Best Time etc Alternatives in 2026

Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links and I may earn a commission at no cost to you. Most of the services below pay me nothing, and I have said so next to each one. It does not change the order they appear in.

Almost every Time etc alternatives article I can find ranks services by hourly rate, and that ranking is useless because half of this category does not sell hours. Magic sells weeks. Prialto sells a 55 hour unit. MyOutDesk sells a whole person. Fancy Hands sells requests capped at 20 minutes. Belay sells a phone call and publishes no price at all. You cannot put those in one column and sort it.

So I did something more boring and more useful. I opened the live pricing page of every serious Time etc competitor on 16 September 2026, read the raw HTML rather than a summary, and worked out what each one costs for the same job: a high-ticket dropshipping store handing over supplier follow-up, order tracking chases, freight delivery-window chasing and quote request replies. Then I sorted them by the reason you are actually leaving Time etc, because that is the only sort order that helps.

Here is the finding that surprised me. If you genuinely only need 10 to 20 hours a month, Time etc is close to the cheapest managed option in this list, because almost everybody else has a floor of 40 hours or more. If you need 40 hours a month or more, Time etc becomes the most expensive per hour in the entire table by a wide margin. Its own 60 hour plan at $2,160 a month buys exactly the same dollars as 160 hours from Magic. Same money, 2.67 times the hours.

Nine options below, counted. The one I think most readers of this site should take is the first one, and I earn a commission on it, so I have shown my working rather than asking you to trust me.

Every Time etc Alternative, With the Price on Its Own Page

Every figure in this table came off the vendor’s own live pricing page on 16 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes two different numbers for the same thing, I have shown both rather than picking one. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says so.

That is nine rows and I counted them against what I wrote. Two of the nine pay me a commission and seven pay me nothing, and the seven that pay me nothing are marked No in the last column. The service names in the table go to the vendor’s site, and each section below links the exact pricing page the figure was read on. The per-hour figures for MyOutDesk and Athena are my arithmetic, not theirs: both sell a full-time person without publishing a monthly hour count, so I have divided by 160 hours and you should treat those two cells as estimates rather than published prices.

1. OnlineJobs.ph, If You Are Leaving Over the Hourly Rate

This is the honest answer for most people reading this, and it is the one that takes the most work from you. OnlineJobs.ph is not a VA service. It is a job board for Filipino remote workers, and you do the hiring, the interviewing, the onboarding and the covering.

Its published pricing page lists three tiers. Free lets you post up to three jobs, see up to 15 applications each and wait two days for approval, but the page states plainly that a free account cannot contact, interview or hire anybody, which makes it a browsing tool rather than a hiring tool. Pro is $69 a month or $299 a year and gives instant job post approval, up to three posts a month, up to 200 applications per job and contact with 75 workers a month. Premium is $99 a month or $349 a year and raises that to ten posts a month and 500 worker contacts, with an AI matching feature.

The important thing is what the platform does not set. Its FAQ says: “How much you pay them is dependent on how much you negotiate with them before you hire them.” There is no markup and no middleman rate, which is exactly why the arithmetic works. In my guide to hiring and onboarding a VA for ecommerce customer service I set out the monthly bands I actually pay, and the band that handles quote requests and freight chasing is $800 to $1,400 a month for a full-time person.

Run that against Time etc. Twenty hours a month from Time etc is $760. For $800 you can have somebody full-time, which is roughly 160 hours. That is eight times the hours for 5 percent more money. The subscription is not an ongoing cost either, because the FAQ states: “There is no time requirement.” You pay $69 for the month you are recruiting and cancel.

What you give up is real and I am not going to pretend otherwise. You spend two weeks writing a job post, screening, running a paid trial task and onboarding. You carry the risk of a bad hire. When your person is ill or on holiday, nobody covers. You handle the tax paperwork. If you have never managed a remote worker and your store is already eating your week, that is a genuine reason to pay somebody else to do it. If you have hired before and you have written process documents, you are paying about $30 an hour for a job you already know how to do.

2. Magic, If You Need Real Hours and Cannot Face Hiring

Magic earns me nothing and I am putting it second anyway, because it is the single most direct answer to the Time etc price problem. Its pricing page sells two plans. A part-time dedicated assistant working 20 hours a week is $270 a week. A full-time dedicated assistant working 40 hours a week is $540 a week and includes a feature the page calls Magic 24/7. There is also a custom Magic Teams tier which starts at three assistants and states it can be ready to work in five days.

