Harvest vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Graphic Designers
Harvest
$11/mo ($132/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 25.4 months at Harvest's current price.
Does Harvest Fit Graphic Designers? Our Read
What graphic designers need from their software, from sources outside Harvest and outside Nexa:
Track licensed usage rights per project, not only hours and fees. Under US copyright law the designer owns commissioned work unless they are an employee, and paying for the work does not transfer ownership. A license covers specific rights, purposes and time periods. A use outside that scope, such as a magazine cover license reused for a promotional poster, needs a new license and payment. Designers need records of what each client was licensed to do and for how long. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Generate written agreements and quotes that state a separate, higher price for a full copyright transfer or buyout. A copyright transfer must be in writing and signed by the owner, and courts strictly enforce this. Nonexclusive licenses do not legally require writing, but the Guild strongly recommends putting the licensed rights and payment terms in writing. Terms should be discussed before work starts. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Plan for self-employment tax and quarterly estimated payments. About 20% of graphic designers are self-employed (BLS). No employer withholds tax for them, so they generally pay Social Security, Medicare and income taxes through quarterly estimated payments (Form 1040-ES). They report self-employment tax on Schedule SE, using income or loss from Schedule C. (irs.gov)
Handle project-based work with varied schedules. BLS reports that designers' schedules vary with workloads and deadlines, and that self-employed designers may meet clients in the evenings or on weekends. They also spend time finding new projects and competing for contracts. Designers need to track the scope of each project, from the initial client meeting where scope is determined through concept presentation. (bls.gov)
Harvest covers the hours-and-fees side of freelance design well. It has one-click timers, timesheets, hours-based or fee-based budgets with over-budget alerts, and rates that can be set per project or task type. It also generates invoices from tracked time, takes online client payments, sends overdue reminders and handles recurring retainers. Its QuickBooks integration can feed a tax-time bookkeeping workflow. What it does not offer is anything built around licensing. Its feature list has no record of which rights a client was licensed for or for how long. It has no way to quote a separate, higher price for a full copyright buyout. It also has no help with quarterly estimated tax payments for self-employed designers.
Nexa covers more of the business around the work. Quotes, estimates and proposals convert to invoices, and clients can sign estimates in a pay portal. Putting licensed rights and a buyout price in the written terms is something you would do by hand in that text, not through a dedicated feature. A CRM pipeline with a public lead form suits the hunt for new projects, and Missions with sub-steps can hold the scope of each job. Bookkeeping includes expenses, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries. But its feature list has no usage-rights tracking and no estimated-tax planning. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no integration library. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk.
Over three years Harvest costs $396 ($11 a month, $132 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. If you add optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month to use it across devices, the total is $458.64. A designer who is happy with Harvest's timers, budgets and QuickBooks link has no strong reason to move, since Nexa adds no licensing tracking either. A designer who wants one-time pricing and a built-in CRM and bookkeeping could use Nexa. Either way, tracking usage rights, buyout pricing and quarterly tax estimates will still need a separate licensing and contract tool or a tax-planning tool.
Our read for graphic designers: Neither tool tracks licensed usage rights per project or plans quarterly estimated taxes, so designers need a licensing-and-contract tracker alongside whichever they already use.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Harvest costs graphic designers $132/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 25.4 months it has cost less than Harvest, 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 Harvest 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 graphic designers: Neither Harvest 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 $396 for Harvest over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need time tracker, 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 Harvest if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Harvest's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
A design project starts with a brief that usually says what the client wants, not what the design needs to do. So the first job is questions: who's it for, where will it live, what does it replace, and what does success look like. For a logo I'm researching the market and competitors, sketching dozens of rough ideas, and developing three directions to present, with the reasoning behind each. The client picks one and we refine it through a set number of rounds, then I build out the system: colours, type, variations for small and large use, and a short guide so it gets used consistently. Packaging, social templates and print pieces each have their own specs, bleed, colour profiles and file formats, and a printer who'll reject files that aren't set up right. Revisions are where projects lose money, so my contract spells out rounds and what counts as a new request. I take a deposit up front, the balance before final files, and I track hours even on flat-fee jobs to see what I should have charged.
