and typically using 12, ask that question on the consultation call and get the answer in writing before your first billday.
The Real Monthly Bill for a Store Owner Using 10 to 20 Hours
Take the job I would actually hand over. Supplier follow-up emails, order tracking chases, delivery-window chasing on freight shipments, and replying to inbound quote requests with a templated answer. In my store that is somewhere between 10 and 20 hours in a normal month and spikes in the two weeks after a promotion.
On the ten-hour plan you pay $390 whether you use the hours or not. Use all ten and your rate is $39.00 an hour, which is what the card says. Use six because August was quiet and you still paid $390, which is $65.00 an hour for the work that got done. The four unused hours roll into September, so September gives you 14 hours available for another $390. If you then use 12 of them, you have paid $780 across two months for 18 hours of work, which is $43.33 an hour. That is the real number, and it is 11 percent above the headline rate.
On the twenty-hour plan the same arithmetic is harsher in a quiet month and better in a busy one. Twenty hours used is $38.00 an hour. Ten hours used is $760 divided by ten, which is $76.00 an hour. A full year on the twenty-hour plan is $760 times twelve, which is $9,120 for up to 240 hours. A full year on the ten-hour plan is $4,680 for up to 120 hours.
| Scenario | Paid | Hours used | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ten-hour plan, all ten used | $390 | 10 | $39.00 |
| Ten-hour plan, six used | $390 | 6 | $65.00 |
| Ten-hour plan, two months, 18 used | $780 | 18 | $43.33 |
| Twenty-hour plan, all twenty used | $760 | 20 | $38.00 |
| Twenty-hour plan, half used | $760 | 10 | $76.00 |
Two things reduce that first bill. The pricing page states there is no setup fee and that you just pay for your first month to get started. And Time etc publishes a $150 discount on your first month for running its task ideas wizard, which appears on the get-started page and inside its own resource articles. Take it and the first month on the ten-hour plan is $240 and on the twenty-hour plan is $610. That is a real, published, first-month-only number and it should not be used to model month two.
There is also a free trial. The pricing page says you send in your first task and an assistant will do it for free, and that no credit card is required. The terms acknowledge the trial in clause 1.3 by making the initial period the length of the trial. What Time etc does not publish anywhere I could find is whether the trial converts to a paid plan automatically, and since there is no card on file at that point the mechanics are probably manual. Ask on the call. I am not going to invent the answer.
If $39 an hour is the problem, hire the person yourself instead
OnlineJobs.ph charges $69 a month or $299 a year for the Pro plan that lets you contact and hire workers, and $99 a month or $349 a year for Premium. You negotiate the salary directly, which is the whole reason the hourly cost collapses.
One Named Assistant, or a Pool? This Is the Whole Product
If you have spent three weeks teaching somebody which of your four suppliers answers the phone, which one needs a purchase order number in the subject line, and which freight carrier lies about delivery windows, then continuity is the product and the hourly rate is a rounding error. Time etc sells continuity harder than it sells price.
Every plan card says dedicated US assistant, and the how-it-works page lists a dedicated virtual assistant as the first thing you get. The meet our assistants page publishes four hard numbers on the screening: 2 percent of applicants approved, 471 assistants represented by Time etc, 12 average years of relevant experience, and a 93 percent average client happiness rating. In prose the same page says: “We’re so thorough that 98% don’t make it in.” It also says Time etc requires a minimum of 5-8 years of relevant experience, and that the selection criteria were designed by Penni Pike based on her experiences supporting Sir Richard Branson.
On cover, the pricing page’s included list carries the line that holiday and sickness cover is built in, and the FAQ on how Time etc differs from a freelancer says backup support ensures continuity if your assistant is unavailable for whatever reason. What Time etc does not publish is how the cover works. There is no named backup assistant, no stated handover process, and no service level on response time when your regular person is away. Compare that with Prialto, which publishes a cross-trained backup assistant as a line item inside every unit it sells. Time etc’s answer is that you can add extra assistants at no extra cost because the plan bills hours rather than people, which is genuinely useful but is not the same thing as somebody already knowing your supplier list.