Both plans work out at $13.50 an hour. The page states: “All plans are billed every 4 weeks.” So a four week cycle on the full-time plan is $540 times four, which is $2,160. Hold that number next to Time etc’s sixty hour plan, which is also $2,160 a month. The same $2,160 buys 60 hours from Time etc and 160 hours from Magic. That is 2.67 times the work for the identical figure.

Magic’s page says its assistants are curated from the top 0.5 percent of talent, that there are no contracts, that you can cancel any time, and that you only pay once you have selected the assistant you want to work with. It does not publish where its assistants are based, which is the caveat. If your reason for considering Time etc in the first place was a US-based voice on the phone to a US supplier, Magic does not tell you on the pricing page whether you get that, and you should ask before you buy.

For a high-ticket store the fit is good on paper. Twenty hours a week is far more than the 10 to 20 hours a month I described at the top, so this is the option for a store that has grown past the light-admin stage and now has somebody chasing four suppliers and a freight forwarder every day.

3. Prialto, If Continuity Is the Reason You Are Leaving

Prialto earns me nothing. It is the best answer in this list for the specific problem of your assistant disappearing, because it is the only service here that publishes a backup as a line item rather than as a reassurance.

Its pricing page sells units. One unit is 55 hours of support a month and includes a dedicated assistant, a named Engagement Manager, and fully trained primary and secondary backup assistants. The plan card prices a unit at $1,600 a month. The FAQ on the same page gives a different figure: “Flat, monthly pricing starts at $1,500 per month with a 90-day minimum per unit plus a $250 initial set-up fee in the first month.” The next sentence adds: “The setup fee will be waived with a 1-year agreement.” I am publishing both numbers because Prialto publishes both, and I would plan against $1,600.

At $1,600 for 55 hours you are paying $29.09 an hour. At $1,500 it is $27.27. Either way it undercuts Time etc’s best published rate of $36, and you get the backup and the engagement manager in the price. The catch is the floor. The minimum commitment is 90 days at one unit, which is $4,800 plus the $250 setup, so $5,050 before you can walk away. Time etc’s minimum is one month.

Prialto is also the only service in this comparison that publishes actual working hours. Its FAQ states assistants work 9:00am to 6:00pm Monday through Friday on US and UK time zones, excluding federal holidays, with extended weekday and weekend hours arranged on a custom basis. Time etc publishes no specific hours anywhere on its site, as I set out in my full breakdown of Time etc pricing. If you need to tell a supplier when somebody will pick up, that difference matters more than three dollars an hour.

One more thing worth knowing before you quote Prialto’s own experience claims back at anybody. The same page says 15 or more years of experience in one place, 14 or more in another and 16 or more in a third. That is sloppy rather than dishonest, but it is a reminder to read the page rather than the review.

4. MyOutDesk, If You Want One Full-Time Person and the Paperwork Handled

MyOutDesk earns me nothing. Its pricing page publishes three tiers. Managed Outsourcing starts at $1,988 a month, Specialized Outsourcing starts at $2,500 a month and adds industry-specific experience plus HIPAA and PCI-DSS readiness, and an Enterprise tier is custom priced. All three include recruiting, screening, payroll, HR and benefits administration in the monthly rate, and the page says candidates come from the top 0.1 percent of applicants with dual-stage vetting, SOC 2 auditing and HIPAA verification.

The model is deliberately the opposite of Time etc’s. MyOutDesk sells one person working eight hours a day, five days a week, fully embedded in your business, and its pricing page argues at length against buying capacity in hours, units or buckets. It says outright that competitors package part-time behind unit pricing so the sticker price looks lower, and that you are not saving money, you are buying less. Whether you agree or not, it is a coherent argument and it is aimed squarely at the model Time etc sells.

If you divide $1,988 by 160 hours you get about $12.43 an hour, which is the cheapest managed option in this list. MyOutDesk does not publish a monthly hour total, so that figure is my arithmetic from its published days and hours, not a number it prints. It also does not publish a minimum term on the pricing page, so ask.

For a high-ticket store this is the right shape once your VA work is genuinely a daily job. If somebody needs to be in your inbox, your freight portal and your supplier threads every morning, buying 40 hours a month in a block and hoping it stretches is the wrong purchase.

5. Athena, If You Want an Executive Assistant and Can Commit 90 Days

Athena earns me nothing. Its pricing page publishes one number: $3,000 a month for one dedicated, full-time executive assistant, vetted, trained, device-equipped and employed by Athena. A footnote on the card says that monthly rate applies after an initial 90-day commitment, so the smallest amount you can spend is $9,000 across three months.

