Acuity Scheduling vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Acupuncturists
Acuity Scheduling
$34/mo ($408/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 8.2 months at Acuity Scheduling's current price.
Does Acuity Scheduling Fit Acupuncturists? Our Read
What acupuncturists need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Time-based billing with acupuncture CPT codes. Codes 97810 and 97813 (without and with electrical stimulation) cover the first 15 minutes of one-on-one contact. 97811 and 97814 are add-ons for each further 15 minutes. Only one base code can be reported per visit. The 15-minute units count face-to-face contact, not the time needles stay in. Software has to record start and stop times and pick the matching codes. (med.uth.edu)
Acupuncture-specific visit documentation. Notes should record the diagnosis, the plan (frequency, duration, expected outcome), the points used, the modality, the number of needles, retention time, start and stop times, and the patient's response. Notes must be signed and dated by the licensed provider, and each one must be specific to that visit rather than cloned. Documentation should be finished within 24–48 hours, and late entries must be labeled as addendums. (med.uth.edu)
Tracking Medicare visit caps per patient. Medicare covers acupuncture only for chronic low back pain, meaning pain lasting 12 weeks or longer. Coverage is up to 12 visits in 90 days, plus 8 more if the patient improves, and no more than 20 treatments a year. Treatment must stop if the patient is not improving. Dry needling and acupuncture for other conditions are not covered. The practice needs per-patient visit counters and a way to separate covered from non-covered services. (cms.gov)
Checking who can bill Medicare. The Medicare national coverage determination lets physicians furnish acupuncture. Physician assistants, nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists can furnish it if they hold a master's or doctoral degree in acupuncture or Oriental Medicine from an ACAOM-accredited school and a full, unrestricted state acupuncture license. Auxiliary personnel can furnish it under the same degree and license conditions, and they must be supervised by a physician, PA or NP/CNS. The page does not say whether an independent acupuncturist can bill Medicare directly. A practice has to record each provider's credentials and supervision arrangements before billing Medicare. (cms.gov)
Tracking continuing education for license renewal. California's Acupuncture Board requires 50 hours of Board-approved continuing education every 2-year renewal period. Four of those hours must be in laws and ethics, no more than 5 hours can come from Category 2 courses, and up to 50% can be done through distance education. Licensees must keep CE records for at least 4 years. Requirements differ by state, so a practice needs a record of CE hours and certificates that fits its own state board's rules. (acupuncture.ca.gov)
Acuity Scheduling covers the scheduling side of an acupuncture practice well. It has online booking, custom intake forms, packages and subscriptions, gift certificates, deposits, cancelation policies, and payments through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo. Its HIPAA support is useful for a clinic, and the Business Associate Agreement comes only on its top tier. Text reminders and a waitlist start on the Standard plan. None of the features it lists covers what the trade depends on most. It has no time-based CPT billing for 97810 to 97814, no acupuncture visit notes (points, needles, retention, start and stop times, signed and dated per visit), no per-patient Medicare visit counters, no record of provider credentials or supervision for Medicare, and no continuing-education tracking for license renewal.
Nexa covers the business side: a public booking page with intake forms and reschedule and cancel links, invoices, payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM, time tracking, notes, and bookkeeping. It does not state any acupuncture billing codes, visit documentation, Medicare caps or CE records, so it does not meet those needs either. It also lacks text messaging, Google Calendar sync, a waitlist, and QuickBooks or Xero sync, all of which Acuity offers or integrates with. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, and you run it yourself with no vendor support desk.
Over three years, Acuity at $34 a month is $408 a year, or $1,224. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings it to $458.64. Without sync it stays at $279 on one device. If you only need booking and reminders, stay with Acuity, especially if you rely on text reminders or Google Calendar. If you mainly want to cut cost and can live with emails that send only while the app is open, Nexa is a fair alternative. Either way, billing, charting, Medicare tracking and CE records will need a separate tool.
Our read for acupuncturists: Neither covers acupuncture's core needs (CPT time-based billing, visit charting, Medicare caps, CE tracking), so look for an acupuncture-specific practice management and billing system, and keep Acuity only if you value its scheduling and text reminders.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Acuity Scheduling costs acupuncturists $408/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 8.2 months it has cost less than Acuity Scheduling, and you own it after that. What it is not: hosted-for-you software with a support desk and a roadmap you can lobby. That is the trade, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it.
Can it pay for itself?
