A short calculator. Put in what your VA costs and how much of their time goes on email, and see how that line compares to SAM Essential at £299/month.
The honest version of the comparison: SAM doesn't replace a virtual assistant. It replaces the email portion of one. What your VA does that isn't email — phone calls, judgement calls, the things people are good at — stays with them.
So you can decide whether you'd keep both or drop one.
SAM handles, 24/7: filtering noise, daily inbox summaries, drafted replies in your voice, approved auto-replies for the patterns you trust, booking against your live calendar, chasing unanswered quotes. It doesn't sleep, doesn't take holiday, doesn't need to be re-briefed.
A virtual assistant still earns their keep on: anything that isn't email, anything that requires picking up the phone, anything that needs judgement on a sensitive or escalating thread, and the parts of the business where a relationship with a real person matters. SAM isn't trying to replace any of that.
The honest position is: if your VA spends most of their week on email, SAM is cheaper and more available. If your VA is doing a dozen things and email is one of them, SAM frees up that block of their time for higher-judgement work.
A short brief is enough to start. We read every enquiry ourselves and reply within two working days.