The selection claim on the same page is the most aggressive in this category: “We receive 30-60k monthly applications, of which only 1% are accepted.” The page also states Athena is SOC 2 Type II certified, provisions and manages all assistant devices with enterprise endpoint protection, and that onboarding through to kickoff takes one to two weeks.

At roughly 160 hours a month, $3,000 works out at about $18.75 an hour, which is half Time etc’s best rate for nearly three times the hours. The trade is the 90-day lock and the fact that this is positioned as an executive assistant for a founder’s whole working life rather than an ecommerce operations hire. If what you actually need is somebody who understands lead times and freight classes, a general EA at $3,000 a month is an expensive way to get it.

6. Boldly, If You Need US-Employed Staff

Boldly earns me nothing. Its pricing page publishes four plans: 40 hours a month at $2,600, 60 hours at $3,900, 80 hours at $5,200 and 100 hours at $6,500. Above that, up to 160 hours, the page says to ask.

Divide each of those and you get $65.00 an hour on all four. Boldly’s ladder has no volume discount whatsoever, which is unusual and worth knowing: Time etc at least drops from $39 to $36 as you buy more. Boldly also charges $79 an hour for project management, web development, blog writing, design and other specialist tasks, so the effective rate goes up rather than down when you ask for anything technical.

Two payment details from the same page that people miss. It states: “Prices are based on monthly payment by ACH Direct Debit.” And then: “Credit card payments incur a processing fee of 2.9%.” On the 40 hour plan that surcharge is $75.40 a month if you pay by card, which is $904.80 a year. There is also a separate pricing page for the state of New York, so if you are in New York the figures above are not yours.

What you are buying at $65 an hour is that Boldly employs your staff member rather than contracting them, which the page frames as removing your compliance exposure. For a store owner who has been advised to worry about worker classification, that is a real product. For everybody else it is the most expensive option in this comparison.

7. Fancy Hands, If Your Work Is Tasks Rather Than Hours

Fancy Hands earns me nothing, and it is the only service here that is genuinely cheaper than Time etc at the bottom of the range. Its pricing page sells three plans: 3 requests a month for $35, 5 requests a month for $55, and 15 requests a month for $125. The page states: “Standard requests are up to 20 minutes of work.” It also says your requests roll over.

Do the arithmetic at the ceiling, where every request runs the full 20 minutes. The 15 request plan is 5 hours for $125, which is $25.00 an hour and undercuts Time etc. The 5 request plan is 100 minutes for $55, which works out at $33 an hour. The 3 request plan is one hour for $35. So only the largest plan beats Time etc on rate, and only if you use every minute of every request.

The structural problem for a store owner is that this is a task pool, not a person. Chasing a freight carrier is not a 20 minute discrete request, it is a thread that runs for nine days across four emails and two phone calls with somebody who remembers the reference number. Fancy Hands is excellent for booking a restaurant, cancelling a subscription or calling a utility. It is the wrong tool for a relationship with a supplier.

8. Belay, If You Are Willing to Get On a Call

Belay earns me nothing and I cannot tell you what it costs, because Belay does not publish a price. I pulled its sitemap, which lists 1,596 URLs across its main site, blog and resources subdomains, and opened every URL containing pricing, cost, fee, rate, plan or invest. There is no pricing page. The obvious paths all return 404 and the navigation carries no pricing item.

The closest thing to a figure is on a Belay FAQ resource page about what it costs to hire a US-based virtual assistant, which says: “Most U.S.-based virtual assistants cost between $1,200 and $3,000 per month, depending on hours, experience, and the type of work.” Read that sentence carefully. It is a statement about the market, not about Belay, and the same page goes on to say Belay may cost more up front than the range it just quoted. Anybody telling you Belay costs a specific figure a month is quoting a third-party review, not Belay.

Time etc names Belay itself, twice, in its own FAQ section, and characterises Belay as requiring higher minimum commitments and being less flexible for small businesses with variable workloads. That is a competitor’s description of a competitor and I am attributing it rather than repeating it as fact. If you want to know what Belay costs, you will have to book the call, which is itself the most useful thing I can tell you about how Belay sells.

9. Time etc, and When Staying Put Is the Right Answer

Having spent eight sections on the alternatives, here is the case for not switching. Look at the floors in that table again. Magic’s smallest plan is 20 hours a week. Prialto’s is 55 hours a month on a 90-day minimum. Boldly’s is 40 hours. MyOutDesk and Athena sell one whole person. Belay will not quote without a call.

