What trivia hosts need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the money side of a trivia host's work well. Hosts paid a flat fee per night need per-venue invoices and income records, and Wave's free Starter plan includes unlimited invoices, estimates and bookkeeping. Pro, at $19 a month, adds automatic bank import and categorizing, receipt capture, and late-payment reminders at 3, 7 and 14 days. Those help a self-employed host who has to total net earnings and make quarterly estimated tax payments. Wave does not track attendance per venue, which hosts need to keep or renegotiate a weekly slot. It also does nothing about music licensing, so the host has to ask each venue whether it holds the licenses and keep a record of asking. Prize payouts can go in as expenses, but nothing reimburses them or ties them to an event.
Nexa covers invoices, recurring invoices, expenses, receipt scanning, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries. Jobs with profit per job could stand in for per-night, per-venue records, and client notes could hold turnout figures. It has no attendance field, no music-licensing tool and no estimated-tax feature, so those gaps are the same as Wave's. Nexa has no bank connection and no sync with QuickBooks or Xero. It runs on one device unless you add Cloud Sync, it comes with no hosted support desk, and its automated emails send only while it is open. Its Stripe-only card payments are unlikely to matter much to a host who is paid by venues.
Over three years Wave Pro is $228 a year, or $684. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. A host who wants bank import and support from a vendor should stay on Wave, and the free Starter plan is enough if they are happy entering transactions by hand. A host who wants to own the software, wants a one-time cost and is comfortable with its limits could switch and save money. Neither tool handles attendance tracking, music licensing or tax payments, so the host will need a separate checklist or spreadsheet for those.
Our read for trivia hosts: Stay with Wave: its free plan already covers per-night invoicing and records, and Pro adds bank import and hosted support that Nexa lacks.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs trivia hosts $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 trivia hosts: 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.
Scheduling, invoicing, client records and the books 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. 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 creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every trivia host: 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.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 creative 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 trivia host'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 trivia host earns $28,000/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 trivia hosts. You own it like you own your PA system and microphone.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small trivia hosts 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 →Scheduling, invoicing, client records and the books 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.
Most weeks I run four or five nights at bars and breweries, and every night is a show I wrote. Writing is the real job: seven or eight rounds, general knowledge, a picture round, a music round and a themed round, and every question has to be checked, because one wrong answer and a table full of regulars will let you know about it for a month. I write questions that are fair to a mixed room, hard enough that the winners feel they earned it, and with answers people half-know so they argue about them at the table. On the night I arrive an hour early to set up the speaker and microphone, hand out answer sheets and pencils, and talk to the bar manager about specials and any big tables coming in. Hosting is the performance: reading clearly over the noise, keeping the pace up so the bar sells drinks between rounds, teasing the team names without being mean, and marking sheets fast while the music round plays. Scores go up on a board after every round. At the end I hand out the bar's gift cards to the winners, pack up, and log the scores for the season leaderboard. Each venue pays me a flat fee per night, and a few private bookings, corporate parties and fundraisers, pay much better.
Real trivia hosts near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a trivia host? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every trivia host 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 trivia host'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 trivia host — 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 trivia hosts 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 trivia hosts, 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