17hats vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Event Planners
17hats
$60/mo ($720/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 4.7 months at 17hats's current price.
Bottom Line
17hats costs event planners $720/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 4.7 months it has cost less than 17hats, 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.
Can it pay for itself?
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 17hats 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 event planners: 17hats is solid software, but at $60/month it costs $2,160 over 3 years. Nexa does most of what 17hats does for $279 once. For solo event planners and small teams, Nexa is the better deal.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need connect crm, scheduler and invoicing in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose 17hats if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in 17hats's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
An event is months of decisions and one day of execution. A new client starts with a call about the budget, guest count, date and what they want people to remember, and from that I build a plan: venue shortlist, a vendor team, a timeline and a budget tracker. Then I'm negotiating contracts with caterers, florists, rentals, entertainment and photographers, reading every clause about deposits, cancellations and overtime. As the date gets close, I'm confirming headcounts, building floor plans and seating charts, and writing a minute-by-minute schedule that every vendor gets. On the day I'm on my feet for twelve hours: vendor arrivals, setup, cues, fixing whatever goes wrong before the client notices, and teardown. Every event has at least one problem, a late delivery, weather, a missing item, and the job is solving it quietly. I charge a planning fee in stages, a deposit to book, payments at milestones and the balance before the event, and I'm careful to keep vendor payments separate from my own.
Managing multiple events at different planning stages simultaneously
Vendor coordination across 5-15 vendors per event
Scope creep when clients add requests not in the original contract
HoneyBook and Dubsado fees eating into already competitive margins
Client records, scheduling, invoicing and job tracking 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. 17hats solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What 17hats Actually Costs Event Planners
Today's list price is $60/month — $720 a year, from 17hats's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$720
Year 2$720
Year 3$720
Three years of 17hats$2,160
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $1,881 less.
If 17hats 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-by-Feature
Feature
17hats
Nexa
Invoicing
✓
✓
Scheduling
✓
✓
CRM
✓
✓
Time Tracking
—
✓
Full Accounting
—
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
—
✓
Works offline
—
✓
Price
$60/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$2,160
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for 17hats come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as 17hats lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy
It buys the software, not a service contract. You install Nexa and it runs on your machine. There is no seat count, and nothing stops working if you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying.
17hats's monthly fee is not only rent. It pays for their hosting, their support desk, and their engineers shipping changes every week. If those matter to how you work, that is a real thing you would be giving up.
Cross-device sync is the one optional extra — $4.99/month if you want your data mirrored between machines. Skip it and Nexa still works; you just sync manually.
The honest risk of buying once: you are betting on us still being here to improve it. The honest risk of renting: the price is theirs to raise, and the graveyard section below is a record of tools that did exactly that.
What 17hats Does Better
Straight from 17hats's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
All-in-one for service businesses
Strong workflow automation (chain triggers)
Quote-to-invoice combined documents
Built-in email sync
Good for photographers, wedding industry
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use 17hats before paying anything.
17hats is the better call if you need all-in-one for service businesses specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What 17hats Is Built For
17hats says it is for service-based small businesses and solopreneurs. It names balloon artists, photographers, coaches and designers among "100+ different industries", and says it serves businesses "just getting started or 100K in". (17hats.com)
It has 14 pipelines for tracking leads and clients. (17hats.com)
Quotes, contracts and invoices are combined into one document. Clients can initial and sign contracts online. (17hats.com)
Invoicing supports payment schedules, saved cards and auto-pay. Stripe handles credit card and ACH payments, and checks and cash can be entered manually. (17hats.com)
Texting (SMS) is built in with no third-party accounts needed. Online scheduling has Zoom integration, group bookings and payments at booking. (17hats.com)
Workflow automation handles emails, documents and to-do creation. Lead capture forms, lead source reporting, questionnaires, a client portal and basic bookkeeping are also included. (17hats.com)
There is a single plan at $60 a month or $600 a year, with a 7-day free trial that needs no credit card and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Onboarding includes group demos, a 20-minute 1:1 walkthrough and 17hats University. The page's discount figures are inconsistent, so confirm current prices. (17hats.com)
What people outside 17hats and outside Nexa say:
A user blog review praises it. The author has run four businesses from one login since 2018. She says she chose it over Dubsado and HoneyBook for the multiple-brands feature, and she likes the professional look for clients. The post lists no drawbacks. (visionaryactivationco.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for an event planner
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every event planner: 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.