Time etc sells ten hours for $390 with a one month minimum period, no setup fee and $150 off the first month if you run its task wizard, and it does that with a dedicated US-based assistant rather than a pool. In a category where almost everybody else starts at a thousand dollars or more, that is a genuinely differentiated position, and it is why the service exists.

So the switch decision is really a volume decision. Below about 20 hours a month, Time etc is competitive and the alternatives mostly cannot serve you at all. Above 40 hours a month, Time etc is charging $37 to $36 an hour for work that Magic sells at $13.50 and MyOutDesk sells at roughly $12.43, and the gap becomes impossible to justify on anything except the US-based requirement. If you are in that upper band and you are still paying Time etc rates, you are paying for a product shape you have outgrown.

I went through the plans, the contradictions between the pricing page and the contract, the nine-month exclusivity clause and the transfer fee in the full Time etc pricing breakdown. There is a longer assessment of the service itself in my Time etc review. Read the pricing piece before you sign anything, because the cancellation clause in the terms is not what the FAQ says it is.

How I Would Actually Choose

Strip it back to four questions and the answer falls out.

How many hours a month do you really need? Under 20 and the managed market barely serves you, so it is Time etc or a part-time direct hire. Over 40 and you should be looking at Magic, MyOutDesk or a full-time direct hire, because paying $36 an hour at that volume is a choice.

Does the work need a US voice or a US time zone? If a supplier or a customer will hear this person, that narrows you to Time etc, Boldly, Belay or a US direct hire, and it costs between $36 and $65 an hour. If the work is email, portals and internal admin, that constraint disappears and so does most of the price.

What happens when your person is away? Prialto is the only one here publishing a named backup structure. MyOutDesk says it rematches at no extra cost. Time etc says cover is built in without saying how. A direct hire has no cover at all unless you build it.

How long are you willing to be locked in? Time etc is one month. Magic says no contracts. Prialto is 90 days plus a setup fee. Athena is 90 days. Boldly and Belay do not publish a term. Read that column before the price column, because a cheap rate on a long lock is not cheap.

This article is general business information rather than legal or tax advice, and worker classification rules vary by state and by country. If you are choosing between contracting through a service and employing somebody directly, the IRS guidance on independent contractor versus employee status is the right starting point and an accountant is the right second step.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cheapest Time etc alternative?

By published entry price, Fancy Hands at $35 a month for three requests. By cost per hour of actual work, hiring directly through OnlineJobs.ph, where the platform costs $69 a month and you negotiate the salary yourself. Among managed services that publish a rate, MyOutDesk at roughly $12.43 an hour on my arithmetic from its $1,988 monthly starting price.

Which Time etc alternative is best for continuity?

Prialto, because it is the only service here that publishes fully trained primary and secondary backup assistants and a named Engagement Manager as part of every unit, and the only one publishing its assistants’ working hours. It costs $1,600 a unit for 55 hours with a 90-day minimum and a $250 setup fee.

Does Belay publish its prices?

No. I pulled Belay’s sitemap of 1,596 URLs and opened every page whose URL contained pricing, cost, fee, rate or plan, and found no pricing page. Its FAQ page quotes a market range of $1,200 to $3,000 a month for US-based virtual assistants generally, and says Belay may cost more than that.

Is Time etc more expensive than its competitors?

At 40 hours a month or more, yes, by a wide margin against everything except Boldly. At 10 to 20 hours a month it is one of the only managed services that will serve you at all, because most competitors start at 40 hours, 55 hours or a full-time person.

Can I get a US-based assistant for less than Time etc charges?

Not from anybody in this comparison who publishes both a rate and a US base. Boldly publishes US-employed staff and charges $65 an hour, which is more than Time etc. Belay publishes no price at all. On the pricing pages I read for Magic, Prialto, MyOutDesk, Athena and Fancy Hands, none of them stated where their assistants are based, so if a US location is a requirement you need to ask each of them directly.

Related Articles

• Time etc Pricing 2026: Every Plan and What It Actually Costs
• 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
• 7 Best OnlineJobs.ph Alternatives in 2026
• Best Contra Alternatives in 2026: Four Meters, Not Four Prices

If you are earlier in the build than this, the delegation question is premature. Start with my guide to what high-ticket dropshipping actually is. From there, work through how to find and approve real suppliers.

Get the business formation and compliance foundation in place before you take anybody on, contractor or otherwise. If you have not settled on a category, the high-ticket niches list is the place to start.

Everything else I write lives at Ecommerce Paradise. If you want a second pair of eyes on the decision, there is private coaching.

Trevor Fenner

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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