# Cheaper than an assistant. And it never sleeps.

> A human assistant costs thousands a month and weeks to train. Beemy handles routine triage and drafting for $29 a month, and still asks before it sends.

Canonical: https://beemy.co/vs/hiring-an-assistant/ · Last updated: 2026-09-02

Comparison

A great human assistant brings judgement, relationships and real-world representation. They also cost thousands a month and take weeks to ramp up. They read everything in your inbox to do the job. Beemy handles the high-volume routine 24/7, keeps you in control, and costs less than a lunch out.

5 min read

At a glance

## Eight ways the job gets done differently.

| Dimension | A human executive/virtual assistant | Beemy |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cost | Typically $3,000–$6,000+ a month for a full-time executive or virtual assistant, plus benefits and management overhead. | $29–49/month per person: Individual or Team plan, free to start. [See plans →](https://beemy.co/pricing) |
| Availability | Works business hours, and takes holiday and sick days like anyone should. | Runs in the background around the clock: triage, drafts and digests keep moving overnight and on weekends. |
| Ramp-up time | Weeks to months of onboarding before they know your contacts, your projects and your preferences. | Useful within your first few minutes connected: a triaged inbox and a first draft in your voice, the same session. [See the pipeline →](https://beemy.co/how-it-works) |
| Access to your inbox | Reads everything in your inbox to do the job; a real person sees it all, including what's personal. | Starts read-only, keeps personal and work in separate architectural silos, and only acts once you approve. [How the silos hold →](https://beemy.co/trust) |
| Judgement & relationships | Brings real judgement, institutional memory, and the ability to build relationships on your behalf. | Handles the high-volume routine and escalates anything ambiguous or high-stakes straight to you instead of guessing. |
| Consistency | Quality varies with mood, workload and turnover, and you start over when they leave. | Same triage, same voice modelling, every single day, and every correction you make teaches it. |
| Scaling to a team | A second assistant means a second salary and a second onboarding. | Team plan is $49/user/month, same autonomy ladder and silo model for everyone. [See team pricing →](https://beemy.co/pricing) |
| Control | You delegate and largely trust their day-to-day judgement. | You keep an explicit autonomy dial: nothing sends without approval until you promote a category yourself. [How the approval ladder works →](https://beemy.co/trust) |

One item, shown

## What Beemy actually produces.

Illustrative example, built with mock data.

In Gmail · personal

What arrived

Airline

Flight change: new departure 6:15am

The airline emails a schedule change late at night, the kind of thing that would otherwise sit until a human assistant clocks in the next morning.

Beemy's draft

Re: Flight change: new departure 6:15am

This lands at 11pm, well past when a hired assistant would have already gone home. Beemy checks the new time against tomorrow's calendar and drafts the confirmation, ready the moment you wake up.

You approve it once you're up. Nothing was booked or changed while you slept.

The honest tradeoff

## A human brings judgement. Beemy brings hours.

Beemy doesn't try to replace judgement — anything ambiguous or high-stakes is escalated to you, with a plain-language reason, instead of guessed at. What it takes off your plate is the volume: the forty emails, the full calendar, the digest of the news, done before you're awake, at a fraction of the cost of another salary.

The maths

## Less than a lunch out, compared to a full-time hire.

$29 a month for an Individual plan versus thousands for a full-time or even part-time human assistant. Team pricing is $49 per user per month, still a fraction of a second hire's salary and onboarding time.

Always on

## It doesn't clock out.

A human assistant works business hours, takes leave, and needs handoff notes when they're out. Beemy triages, drafts and digests overnight and on weekends, the same one loop, every day.

Privacy

## Fewer eyes on your mail.

A person you hire reads essentially everything in your inbox to do the job. Beemy starts read-only, keeps personal and work in separate architectural silos, and nothing sends without your approval.

A fair word

## When hiring a human is the right call.

Some jobs need real-world representation: attending meetings, negotiating on your behalf, building relationships, exercising judgement on ambiguous or sensitive calls. There a human assistant is the right tool, and Beemy isn't built to compete. It escalates exactly that kind of decision to you, rather than guessing at it. What Beemy replaces is the high-volume, recurring routine: the triage, the drafting, the digesting, the chasing. For most people, the honest answer is that Beemy handles the routine. A human's time, yours or a hire's, then goes to the parts that actually need a person.

Questions

## Fair questions, straight answers.

**Is Beemy meant to replace hiring an assistant?**

Not entirely. Beemy is built for the high-volume, recurring parts of the job — triage, drafting, digests, follow-ups, scheduling. Judgement calls, relationship-building and anything ambiguous still get escalated to you, the same way a good human assistant would flag something rather than guess.

**How much cheaper is Beemy than hiring an assistant?**

Individual is $29/month, or $49/user/month for a team, versus typically $3,000+/month for a full- or part-time human hire. See full pricing on the plans page.

**Does Beemy read my entire inbox the way a human assistant would have to?**

No. It starts read-only, keeps personal and work in strictly separate architectural silos, and won't send, reply or file anything on your behalf until you approve it.

**What can't Beemy do that a human assistant can?**

Attend meetings in person, make judgement calls on genuinely ambiguous or sensitive matters, or build relationships on your behalf: exactly what it escalates to you instead of guessing at.

Last updated 2 September 2026