What vjs (video jockeys) need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the agreement side of a VJ's work reasonably well. Its proposals, contracts and templates suit the written terms the trade needs: who owns the visuals, what licence the client gets, and who may stream or upload recordings and for how long. A reusable template lets you set those terms before each booking. The client portal, invoices and payments cover the billing side. What it does not offer is a record of the rights status of each clip, loop and track, a log of set footage containing unlicensed third-party clips, an asset register for gear and its section 179 treatment, or a trip log for performance travel. Those needs fall outside what its feature list describes.
Nexa covers the business-admin side: invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM with a public lead form, a booking page, and bookkeeping with expenses, receipt scanning, profit and loss and 1099 summaries. Receipt scanning and expense tracking could help with gear and travel paperwork. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file), and no text messaging. If you use automation, its emails, sequences and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years HoneyBook at $36 a month is $1,296 ($432 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. Neither tool tracks clip licences or footage rights, so a VJ needs a dedicated rights register or asset-tracking database alongside whichever invoicing tool they choose. Keep HoneyBook if you rely on its contract templates, and consider Nexa if you mainly want cheaper invoicing and bookkeeping and don't need hosted support.
Our read for vjs (video jockeys): Neither tool covers a VJ's core need to track the rights status of every clip, so use a dedicated rights and asset register, and pick HoneyBook or Nexa only for billing and paperwork.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs vjs (video jockeys) $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 vjs (video jockeys): Neither HoneyBook 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 $1,296 for HoneyBook over three years.
Scheduling, invoicing and client records 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 vj: 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 vj'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 VJ earns $35,000/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 vjs (video jockeys). You own it like you own your Projectors and LED panels.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small vjs (video jockeys) 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 →Scheduling, invoicing and client records 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.
Saturday starts with a load-in list. Tonight is a private event with projection mapping onto the front of a converted warehouse, $800 plus $200 in rented screens, so I'm checking the laptop, the capture card, the MIDI controller, spare HDMI and SDI runs, the lens for the throw distance and my own projector, whose lamp is down to about 500 hours. I pick the rental screens up at 2 and inspect them for tears before I sign. At 4 I'm on site measuring the facade, setting the projector on a scaffold and taping cables down where people will walk. Once it's dark enough I build the map: warping corners onto the window frames, masking the doors, lining up edges so the loops I rendered last week fit the architecture. I test clips against the DJ's opening track and fix a loop that stutters at the seam. During the event I'm triggering clips live, matching tempo, and layering the logos the client sent in the wrong format, which I recut this afternoon. Last night was a club set, $400, house visuals on the LED wall, and I got home at 4. Tonight wraps at 1, strike takes an hour, and the rented screens go back Monday. Sunday I sleep, then send two invoices from last weekend that I forgot, note which venue still hasn't paid for September, and look up what a replacement lamp costs, because I know I haven't been pricing its hours into my rates.
Real vjs (video jockeys) near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a vj? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every vj 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 a vj'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 vj — 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 vjs (video jockeys) 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 vjs (video jockeys), 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