What djs need from their software, from sources outside Dubsado and outside Nexa:
Dubsado covers most of what a self-employed DJ needs to run bookings. A proposal, a contract with e-signature and an invoice can go out together. Payment plans suit a deposit taken at booking with the balance due before the event. Automated payment reminders and payment tracking show which deposits and final payments have come in. A client portal, a calendar connection, a scheduler integration and a mobile app with Tap to Pay help with weekend and evening work. Premier adds a bookkeeping integration for tax records. Dubsado does not track music licensing. A DJ still has to record, for each gig, whether the venue holds a licence and whether the event is private or public. Dubsado has no gig-level field built for that, so it would go in notes or a custom form. Deposits are taxable when received, even for an event in a later year. Dubsado's payment tracking helps, but the DJ still has to tie each payment to its event and receipt date.
Nexa covers the money side well. It has invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, recurring invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal where clients pay by card through the DJ's own Stripe account and sign estimates. It also has a booking page with intake forms, jobs with costing and profit per job, and bookkeeping with expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, 1099 summaries and sales tax tracking. Those suit a sole proprietor who wants one place for invoices and tax records. Notes can be checklists linked to a client, which could hold a licensing check, but a checklist is not attached to a job. Nexa has no Google Calendar sync, only an .ics export, which matters for a DJ juggling gigs and another job. It has no card reader or point-of-sale. Its automated emails, including reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of the user's devices, which is a real limit for someone out at a late-night event. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years Dubsado at $35 a month costs $1,260 ($420 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $99 in three payments, and $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. A DJ already settled on Dubsado who uses its calendar connection, contracts or Tap to Pay should stay. A DJ who mostly needs invoices, deposits and tax records, and who is comfortable keeping Nexa open for reminders, can save money by switching. Neither tool tracks licensing per gig, so that needs your own checklist either way.
Our read for djs: Stay with Dubsado if you rely on its calendar connection, contracts with e-signature or Tap to Pay; Nexa costs less over three years but lacks Google Calendar sync and a card reader.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Dubsado costs djs $420/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 8.0 months it has cost less than Dubsado, 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.
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 Dubsado 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 djs: Stay with Dubsado if the needs in our read above apply to you. If they don't, Nexa covers the core invoicing, scheduling and books for $279 once against $1,260 for Dubsado over three years.
Client records, scheduling 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. Dubsado solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $35/month — $420 a year, from Dubsado'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 $981 less.
If Dubsado 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 | Dubsado | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | — | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $35/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,260 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Dubsado come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Dubsado lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Dubsado's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Dubsado is the better call if you need all-in-one crm for creatives specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Dubsado says it is for creative, licensed, and event-based businesses. Its homepage names photographers, designers, copywriters, coaches, virtual assistants, accountants, legal professionals, event planners and wedding planners. (dubsado.com)
What people outside Dubsado and outside Nexa say:
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every dj: 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 creative work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 creative 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 dj'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.
Dubsado plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median DJ earns $35,000/year. At $420/year, Dubsado 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 djs. You own it like you own your Controller/mixer (Pioneer DDJ, Numark).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small djs 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.
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
Your people are already online — swapping real numbers, tool picks, and war stories. Here's where to find them.
Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Client records, scheduling 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.
A wedding is mostly done before I play a song. Weeks ahead I meet the couple to plan the timeline: grand entrance, first dance, speeches, cake cutting and the last song, plus the must-play and do-not-play lists and the pronunciation of every name I'll announce. I coordinate with the venue about load-in, power and sound limits, and with the planner and photographer so the timeline works for everyone. On the day I arrive two hours early to set up speakers, subwoofers, lighting and a microphone for the ceremony, test everything and run backups of my music. During the night I'm reading the dance floor constantly, changing direction when it thins out, and running the microphone for toasts and announcements, which is half of the job. Weddings are booked with a contract and a deposit, often a year ahead, and I carry liability insurance because venues ask for it. My equipment is a serious investment, and I keep spares of the things that fail. Weeknights are corporate events, school dances and bar residencies that fill the calendar.
Real djs near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a dj? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every dj on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $1,480–$5,050 on tools that last for years, and never thought twice. So why should the software cost more than your whole kit — every single year? Hold it to the same standard as a good tool: $279, once.
We build a dj'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 dj — 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 djs and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Dubsado may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Dubsado has features like All-in-one CRM for creatives and Contract and proposal templates that some businesses rely on. For most solo djs, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $35/month, Nexa pays for itself in 8.0 months. After that: $420 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