Nexa is $279 once, about $23 a month over its first year. Its Drain Guard reads your expenses (from a linked bank, an imported statement, or ones you type in), finds the charges that repeat, and adds them up by the month. Keep or Cut then walks you through them one at a time. Cancel $23 a month of charges you'd forgotten about and Nexa has paid for itself inside the first year, before you count the Acuity Scheduling bill you'd stop paying.
It depends on what you find and what you cancel, so we don't promise a number. In our demo data, Drain Guard finds 5 subscriptions adding up to $110.13 a month. That is sample data, not a customer's.
The verdict for acupuncturists: Neither Acuity Scheduling nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with software built for it. Nexa only makes sense beside it, at $279 once against $1,224 for Acuity Scheduling over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need scheduler, invoicing and connect crm in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Acuity Scheduling if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Acuity Scheduling's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
She unlocks the clinic around 8:30, switches on the diffuser, and warms the room because patients won't relax on a cold table. The first patient is a recurring lower-back case; she checks the tongue, takes the pulse at both wrists, and notices it's wirier than last week. She inserts a dozen needles, clips on the e-stim leads, dims the lights, and leaves him to rest for twenty-five minutes while she preps the next room and lights a moxa stick for an arthritis patient. Between treatments she's refilling the sharps container, restocking cotton balls, and answering a text from someone asking if their insurance covers dry needling. Midday a new patient fills out a long intake; she spends the consult mapping symptoms to a TCM pattern before a single needle goes in. The afternoon is back-to-back, and she's quietly counting how many sessions remain on each patient's prepaid package in her head. After the last patient she sits down to write up SOAP notes she didn't have time for between visits, reconciles two superbills, and wipes down every table. She closes the sharps log, turns off the TDP lamp, and reminds herself to reorder 0.20mm needles before Thursday.
Charting a full tongue-and-pulse diagnosis plus point prescription for every visit without it eating into the next patient's slot
Insurers that reimburse 97810/97811 for some plans and flatly deny acupuncture on others, forcing eligibility checks before each appointment
Selling and drawing down 6- and 10-session packages while patients drift off after feeling better at visit three
Tracking which points and herbal formulas were used last time so a returning patient isn't re-treated blindly
Scheduling, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
None of that is a software problem you can buy your way out of in one click — it is why the tool you pick matters more than what it costs. Acuity Scheduling solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Acuity Scheduling Actually Costs Acupuncturists
Today's list price is $34/month — $408 a year, from Acuity Scheduling's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$408
Year 2$408
Year 3$408
Three years of Acuity Scheduling$1,224
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $945 less.
If Acuity Scheduling raises its price, the three-year cost goes up; if it cuts it, the cost comes down. We don't guess which. Add-ons, extra seats and card-processing fees are not included, on either side.
Feature-by-Feature
Feature
Acuity Scheduling
Nexa
Invoicing
✗
✓
Scheduling
✓
✓
CRM
✗
✓
Time Tracking
✗
✓
Full Accounting
✗
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
✗
✓
Works offline
—
✓
Price
$34/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$1,224
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for Acuity Scheduling come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Acuity Scheduling lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy
It buys the software, not a service contract. You install Nexa and it runs on your machine. There is no seat count, and nothing stops working if you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying.
Acuity Scheduling's monthly fee is not only rent. It pays for their hosting, their support desk, and their engineers shipping changes every week. If those matter to how you work, that is a real thing you would be giving up.
Cross-device sync is the one optional extra — $4.99/month if you want your data mirrored between machines. Skip it and Nexa still works; you just sync manually.
The honest risk of buying once: you are betting on us still being here to improve it. The honest risk of renting: the price is theirs to raise, and the graveyard section below is a record of tools that did exactly that.
What Acuity Scheduling Does Better
Straight from Acuity Scheduling's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Intake forms
Package and subscription billing
Gift certificates
HIPAA compliance (Powerhouse)
Squarespace integration
A smaller bill up front: plans start at $20/month, against $279 paid once for Nexa.
