Confused about all the different platforms, apps and tools that Virtual Assistants talk about online? Worried that if you don’t know what they are and how to use them then you can’t be a VA? Uncertain whether a platform should be used by you or one of your clients instead? Not sure if you should upgrade or stick with the free version?
I don’t blame you.
There are so many platforms, apps and tools out there it’s enough to make a Virtual Assistant’s head spin.
You’re certainly not alone if you’re left wondering what all of these platforms do, how they work and whether you even need to know about them at all.
While I have a free guide on the tools you need (and don’t need) to set up a Virtual Assistant business, I thought you might like to know what tools I use myself.
Note:
- Some are tools I use to run the VA Handbook and others are for the work I do as a Virtual Assistant.
- Some I pay for and others are free.
- Some may be useful for your own business while others would be more suitable for your clients.
Also, a couple of things I’ve listed aren’t actually ‘tools’, but they’re business items I regularly pay for so I felt I should list them with my other expenses.
Don’t. Freak. Out. At. The. List.
I’ll elaborate at the end of the post (using a fun chef analogy), but just because I or another VA uses a specific tool or platform, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will need to use it too.
There is no such thing as an “average” Virtual Assistant
I’ll start by mentioning that there are many different types of Virtual Assistant.
Some provide traditional PA/secretarial services, many offer admin support plus a few techie services which may include social media (this is probably the largest category) and others are what I would call “techie VAs”.
Even then, there are many levels within the techie VA category because not all tech VAs offer the same services. One may specialise in video and photo editing, one may be heavily into website development, and another might be a whizz at creating landing pages or membership sites.
Virtual Assistants simply use the platforms and tools they need to deliver the services they offer and, as I fall under the techie VA category, I use several things you may never need to use.
Platforms, apps and tools I pay for
In addition to my website domain names (GoDaddy), hosting (Nimbus), and website security (WordFence and Cloudflare), these are the tools I currently pay for and use regularly.
Some of these I pay a monthly subscription for and others are paid annually in one go.
While an annual payment usually works out cheaper, unless a platform is really low-cost or you have given it a whirl via a free trial, I recommend paying monthly until you have decided to stick with it.
Virtual Assistants need insurance because of the potential damage they could inflict on their clients’ reputation and business.
A VA may have access to their client’s CRM, social media accounts, contact list, intellectual property, website, cloud storage, bank accounts and, in the case of lifestyle VAs, even their home.
So it pays to be covered. Insurance isn’t expensive and having it indicates that you are a serious, conscientious and professional business owner.
If you’re looking for cover, PolicyBee’s Professional Indemnity Insurance for VAs comes highly recommended by my Facebook group and they are the company I use myself.
UK VAs can use this link to receive up to 10% off.
PolicyBee’s US sister company is InsuranceBee but unfortunately, I was unable to arrange a reduction for my American readers as referral discounts are regarded as ‘kickbacks’ and are not allowed under US law.
LeadPages is the platform I use to create my sales and signup pages and, along with SendOwl and ConvertKit, is one of the very last platforms I would give up if I were ever short of funds.
Seriously, I would rather live in a dumpster than give up LeadPages!
They have a cornucopia of beautiful templates spanning multiple industries that you can use as starting points for your own designs. These include webinar signups, About pages, contests, e-book downloads, countdown offers, squeeze pages and many more.
Their incredible template gallery means I can create stylish, feature-packed pages for a variety of different purposes quickly and easily without the help of a designer.
While some VAs may use LeadPages for their own business, it’s more likely something your clients would need. I design landing and signup pages for the VA Handbook, but it is also one of my most popular, well-paid and favourite VA services.
I highly recommend knowing how to build a Lead Page and familiarising yourself with the platform because not only is it really fun to use, but you can earn a great project rate by offering landing page setup as a service.
You know when you download a free or paid PDF from the Downloads and Training page of my website? Well, that document is delivered by a snazzy little platform called SendOwl.
I’ve been using SendOwl for years because I can literally create a PDF, upload it to SendOwl, put the link in a sales page or share it online and start making money in under an hour.
It has many great features such as filtered reporting, upsells, bundles, and cart abandonment reminders, but one of the things I like best is that whenever I update a document, I can simply upload a new version and resend it to previous buyers.
While you may not need this platform yourself, if you have a client looking to sell digital products then suggest SendOwl, help them set it all up and bask in the glow of their everlasting gratitude.
To be honest, I hate Zoom with a passion.