Tracking billable hours across 5+ client projects
Scope creep — 'one more revision' eating into fixed-price projects
Separating creative time (billable) from admin time (not billable)
FreshBooks + Toggl combined costing $27+/month for basic time tracking and invoicing
Time tracking, invoicing, client records 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. Harvest solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Harvest Actually Costs Graphic Designers
Today's list price is $11/month — $132 a year, from Harvest's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$132
Year 2$132
Year 3$132
Three years of Harvest$396
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $117 less.
If Harvest 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
Harvest
Nexa
Invoicing
✓
✓
Scheduling
✗
✓
CRM
✗
✓
Time Tracking
✓
✓
Full Accounting
✗
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
✗
✓
Works offline
✗
✓
Price
$11/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$396
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for Harvest come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Harvest 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.
Harvest'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 Harvest Does Better
Straight from Harvest's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Clean, simple interface
Automatic invoice generation from time
Budget monitoring and alerts
Good integrations (Asana, Trello, QuickBooks)
70,000+ companies use it
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use Harvest before paying anything.
Harvest is the better call if you need clean, simple interface specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What Harvest Is Built For
Professional services teams that bill clients by the hour, including advertising and marketing, architecture, construction, law, accounting and finance, consulting and IT, design, and software development. The site also says it serves teams of all sizes, types and industries. (getharvest.com)
Time tracking uses one-click timers, daily and weekly timesheets, and calendar-based logging. It runs on desktop (macOS, Windows), mobile (iOS, Android) and browser. (getharvest.com)
Invoices are generated from tracked time and expenses. The page also lists online client payments, automatic overdue reminders and recurring retainers. (getharvest.com)
Budgets can be hours-based or fee-based, with over-budget alerts and estimated-vs-actual rollups. Billing rates can be set per person, project or task type. (getharvest.com)
The homepage claims 40+ integrations, with Asana, Slack and Stripe named as examples. The pricing page says the Free plan has 50+ core integrations. (getharvest.com)
The Free plan costs $0 and covers 1 seat, 2 projects and up to 4 custom reports, with time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking. (getharvest.com)
Teams costs $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly) and adds team reporting, billable and cost rates, CSV import, QuickBooks Online, Xero and Stripe integrations, and scheduled phone support. Enterprise costs $14 per seat per month billed annually ($17.50 monthly) and adds profitability reporting, timesheet approval, an activity log, custom CSV exports and SAML SSO. (getharvest.com)
What people outside Harvest and outside Nexa say:
The Business Dive scores Harvest 3.9/5 and calls it "a well-rounded time tracking and invoicing solution". It praises the user-friendly interface, "smooth" invoicing that pulls in time and expenses automatically, simple timers and timesheets, and "quite massive" integrations. (thebusinessdive.com)
The Business Dive lists these drawbacks: phone support only on paid plans, no GPS tracking, and automatic time capture only through integrated apps. It also notes that Profitability and Activity Log reports need the Premium plan. (thebusinessdive.com)
ITQlick scores Harvest 91/100 and ranks it #3 of 64 time tracking products. It praises real-time budget tracking and API integrations. It criticises a dated UX, a steep learning curve for advanced features, and cost that may be too high for very small businesses. ITQlick says vendors pay it when it connects them with buyers. (itqlick.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a graphic designer
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every graphic designer: 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.
1
Find the work
Land the project
↓
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the work
↓
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 the creative work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Watch a job become an invoice
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A graphic designer'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.
Export your data — Go to Settings → Manage → Export. Download time entries, invoices, and expenses.
2
Set up Nexa — 10-minute setup. Import your client list by CSV, then set up your projects.
3
Start tracking in Nexa — Begin using Nexa time tracker. Import historical time data if needed.
