What digital download sellers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the bookkeeping side of this trade: invoices, bills, receipt capture and, on Pro, automatic bank transaction import and categorizing. That helps when you reconcile processor or marketplace payouts against your records, which matters because many small sellers get no Form 1099-K but still have sales to record. It is simple enough to run without an accountant, and it has live chat and email support on weekdays. Nothing in Wave's feature list covers the core of a download seller's tax work. That work is tracking where each buyer is, charging or remitting VAT or sales tax for that place, watching state economic-nexus thresholds, and keeping business-purpose exemption forms on file. That includes EU One Stop Shop filing for non-EU sellers.
Nexa has sales tax tracking, 1099 summaries, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and receipt scanning. That is solid bookkeeping for a small seller. It does not do EU VAT filing, and nothing in its feature list covers per-state nexus thresholds or exemption-form storage. A client record has no street-address field, which limits how well you could track buyer location in it. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no integration library, and no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding, because you own and run the software yourself. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account.
Over three years Wave Pro is $684 ($19 a month, $228 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa is cheaper, but price is not the deciding factor here. If you already use Wave for bookkeeping and it works, there is no tax-compliance reason to move. If you are choosing fresh and want to own your software, Nexa's bookkeeping is adequate. Either way, the location-based tax and VAT work needs a separate tax-compliance tool.
Our read for digital download sellers: Neither tool handles the core job of tracking buyer location and charging, remitting or filing VAT and sales tax, so add a dedicated sales-tax and VAT compliance tool and keep whichever bookkeeping app you already use.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs digital download 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 digital download sellers: Neither Wave 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 $684 for Wave over three years.
The books and job tracking 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 digital download 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A digital download seller'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.
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median digital download seller earns $22,000/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 digital download sellers. You own it like you own your Design software (Canva Pro, Adobe, Procreate).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small digital download 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 →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →The books and job tracking 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.
I sell printable planners, digital art prints and Canva templates, and my morning starts with the overnight Etsy orders, which deliver automatically, and the messages that don't. One buyer can't find the download in her account, so I send a walkthrough screenshot; another bought an A4 planner and needs US Letter, so I send the other file. Then I work on the custom branded Canva template pack for a coach: twenty Instagram post templates and ten story templates in her brand colors, fonts and logo, and I build them with grids and locked elements so she can't break the layout. I test the share link as template-only so she gets a copy, not edit access to my original. After lunch I make new listings: design a weekly planner page, export at 300 DPI as PDF, make five mockup images and a video preview, and write a title and thirteen tags with the search terms buyers actually use. I upload the same product to Gumroad and Creative Market with different cover images. In the afternoon I deal with a refund request from someone who downloaded the files and says it wasn't what she expected, which on digital files means I've lost the product and the fee either way, and I reword the listing to prevent it. In the evening I look at views and sales per listing across each shop, deactivate listings that never sell, renew the ones that do, and try to work out which products earned back the hours I spent making them.
Real digital download sellers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a digital download seller? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every digital download 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 digital download 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 digital download 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 digital download 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 digital download 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