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E-commerce VA · Shopify

Shopify Virtual Assistant: a dedicated person in your store admin from £5 per hour

A Shopify store runs on a hundred small daily jobs: products to update, orders to move, stock to watch, messages to answer, returns to process. A Shopify virtual assistant is one dedicated person who does them every day inside your admin, in your voice and to your rules, so the store runs whether you are at your desk or not. It is the Shopify version of our e-commerce virtual assistant service: UK-managed, based in our Cairo office, working your hours, from £5 per hour on the entry rate, on a rolling monthly agreement, with the seasons handled by scaling hours rather than hiring.

Product pagesOrders and fulfilmentInventoryCustomer messages
From £5/hour UK-managed Dedicated VA, not shared No long-term contract
What They Handle

What a Shopify virtual assistant does in your store

Product pages and collections

Creates and updates products with titles, descriptions, images, variants and attributes from your product information and brand guidelines, and keeps collections tidy.

Order processing and fulfilment

Processes orders, tracks fulfilment, handles cancellations and address changes, updates shipping statuses and coordinates with your couriers and 3PL.

Inventory monitoring

Watches stock levels across SKUs and channels, flags reorders before bestsellers run out, and flags the slow movers.

Customer messages and reviews

Answers store and social messages and responds to reviews in your voice, protecting the reputation the store trades on.

Returns and exchanges

Processes returns, manages exchanges, handles refunds within your policy and spots the patterns that reduce return rates.

Apps, discounts and housekeeping

Sets up the discount codes, keeps the apps and integrations you already use running, and reports what changed each day.

Different stack? These are examples. Your VA is trained on your store, your apps and your policies during onboarding, and works inside your accounts, not ours.

Dedicated vs freelancer

A dedicated Shopify VA vs a freelancer or an agency retainer

A freelancer profile gives you a person for a project and leaves you to be the manager; when they move on, the store's knowledge goes with them. An agency retainer gives you a ticket queue and a rotating team who learn your catalogue every time.

A dedicated VA is one named person who learns your products, your customers and your policies once and stays. They know which variants sell out, which courier loses parcels and which customers deserve a goodwill gesture. A UK team supervises quality; if the fit is wrong we replace the person and carry the handover, with no re-recruitment and no restart from zero.

Who It's For

Who a Shopify virtual assistant is built for

Founders running the store from their own admin

Every product update and every message is you. One VA takes the daily operations so you take the product and the marketing.

Growing brands adding channels and SKUs

More products, more variants, more marketplaces: the housekeeping grows faster than the revenue. A VA keeps the catalogue and the stock in order.

Stores with seasonal peaks

Scale hours up for Black Friday and Christmas and back down afterwards, with no penalty and no hiring.

Agencies and operators managing several stores

One dedicated VA per store, each trained on that store, each supervised by us.

Cost Comparison

What a Shopify virtual assistant costs in the UK

The entry rate is £5 per hour for the first 6 months on the Entry tier, 3 months on Mid, 1 month on Expert. It covers your dedicated VA's time, our office facilities in Cairo, and the supervision and management that keep quality up. After the promotion, the e-commerce rate card applies: £6.50 per hour full time on the Entry tier (160 hours a month, £1,040) or £6.80 per hour part time (80 hours a month, £544), with Mid at £7.48 and Expert at £8.13 per hour full time. Your Shopify plan and apps are your subscriptions and stay in your name.

Set that against a UK in-house e-commerce hire once salary, employer National Insurance, pension, holiday and a desk are counted; the comparison card on this page shows the calculator's model, and the full calculator gives your figures for your hours.

UK In-House · Entry level
UK in-house e-commerce hire (calculator model)
£2,384 a month gross salary, full time (the calculator's ecommerce benchmark, ONS ASHE 2025)
Monthly salary£2,384
Benefits (5% of salary)£119
Equipment and office£442
Management time (2 hrs a week)£156
~£3,100/mo
~£37,205 / year
Ant Assist VA · Entry
Dedicated Shopify Virtual Assistant
160 hrs a month · £5/hour for the first 6 months (£800/mo), then £6.50/hour on the ecommerce rate card
VA hours (160h × £6.50/hour standard rate)£1,040
Management and supervisionIncluded
Recruitment and onboardingIncluded
Office infrastructureIncluded
£1,040/mo
£12,480 / year at the standard rate
You save ~£24,725 / year at the standard rate (est.)

What the £5/hour entry rate includes

  • Dedicated VA, never shared
  • UK-hour aligned support
  • Management and supervision included
  • Recruitment and onboarding included
  • Office infrastructure included
  • VA replacement available
  • No NI, pension, or holiday costs
  • No long-term contract, rolling monthly

These are typical estimates. Get your exact numbers in the full calculator. Or read how much a virtual assistant costs in the UK.

Calculate your exact savings →
Process

How to hire a Shopify VA: from first call to a store that runs itself

1
First call
A 15-minute call about your store, your channels, your daily tasks, your apps and the hours you need.
2
Matching
We select a VA from our in-house team with Shopify experience and introduce them to you.
3
Onboarding
Together we document your product information and brand guidelines, your policies on returns and refunds, your reorder points and your escalation rules; store access is granted at the level each task needs, through a password manager.
4
Live
Most clients have their VA active within 5 to 7 working days of signing up. Your VA works your hours from our managed office.
5
Ongoing management
A UK team supervises quality, reviews the work with your VA, and scales hours with your seasons.
Why Managed

Why a managed Shopify VA beats a marketplace or an agency

Managed, not just placed.
Your VA is recruited, trained and supervised from our own in-house office. Not a freelancer profile, not a ticket queue.
Replaceable without restart cost.
If the fit is wrong, we replace the VA and carry the handover. No re-recruitment, no starting from zero.
No NI, pension, or holiday overhead.
One hourly rate; the employment costs sit with us.
Language and cultural alignment with UK customers.
Trained on your tone and your customers before they answer a message.
Your data stays yours.
Every VA signs an NDA and a data-processing agreement, works inside your admin through password managers at the access level the job needs, and you can revoke access at any time.
Rolling monthly.
Scale hours up or down, pause, or cancel with 30 days' notice.
Rated 5.0 on Google.Trusted by our clients
FAQ

Common questions about hiring a Shopify virtual assistant

Our VAs are experienced with Shopify, Amazon Seller Central, eBay, Etsy, WooCommerce, and Wix. If you sell on a platform not listed, let us know, as most e-commerce back-ends follow similar patterns and our VAs adapt quickly.

Yes. Our VAs can create and optimise product listings: titles, bullet points, descriptions, and backend keywords for Amazon, as well as full product pages for Shopify. They work from your product information and brand guidelines. For SEO-optimised listings, we can pair them with keyword research tools.

You can scale VA hours up during peak periods (Black Friday, Christmas, summer sales) and back down afterwards. Because we operate on rolling monthly agreements, there is no penalty for adjusting. Most clients plan their seasonal schedules a few weeks ahead so we can ensure the right cover.

All Ant Assist VAs sign NDAs and data processing agreements as part of their contracts. Access to your systems is managed via password managers (we recommend 1Password or Bitwarden) so credentials are never shared in plain text. You retain control and can revoke access instantly.

No long-term contract is required. We operate on a rolling monthly basis. You can scale hours up or down, pause, or cancel with 30 days' notice.

Ant Assist can replace the VA. We take responsibility for quality and will match you with a more suitable candidate rather than leaving you stuck with an underperforming arrangement.

Didn't find your answer? Browse more common questions in the Help Center.

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Run the store, not the admin.

One dedicated Shopify VA, from £5 per hour. Book a free 15-minute call.

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