Comparison
Offshore VA vs Relay: two ways to buy back your agency's time
Most agencies weighing automation are really weighing it against the other fix they already know: hiring a virtual assistant, usually offshore at around $6 per hour, or another in-house CSR at $25 or more. Both paths buy time. They buy different kinds of time, and the honest comparison is about which kind your agency is short on.
Side by side
How the two paths compare
| Offshore VA | Relay | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | About $6/hr offshore; $25+/hr in-house | Seat-based, month to month |
| Ramp time | Weeks to months of training on your carriers and processes | Guided setup; your team reviews everything from day one |
| Judgment calls | Yes, within what they have been trained on | No. Relay drafts and prepares; a licensed person decides |
| Phone work | Yes | No |
| Parallel work | One task at a time, one person at a time | Inbox, documents, and portal workflows run in parallel |
| Turnover risk | Training walks out the door when they leave | Configured workflows persist |
| Credential handling | Your portal logins shared with a person outside the agency | Zero human access to credentials by design |
Where each fits
When Offshore VA fits
You need phone coverage, outbound follow-up calls, or client conversations. Software does not make calls for you.
Your bottleneck work genuinely requires human judgment on every item and cannot be reviewed in batches.
You have someone who enjoys managing and training a remote person, and turnover will not sink the process they hold.
Where Relay fits
The bottleneck is typing: portal entry, re-keying documents, inbox triage. That is the work Relay is built to remove.
You want the work prepared in parallel rather than one item at a time.
Sharing carrier credentials with a person outside the agency makes you uncomfortable. It should.
Other paths
Alternatives worth weighing
In-house hire
A licensed CSR at $25+ per hour plus benefits.
Best for: Agencies whose gap is licensed judgment and client relationships, not keystrokes.
Do both
Many agencies pair a VA for calls with automation for typing.
Best for: Shops with both a phone gap and a typing gap; the two do not compete for the same work.
The honest take
What we would tell a friend who runs an agency
Relay is honest about the boundary: it does not talk to clients, make coverage decisions, or replace a licensed person. It reads the inbox, parses documents, drafts ACORD forms, and, in the AI Quoting Research Preview, runs carrier portal workflows for human review. If your agency's constraint is that kind of work, the math favors software. If your constraint is conversations, hire a person and give them fewer keystrokes.
FAQ
Common questions
Where do the $6/hr and $25/hr figures come from?+
They are the rates agency owners consistently report in Relay's prospect interviews for offshore VAs and in-house CSRs respectively, and they match the ranges used across Relay's published cost math.
Can Relay replace our VA?+
Only the typing part of their job. If your VA mostly does portal entry, document re-keying, and inbox sorting, Relay covers that work. If they handle calls and client follow-ups, keep them and give them better tools.
Part of the Relay comparison library. Updated 2026-07-11.
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