Housecall Pro costs french drain installers $948/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so it pays for itself in 3.5 months 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.
The verdict for french drain installers: Housecall Pro is solid software, but at $79/month it costs $2,844 over 3 years. Nexa does most of what Housecall Pro does for $279 once. For solo french drain installers and small teams, Nexa is the better deal.
Today's list price is $79/month — $948 a year, from Housecall Pro'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 $2,565 less.
If Housecall Pro 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 | Housecall Pro | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | — | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | — | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $79/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $2,844 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Housecall Pro come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Housecall Pro lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Housecall Pro's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Housecall Pro is the better call if you need online booking for home services specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every french drain installer: 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 actual work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
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 actual work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Housecall Pro plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Time tracking, invoicing, job tracking and the books 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. Housecall Pro solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
The median French drain installer earns $55,000/year. At $948/year, Housecall Pro 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 french drain installers. You own it like you own your trencher or mini-excavator.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small french drain installers business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling past a handful of crews, a fleet platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
Extreme summer heat drives HVAC demand. Hurricane risk on Gulf Coast. Year-round construction. Rapid population growth in DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio creates sustained demand. Freeze events (like 2021) create emergency plumbing/HVAC surge.
Hurricane season June-November creates massive restoration demand. Snowbird season November-March boosts service volume 30-40%. Year-round construction. Pool service is year-round industry. Pest control peaks in summer humidity.
Harsh winters in upstate, moderate in NYC. Construction limited in winter upstate. NYC market is enormous but hypercompetitive. Brownstone/pre-war building maintenance is specialized trade. NYC licensing is notoriously complex.
Time tracking, invoicing, job tracking and the books 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.
The job is a chronically wet side yard, so you start by confirming the trench line and shooting grade with the laser, because the whole system lives or dies on continuous fall. The trencher opens a clean cut to the depth you need, but halfway down the line you hit a mat of tree roots and have to switch to hand digging to ease the trench around them without losing your slope. You line the trench with non-woven filter fabric, lay in a few inches of washed gravel, and set the sock-wrapped perforated pipe on top, checking the drop with the laser every few feet so there's no belly. More gravel goes over the pipe, then you fold the fabric over the top like a burrito so silt from the surrounding soil can't migrate in and choke it. You tie the run to a solid pipe that carries water to a pop-up emitter at the low end of the yard. A cleanout at the head lets the homeowner flush it years from now. Backfill, tamp, and the trench all but disappears, which is the part customers struggle with, because they paid for something they can no longer see. You walk them through the cleanout and the emitter, and remind them not to bury the pop-up under mulch. The test is the next downpour, and you want the call to never come.
Real french drain installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a french drain installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every french drain installer 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 $6,800–$42,300 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.
The honest version. Nexa was built to beat the rented stack on the jobs that matter most to a french drain installer — here's where it wins, where the integration wins it anyway, and the things it genuinely doesn't do, with who to use instead. (No tool is best at everything; a guide that pretends otherwise is just an ad.)
The usual subscriptions vs. Nexa, side by side. Drag the time slider — every year you keep renting, the gap widens. Nexa is $279, one time.
Prefer to own a piece outright instead of renting? Free and open-source tools (GnuCash, Invoice Ninja and the like) each handle one job if you'll self-host them — a real option, listed because it's true.
These are affiliate links — if you sign up through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We list them because they're the honest best pick for the job, Nexa included. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Competitor pricing verified 2026-06-12.
We build a french drain installer'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 french drain installer — 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 french drain installers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Housecall Pro may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Housecall Pro has features like Online booking for home services and GPS tracking that some businesses rely on. For most solo french drain installers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $79/month, Nexa pays for itself in 3.5 months. After that: $948 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