What paper & stationery makers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the money side of this trade reasonably well. It has estimates and invoices, and Pro lets you attach files to them, which is useful for sending proofs. It also has your logo and brand colors on invoices, late-payment reminders, bank import and receipt capture, and it comes with live chat and email support on weekdays. What it doesn't do is follow a custom project. Nothing in what Wave lists tracks a 50% retainer or 30/70 split as a stage, counts proof rounds against a package's revision limit, or ties the balance due to final approval. There are also no milestone timelines for the 12-14 weeks from deposit to delivery, and no place to store resale certificates by supplier or separate materials that go into products from supplies you use yourself.
Nexa gets closer on workflow. It has payment plans, estimates that clients can sign, and a client pay portal that takes card payments through your own Stripe account. Missions with sub-steps and templates can model the deposit, proofing, approval, print and delivery milestones. It also tracks sales tax, purchase orders and a simple stock count per product. It does not count proof rounds or enforce per-package revision limits, and it has no resale-certificate storage, so you would be working around those gaps. It also has no sync with QuickBooks or Xero, no manual journal entries, and no hosted support desk, because you own and run it yourself. Online card payments work only through your own Stripe account, and Cloud Sync is needed to use it across devices.
Over three years, Wave Pro at $19 a month comes to $228 a year, or $684. Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99). Adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings three years to $458.64. If Wave's free-tier bookkeeping and invoicing already work for you, stay there, since neither tool covers the proofing and resale-certificate needs. If you want deposit-to-delivery timelines and payment plans in one place and are comfortable supporting yourself, Nexa is the cheaper way to get them. Either way, the proof-round and approval tracking is better handled by a project and client-proofing tool built for custom design studios.
Our read for paper & stationery makers: Neither tool tracks proof rounds, per-package revision limits, approval-triggered balances or resale certificates, so a studio project-management and client-proofing tool is the real fit, and Wave users with no pressing need can stay put.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs paper & stationery makers $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 paper & stationery makers: 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, 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 stationery maker: 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 stationery maker earns $24,000/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 paper & stationery makers. You own it like you own your Letterpress or printing equipment.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small paper & stationery makers 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, 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.
I design and print stationery: wedding invitation suites, greeting cards, notebooks, and custom letterpress pieces for small businesses. A wedding suite starts with a consultation: the couple's style, colours, the wording, the number of guests, the mailing date, and the budget, which decides between digital printing, foil and letterpress. I design proofs and go back and forth until every name and date is right, because one typo on two hundred printed invitations is my cost, not theirs. Production is hands-on: cutting paper to size, mixing ink to match a colour exactly, locking up plates on the letterpress and feeding sheets one at a time, then scoring, folding, trimming and assembling envelopes, liners and RSVP cards. Paper choice matters, cotton for letterpress, coated stock for digital, and I order paper weeks ahead because specialty stock runs out. My card line sells wholesale to gift shops and through my own online shop and craft fairs, which means inventory, packing orders and shipping. Wedding season fills every spring, so I schedule production months ahead, take a deposit on approval, and bill the balance before shipping.
Real paper & stationery makers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a stationery maker? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every stationery maker 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 stationery maker'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 stationery maker — 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 paper & stationery makers 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 paper & stationery makers, 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