Acuity Scheduling costs special needs tutors $408/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so it pays for itself in 8.2 months 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.
The verdict for special needs tutors: Acuity Scheduling is solid software, but at $34/month it costs $1,224 over 3 years. Nexa does most of what Acuity Scheduling does for $279 once. For solo special needs tutors and small teams, Nexa is the better deal.
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.
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 | 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.
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.
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.
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every special needs tutor: 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 the actual work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed engagement — the terms and the retainer set.
The work you're paid for — with the hours, tasks, and expenses tracked against the engagement instead of reconstructed at month-end.
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
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 the actual work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A special needs tutor's job already holds the services, the hours, the add-ons, and the materials — so the invoice builds itself from the work instead of you re-typing it at 9pm. Toggle an add-on or nudge the hours and watch it recompute.
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Acuity Scheduling plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Scheduling, client records and invoicing 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.
The median Special Needs Tutor earns $42,000/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 special needs tutors. You own it like you own your multisensory reading kits (Orton-Gillingham letter tiles, sand trays) for dyslexia work.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small special needs tutors 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, client records and invoicing 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.
Mornings are prep and the occasional homeschool client. You pull each kid's folder and remind yourself where they are: the third-grader is on closed-syllable decoding, the middle-schooler is fighting math anxiety, the high-schooler needs executive-function scaffolding for a research paper he keeps avoiding. The real day starts at 3 when school lets out. First student is a dyslexia learner, so you're at the table with letter tiles and a sand tray, going slow, celebrating a blended word, watching for the frustration that means it's time to switch modes. Next is multiplication with base-ten blocks for a child who freezes at a worksheet but lights up with manipulatives. You keep notes as you go because his mom and his resource teacher both want to know if he's closing the gap toward his IEP goal. Between students you eat standing up and text a parent that her son nailed today's spelling. The 6 o'clock is the paper-avoider, and half the session is just breaking the assignment into a checklist he can stand to start. After the last family leaves you tally the week: who's billed at what rate, which session a school district covers, and you draft a short progress note for the parent meeting on Friday.
Real special needs tutors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a special needs tutor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every special needs tutor on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
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.
The honest version. Nexa was built to beat the rented stack on the jobs that matter most to a special needs tutor — here's where it wins, where the integration wins it anyway, and the things it genuinely doesn't do, with who to use instead. (No tool is best at everything; a guide that pretends otherwise is just an ad.)
The usual subscriptions vs. Nexa, side by side. Drag the time slider — every year you keep renting, the gap widens. Nexa is $279, one time.
On the work a special needs tutor actually lives in — scheduling & booking, crm & clients and invoicing — Nexa holds its own against the usual rentals (Calendly →, HubSpot →, FreshBooks →). Head-to-head on any single one it's competitive; what tips it is the thing none of them can copy: From a booked after-school session through per-goal IEP progress tracking to the invoice and the parent update, every student rides one record so a no-show in the narrow window and the billing never fall through separate tools. in one record, no re-typing between four apps. One tool, $279 once, against 3 subscriptions · ~$900/yr. Concretely: on scheduling & booking, Your income clusters in the narrow 3-to-7pm after-school window, so holding those hours on one record means a 5 o'clock no-show in that block is visible immediately, not lost the way it would be across two tools.
Where it's not the answer: if you run real payroll for a team (use Gusto →), or run big email campaigns & automations (use ConvertKit →). Those tools are better at their one thing, and we'd rather point you to them than pretend.
Prefer to own a piece outright instead of renting? Free and open-source tools (GnuCash, Invoice Ninja and the like) each handle one job if you'll self-host them — a real option, listed because it's true.
These are affiliate links — if you sign up through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We list them because they're the honest best pick for the job, Nexa included. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Competitor pricing verified 2026-06-12.
We build a special needs tutor'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 a special needs tutor — 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.
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.
For solo special needs tutors 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.
Acuity Scheduling has features like Intake forms and Package and subscription billing that some businesses rely on. For most solo special needs tutors, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $34/month, Nexa pays for itself in 8.2 months. After that: $408 saved every year.
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.
Own your tools. Stop renting your software.
Get Nexa — $279 Once