Acuity Scheduling vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Bridge Instructors
Acuity Scheduling
$34/mo ($408/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 8.2 months at Acuity Scheduling's current price.
Does Acuity Scheduling Fit Bridge Instructors? Our Read
What bridge instructors need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Teachers need to track ACBL membership status and certification, because several program benefits depend on them. Listing a class in the ACBL Find a Bridge Class directory requires a paid ACBL membership in good standing. Teachers without a recognized certification must submit a Teaching Experience Verification Form before their profile is activated. Certified teachers get directory listing and recruitment incentives. (acbl.org)
Teachers who run school or lifelong-learning classes need to keep records and meet deadlines to claim the ACBL stipend. It is $350 per qualifying class of at least 8 students with 16 or more hours of instruction and play, and the school may pay the teacher no more than $150. A school administrator must sign the request, and it is due within 30 days of class completion. A teacher can receive up to five stipends per semester. (acbl.org)
Teachers who advertise courses need to track ad spend and submission dates. ACBL's advertising reimbursement program pays 50% of eligible ad costs, capped at $500 per campaign. Receipts are due within 60 days of the ad running, and a teacher cannot use both Boost and CAP for the same course. Boost applications are due at least 6 weeks before the course starts, and the course must be tuition-charging with 6 or more classes totalling 9 or more hours. (acbl.org)
Teachers need to record recruiter credit for students who join ACBL. Students in Boost and CAP programs sign up as free Guest Members. Teachers are automatically registered as recruiters and can earn up to $30 per new member. Guests who convert to full membership within 120 days earn the teacher an incentive. Teachers also need to report outcomes and follow up with leads for Boost. (acbl.org)
Class pricing is usually a small per-session fee. Fees are sometimes split with the host club, or billed to the club per attendee, and free classes often lead to private-lesson requests. Teachers therefore need per-class attendance and fee-split records and a way to handle private lessons. Practitioner posts from 2010 mention $10 per two-hour class, about £6 to £8.50 per session in the UK and Denmark, and a 50:50 split with the club. These figures are old and anecdotal. (bridgebase.com)
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of a bridge teacher's work well. It has class scheduling, packages and subscriptions for multi-week courses, coupons, custom intake forms, cancelation policies, and payments through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo. It also syncs with Google Calendar and Apple Calendar. Nothing in its feature list tracks ACBL membership or certification status, stipend paperwork and the 30-day deadline, advertising receipts, or recruiter credit. A teacher would keep those records somewhere else. Per-class fee splits with a host club also have no named feature.
Nexa covers a public booking page with intake forms, group-class capacity, and reschedule and cancel links. It also has invoices that could bill a club per attendee, a CRM with tags and notes that could hold each student's ACBL status, and expense tracking that could hold ad spend. Online card payments go only through the teacher's own Stripe account. It does not have waitlists, recurring booking series, Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file), or text messages. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of the teacher's devices. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Like Acuity, it has no feature built for the ACBL stipend, reimbursement or recruiter rules, so the teacher would still do that record-keeping by hand.
Over three years Acuity at $34 a month costs $408 a year, or $1,224. Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa is cheaper. Class fees are small, so that matters to a teacher running a few classes a year. A teacher who already uses Acuity for class booking and packages, or who relies on Google Calendar sync or a waitlist, can reasonably stay. A teacher who mostly needs a booking page, per-student notes and simple invoicing, and who works from one device, can reasonably move to Nexa. Either way, the ACBL paperwork needs its own system.
Our read for bridge instructors: Neither tool tracks ACBL stipend, advertising or recruiter records, so choose Acuity for waitlists and calendar sync or Nexa for the lower three-year cost.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Acuity Scheduling costs bridge 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.
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 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 bridge instructors: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $279 once against $1,224 for Acuity Scheduling over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need scheduler, connect crm and invoicing in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Acuity Scheduling if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Acuity Scheduling's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
Bridge is taught in fours, which makes scheduling its own small war. My morning class is beginners, six retirees who are still learning that a one-no-trump opener describes a balanced fifteen-to-seventeen points, and I have pre-dealt every hand the night before so each deal teaches exactly one idea, the kind of preparation no one sees on the invoice. We bid, we play it out, and then we play the very same deal again with the bidding boxes so they feel why the auction mattered. Midday I run an online session on BBO for a couple who moved to Arizona but still want their lesson; I set up teaching hands they can see on screen and we talk through a finesse. The afternoon group is intermediate, working on negative doubles and when to compete, and they would be insulted to sit with the beginners, so it is a wholly separate lesson with its own materials. Payment is the comedy of this trade: half hand me a check at the table, one always says she will get me next week, and I keep a running tally in my head of who is paid up through which week of an eight-week course. When someone cancels, the table is short, and three people came to play a four-person game.
Students learn in stable partnerships and groups, so a single absence breaks the table and a four-person lesson can't run with three
Beginners and intermediates can't share a class, yet both want the same weekly slot, forcing me to prep two separate curricula
Most of my students are retirees who pay by cash or check at the table, and reconciling who's paid for a multi-week course is a headache
Teaching deals must be crafted to illustrate one specific concept, and that hand-preparation work before every lesson is invisible and unbilled
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.
What Acuity Scheduling Actually Costs Bridge Instructors
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.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$408
Year 2$408
Year 3$408
Three years of Acuity Scheduling$1,224
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-by-Feature
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.
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.
Acuity Scheduling'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 Acuity Scheduling Does Better
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.
Intake forms
Package and subscription billing
Gift certificates
HIPAA compliance (Powerhouse)
Squarespace integration
A smaller bill up front: plans start at $20/month, against $279 paid once for Nexa.
