What event planners need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the client-facing side of event planning well. It has proposals, contracts, invoices, payments, a client portal, templates and workflow automation, and every plan allows unlimited clients and projects. The QuickBooks Online integration and text reminders are on the higher plans. Support is 24/7 by email and chat, and the 60-day money-back guarantee lowers the risk of trying it. Its listed features don't show a way to link a budget to vendor bids, contracts and bills for each event, or to keep vendor reliability and insurance records. Deposits by tax year and the split between resold items, the planner's own services and catering would need a separate bookkeeping tool or your accountant.
Nexa covers more of the money side. It has invoices, estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal where clients pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates. It also has expenses, purchase orders, sales tax tracking, profit and loss, and a CRM with a pipeline and lead form. Nexa's automated emails (sequences, workflows and reminders) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It has no text messages, no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no Google Calendar sync, and no app marketplace. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years, HoneyBook at $36 a month is $432 a year, or $1,296. Nexa is $279 once, or $279 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for 36 months, which is $458.64 in total. Stay with HoneyBook if you rely on its contracts, text reminders, QuickBooks link or hosted support. Consider Nexa if you mainly want built-in invoicing, expenses, purchase orders and sales tax tracking at a lower cost, and you are comfortable keeping it open for automated emails to go out.
Our read for event planners: Stay with HoneyBook if you depend on its contracts, text reminders, QuickBooks integration or hosted support; Nexa is a cheaper fit mainly for planners who want built-in bookkeeping and can keep it open for automated emails.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs event planners $432/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 7.8 months it has cost less than HoneyBook, 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 HoneyBook 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 event planners: Stay with HoneyBook 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 $1,296 for HoneyBook over three years.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing and job tracking 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. HoneyBook solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $36/month — $432 a year, from HoneyBook'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 $1,017 less.
If HoneyBook 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 | HoneyBook | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | — | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $36/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,296 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for HoneyBook come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as HoneyBook lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from HoneyBook's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
HoneyBook is the better call if you need beautiful proposals and contracts specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
HoneyBook describes itself as built for anyone with clients, aimed at small businesses that work with clients. Its categories are event services, marketing, design and creative, professional services, personal services, and home and real estate. (honeybook.com)
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 event planner: 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 event planner'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.
HoneyBook plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median event planner earns $45,000/year. At $432/year, HoneyBook 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 event planners. You own it like you own your Event management binders and checklists.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small event planners 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, invoicing and job tracking 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.
An event is months of decisions and one day of execution. A new client starts with a call about the budget, guest count, date and what they want people to remember, and from that I build a plan: venue shortlist, a vendor team, a timeline and a budget tracker. Then I'm negotiating contracts with caterers, florists, rentals, entertainment and photographers, reading every clause about deposits, cancellations and overtime. As the date gets close, I'm confirming headcounts, building floor plans and seating charts, and writing a minute-by-minute schedule that every vendor gets. On the day I'm on my feet for twelve hours: vendor arrivals, setup, cues, fixing whatever goes wrong before the client notices, and teardown. Every event has at least one problem, a late delivery, weather, a missing item, and the job is solving it quietly. I charge a planning fee in stages, a deposit to book, payments at milestones and the balance before the event, and I'm careful to keep vendor payments separate from my own.
Real event planners near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an event planner? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every event planner 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 event planner'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 event planner — 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 event planners and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. HoneyBook may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
HoneyBook has features like Beautiful proposals and contracts and Client portal that some businesses rely on. For most solo event planners, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $36/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.8 months. After that: $432 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