Toggl Track vs Nexa
The Real Comparison for Portrait Painters

Toggl Track
$12/mo ($144/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 23.3 months at Toggl Track's current price.

Bottom Line

Toggl Track costs portrait painters $144/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 23.3 months it has cost less than Toggl Track, 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.

Can it pay for itself?

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 Toggl Track 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 portrait painters: Toggl Track is solid software, but at $12/month it costs $432 over 3 years. Nexa does most of what Toggl Track does for $279 once. For solo portrait painters and small teams, Nexa is the better deal.

Choose Nexa if:

  • You're done paying monthly forever
  • You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
  • You need time tracker, invoicing and connect crm in one tool
  • You're tired of price increases
  • You want to own your tools like you own your equipment

Choose Toggl Track if:

  • You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
  • You're deeply invested in Toggl Track's specific workflow
  • You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet

Sound Familiar?

The morning starts by checking the north-facing studio light before touching a brush, because color matching skin tones under afternoon sun is hopeless. You pin the client's reference photos to the wall, squint to read the values, and mix a base flesh tone from cadmium red, yellow ochre, white, and a whisper of viridian to kill the pink. Most of the day is the slow build: blocking in the underpainting, then waiting, then glazing thin layers so the cheeks actually glow instead of looking like plastic. Around lunch a client texts asking for a progress photo, and you debate whether to send one, knowing an unfinished face always looks 'wrong' to someone who isn't a painter. You spend an hour just on the eyes, because everyone judges a portrait by whether the eyes follow them. Between sessions you photograph the work-in-progress for your portfolio, answer two inquiry emails asking 'how much for a painting of my dad,' and quote one of them. By evening the linen needs to dry before the next layer, so you clean brushes with mineral spirits, scrape the palette, and log the hours so this commission doesn't quietly turn into unpaid labor.

Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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. Toggl Track solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.

What Toggl Track Actually Costs Portrait Painters

Today's list price is $12/month — $144 a year, from Toggl Track's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.

Three years at today's price

Year 1$144
Year 2$144
Year 3$144
Three years of Toggl Track$432

Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $153 less.

If Toggl Track 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-by-Feature

FeatureToggl TrackNexa
Invoicing✗✓
Scheduling✗✓
CRM✗✓
Time Tracking✓✓
Full Accounting✗✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management✗✓
Works offline—✓
Price$12/mo$279 once
or 3 × $99
3-Year Total$432$279
You own it?No — stop paying, lose accessYes — forever

✓ and ✗ for Toggl Track come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Toggl Track lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.

What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy

What Toggl Track Does Better

Straight from Toggl Track's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.

Toggl Track is the better call if you need simple time tracking specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.

What Toggl Track Is Built For

Toggl Track's product page lists agencies and professional services teams, software and IT teams, law firms, and accounting and finance teams. It also names three sizes of customer: freelancers and solo users, growing teams, and large organizations. (toggl.com)

What people outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa say:

Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.

Where business tools fit — for a portrait painter

Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every portrait painter: 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.

  1. 1
    Find the work

    Land the project

    ↓

    An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.

    • CRM / contacts
    • Estimates & proposals
    • Booking / scheduling
    then ↓
  2. 2

    The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.

    • Job / project tracking
    • Time tracking
    • Expenses, materials & add-ons
    then ↓
  3. 3

    The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.

    • Invoicing
    • Deposits & credits
    then ↓
  4. 4

    Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.

    • Card / online payments
    • Automatic reminders

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.)

Watch a job become an invoice

This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A portrait painter'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.

The job 16x20 oil portrait commission from photos
Service Oil portrait, 16x20, single subject 1 × $1,200 $1,200
Materials Gallery frame $180
The invoice builds itself
Subtotal$1,455
Deposit credited−$500
Invoice total$955

You didn't write this invoice — the job did.

Calculate Your Full Stack

Toggl Track plus whatever else you're paying for:

Email yourself this comparison?

Switching from Toggl Track

1
Export your data — Go to Reports → Detailed → Export as CSV. Download your full time entry history.
2
Set up Nexa — 10-minute setup. Import your client list by CSV, then set up your projects.
3
Start tracking in Nexa — Use Nexa time tracker for new entries. Import historical data if needed.
4
Cancel Toggl — Cancel subscription. Download a final export for your records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.

What This Means for Portrait Painters

The median Portrait Painter earns $45,000/year. At $144/year, Toggl Track 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 portrait painters. You own it like you own your Winsor & Newton oil paints.

Is Nexa actually right for a portrait painter?

An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.

Right for you if

  • You run solo or a small team — like the 25,000 portrait painters in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
  • You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack and a pile of apps that don't talk to each other.
  • You want invoicing, scheduling, and client tracking in one place — not scattered across five apps.
  • You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your Winsor & Newton oil paints.

