An employer of record and a managed team both end with someone overseas doing work for your business. That is where the similarity stops. An EOR is a payroll and compliance rail: it makes it legal to pay a person in another country. A managed team is an operating service: it makes the work get done. One is infrastructure. The other is an outcome. Most of the confusion, and most of the disappointment, comes from buying the first while expecting the second. At Neon Link, a dedicated, managed Linker starts at $1,995 a month, month to month, with recruiting, day-to-day management and replacement included.
What an employer of record actually does
An EOR becomes the legal employer of a worker in a country where you have no entity. It runs local payroll, withholds and files the right taxes, issues a compliant contract, provides statutory benefits, and absorbs the risk of getting any of that wrong.
That is a real product solving a real problem. Standing up your own entity in the Philippines, or Colombia, or Poland is slow and expensive. An EOR gets you a legally employed person there quickly.
Look at that list again, though. It is all paperwork. Payroll, tax, contract, compliance. Every item is about the employment relationship. Not one is about the work.
What it does not do
An EOR does not find the person. You source them. In most cases you already have to know who you are hiring before an EOR is any use to you at all. When an EOR does offer recruiting, it is usually an extra fee on top.
It does not interview, test, or reference-check them. It does not train them on your process. It does not manage them day to day, set their priorities, review their output, coach them when quality slips, or notice that quality slipped in the first place.
When the arrangement breaks, an EOR offboards. It does not replace. You are back to sourcing, alone, while the work sits.
So the honest description is this: you do the hiring, you do the managing, you own the outcome, and you pay a fee to make the payroll legal.
The four ways to buy back-office capacity
| How you buy it | Who finds the person | Who manages the work | When it breaks | What you actually bought |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace freelancer | You | You | You start over | Hours |
| Employer of record | You | You | You start over, legally | A payroll rail |
| Placement or staffing agency | They do | You | A replacement, eventually | An introduction |
| Managed team | They do | They do | They replace, you keep working | The work getting done |
Three of those four rows leave you as the manager. Only one of them takes the work off your desk.
The month three problem
The first two months of an EOR arrangement usually feel fine. You picked the person yourself, so you like them. Novelty carries the effort.
Month three is where it shows. The owner who signed an EOR contract to avoid employment overhead discovers they have acquired a direct report in a different time zone. Priorities have to be set. Output has to be checked. Somebody has to notice that the same error is happening every week and then do something about it. That somebody is you, and it was not on the invoice.
An EOR fee looks smaller than a managed rate because it is buying less. That is not a trick. It is a different product. The gap between the two numbers is the management you quietly agreed to do yourself.
When an EOR is the right call
Sometimes it is, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling.
Use an EOR when you already know exactly who you want to employ, that person is in a country where you have no entity, and you want to manage them yourself. A senior hire you headhunted. A founding engineer in another market. Someone you have already worked with who is moving abroad.
In those cases you are not looking for anyone to run the work. You are looking for a legal way to pay a person you have already chosen. That is exactly what an EOR is built for.
Use a managed team when you have work rather than a person. When what you want back is your calendar, not another direct report. When the honest answer to "who is managing this day to day" is "I do not have time to."
Four questions that settle it
Ask any provider these and the category answers itself.
- Who sources and screens the candidates, and what happens if the first one is wrong?
- Who sets priorities and checks output every week?
- If the person leaves in month four, what happens, and how long does the work sit?
- Six months from now, will this process run better than it does today, and who is accountable for making that true?
An EOR answers "you" to the first three and has no answer to the fourth. That is not a failing. That is the product.
Where we sit
Neon Link is the fourth row. We source, screen and place the person, and you interview the finalist before anyone starts. A Neon Link manager runs the account day to day. If the fit is wrong in the first 60 days we swap them at no cost, and if they leave later we recruit the replacement at no charge. And we document your process as we learn it, so the knowledge stays yours to keep.
Month one, your Linker learns how you work. By month six, they have made it better. That model has a name, knowledge process outsourcing, but the label matters far less than the four questions above.
The rate is published on the site: full time from $1,995 a month, month to month, no setup fee. One number, with the management inside it instead of on your calendar. If you want the wider market comparison, How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost lays out every hiring model side by side.
FAQ
What is an employer of record? A company that becomes the legal employer of a worker in a country where you have no entity. It runs local payroll, taxes, the contract and statutory benefits. It does not find, train or manage the person.
Is an employer of record the same as outsourcing? No. With an EOR you still find the person, set the priorities and check the work. With a managed team you hand over the work itself, and the provider manages the person doing it.
Does an EOR find and screen candidates? Usually not. Most expect you to arrive with the person already chosen, and recruiting, when it is offered, is an extra fee. A managed team sources and screens, and you interview the finalist before anyone starts.
What does a managed team cost compared to an EOR? An EOR fee is smaller because it buys payroll and compliance only. At Neon Link one dedicated, full-time Linker is $1,995 a month for processing work, $2,295 for admin and client success, and $2,995 for specialized or regulated work, month to month. Recruiting, management and replacement are inside the rate. Every number is on the pricing page.
What happens if the person leaves? Under an EOR the arrangement ends and you start sourcing again. At Neon Link, if the fit is wrong in the first 60 days we swap them at no cost, and if they leave later we recruit the replacement at no charge.
What kind of work fits a managed team? Ongoing back-office work with a repeatable process: admin, data entry, scheduling, billing support, bookkeeping support, client success. Our open Virtual Assistant / Back Office Specialist posting shows the work and the bar we hire to, and the industry pages break it out by line of business.
If you are weighing an EOR against a managed team right now, book a call and bring the actual work. Fifteen minutes and you will know which one you are buying.