What beekeeper sellers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the invoicing and bookkeeping side of a pollination business well. Its free Starter plan includes unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. Pro, at $19 a month, adds automatic bank transaction import, automatic categorizing, and late-payment reminders at 3, 7 and 14 days after the due date. Those reminders matter for a seller whose income arrives as large per-colony fees and up-front payments. Wave is hosted, so those reminders don't depend on your own device, and it has live chat and email support on weekdays. What the listed Wave features don't show is any per-hive or per-crop pricing, deposit handling or clause-based price adjustments, so quoting by colony and tracking income by crop would mean working around general-purpose invoices. Wave also has no job costing.
Nexa covers more of the quoting and tracking side. It has quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans (which could serve deposit-and-balance billing), jobs with costing and profit per job, recurring jobs, time tracking, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, sales tax tracking and receipt scanning. It works offline, which helps in remote apiaries. Its facts list no per-hive pricing field or crop-level reporting, so that gap is the same as Wave's. Nexa has no bank sync or import, and no QuickBooks or Xero sync. Its automated emails, including reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Card payments go only through your own Stripe account, it does not run payroll, and there is no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years, Wave Pro comes to $684 (at $228 a year), and the Starter plan is free. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month the total is $458.64. A seller who wants reminders to chase late payments without anyone having to keep an app open, plus automatic bank import and a support line, should stay with Wave. Starter may be enough if you don't need the bank feed. A seller who works mostly offline, wants profit per job, and is comfortable keeping the software open and handling their own setup could reasonably choose Nexa for the lower cost.
Our read for beekeeper sellers: Stay with Wave: its hosted late-payment reminders and bank import are things Nexa lacks or only does while it is open, and Nexa's lower cost doesn't make up for that.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs beekeeper sellers $228/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 14.7 months it has cost less than Wave, 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 Wave 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 beekeeper sellers: Stay with Wave 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 $684 for Wave over three years.
The books, job tracking and invoicing 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. Wave solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $19/month — $228 a year, from Wave'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 $405 less.
If Wave 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 | Wave | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✗ | ✓ |
| Price | $19/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $684 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Wave come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Wave lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Wave's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Wave is the better call if you need free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Wave says it is built for small business owners and solopreneurs at every stage, not accountants. Its page names freelancers, contractors and consultants. (waveapps.com)
What people outside Wave 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 beekeeper seller: 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.)
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median beekeeper seller earns $25,000/year. At $228/year, Wave 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 beekeeper sellers. You own it like you own your Hive equipment and bee suits.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small beekeeper sellers 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.
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 →The books, job tracking and invoicing 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.
Harvest season: you pulled 200 lbs of honey from 8 hives this week. After extraction, filtering, and bottling, you have 150 jars. You sell at the farmers market ($12/jar), to a local co-op ($8/jar wholesale), and on Etsy ($14/jar + shipping). The beeswax goes into candles and lip balm — different products with different costs. Your hive maintenance this year was $1,200. How much of that $1,200 does each jar of honey need to absorb?
Real beekeeper sellers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a beekeeper seller? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every beekeeper seller 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 beekeeper seller'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 beekeeper seller — 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 beekeeper sellers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Wave may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Wave has features like Free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping and Bank transaction import on Pro that some businesses rely on. For most solo beekeeper sellers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $19/month, Nexa pays for itself in 14.7 months. After that: $228 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