Last updated February 20, 2026
A great human VA is genuinely hard to replace. They understand context, build relationships on your behalf, handle ambiguous situations with judgment, and adapt to your working style over months. If you can afford $2,000-4,000/month for a skilled one and you have enough work to keep them busy, a human VA is still the gold standard for executive support. But most solo founders can't justify that cost, especially early on. notodo gives you 80% of the functionality at 1-2% of the price: email triage, calendar management, task tracking, research, and daily briefings - available 24/7 with instant response times. The 20% you lose is the nuanced human judgment, relationship building, and ability to handle truly novel situations. For most founders, that trade-off makes sense until revenue justifies a human hire.
| Feature | notodo | Human Virtual Assistant | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Availability | 24/7 instant responses. No time zones, no holidays, no sick days. Available on demand whenever you need it | Business hours only (typically 20-40 hours/week). Time zone dependent. Unavailable on weekends, holidays, and during personal time | |
| Response time | Instant. Email triage, calendar updates, and task creation happen in seconds | Minutes to hours depending on complexity and current workload. Faster with experience, but never instant | |
| Email management | AI-powered triage, auto-archive, drafting, and sending with approval gates. Handles volume consistently | Human judgment on tone, urgency, and relationships. Can handle sensitive emails you wouldn't trust to AI. Learns your voice over time | |
| Calendar scheduling | Smart scheduling with rules, buffers, and preferences. Creates and manages events through chat | Can negotiate meeting times, understand social dynamics, and make judgment calls about scheduling priorities. Handles back-and-forth with external contacts naturally | |
| Nuanced judgment | Follows rules and patterns well but struggles with truly ambiguous or politically sensitive situations | Understands social dynamics, reads between the lines, and makes judgment calls based on experience and emotional intelligence | |
| Relationship building | Can send follow-up reminders and track contacts but can't build genuine relationships on your behalf | Remembers personal details, builds rapport with your contacts, handles gifts and personal touches that strengthen business relationships | |
| Scalability | Handles any volume consistently. 10 emails or 200 emails, same speed and quality | Limited by human capacity. High-volume periods mean slower response times or dropped tasks | |
| Consistency | Same performance every time. No bad days, no learning curve reset if you switch providers | Quality varies day to day. If your VA leaves, you lose months of context and start over with someone new |
Free tier available. Pro at €79/month. That's roughly 1-2% the cost of a human VA.
Offshore VAs: $800-1,500/month for part-time. US/EU-based VAs: $2,000-4,000/month full-time. Top-tier executive assistants: $5,000-8,000/month. Plus recruiting costs and training time.
Solo founders, freelancers, and early-stage companies that need executive assistant functionality but can't justify $2,000+/month. Ideal for digital-first workflows centered on email, calendar, and task management.
Funded founders and executives who need high-touch support: travel booking, vendor management, event planning, client relationship management, and tasks requiring human judgment and interpersonal skills.
Start with notodo. It handles the routine digital work (email triage, scheduling, task management) that consumes most of a VA's time. When your business grows to the point where you need human judgment, relationship building, or physical task handling, hire a VA for those high-value tasks and keep notodo for the routine work.
For digital tasks like email management, calendar scheduling, task tracking, and research - largely yes. For tasks requiring human judgment, relationship building, phone calls, travel booking, or handling ambiguous situations - no. Many founders use both: notodo for volume and speed, a VA for nuanced work.
Make phone calls, book complex travel itineraries, handle sensitive interpersonal situations with judgment, build genuine relationships with clients, manage physical tasks, negotiate on your behalf, and handle truly novel situations that don't fit established patterns.
Process high volumes of email instantly, be available at 3am, respond in seconds rather than minutes, maintain perfect consistency regardless of workload, never need a sick day or vacation, and cost 98% less. For routine digital tasks, AI has clear advantages.
For triage and categorization, notodo is faster and more consistent. For drafting responses, a good VA who knows your voice will write more naturally nuanced emails, especially for sensitive or relationship-critical communications. notodo's approval gates help bridge this gap by letting you review before anything sends.
Join the waitlist. We're onboarding founders and agency owners who want to focus on what matters.