Look elsewhere if

  • You have a large team that needs enterprise seats, granular roles, and dedicated admin staff — Nexa is built for solo and small operators (1–5), and a bigger platform will serve you better.
  • You need full payroll for a large team or deep, SKU-level inventory — that's not what Nexa is for.
  • You're genuinely happy paying monthly and don't mind stitching tools together. No tool fixes a workflow you already like.

The honest fit: if you're a solo or small portrait painters 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.

Portrait Painters by the numbers — by place

Tax & registration where you operate

1-13.3%income tax

Register a business in California →

Noneincome tax

Register a business in Texas →

Noneincome tax

Register a business in Florida →

4-10.9%income tax

Register a business in New York →

Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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.

What portrait painters actually deal with

A day in the life of a portrait painter

The morning starts by checking the north-facing studio light before touching a brush, because color matching skin tones under afternoon sun is hopeless. You pin the client's reference photos to the wall, squint to read the values, and mix a base flesh tone from cadmium red, yellow ochre, white, and a whisper of viridian to kill the pink. Most of the day is the slow build: blocking in the underpainting, then waiting, then glazing thin layers so the cheeks actually glow instead of looking like plastic. Around lunch a client texts asking for a progress photo, and you debate whether to send one, knowing an unfinished face always looks 'wrong' to someone who isn't a painter. You spend an hour just on the eyes, because everyone judges a portrait by whether the eyes follow them. Between sessions you photograph the work-in-progress for your portfolio, answer two inquiry emails asking 'how much for a painting of my dad,' and quote one of them. By evening the linen needs to dry before the next layer, so you clean brushes with mineral spirits, scrape the palette, and log the hours so this commission doesn't quietly turn into unpaid labor.

The tools a working portrait painter actually owns

Local portrait painters on Nexa

Real portrait painters near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a portrait painter? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every portrait painter on Nexa →

The kit a working portrait painter owns

The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.

Winsor & Newton oil paints

sable filbert and round brushes

stretched linen canvases

wooden easel

odorless mineral spirits and palette

DSLR camera with diffused lighting for reference shots

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.

Where Nexa wins for a portrait painter — and where it doesn't

The honest version. Nexa was built to beat the rented stack on the jobs that matter most to a portrait painter — 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.)

Compare the essential business tools for portrait painters

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.

The jobThe usual rentalThe verdict
The whole connected stack 4 subscriptions · ~$1,032/yr Nexa wins big One tool, $279 once — From the reference photos and flesh-tone mixing, through drying time, to the bill, one record carries each portrait so the real 30-plus hours and any later make-him-younger requests are counted and priced. without re-typing. That handoff is the part separate tools can't buy at any price.
Job & project tracking Jobber → Nexa wins When a client wants a portrait for her father's birthday but oils do not care about birthdays, Nexa keeps the reference photos, the flesh-tone notes, and the real drying timeline on one record so the 30-plus hours of work flow into the bill.
Invoicing FreshBooks → Nexa wins Nexa invoices from the portrait record, so a 16x20 oil priced to cover 30-plus hours is itemized clearly, and any mid-commission change like make Grandpa look younger is logged as scope beyond the original agreement.
CRM & clients HubSpot → Nexa wins Nexa keeps each client's reference photos and the agreed scope together, so when blurry bad-lighting phone photos arrive but a studio result is expected, you can point back to exactly what was sent and agreed.
Scheduling & booking Calendly → Nexa wins Nexa lets you schedule around drying time and the north-light hours you need, so a moving birthday deadline does not collide with the fact that oils set on their own schedule.
If you run real payroll for a team — Not Nexa Use Gusto → — it's better at that, and we'd rather tell you than pretend.
If you run big email campaigns & automations — Not Nexa Use ConvertKit → — it's better at that, and we'd rather tell you than pretend.
If you design graphics & marketing assets — Not Nexa Use Canva → — it's better at that, and we'd rather tell you than pretend.

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.

Competitor pricing verified 2026-06-12.

How To Read This Page

How we put this guide together

We build a portrait painter'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 portrait painter — 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.

Where the numbers come from

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.

FAQ

Is Nexa really a Toggl Track replacement?

For solo portrait painters and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Toggl Track may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.

What does Toggl Track do that Nexa doesn't?

Toggl Track has features like Simple time tracking and Desktop and mobile apps that some businesses rely on. For most solo portrait painters, these aren't dealbreakers.

How fast does Nexa pay for itself?

At $12/month, Nexa pays for itself in 23.3 months. After that: $144 saved every year.

Can I pay in installments?

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.

$432 Over 3 Years. Or $279 Once (or 3 × $99).

Own your tools. Stop renting your software.

Get Nexa — $279 Once
or 3 payments of $99
✓ 30-day money-back — save $500 or full refund

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