Acuity Scheduling is the better call if you need intake forms specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What Acuity Scheduling Is Built For
Acuity says it is for "anyone in the business of time," from solo practitioners to multi-location teams. It lists beauty, business services (consulting, coaching), wellness, fitness, visual and performing arts, and education. (acuityscheduling.com)
The Starter plan costs $16/month billed annually ($20 monthly) and includes 1 calendar, client self-scheduling, email reminders, custom client forms and automatic time zone conversion. (acuityscheduling.com)
Payments run through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo on all plans. The Standard plan ($27/month annual, up to 6 calendars) adds text reminders, an appointment waitlist, memberships and packages, and gift certificates. (acuityscheduling.com)
The Premium plan ($49/month annual, up to 36 calendars) adds an AI Booking Assistant, a Business Associate Agreement for HIPAA compliance, removal of the Acuity logo, multiple time zones for staff or locations, and custom API and CSS access. Unlimited calendars require the Enterprise team. (acuityscheduling.com)
All plans have a 7-day free trial with no credit card required. There is no free plan beyond the trial. (acuityscheduling.com)
The site lists 15 integrations, including Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Stripe, Square, PayPal, QuickBooks, Zoom, Google Meet, Zapier, Mailchimp and Squarespace. (acuityscheduling.com)
Named features include online booking, class scheduling, packages, subscriptions, gift certificates, coupons, deposits, custom intake forms, cancelation policies, a mobile app and a website builder. The site is offered in 6 languages. (acuityscheduling.com)
What people outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa say:
Software Finder shows a 4.5 rating from 25 reviews, with category scores of 9/10 for ease of use, value for money, customer support and functionality. The most-cited strengths are ease of use, integrations, automated email and text reminders that reviewers credit with reducing no-shows, and customizable emails and calendar views. (softwarefinder.com)
Software Finder reviewers also raise drawbacks. Some small businesses find it expensive, and one reported unresolved booking issues and slow support replies. Booking form appearance is limited, and add-ons are checkboxes only, so customers can't choose quantities. Stripe refunds need a separate login to Stripe. One business said it lacked features as its staff and resources grew, and a healthcare reviewer said it isn't suited to HIPAA-regulated practices. (softwarefinder.com)
Secret's page has no user reviews. Its editorial text calls the product user-friendly, customizable and affordable. It also lists as cons that pricing may be expensive for tight budgets, advanced features are limited, and some third-party integrations may be lacking. (joinsecret.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for an acupuncturist
Software doesn't do your clients — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every acupuncturist: find the work, manage it, bill for it, get paid. Each step has a tool — and the right single tool runs the whole loop, so the handoffs are automatic and you get back to your clients. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
1
Find the work
Get booked
↓
A new client finds you and books a time — no phone tag, no double-booking.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Deliver the service
↓
The session itself — with the client history, notes, packages, and add-ons right there instead of in three different places.
Job / project tracking
Time tracking
Expenses, materials & add-ons
then ↓
3
Bill for it
Send the bill
↓
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Invoicing
Deposits & credits
then ↓
4
Get paid
Collect payment
↓
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
Card / online payments
Automatic reminders
You can stitch four separate subscriptions across these four steps, or run one tool that does the whole flow so a booking becomes a job becomes an invoice becomes a payment without re-typing. Either way the goal is the same: less time on the business of the business, more on your clients. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Calculate Your Full Stack
Acuity Scheduling plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Acuity Scheduling
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Export. Download your client list and appointment history.
2
Set up Nexa Scheduler — 15-minute setup. Import clients and recreate your appointment types.
3
Update your links — Replace your Acuity booking link everywhere — website, email, social.
4
Cancel Acuity — Cancel Squarespace subscription. Download a final backup of your data.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Acupuncturists
The median Acupuncturist earns $65,000/year. At $408/year, Acuity Scheduling is a recurring slice of that — paid again every year, whether the year was good or not. Owning the same jobs outright is $279 once, and the slice stops.
Nexa is $279 once. Invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, accounting — all connected, built for acupuncturists. You own it like you own your Sterile single-use filiform needles in assorted gauges (0.16-0.30mm).
Is Nexa actually right for an acupuncturist?
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
Right for you if
You run solo or a small team — like the 18,000 acupuncturists in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for 0 and a pile of apps that don't talk to each other.
You want invoicing, scheduling, and client tracking in one place — not scattered across five apps.
You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your Sterile single-use filiform needles in assorted gauges (0.16-0.30mm).
Look elsewhere if
You have a large team that needs enterprise seats, granular roles, and dedicated admin staff — Nexa is built for solo and small operators (1–5), and a bigger platform will serve you better.
You need full payroll for a large team or deep, SKU-level inventory — that's not what Nexa is for.
