Compare · vs Virtual Assistant

Prudence vs. a Virtual Assistant or PA.

If your team is buried and you are weighing up a Virtual Assistant against Prudence, here is the honest difference: a VA does tasks for one person, Prudence runs systems for a team. Different problems, different shapes of answer.

	Prudence	Virtual Assistant
Cost (UK typical)	Prudence £1,195/mo, one flat fee for both modules. Bespoke POA. Fixed monthly regardless of volume.	£15 to £30 an hour. 10 to 20 hours a week is £600 to £2,400 a month. Cost scales linearly with hours used.
Who is it for	The whole team. Pru captures and moves the work everyone in the team is doing at both ends of the job.	One person (usually the owner). The VA reports to them and takes work delegated by them.
When does it run	Continuously. The moment a new supplier invoice or estimate request lands, it is captured. No queue, no waiting.	When the VA is working. Tasks queue up while they are off, asleep or on another client.
Multi-tool integration	The integration is the product. Prudence connects to the tools the team already uses. Pru generates estimates from your rate card at the pitch side, catches supplier costs and drafts recharges at the pay side.	They use your tools the way a person does: log in, check the CRM, switch to email, copy a detail across. Integration is them.
What it does well	Systematic, repeatable team work at both ends of the job. Estimates drafted at the pitch side, supplier costs caught and recharges drafted at the pay side, all in the native tools (your accounting package, your rate-card system) for owner sign-off.	Bespoke, judgement-led personal tasks. Calendar nuance. Difficult replies. Travel. Research. The work that genuinely needs a person.
What it does not do	Prudence does not make personal judgement calls. It does not handle bespoke ad-hoc tasks for one person. It does not bring human warmth to a difficult reply.	A VA does not connect your systems. They use them. Information still has to be entered into each tool separately.
Scaling	£1,195/month flat whether the team is 5 or 50 people. Bespoke steps in for higher volume, multi-entity or industry-specific needs. No handovers.	Add hours, add more VAs as the team grows. Cost scales linearly. Handovers between VAs are friction.