There is one more continuity fact buried in the terms. Your assistant is not a Time etc employee. Clause 1.4 describes the people doing your work as independent contractors engaged by Time etc, and states plainly: “They are contracted to us, not to you, and issues of concern about services provided to you should be raised directly with us.” That is fine, and it is normal, and it sets up the clause in the next section that most people never see.
You cannot hire your assistant away, and the exit price is 50 percent of a year
Clause 7 of the terms is titled Exclusivity, and a store owner should read it before month one. Clause 7.2 stops both parties employing or contracting anyone engaged by the other, for the term of the agreement and for nine months after it ends. Clause 7.3 gives you two ways out if you want to take your assistant on directly: give Time etc a nine-month notice period during which the engagement continues through Time etc on the same basis, or pay a transfer fee of 50 percent of the annualised gross fees that assistant billed through Time etc over the previous year.
Work that through on the forty-hour plan. A year at $1,480 a month is $17,760 of gross fees. A transfer fee of 50 percent of that is $8,880 to take your own assistant onto your own payroll. That is not a hidden fee and it is not sharp practice, since every staffing business protects its placements the same way. But it is the single largest number in Time etc’s pricing and it does not appear on the pricing page. If the plan in your head is to use Time etc to find someone good and then hire them, price that plan at $8,880 before you start.
Working Hours and the Timezone Question, Answered Plainly
Time etc is a British company. The terms name the contracting entity as Time etc USA Limited and give a correspondence address in Birmingham, England. That surprises people, so here is what the US-facing site actually promises about who does your work and when.
The footer of every page on timeetc.com says 100 percent US-based virtual assistants, and that the assistants are based all over the US and available worldwide. The how-it-works page has a feature block headed convenient timezone, which says that being based in the US means they will be available during your working hours. The state pages go further: the California page says Time etc matches you with assistants who work in your preferred time zone, and its FAQ answers yes to whether assistants are available during Pacific Time business hours. So the answer to the question a US reader is asking is yes, the assistant is in the US and the company undertakes to align to your hours.
Two caveats you should know. First, Time etc publishes no specific working hours anywhere. I opened all 343 URLs in its sitemap, and the only Monday to Friday commitment with no weekends on the entire domain is on the careers page, describing Time etc’s own head office staff in Birmingham, not the assistants. Any article telling you Time etc assistants work strictly Monday to Friday nine to five is stating something the vendor does not publish. Second, clause 6.7 of the terms says the client is not entitled to direct or control the work of any freelancer, nor impose any specific time of day or location in which the work is done. Marketing promises timezone alignment, and the contract reserves the right not to be scheduled. Both are true at once and you should plan against the contract.
What a Time etc Assistant Is Not Allowed to Do
The exclusion list decides whether this solves your actual problem, and Time etc publishes one. Its article on what you cannot offload names five things that sit outside what any of its assistants take on, and I counted five in the article: bookkeeping and accounting, cold outreach and sales calls, live call answering and screening, building your strategy, and personal errands that need somebody physically present.
For a high-ticket store that list lands unevenly. Two of the five hurt. You cannot use a Time etc assistant as your inbound phone cover, which is a real problem if your quote requests arrive by phone, and the article is blunt that this is down to the shape of fractional support. And the assistant will not do cold outreach: “Time etc assistants don’t do cold calling, cold emailing or sales.” If your dealer-recruitment plan involves emailing 200 manufacturers cold, that is not this product.
The other three barely matter. Nobody sane outsources store strategy to a ten-hour-a-month assistant. Errands are irrelevant. And on bookkeeping the same article draws a useful line: the assistant will not keep your books, but can create and send invoices from your templates, chase late payments on a schedule you set, pay bills, track expenses, file receipts, and assemble the paperwork your accountant asks for.