It’s clunky, unintuitive, has layers of sneakily hidden privacy settings and they only attempted to improve things after a number of public outcries and high-level breaches.
Zoom is still very underhand about security and how they use your data. In July 2021 they settled a federal class-action lawsuit that alleged the company skimped on security, misled users and shared personal data with third parties without notification or consent. They only fixed a hacking flaw in August 2021.
Although I neither like nor trust Zoom, it’s the best way to hold webinars, workshops, strategy, training, coworking and mastermind sessions.
Most people are familiar with Zoom so I suffer it.
Notion is a productivity platform that offers organisational tools including task management, project tracking, to-do lists, bookmarking, and more. I use it every single day and I am totally in love with it.
I use it in 100 different ways for 100 different things including travel and goal planning, storing ideas and online resources, journalling, task management and note-taking. I also store info about my health, car, dog and house… literally, everything!
There is a free version you can get but you quickly use up the storage space and need to upgrade. It doesn’t cost much though and, seeing as I use it for both my work and personal life, it’s worth every penny.
I’m a big fan of AI and pay for two ChatGPT accounts. One for holding Virtual Assistant AI training sessions and one for personal use.
Some VAs are afraid or suspicious of AI, but the genie is firmly out of the bottle, and it’s not going back!
AI is the future of business and the most exciting thing to happen to the Virtual Assistant industry since, well, forever!
I use ChatGPT for a myriad of things, including assessing and improving my marketing strategy and helping rewrite my LinkedIn profile!
ConvertKit is my preferred email marketing platform. I started out using MailChimp, quickly moved to AWeber and when I needed something a bit more advanced, I tried a few out and settled on ConvertKit.
As ConvertKit integrates with LifterLMS, LeadPages and SendOwl, tags are automatically added to a subscriber’s account based on specific actions they take – such as downloading a document, clicking a link or enrolling in a course.
This allows me (or your client) to send targeted follow-up emails to someone who may have clicked a link but not gone on to buy the product or send further information to a subscriber who has expressed an interest in a specific topic. I don’t use them all, but ConvertKit has some fantastic additional features and their customer service is impeccable.
While a lot of small business owners use MailChimp, if you’re interested in offering email marketing as a service, I regularly see clients and VAs looking for people who know how to use ConvertKit, Mailerlite and ActiveCampaign.
My Accountant always recommends FreeAgent or Xero to his clients and I went with Xero. It’s fairly easy to use and my Accountant can submit my tax returns to HMRC directly through the platform.
I used the free version for many years and only just upgraded to the paid version. To be honest, I’m kinda embarrassed I didn’t pay for it earlier because it’s a total game-changer.
I don’t always use its suggestions, but it has made a huge difference to my grammar, I can tell you!
As I work solely in The Cloud, I store all of my data in Google Drive. It’s cheaper than Dropbox and is my go-to method for storing and sharing files.
Google give you 15GB of free storage, but I pay annually for 200GB, which is more than enough to back up my entire laptop, including videos and thousands of photos.
Quick note: as a backup, I export data from Google Drive to Microsoft OneDrive every month using Google Takeout.
The Swiss army knife of online design tools, Canva is a Virtual Assistant’s best friend.
I started with the free version but then upgraded so I could upload my brand colours, logos and fonts, use the “free” stock images and background remover (I use this quite a bit), add more team members, resize images, and have access to three times as many templates.
Canva now has a ton of incredible AI features in their ‘Magic Design’ studio including resize, erase, replace, edit, grab and even the amazing image generation tool DALL-E.
Magic Design is free to all users but, as it uses the Canva template library to suggest the best and most relevant designs based on your query, it may suggest templates that use Canva Pro elements. This means you’ll receive more suggestions if you have the Pro version.
Calendly is the platform I use to create my online VA events. I link it to Stripe, Zoom and my Google calendar and then when someone books a session with me, it automatically takes payment, creates a unique Zoom link and adds the event to my calendar.
Pretty amazing huh?!
This is an LMS (Learning Management System) WordPress plugin that I use to create courses on my Munro Courses website.
It integrates with Stripe and ConvertKit and, while it isn’t perfect and I once had a security issue that I needed to fix with CloudFlare, it does what I need it to.
I like that I pay an annual fee for the plugin instead of the company taking a cut of each sale – which is often the case for other course platforms.
Not a tool but UK Virtual Assistants need to pay an annual data protection fee to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Or they will fine you.
