What photographers need from their software, from sources outside 17hats and outside Nexa:
17hats covers most of a photographer's day-to-day admin well. It has quotes, contracts and invoices combined into one document, and clients can initial and sign online. Invoicing supports payment schedules, saved cards and auto-pay. Online scheduling takes payment at booking. It also has 14 pipelines, lead capture, questionnaires, a client portal, built-in texting and workflow automation. That suits a self-employed photographer who handles booking, billing and client follow-up alone. Its feature list does not mention per-image records such as title, file name, publication month, registration status or work-made-for-hire status, which copyright registration depends on. Plan to keep that register separately.
Nexa covers a lot of the same business ground. It has estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal where clients pay by card and sign estimates. It also has a CRM with a pipeline board and public lead form, a public booking page with intake forms, reminders, and bookkeeping with profit and loss and 1099 summaries. Its limits matter for this trade. It has no text messaging or calls. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no Google Calendar sync, only an .ics export. Card payments go only through your own Stripe account. Its automated emails, including sequences, workflows and reminders, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, which is a real risk for booking and payment reminders. It is also software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years, 17hats at $60 a month costs $2,160, or $720 a year. Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, plus $4.99 a month for optional Cloud Sync, which brings three years to $458.64 with sync. The savings are large. But if you rely on texting clients, always-on automated emails, or vendor onboarding and support, stay on 17hats. Consider Nexa only if you work from one device, don't need those things, and mainly want low-cost invoicing, booking and bookkeeping.
Our read for photographers: Stay with 17hats if you rely on built-in texting, automations that run without your device open, or vendor onboarding; Nexa's much lower three-year cost only suits a single-device, self-supported setup.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
17hats costs photographers $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.
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 photographers: Stay with 17hats 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 $2,160 for 17hats over three years.
Client records, scheduling and invoicing 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.
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.
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 | 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.
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.
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.
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)
What people outside 17hats 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 photographer: 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 photographer'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.
17hats plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median photographer earns $42,000/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 photographers. You own it like you own your Camera bodies (Canon R5/R6, Sony A7IV, Nikon Z6 — $2,500+ each).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small photographers 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.
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
Your people are already online — swapping real numbers, tool picks, and war stories. Here's where to find them.
General photography questions, gear advice
Open on Reddit →Wedding-specific advice, pricing strategies
Open on Reddit →Running a photography business
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Client records, scheduling and invoicing 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.
The shoot is the smallest part of a wedding. Weeks before, I've walked the venue at the same hour the ceremony starts to see where the light falls, built a shot list with the couple, and confirmed timing with the planner so the portraits don't get squeezed. On the day it's ten hours on my feet with two bodies, three lenses and backup cards, reading the room so I'm in position before the moment happens, not after. Then the real work starts. A wedding comes back as three to four thousand frames; I cull that to around six hundred, then edit every one for exposure, colour and skin, which is thirty to forty hours at the desk. The gallery goes out in six to eight weeks, and in between I'm answering where-are-our-photos emails. The money side is its own job: a retainer to hold the date months out, the balance before the wedding, album upsells after, and second-shooter pay on my side. In the off-season I'm doing engagement sessions and family minis to keep cash coming, and I'm always booking next year while I edit this one.
Real photographers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a photographer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every photographer on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $6,850–$19,900 on tools that last for years, and never thought twice. So why should the software cost more than your whole kit — every single year? Hold it to the same standard as a good tool: $279, once.
We build a photographer'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 photographer — 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 photographers 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.
17hats has features like All-in-one for service businesses and Strong workflow automation (chain triggers) that some businesses rely on. For most solo photographers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $60/month, Nexa pays for itself in 4.7 months. After that: $720 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