Better still for my use case, the same article explicitly puts outbound supplier calls in the yes column, including the ones that mean forty minutes on hold, and chasing an order, a delivery or a refund until it is resolved. That is precisely the freight-chasing job. The published exclusion list and the published inclusion list, taken together, say Time etc fits a high-ticket store’s supplier and order-chasing work and does not fit its phones or its cold outreach.
The ecommerce page contradicts the exclusion list
One caution. Time etc’s virtual assistants for ecommerce businesses page lists nine things its ecommerce assistants can help with, and two of them are flatly contradicted by the exclusions article. It offers finance support described as bookkeeping, invoicing and financial management, and website updates described as website design, development and maintenance. The exclusions article says bookkeeping is out because assistants do not carry professional indemnity cover for it. Those two pages cannot both be right. Get the scope confirmed in writing on the consultation call and do not assume the industry landing page is the operative list.
On tooling, the assistant screening page says Time etc looks for specific software experience in Outlook, Gmail, Google Apps and Microsoft Office. The ecommerce page says assistants can manage Shopify and WooCommerce. And clause 6.1(e) of the terms requires you not to submit work needing the assistant to install extra software, and to flag in the brief anything beyond the standard Microsoft Office package. If your process lives inside your Shopify admin and a freight portal, say so during matching.
The Premium Over Hiring Direct, in Dollars per Hour
Time etc’s real product is that it does the hiring, the vetting and the cover, and you pay a premium for that. Here is the premium in dollars, because a multiple is easy to argue with and a dollar figure is not.
Time etc’s published rates run from $39 an hour at ten hours down to $36 an hour at sixty hours. In my guide to hiring and onboarding a VA for ecommerce customer service I set out the monthly bands I actually pay hiring directly in the Philippines, and the band that covers quote requests and freight chasing is $800 to $1,400 a month for a full-time person. At roughly 160 hours a month that is $5.00 to $8.75 an hour.
Add the platform cost on top. OnlineJobs.ph charges $69 a month or $299 a year for Pro, and you only need it during the months you are actually recruiting. Those figures sit on the OnlineJobs.ph pricing page, which also lists a free tier that blocks contact with workers and a Premium plan at $99 a month or $349 a year.
So at the twenty-hour tier the premium is $38.00 minus somewhere between $5.00 and $8.75, which is $29.25 to $33.00 an hour. At the sixty-hour tier it is $36.00 minus the same range, which is $27.25 to $31.00 an hour. Over 20 hours a month that premium is between $585 and $660 a month, or roughly $7,000 to $7,900 a year.
Is it worth it? For most readers of this site, no. If your VA work is recurring, rules-based and volume-heavy, hiring one person directly buys you eight times the hours for the same money, and the hours are the thing you are short of. What you buy back with the premium is the two weeks of hiring, the risk of a bad hire, the cover when they are ill, and a US voice and time zone if your customers or suppliers need one. If you have never managed anybody remotely and your store is already eating your week, that is a real purchase, not a luxury. If you have hired before and you have a process document, you are paying about $30 an hour for something you already know how to do.
One more figure worth checking, because Time etc leans on it. The pricing page says entrepreneurs using Time etc save an average of 90 percent compared with hiring an assistant full-time, based on an average experienced executive assistant salary of $60,500 in 2026, sourced to Payscale. When I opened Payscale’s own executive assistant salary page on the same day, it gave an average base salary of $68,026 for 2026 from 12,259 salary profiles. Time etc’s comparison is against a number $7,526 below what its own cited source publishes today, which makes the saving it advertises conservative rather than inflated. Credit where it is due.
My Verdict on Time etc Pricing
Time etc is honestly priced for what it is, and what it is has a narrow shape. The four plans are published clearly, the rate ladder is shallow and fair, there is no setup fee, and the first month is $150 cheaper than the sticker if you run the wizard. The screening data it publishes is unusually specific for this category. If you want ten to twenty hours a month of US-based, professionally experienced admin support with a named person on the other end and no management overhead, the $390 and $760 plans are a real product for a real situation, and the plan card is not lying to you.