You're genuinely happy paying monthly and don't mind stitching tools together. No tool fixes a workflow you already like.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small acupuncturists business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling into a large team with dedicated admin staff, a bigger platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Scheduling, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
What acupuncturists actually deal with
Charting a full tongue-and-pulse diagnosis plus point prescription for every visit without it eating into the next patient's slot
Insurers that reimburse 97810/97811 for some plans and flatly deny acupuncture on others, forcing eligibility checks before each appointment
Selling and drawing down 6- and 10-session packages while patients drift off after feeling better at visit three
Tracking which points and herbal formulas were used last time so a returning patient isn't re-treated blindly
A day in the life of a acupuncturist
She unlocks the clinic around 8:30, switches on the diffuser, and warms the room because patients won't relax on a cold table. The first patient is a recurring lower-back case; she checks the tongue, takes the pulse at both wrists, and notices it's wirier than last week. She inserts a dozen needles, clips on the e-stim leads, dims the lights, and leaves him to rest for twenty-five minutes while she preps the next room and lights a moxa stick for an arthritis patient. Between treatments she's refilling the sharps container, restocking cotton balls, and answering a text from someone asking if their insurance covers dry needling. Midday a new patient fills out a long intake; she spends the consult mapping symptoms to a TCM pattern before a single needle goes in. The afternoon is back-to-back, and she's quietly counting how many sessions remain on each patient's prepaid package in her head. After the last patient she sits down to write up SOAP notes she didn't have time for between visits, reconciles two superbills, and wipes down every table. She closes the sharps log, turns off the TDP lamp, and reminds herself to reorder 0.20mm needles before Thursday.
The tools a working acupuncturist actually owns
Sterile single-use filiform needles in assorted gauges (0.16-0.30mm)
Moxa sticks and loose moxa for moxibustion
Glass and silicone cupping sets with a hand pump
Sharps container and an autoclave or sterilization log
Adjustable treatment table with a face cradle and bolsters
Infrared TDP heat lamp and an electro-stim unit
Why acupuncturists leave the big platforms
0: vagaro
Local acupuncturists on Nexa
Real acupuncturists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you an acupuncturist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every acupuncturist on Nexa →
The kit a working acupuncturist owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Sterile single-use filiform needles in assorted gauges (0.16-0.30mm)
Moxa sticks and loose moxa for moxibustion
Glass and silicone cupping sets with a hand pump
Sharps container and an autoclave or sterilization log
Adjustable treatment table with a face cradle and bolsters
Infrared TDP heat lamp and an electro-stim unit
You paid for these once because good tools last. That's the bar your software should clear too — priced like a tool you own, $279 once, not a subscription that costs more than your kit every year.
How To Read This Page
We make Nexa. It is one of the two options compared here, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make Acuity Scheduling's case the way we would want ours made — their strengths above are their own published feature list, not our summary of it.
The prices are Acuity Scheduling's published list prices, checked on the date shown in the sources below. Plans change; check theirs before you decide.
No customer quotes appear on this page because we do not have any from acupuncturists we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Acuity Scheduling on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Acuity Scheduling's own pricing page is the source for every figure above, read on the date shown in the sources section below.
We are not neutral about subscriptions, and that is the argument, not a hidden assumption: software you pay for once is cheaper over three years than software you rent, unless you need something only the rented one does.
How we put this guide together
We build an acupuncturist's guide the same way every time, and we'd rather you trust it than take it on faith. Nexa is our product, so the test we hold ourselves to is simple: a tool only "wins" a job here when it genuinely does that job better for an acupuncturist — and where something free, open-source, or buy-once does it better, we say so and link you to it. Where Nexa falls short (payroll is the honest example), we name the alternative outright.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingVagaro $600/yr, Acuity Scheduling $408/yr, QuickBooks $456/yr, Square — taken from each company's published plans, last verified September 2026. Pricing moves; each name above links straight to that vendor’s own pricing page so you can confirm it before you decide.
Income contextThe $65,000 median we cite for the typical acupuncturist is occupational median annual pay from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics), compiled April 2026. We use it only to show software spend as a share of real income — your own numbers will differ.
Three-year mathMulti-year totals are today's list price multiplied by the number of years. No price rise is projected, so the figure can be checked against the vendor's own pricing page; if they raise it, the real cost is higher.
Found something out of date? Prices change and we don't catch every move the day it happens. This guide is published and maintained by the Nexa team; if a figure here is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it — getting it right matters more to us than the sale.
FAQ
Is Nexa really a Acuity Scheduling replacement?
For solo acupuncturists and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Acuity Scheduling may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does Acuity Scheduling do that Nexa doesn't?
Acuity Scheduling has features like Intake forms and Package and subscription billing that some businesses rely on. For most solo acupuncturists, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $34/month, Nexa pays for itself in 8.2 months. After that: $408 saved every year.
Can I pay in installments?
Yes. Nexa is $279 as a one-time payment, or 3 payments of $99 ($297 total). Either way it's a one-time purchase — no subscription, no recurring fees ever.