1
Find the work
Land the project
↓
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the work
↓
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
Job / project tracking
Time tracking
Expenses, materials & add-ons
then ↓
3
Bill for it
Send the bill
↓
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Invoicing
Deposits & credits
then ↓
4
Get paid
Collect payment
↓
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
Card / online payments
Automatic reminders
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.)
Watch a job become an invoice
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A event planner'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.
The job Full planning, 120-guest event
ServicePlanning fee1 × $4,500$4,500
→
The invoice builds itself
Subtotal$4,900
Deposit credited−$1,500
Invoice total$3,400
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Calculate Your Full Stack
17hats plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from 17hats
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Data Export. Download clients, invoices, expenses as CSV.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your client list and data.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 1-2 weeks to verify everything transferred.
4
Cancel 17hats — Cancel subscription before next billing cycle.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Event Planners
The median event planner earns $45,000/year. At $720/year, 17hats 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 event planners. You own it like you own your Event management binders and checklists.
Is Nexa actually right for an event planner?
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
Right for you if
You run solo or a small team — like the 40,000 event planners in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for honeybook and a pile of apps that don't talk to each other.
You want invoicing, scheduling, and client tracking in one place — not scattered across five apps.
You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your Event management binders and checklists.
Look elsewhere if
You have a large team that needs enterprise seats, granular roles, and dedicated admin staff — Nexa is built for solo and small operators (1–5), and a bigger platform will serve you better.
You need full payroll for a large team or deep, SKU-level inventory — that's not what Nexa is for.
You're genuinely happy paying monthly and don't mind stitching tools together. No tool fixes a workflow you already like.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small event planners 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.
Event Planners by the numbers — by place
What event planners charge, city by city
$4,502 /eventavg local price
+80%vs national
lowsaturation
~2,845operators
7%growth
$4,331 /eventavg local price
+73%vs national
moderatesaturation
~3,277operators
7%growth
$3,385 /eventavg local price
+35%vs national
moderatesaturation
~1,955operators
6%growth
$3,031 /eventavg local price
+21%vs national
moderatesaturation
~1,261operators
5%growth
$3,171 /eventavg local price
+27%vs national
moderatesaturation
~1,218operators
10%growth
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing and job tracking 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.
What event planners actually deal with
Managing multiple events at different planning stages simultaneously
Vendor coordination across 5-15 vendors per event
Scope creep when clients add requests not in the original contract
HoneyBook and Dubsado fees eating into already competitive margins
A day in the life of a event planner
An event is months of decisions and one day of execution. A new client starts with a call about the budget, guest count, date and what they want people to remember, and from that I build a plan: venue shortlist, a vendor team, a timeline and a budget tracker. Then I'm negotiating contracts with caterers, florists, rentals, entertainment and photographers, reading every clause about deposits, cancellations and overtime. As the date gets close, I'm confirming headcounts, building floor plans and seating charts, and writing a minute-by-minute schedule that every vendor gets. On the day I'm on my feet for twelve hours: vendor arrivals, setup, cues, fixing whatever goes wrong before the client notices, and teardown. Every event has at least one problem, a late delivery, weather, a missing item, and the job is solving it quietly. I charge a planning fee in stages, a deposit to book, payments at milestones and the balance before the event, and I'm careful to keep vendor payments separate from my own.
honeybook: $39/month plus payment processing fees. On large corporate events, the processing fees alone are hundreds of dollars.
dubsado: Setup took forever. The workflows are powerful but any change requires 30 minutes of configuration.
17hats: The interface looks like it was designed in 2015 and hasn't been updated since. Clunky and slow.
