What paving contractors need from their software, from sources outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa:
Housecall Pro covers much of what a paving crew runs on. It has scheduling and dispatching, estimates, a price book, invoicing, online payments, time tracking, payroll, job costing, vehicle GPS and 'On My Way' texts. The Essentials plan adds routes and QuickBooks Online sync. Job costing and time tracking help with the labor-by-job tracking that public-works paving can require. Vehicle GPS gives a location record for heavy trucks, which may help with the per-truck mileage records behind the annual Form 2290 heavy-vehicle tax. It is not a tax-filing or weight-record tool, though. Nothing in its feature list covers license classification scope (such as California's C-12 or Arizona's A-14), checking a bid against that scope, or prevailing-wage paperwork. Those still need a separate process.
Nexa covers the office side: estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM, jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, a payroll CSV of hours x rate, expenses, purchase orders, receipt scanning, sales tax tracking and reports. It also sends each day's job stops to Google Maps in time order. It has no GPS or fleet tracking, no dispatch board, no route optimization and no QuickBooks or Xero sync. It does not run payroll, meaning no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit. It has no text messaging, and no feature for license scope, truck weight and mileage records, or wage-rate paperwork. Its automated emails (sequences, workflows, 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, Housecall Pro on the $79/month plan (1 user) comes to $2,844, or $948 a year. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. With optional Cloud Sync at $4.99/month for syncing across devices, three years comes to $458.64. A solo or very small outfit that mostly writes bids, sends invoices and tracks job profit could save a lot with Nexa, as long as it can do without dispatch, vehicle tracking and payroll. A crew with trucks on the road, employees to pay and a dispatcher scheduling jobs should stay with Housecall Pro. Either way, license scope and truck tax records need their own tracking.
Our read for paving contractors: Stay with Housecall Pro if you run trucks and a crew, since it has vehicle GPS, dispatch and payroll that Nexa lacks. Consider Nexa only if you are a solo operator who needs just bids, invoices and job profit.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Housecall Pro costs paving contractors $948/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 3.5 months it has cost less than Housecall Pro, 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 Housecall Pro 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 paving contractors: Stay with Housecall Pro 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 $2,844 for Housecall Pro over three years.
Invoicing, job tracking, the books and client records 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.
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.
Housecall Pro describes itself as 'Tailored for teams of 1 to 100+' and aimed at home service pros across 50+ industries, including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning, lawn care and pest control. (housecallpro.com)
What people outside Housecall Pro 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 actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every paving contractor: 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A paving contractor'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.
Housecall Pro plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median paving contractor earns $50,000/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 paving contractors. You own it like you own your Asphalt and concrete equipment.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small paving contractors 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.
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 →Invoicing, job tracking, the books and client records 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.
Most of my work is asphalt driveways, parking lots and repairs. A new driveway starts with the base, which is where most failures begin: excavating to the right depth, installing and compacting gravel in layers, and grading so water runs off rather than pooling. Asphalt arrives hot from the plant and the clock starts; it has to be spread, raked and rolled at the right temperature, so the crew and trucks are timed to keep it flowing. Edges get compacted and the finished surface has to be smooth and pitched correctly. Parking lots add line striping, handicap spaces that meet code, and drainage around catch basins. Repairs are steady work: crack sealing, patching potholes, and sealcoating that protects the surface from sun and water every few years. The season runs from spring to late fall, since asphalt can't be laid in the cold. Equipment, rollers, pavers and trucks, is expensive to own and maintain. I quote by the square foot, with base work and removal of the old surface listed separately, and take a deposit to schedule.
Real paving contractors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a paving contractor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every paving contractor 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 $55,250–$210,900 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.
We build a paving contractor'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 paving contractor — 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 paving contractors 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 paving contractors, 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