All VAs should have a good working understanding of GDPR and data protection regs whatever country they are based in. You can find more information on data protection here.
I use this simple site to trim the monthly live Q&A session I hold with my trainee group as well as other online sessions and demos.
I mainly use it to trim and edit long videos but the platform also has some great audio and PDF tools.
Platforms, tools and apps that I don’t pay for
These are the free versions of platforms, apps or tools that I use regularly. All of these have paid versions, but I’ve continued to use the free one.
Many VAs use Asana but I prefer Trello. I have a personal board and a business board I share with my VA. We store annual goals, brand guidelines, company SOPs, roles and responsibilities, content ideas and other bits and bobs.
My VA also has a number of different work updates and progress cards so I can check the status of my tasks any time of the day or night without having to contact her.
After a truly appalling experience with LastPass as well as their underhand annual fee implementation and truly abysmal customer service, I now use Google’s built-in password manager.
I tried moving to 1Password but didn’t really get on with them. My VA uses Dashlane and loves it so I may move to them in the future though.
I’ve been on LinkedIn since I set my business up in 2008 and I’ve never permanently upgraded to the Premium version. I’ve taken advantage of free trials here and there so I can try out different features, but I’ve always remembered to cancel before I was charged.
I know that some VAs do use LinkedIn Premium though, and this is usually so they can access LinkedIn Learning, send more InMail messages, take advantage of unlimited searches and see who has viewed their profile.
* When implementing the method I outline in my Guide on How to Get New Clients, I contact prospects directly instead of using LinkedIn InMail.
Feedly is a darling little RSS Reader that you can use to aggregate content from different websites and online sources.
It’s a great way to keep on top of topics that may interest you personally and stay abreast of developments within your client’s industries.
You can use this content as social media fodder and/or share it with your clients.
Feedly Pro has more features such as the ability to hide ads, save articles to Evernote, Pocket and OneNote, and share to LinkedIn, Buffer, IFTTT and Zapier.
While it isn’t expensive, I just use Feedly to collate content that I or my clients will find interesting, so I stick with the free version.
Tools I occasionally use
These are the platforms, apps and tools that I use semi-regularly or very occasionally. Some of these are free and some have paid tiers.
WISE – previously known as TransferWise, Wise is the fastest and cheapest way to send and receive international payments and is how most business owners receive payments from overseas clients.
PDFZORRO – I use this marvellous free platform every month to edit documents. I forgive its ugliness because it’s just so easy and quick!
WETRANSFER – when I need to send a video and the file exceeds the maximum Gmail attachment size, I mosey on over to WeTransfer and send it for free that way instead.
What’s missing?
You may have noticed that I don’t use an “all in one” business management platform such as Hubspot, Dubsado or Clickup. This is a deliberate choice as I prefer to keep my platforms separate for two reasons:
1. I prefer to use specialists
For example, when ConvertKit introduced the ability to create landing pages, I continued to use LeadPages because whenever I saw people asking for help in the ConvertKit Facebook group it was always landing pages that were causing the problem.
ConvertKit does email marketing incredibly well but LeadPages’s landing pages are 100% times better than Convertkit’s – because it’s the sole purpose of their platform… it’s what they do.
I’ve noticed that whenever platforms (or VAs for that matter) attempt to offer things they are not very good at, they usually dilute their value.
2. I don’t want to put all of my eggs in one basket
What would happen if I had everything on one platform and that site was hacked, went offline, went out of business or started charging more for the service?
I’d enter a world of pain, is what.
As part of my business contingency/disaster recovery plan, I focus on simplicity and not being reliant on any one platform to run my business. This way, no one platform will ever hold me hostage or stop me from doing my job.
I guess what I’m saying is that, while a Swiss Army Knife is great, no tool on it is as good as the actual stand-alone tool and if it breaks, then you’re in deep trouble!
Do VAs need all of these platforms and tools?
Something I see a lot is new or wannabe VAs hearing other VAs discuss platforms they have never heard of and freaking out.
They worry that if they don’t understand what these platforms or tools are then they can’t be a VA. Or they think that they need to learn how to use all of them to be a Virtual Assistant.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
I’ve been running my own business since 2008 and I often see platforms and tools being discussed in the Facebook group that I have no experience with whatsoever. I either don’t need to use them or I/my clients use something else.
It’s kinda like cooking.
Most chefs just need basic items such as pots, pans, scales and mixing bowls. A pastry chef would also need piping bags, cooling racks and a sugar thermometer. But a specialist chef might also use a wok, a pasta roller, a blow torch or a sushi mat.