What I would push back on is the gap between the pricing page and the contract. No notice period on the FAQ against one full billing period in clause 14.2 is not a nuance, it is the difference between stopping this month and paying for another one. Money back on the home page against refunds at the vendor’s sole discretion in clause 8.2 is the same kind of gap. Rollover promised four times in marketing and absent entirely from the terms is the third. None of that makes Time etc a bad service. It makes it a service whose real terms you should read before you give it a card, which is true of every vendor in this category and is why I read them.
For the specific reader of this site, running a store selling $1,000 to $5,000 products, the decision is this. Time etc fits if your volume is genuinely small, the work is supplier and order chasing rather than phones, you want continuity without hiring, and you can absorb $39 an hour. It does not fit if you need inbound phone cover, cold outreach, or more than a few hours a week, because at 40 or 60 hours a month you are spending $1,480 to $2,160 and there are full-time alternatives at that price. And if the plan is to meet a great assistant through Time etc and then hire them, remember clause 7.3 and budget the transfer fee.
This article is general business information, not legal advice, and the contract terms quoted here are the ones published on 16 September 2026. Vendors change terms. Read the current version before you sign up.
Not sure delegation is your bottleneck yet?
Before you spend $4,680 a year on ten hours a month, it is worth knowing whether the constraint is your time, your supplier list or your offer. That is a conversation, not a subscription.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Time etc cost per month in 2026?
Four plans on timeetc.com: ten hours for $390, twenty hours for $760, forty hours for $1,480 and sixty hours for $2,160 a month. The page states those as $39, $38, $37 and $36 an hour. Plans above sixty hours exist but Time etc publishes no price for them.
Do unused Time etc hours roll over?
Time etc says yes, in four places, and each says they roll over to the next month. The plan cards, the bundled feature list, the how-it-works page and the pricing FAQ all state it. The terms and conditions contain no rollover clause, and no page states what happens to hours still unused after that following month.
Is there a minimum commitment or a notice period?
The pricing FAQ says cancelling is easy and that there is no notice period. Clause 1.3 of the terms sets a minimum period of one month from registration, and clause 14.2 requires notice of not less than one full monthly billing period. Plan for one further month’s charge after you give notice.
Are Time etc assistants based in the US?
The footer on every page of timeetc.com says 100 percent US-based virtual assistants, based all over the US. The how-it-works page says being US-based means they will be available during your working hours. Time etc runs a separate UK site at timeetc.co.uk which prices the same four tiers in pounds.
What will a Time etc assistant not do?
Time etc’s own article names five exclusions: bookkeeping and accounting, cold outreach and sales calls, live inbound call answering, business strategy, and errands needing physical presence. Note that its ecommerce landing page lists bookkeeping and website development as things its assistants do help with, so confirm scope in writing.
Is Time etc cheaper than hiring a VA directly?
No. At $36 to $39 an hour it costs roughly $27 to $33 an hour more than hiring a full-time assistant directly in the Philippines, based on the bands I pay. You are buying the hiring, the vetting, the cover and the US time zone, not a lower rate.
Related Articles
- Time etc Review 2026: The Best Virtual Assistant Service for Entrepreneurs?
- How to Hire and Onboard a VA for Ecommerce Customer Service
- Best VA Platforms for Small Business in 2026
- Contra Pricing 2026: Commission-Free Is Not the Same as Free
- 7 Best OnlineJobs.ph Alternatives in 2026
If you are earlier than this and still working out whether the model itself suits you, start with my full guide to what high-ticket dropshipping actually is. After that, work through the supplier sourcing process before you pay anybody to chase them for you.
Getting the business formation and compliance foundation right comes first as well. If you have not picked a category yet, the high-ticket niches list is where I would start.
Everything else I publish lives at Ecommerce Paradise. If you would rather skip the build entirely, there is the done-for-you store build and launch service.
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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