allen. vs Hiring a VA
Handing LinkedIn to a VA or an agency is the most expensive alternative to Allen, and the one with the biggest gap between what you are promised and what shows up in your comment section.
The short answer.
You need a human doing many things across your business, and LinkedIn is one small part of a broader role.
You want the specificity of your own thinking, at a tenth of the cost, without handing your credentials to anyone.
Built for
allen.
Intelligent commenting + pipeline
Hiring a VA
Outsourcing to a person
Price
allen.
$97/mo, one plan
Hiring a VA
$1-5k/mo
LinkedIn access
allen.
Official LinkedIn API
Hiring a VA
Your login, shared
Background
What Hiring a VA actually does.
A VA can genuinely do the work: scroll your niche, find relevant posts, and write comments on your behalf. Agencies package the same thing with reporting on top.
Cost runs from around $1,000 a month for an offshore assistant to $5,000 or more for a managed agency retainer.
The structural problem is that the comment goes out under your name and your face, written by someone who is not in your industry, does not know your customers, and has never had the conversations you have had.
Feature by feature.
The seven things that decide whether daily LinkedIn engagement actually happens.
| Capability | allen. | Hiring a VA |
|---|---|---|
| Finds relevant posts for you daily | ||
| Drafts comments in your trained voice | ||
| Voice improves from your edits and ratings | ||
| Connects through the official LinkedIn API | ||
| Built-in prospect and pipeline tracking | ||
| Works without a browser extension | ||
| You approve every comment before it posts | ||
| Monthly cost | $97 | $1-5k/mo |
A dot means partial or add-on support. Pricing, categories, and features reflect each product's public positioning at the time of writing and may change. We do our best to describe competitors fairly, and we encourage you to evaluate every tool yourself before you buy.
Head to head
Where the two really differ.
Voice
Hiring a VA
Someone else's writing under your name. It is usually obvious, especially to people in your field.
allen.
Trained on your real writing, and you approve every comment before it posts.
Cost
Hiring a VA
$1,000 to $5,000 a month, plus management time, plus turnover.
allen.
$97 a month, flat.
Access
Hiring a VA
You hand over your LinkedIn credentials or a shared session.
allen.
You authorize Allen through LinkedIn's own login. No password sharing.
Consistency
Hiring a VA
Quality varies by day, and starts over when they leave.
allen.
The same standard every morning, improving as it learns from your edits.
Where Hiring a VA genuinely wins
We would rather you buy the right tool than the wrong one.
- A human can handle judgment calls and edge cases
- One hire can cover many tasks beyond LinkedIn
- No software to learn
Why people move to Allen
The reasons we hear most from people switching.
- Comments obviously were not written by them
- Cost could not be justified against results
- Uncomfortable sharing LinkedIn credentials
- Started over every time the assistant changed
Allen vs Hiring a VA: common questions.
Stop scrolling.
Start growing..
Allen does the heavy lifting by finding posts, drafting comments, and tracking prospects easily. You just show up, review, and post.