What blind & shade installers need from their software, from sources outside Jobber and outside Nexa:
Jobber covers the scheduling and field side of an install business well. It has online booking, a mobile app for crews, route optimization, quotes, invoices with online payments, and QuickBooks Online integration. Its quotes and invoices take line items, and Jobber AI can add them, so product and labor can be listed separately. The trade's sharper needs are different. Each custom order has to record the operating system for every window (cordless, wand or motorized), show cord configuration and compliance under the CPSC and WCMA cord rules, and tag every line by product type so tax treatment of product versus installation labor can be handled. Nothing on Jobber's feature list describes per-window product options, cord-compliance records or product-type tax tagging. Checklists and custom workflow automations on the higher plans might approximate some of it, but you would be building that yourself. Tax rules also vary by state and product type. The Utah ruling is from 2003 and is specific to Utah.
Nexa covers quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, jobs with costing and profit per job, a crew view of assigned jobs, today's stops sent to Google Maps in time order, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, time tracking, sales tax tracking, expenses and a simple stock count per product. It works offline and has a Spanish interface. It does not list per-window operating-system fields, cord-compliance records or product-type tax tagging either. It also lacks several things a Jobber-based crew may rely on: no text messages, no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no Google Calendar sync, no route optimization or dispatch board, no job templates and no full inventory management. Its automated emails (sequences, workflows 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 Jobber's Core plan at $49 a month comes to $1,764 ($588 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 a month Cloud Sync. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. The price gap is real, but it does not settle the question, because neither tool lists the compliance and tax tracking this trade needs. If you stay on Jobber, keep cord configuration, operating-system choice and product-type tax treatment in a separate order record. If cost is the main concern and you can work without texting, QuickBooks sync and route tools, Nexa is cheaper, but it would need the same separate record.
Our read for blind & shade installers: Neither tool lists per-window operating-system choices, cord-compliance records or product-type tax tagging, so a made-to-order custom-product ordering and compliance tracker is the kind of tool this trade's core need calls for.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Jobber costs blind & shade installers $588/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 5.7 months it has cost less than Jobber, 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 Jobber 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 blind & shade installers: Neither Jobber 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 $1,764 for Jobber over three years.
Scheduling, 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 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. Jobber solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $49/month — $588 a year, from Jobber'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 $1,485 less.
If Jobber 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 | Jobber | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | — | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $49/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,764 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Jobber come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Jobber lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Jobber's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Jobber is the better call if you need built for home services specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Jobber is built for home and commercial field service businesses. Its homepage names 12 trades, including cleaning, HVAC, landscaping, plumbing, roofing and tree care, and says it serves service pros in over 50 industries. (getjobber.com)
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 blind 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.)
Jobber plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median blind installer earns $40,000/year. At $588/year, Jobber 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 blind & shade installers. You own it like you own your Drill and mounting hardware.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small blind & shade 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.
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Open on Reddit →Scheduling, 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 and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
Morning: 2 in-home measurements and consultations (free, 45 min each). Afternoon: install job — 12 windows across 4 rooms. The order was placed 3 weeks ago and the client changed the master bedroom color after ordering. One blind arrived the wrong size — you need to reorder. The install that should have been 3 hours is now 2.5 hours plus a return trip next week. Your job tracking is a folder of paper order forms.
Real blind & shade installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a blind installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every blind installer 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 blind 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 blind 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 blind & shade installers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Jobber may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Jobber has features like Built for home services and Mobile app for field teams that some businesses rely on. For most solo blind & shade installers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $49/month, Nexa pays for itself in 5.7 months. After that: $588 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