4
Cancel Harvest — Cancel subscription. Download a final export for your records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Graphic Designers
The median graphic designer earns $52,000/year. At $132/year, Harvest 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 graphic designers. You own it like you own your Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
Is Nexa actually right for a graphic designer?
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 150,000 graphic designers in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for freshbooks 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 Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
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 graphic designers 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.
Graphic Designers by the numbers — by place
What graphic designers charge, city by city
$125 /hravg local price
+47%vs national
moderatesaturation
~3,237operators
8%growth
$134 /hravg local price
+58%vs national
moderatesaturation
~2,317operators
6%growth
$124 /hravg local price
+46%vs national
moderatesaturation
~2,063operators
5%growth
$104 /hravg local price
+22%vs national
moderatesaturation
~1,744operators
8%growth
$107 /hravg local price
+26%vs national
moderatesaturation
~1,340operators
8%growth
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records 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.
What graphic designers actually deal with
Tracking billable hours across 5+ client projects
Scope creep — 'one more revision' eating into fixed-price projects
Separating creative time (billable) from admin time (not billable)
FreshBooks + Toggl combined costing $27+/month for basic time tracking and invoicing
A day in the life of a graphic designer
A design project starts with a brief that usually says what the client wants, not what the design needs to do. So the first job is questions: who's it for, where will it live, what does it replace, and what does success look like. For a logo I'm researching the market and competitors, sketching dozens of rough ideas, and developing three directions to present, with the reasoning behind each. The client picks one and we refine it through a set number of rounds, then I build out the system: colours, type, variations for small and large use, and a short guide so it gets used consistently. Packaging, social templates and print pieces each have their own specs, bleed, colour profiles and file formats, and a printer who'll reject files that aren't set up right. Revisions are where projects lose money, so my contract spells out rounds and what counts as a new request. I take a deposit up front, the balance before final files, and I track hours even on flat-fee jobs to see what I should have charged.
The tools a working graphic designer actually owns
Adobe Creative Cloud subscription
High-resolution monitor (color-calibrated)
Drawing tablet (Wacom, iPad Pro)
Font licenses and stock subscriptions
Why graphic designers leave the big platforms
freshbooks: $17-55/month depending on client count. Good invoicing but the time tracking is bolted on and clunky.
toggl: $10/month for time tracking alone. No invoicing. You need Toggl PLUS FreshBooks — that's $27+/month combined.
harvest: $11/month for mediocre time tracking and basic invoicing. The reports are good but the rest is underwhelming.
Where graphic designers actually talk shop
r/graphic_design (Reddit)
r/freelanceDesigners (Reddit)
r/Design (Reddit)
r/logodesign (Reddit)
Dribbble Community (Forum)
Behance Forum (Forum)
Designer Hangout (Slack) (Forum)
The Futur (YouTube)
Local graphic designers on Nexa
Real graphic designers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a graphic designer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every graphic designer on Nexa →
The kit a working graphic designer owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Adobe Creative Cloud subscription
High-resolution monitor (color-calibrated)
Drawing tablet (Wacom, iPad Pro)
Font licenses and stock subscriptions
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 Harvest'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 Harvest'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 graphic designers we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Harvest on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Harvest'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 a graphic designer'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 graphic designer — 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 pricingFreshBooks $516/yr, Toggl Track $144/yr, Harvest $132/yr, HoneyBook $432/yr — 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 $52,000 median we cite for the typical graphic designer 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.
The field's own bodiesWe anchor what graphic designers actually need to the people who set the standards — AIGA. We don't speak for them; we point you to them so you can weigh this guide against the profession's own.
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 Harvest replacement?
For solo graphic designers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Harvest may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does Harvest do that Nexa doesn't?
Harvest has features like Clean, simple interface and Automatic invoice generation from time that some businesses rely on. For most solo graphic designers, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $11/month, Nexa pays for itself in 25.4 months. After that: $132 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.