The tools they use would vary depending on what type of chef they were, who they were cooking for and what they were trying to make.
Just as there are many types of frying pans to choose from depending on what you’re cooking and how much money you want to spend, the same is true of many online business tools such as CRMs or email marketing platforms.
Most of them do the same thing but just offer different features.
There are many CRMs out there and they all pretty much do the same thing. Clients decide which one to use based on a number of factors such as their budget, customer demographic, the features they need and what they’re trying to achieve.
I don’t even use a CRM system.
I checked them out early in my career, realised I could use labels and notes in my Google Contact list to do the same thing and then got on with my day.
So, what you’re actually seeing in the Facebook group is often just a specialist chef talking about the specialist equipment (or a brand of equipment) that they use or are considering using.
When should you upgrade and start paying for tools?
When you first start out you are understandably trying to keep costs as low as possible. This is what I did and I continue to use many of these free tools today.
But free isn’t always the best option.
We want clients to outsource tasks to Virtual Assistants because we know we can save them time, money and a whole lotta work – and it’s the same with these platforms.
If we can save (or make) money by using a tool to do the heavy lifting for us then it would be insane not to do so, and paid options can be worth every penny.
Yes, sometimes the free version does the job perfectly well but the paid version usually has better features and comes with customer support. You don’t realise how important customer support actually is until you really need it!
There are things I regret not paying for sooner.
In particular, I wish I had invested in an evergreen social media scheduler way before I did. I think I was reluctant to upgrade to paid tools because I still had the mindset of a newbie who wanted to save every penny.
I hadn’t yet realised that the time and mental energy I saved by not spending hours coming up with marketing content and then manually scheduling it meant I could focus on more important things such as:
– Developing a solid marketing plan
– Creating focused marketing content
– Assessing and reviewing my marketing plan and content
– Having conversations with prospects
– Providing a better service to my clients
– Working on my business
This applies to many paid platforms btw, not just evergreen social media schedulers.
I’ve also seen trainees spend hours – days even – trying to find the perfect free solution for themselves or their client, whereas a year’s subscription to a paid platform would have cost far less than the invoice equivalent of the time they have already spent looking.
DOH!
Also, another negative of free options is that the platform often decides to remove features or to start charging later on. When this happens you’re left with no choice but to start paying or spend time sourcing another free platform that does the same thing.
Takeaway tips
When it comes to choosing tools, my advice is to ascertain what it is you (or your client) want to achieve first and THEN find the right tool for the job.
If the perfect tool isn’t free then evaluate the cost, sign up for a free trial and then make a decision.
Be aware that many platforms and tools do the same thing, free isn’t always the best option, prioritise your time and mental energy, and try to keep everything as simple as possible.
* Affiliate disclosure – many of these links on this page are affiliate links which means I may receive a small commission if you decide to buy from them. My reputation is extremely important to me and I only recommend products and services that I either use myself and/or know will help you.
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Hey Joanne, this is a brilliant list. Thanks.
I’ve tried with Notion and want to keep going but i’m finding it something of an enigma – it’s all trial and error learning.
Are you self taught through youtube and just using it? I’ve tried to find Notion tutors, had a couple of hours 1-1 but still no further really. Any suggestions how to get the penny to drop, I can see how it is so awesome and can be integrated/automated for clients.
Best, Michelle
Hi Michelle, I actually did a walkthrugh demo video of my Notion setup and how to use it in the All Stars group a couple of weeks ago. If you are an established VA you can join for £5 a month and cancel at any time. I am self-taught but I also watched a few fantastic tutorials on YouTube.
Great post – thank you so much! I have tons of experience but have been slightly concerned that I don’t know all these tools, but it will all work out! Will get myself started on Evergreen today. Looking forward to delving into more of your fabulous content!
Great info Joanne.
There are so many different platform, we would not be able to learn them all. I focus on customer needs and learn there systems where required. For instance, just started using Discord. Similar to Slack
Hey!
Just starting out my VA business and your information is so knowledge. I will continue to look at all your content.
It’s great.
Jo
As always, I find your posts incredibly insightful. Thank you!
Thank you, Debbie!
Thanks so much. Been in this a while but it helps to confirm or upgrade based on Hero-guides 😊
You are welcome! Many VAs freak right out when they see other VAs talking about a ton of apps and platforms they’ve never heard of. But I found that most of them are all the same or completely superfluous.