What animators need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the billing side of an animator's work well. It has built-in time tracking, professional invoice templates, a client portal, and proposals and retainers on Plus. Premium adds project profitability, which helps with per-project hours and costs behind a kill fee or a separate charge for client-requested changes. Plus also adds accountant access and financial reports, useful when you need to ask a tax adviser how production costs are treated now that Section 181 has not been extended. It also comes with free phone and email support during the trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. It does not track rights or licenses per job, and it has no feature for flagging a revision as a client change versus your own fix. Union rate schedules would have to be entered by hand. The client count also includes archived clients, so a freelancer with a long list of repeat clients may need Plus or higher or have to delete old records.
Nexa covers much of the same ground: invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, recurring invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal through your own Stripe account. It tracks jobs with costing and profit per job, has time tracking, and offers expenses, receipt scanning, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries. Its CRM and missions with sub-steps can hold client notes and project stages. It has no field for rights or licensing, no way to separate changes from fixes, and no job templates. It does not sync or import with QuickBooks or Xero, so an accountant working in those tools gets no direct feed. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails, such as reminders, sequences and workflows, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years, FreshBooks at $43 a month comes to $516 a year, or $1,548. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 over the same three years if you add optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month; without sync it runs on one device. If you already have FreshBooks and use its accountant access, support, or client portal, stay. Move to Nexa only if the cost matters more to you and you are comfortable running your own software. Either way, keep rights and license records for each job in a separate place, because neither tool tracks them.
Our read for animators: Stay with FreshBooks if you rely on its hosted support, accountant access and accounting-software ecosystem; Nexa is the cheaper option for a solo animator who can run it on their own, but neither tool tracks rights per job.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs animators $516/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 6.5 months it has cost less than FreshBooks, 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 FreshBooks 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 animators: Stay with FreshBooks 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 $1,548 for FreshBooks over three years.
Invoicing, client records, time tracking and job tracking are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. 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. FreshBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $43/month — $516 a year, from FreshBooks'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 $1,269 less.
If FreshBooks 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 | FreshBooks | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $43/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,548 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for FreshBooks come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as FreshBooks lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from FreshBooks's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
FreshBooks is the better call if you need very user-friendly for non-accountants specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
FreshBooks says it is "perfect for everyone from self-employed professionals to growing business owners." It lists four audiences: freelancers, solopreneurs, businesses with employees, and businesses with contractors. (freshbooks.com)
What people outside FreshBooks 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 animator: 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 animator'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.
FreshBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median animator earns $45,000/year. At $516/year, FreshBooks 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 animators. You own it like you own your Animation software (After Effects, Toon Boom, Blender).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small animators 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.
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 →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Invoicing, client records, time tracking and job tracking are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. The sections below price both routes honestly.
A thirty-second animated explainer takes me three to five weeks. It starts with the script, which the client usually writes and I usually cut, because every second on screen costs animation time. Then a storyboard, a sequence of rough frames that shows every scene, and a style frame or two so the client sees exactly how it will look before I animate anything. Changes are cheap at the storyboard stage and expensive later, so I push for sign-off there. Next is the voiceover, recorded first so I can time the animation to it. Then the long part: building characters and assets, animating each scene, adding motion to text and transitions, and adding sound effects and music. Rendering can take hours for complex scenes. The client gets two rounds of revisions in my contract, and I'm specific about what counts as a revision versus a new request. Deliverables come in several formats for web, social and presentations. I take a deposit before the script is locked, a payment at storyboard approval and the balance on delivery.
Real animators near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an animator? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every animator 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.
We build an animator'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 animator — 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 animators and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. FreshBooks may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
FreshBooks has features like Very user-friendly for non-accountants and Built-in time tracking that some businesses rely on. For most solo animators, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $43/month, Nexa pays for itself in 6.5 months. After that: $516 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