Where event planners actually talk shop
r/EventPlanning (Reddit)
r/weddingplanning (Reddit)
r/smallbusiness (Reddit)
EventPlanning.com Forum (Forum)
The Event Planning Blueprint (YouTube)
Eventistry by Alecia (YouTube)
Local event planners on Nexa
Real event planners near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you an event planner? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every event planner on Nexa →
The kit a working event planner owns
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.
Where Nexa wins for an event planner — and where it doesn't
The honest version. Nexa was built to beat the rented stack on the jobs that matter most to an event planner — 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.)
Compare the essential business tools for event planners
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.
The jobThe usual rentalThe verdict
The whole connected stack4 subscriptions · ~$1,032/yrNexa wins big One tool, $279 once — Your event flows from the contract into one record that tracks its planning stage, its vendor roster, and every scope-creep request, so the photo-booth add and the floor-plan change land on the timeline and the invoice without re-keying across HoneyBook, Dubsado, and 17hats. without re-typing. That handoff is the part separate tools can't buy at any price.
CRM & clientsHubSpot →Nexa wins The gala client, the retirement-party client, and the product-launch client each live in one record with their event stage attached, so when the gala adds a photo booth vendor you are not hunting across Dubsado and 17hats to remember who is where.
Scheduling & bookingCalendly →Nexa wins When the product launch venue changes its floor plan you adjust one timeline and the affected dates move with the event, so juggling a 300-person gala, a 75-person retirement party, and a 150-person launch in the same month does not mean three disconnected calendars.
InvoicingFreshBooks →Nexa wins When a client adds a request that was not in the original contract, you log the scope change on the event and it carries straight onto the invoice, so the photo-booth add-on gets billed instead of quietly eating your margin like it does in HoneyBook.
Job & project trackingJobber →Nexa wins Each event holds its 5 to 15 vendors, its timeline, and its budget in one job, so coordinating the gala, the retirement party, and the launch is one record per event rather than scattered vendor lists across Dubsado and 17hats.
If you run real payroll for a team—Not Nexa Use Gusto → — it's better at that, and we'd rather tell you than pretend.
If you run big email campaigns & automations—Not Nexa Use ConvertKit → — it's better at that, and we'd rather tell you than pretend.
If you design graphics & marketing assets—Not Nexa Use Canva → — it's better at that, and we'd rather tell you 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.
Competitor pricing verified 2026-06-12.
How To Read This Page
We make Nexa. It is one of the two options compared here, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make 17hats's case the way we would want ours made — their strengths above are their own published feature list, not our summary of it.
The prices are 17hats's published list prices, checked on the date shown in the sources below. Plans change; check theirs before you decide.
No customer quotes appear on this page because we do not have any from event planners we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — 17hats on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:17hats's own pricing page is the source for every figure above, read on the date shown in the sources section below.
We are not neutral about subscriptions, and that is the argument, not a hidden assumption: software you pay for once is cheaper over three years than software you rent, unless you need something only the rented one does.
How we put this guide together
We build an event planner'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 event planner — 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.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingHoneyBook $432/yr, Dubsado $420/yr, 17hats $720/yr, QuickBooks $456/yr — taken from each company's published plans, last verified September 2026. Pricing moves; each name above links straight to that vendor’s own pricing page so you can confirm it before you decide.
Income contextThe $45,000 median we cite for the typical event planner is occupational median annual pay from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics), compiled April 2026. We use it only to show software spend as a share of real income — your own numbers will differ.
The field's own bodiesWe anchor what event planners actually need to the people who set the standards — MPI. We don't speak for them; we point you to them so you can weigh this guide against the profession's own.
Three-year mathMulti-year totals are today's list price multiplied by the number of years. No price rise is projected, so the figure can be checked against the vendor's own pricing page; if they raise it, the real cost is higher.
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.
FAQ
Is Nexa really a 17hats replacement?
For solo event planners and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. 17hats may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does 17hats do that Nexa doesn't?
17hats has features like All-in-one for service businesses and Strong workflow automation (chain triggers) that some businesses rely on. For most solo event planners, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $60/month, Nexa pays for itself in 4.7 months. After that: $720 saved every year.
Can I pay in installments?
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.