Vagaro costs athletic trainers $600/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 5.6 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 athletic trainers: Vagaro is solid software, but at $50/month it costs $1,800 over 3 years. Nexa does most of what Vagaro does for $279 once. For solo athletic trainers and small teams, Nexa is the better deal.
Today's list price is $50/month — $600 a year, from Vagaro'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 $1,521 less.
If Vagaro 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 | Vagaro | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | — | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✗ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✗ | ✓ |
| Price | $50/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,800 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Vagaro come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Vagaro lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Vagaro's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Vagaro is the better call if you need affordable for salon/spa industry specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Software doesn't do your clients — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every athletic trainer: 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 your clients. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
A new client finds you and books a time — no phone tag, no double-booking.
The session itself — with the client history, notes, packages, and add-ons right there instead of in three different places.
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 your clients. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Vagaro plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Scheduling, client records and invoicing 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. Vagaro solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
The median athletic trainer earns $40,000/year. At $600/year, Vagaro 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 athletic trainers. You own it like you own your A BOC athletic-training certification and state licensure.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small athletic trainers 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.
Scheduling, client records and invoicing 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.
You're in the training room before practice, taping ankles in an assembly line while athletes file through, each one a quick check-in: how's the hamstring, did you ice last night, range of motion any better. A field hockey player limps in needing an evaluation, so you run her through the special tests, decide it's a grade-one sprain not a tear, and start her on the early rehab protocol. The unpredictability is the job, because the moment a game starts, your plan is whatever happens on the field; a player goes down hard and you're sprinting out, clearing the scene, ruling out anything serious before you decide whether she walks off or stays still. Between events you're chasing documentation, because every eval and treatment has to be written up for liability and for the physician who'll make the clearance call, and during a busy season that paperwork stacks up fast. You're juggling a dozen athletes at different return-to-play stages, the one cleared for non-contact, the one two weeks out, the one you're holding back even though the coach wants him. You field a parent asking about their kid's concussion timeline and a coach asking who's available Friday, and you walk the line of what you're allowed to share. By the time the last athlete's been treated, you're restocking the kit and finishing notes you didn't have time for at noon.
Real athletic trainers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an athletic trainer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every athletic trainer 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 $3,250–$11,950 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 an athletic trainer — 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.
On the work an athletic trainer actually lives in — scheduling & booking, crm & clients and invoicing — Nexa holds its own against the usual rentals (Calendly →, HubSpot →, FreshBooks →). Head-to-head on any single one it's competitive; what tips it is the thing none of them can copy: From the mid-practice evaluation to the documented treatment to the return-to-play progression to the bill, every athlete moves through one record, so nothing you wrote up for clearance has to be re-keyed to get paid. in one record, no re-typing between four apps. One tool, $279 once, against 3 subscriptions · ~$900/yr. Concretely: on scheduling & booking, When a player goes down mid-practice and blows up the next hour, Nexa lets you slot the new evaluation against the dozen return-to-play progressions you are already juggling, because the schedule and the athlete record live in the same place instead of on a separate calendar app.
Where it's not the answer: if you run real payroll for a team (use Gusto →), or run big email campaigns & automations (use ConvertKit →). Those tools are better at their one thing, and we'd rather point you to them 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.
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 an athletic trainer'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 an athletic trainer — 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 athletic trainers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Vagaro may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Vagaro has features like Affordable for salon/spa industry and Online booking marketplace that some businesses rely on. For most solo athletic trainers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $50/month, Nexa pays for itself in 5.6 months. After that: $600 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