What barre instructors need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of a barre business well. It has class scheduling, packages, subscriptions, memberships, gift certificates, coupons, deposits, intake forms and cancelation policies. The Standard plan adds text reminders and an appointment waitlist, which matter when popular classes fill. Instructors who teach at several sites can use separate calendars (up to 6 on Standard, up to 36 on Premium), and it integrates with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Stripe, Square, PayPal and QuickBooks. It does not appear to cover the trade's other recurring needs. Nothing in its feature list tracks music licensing renewals, rules for which classes may be recorded, or instructor CPR/AED and certification expiry dates. You would keep those in a separate system.
Nexa covers some of the same ground. It has a public booking page with intake forms, group-class capacity, and reschedule and cancel links. It also has jobs that can be assigned to team members with a crew view, time tracking, a payroll CSV of hours x rate, notes with tick-box checklists, and a task board. These could hold a licensing renewal or a credential checklist, though neither is built for that. Nexa has no waitlist, no recurring booking series, no text messages and no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file). Its reminders and other automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device, which is awkward for instructors who move between sites. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or onboarding.
Over three years Acuity Scheduling costs $1,224 at $34 a month ($408 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa is cheaper, but it lacks a waitlist and text reminders, which barre studios depend on. Instructors who need those, or who book across several calendars, should stay with Acuity Scheduling and track licenses and certifications in a separate tool. A solo instructor with small classes who can live with email-only reminders, no waitlist and no calendar sync could consider Nexa for the savings.
Our read for barre instructors: Stay with Acuity Scheduling if you rely on a class waitlist, text reminders or calendar sync, since Nexa has none of them; Nexa suits only a solo instructor with small classes.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Acuity Scheduling costs barre instructors $408/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 8.2 months it has cost less than Acuity Scheduling, 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 Acuity Scheduling 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 barre instructors: Stay with Acuity Scheduling 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 $1,224 for Acuity Scheduling over three years.
Scheduling, client records 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. Acuity Scheduling solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $34/month — $408 a year, from Acuity Scheduling'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 $945 less.
If Acuity Scheduling 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 | Acuity Scheduling | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✗ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $34/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,224 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Acuity Scheduling come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Acuity Scheduling lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Acuity Scheduling's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Acuity Scheduling is the better call if you need intake forms specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Acuity says it is for "anyone in the business of time," from solo practitioners to multi-location teams. It lists beauty, business services (consulting, coaching), wellness, fitness, visual and performing arts, and education. (acuityscheduling.com)
What people outside Acuity Scheduling 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 your clients — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every barre instructor: 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 your clients. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
A new client finds you and books a time — no phone tag, no double-booking.
The session itself — with the client history, notes, packages, and add-ons right there instead of in three different places.
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 your clients. (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 barre instructor'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.
Acuity Scheduling plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median barre instructor earns $40,000/year. At $408/year, Acuity Scheduling 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 barre instructors. You own it like you own your Portable ballet barres (or studio installation).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small barre instructors 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.
Scheduling, client records 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 studio opens at 6 and I'm there early to set out mats, light balls, resistance loops and two-pound weights along the barre for my 6:30 crew of fourteen. The class runs warm-up, arms with the weights, thighs at the barre in first and second position, seat work, then a core series on the mat, and I cue tuck and pulses by ear, walking the room to correct knees drifting past toes. At 9:30 I teach a smaller midmorning class of eight, mostly regulars who came off the four-week intro deal, and I learn the name of the one new person. At 11 I have a private client in session three of a five-session series; she's recovering from a hamstring strain, so we modify the thigh work and do more stretching. At noon I build next week's playlist to the right tempo for each section, check it is from the licensed catalog, and draft next month's schedule. A teacher texts that she's sick for tomorrow's 6pm, so I message the sub list until someone takes it. At 4 and at 6 I teach again, and between classes I wipe down the barre and reset the equipment. At 8 I sit down with the sign-in sheet, count class-pack visits against five-class, ten-class and monthly unlimited members, work out my per-class pay versus the studio's cut, send the private client her invoice for the remaining two sessions, and message the intro-month people whose trial ends this week.
Real barre instructors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a barre instructor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every barre instructor 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 $790–$3,300 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 barre instructor'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 barre instructor — 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 barre instructors and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Acuity Scheduling may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Acuity Scheduling has features like Intake forms and Package and subscription billing that some businesses rely on. For most solo barre instructors, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $34/month, Nexa pays for itself in 8.2 months. After that: $408 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