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.
What Acuity Scheduling Is Built For
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)
The Starter plan costs $16/month billed annually ($20 monthly) and includes 1 calendar, client self-scheduling, email reminders, custom client forms and automatic time zone conversion. (acuityscheduling.com)
Payments run through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo on all plans. The Standard plan ($27/month annual, up to 6 calendars) adds text reminders, an appointment waitlist, memberships and packages, and gift certificates. (acuityscheduling.com)
The Premium plan ($49/month annual, up to 36 calendars) adds an AI Booking Assistant, a Business Associate Agreement for HIPAA compliance, removal of the Acuity logo, multiple time zones for staff or locations, and custom API and CSS access. Unlimited calendars require the Enterprise team. (acuityscheduling.com)
All plans have a 7-day free trial with no credit card required. There is no free plan beyond the trial. (acuityscheduling.com)
The site lists 15 integrations, including Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Stripe, Square, PayPal, QuickBooks, Zoom, Google Meet, Zapier, Mailchimp and Squarespace. (acuityscheduling.com)
Named features include online booking, class scheduling, packages, subscriptions, gift certificates, coupons, deposits, custom intake forms, cancelation policies, a mobile app and a website builder. The site is offered in 6 languages. (acuityscheduling.com)
What people outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa say:
Software Finder shows a 4.5 rating from 25 reviews, with category scores of 9/10 for ease of use, value for money, customer support and functionality. The most-cited strengths are ease of use, integrations, automated email and text reminders that reviewers credit with reducing no-shows, and customizable emails and calendar views. (softwarefinder.com)
Software Finder reviewers also raise drawbacks. Some small businesses find it expensive, and one reported unresolved booking issues and slow support replies. Booking form appearance is limited, and add-ons are checkboxes only, so customers can't choose quantities. Stripe refunds need a separate login to Stripe. One business said it lacked features as its staff and resources grew, and a healthcare reviewer said it isn't suited to HIPAA-regulated practices. (softwarefinder.com)
Secret's page has no user reviews. Its editorial text calls the product user-friendly, customizable and affordable. It also lists as cons that pricing may be expensive for tight budgets, advanced features are limited, and some third-party integrations may be lacking. (joinsecret.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a bridge instructor
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every bridge 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 the actual work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
1
Find the work
Land the client
↓
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed engagement — the terms and the retainer set.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the work
↓
The work you're paid for — with the hours, tasks, and expenses tracked against the engagement instead of reconstructed at month-end.
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 actual work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Calculate Your Full Stack
Acuity Scheduling plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Acuity Scheduling
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Export. Download your client list and appointment history.
2
Set up Nexa Scheduler — 15-minute setup. Import clients and recreate your appointment types.
3
Update your links — Replace your Acuity booking link everywhere — website, email, social.
4
Cancel Acuity — Cancel Squarespace subscription. Download a final backup of your data.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Bridge Instructors
The median Bridge Instructor earns $42,000/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 bridge instructors. You own it like you own your Pre-dealt teaching hands and duplicate boards to repeat the same deal.
Is Nexa actually right for a bridge instructor?
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 18,000 bridge instructors in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack 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 Pre-dealt teaching hands and duplicate boards to repeat the same deal.
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 bridge 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.
What bridge instructors actually deal with
Students learn in stable partnerships and groups, so a single absence breaks the table and a four-person lesson can't run with three
Beginners and intermediates can't share a class, yet both want the same weekly slot, forcing me to prep two separate curricula
Most of my students are retirees who pay by cash or check at the table, and reconciling who's paid for a multi-week course is a headache
Teaching deals must be crafted to illustrate one specific concept, and that hand-preparation work before every lesson is invisible and unbilled
A day in the life of a bridge instructor
Bridge is taught in fours, which makes scheduling its own small war. My morning class is beginners, six retirees who are still learning that a one-no-trump opener describes a balanced fifteen-to-seventeen points, and I have pre-dealt every hand the night before so each deal teaches exactly one idea, the kind of preparation no one sees on the invoice. We bid, we play it out, and then we play the very same deal again with the bidding boxes so they feel why the auction mattered. Midday I run an online session on BBO for a couple who moved to Arizona but still want their lesson; I set up teaching hands they can see on screen and we talk through a finesse. The afternoon group is intermediate, working on negative doubles and when to compete, and they would be insulted to sit with the beginners, so it is a wholly separate lesson with its own materials. Payment is the comedy of this trade: half hand me a check at the table, one always says she will get me next week, and I keep a running tally in my head of who is paid up through which week of an eight-week course. When someone cancels, the table is short, and three people came to play a four-person game.
The tools a working bridge instructor actually owns
Pre-dealt teaching hands and duplicate boards to repeat the same deal
Bidding boxes and convention cards for the table
A projector or large screen to display the four hands and the auction
Bridge Base Online (BBO) for running online lessons and practice
A bidding-system reference (2/1, Standard American, Acol) and convention notes
A dealing machine or hand-record generator for crafting teaching deals
Local bridge instructors on Nexa
Real bridge instructors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a bridge instructor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every bridge instructor on Nexa →
The kit a working bridge instructor owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Core kitEssential
Duplicate boards and bidding boxes
$200–$900
Core kitEssential
Playing cards, bulk
$40–$180
Core kitEssential
Projector and screen
$200–$800
Core kitEssential
Card tables and chairs
$150–$600
Core kitEssential
Laptop and dealing software
$900–$2,500
Upgrade
Dealing machine
$2,000–$8,000
The core kit, bought once$1,490–$4,980
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $1,490–$4,980 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.
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 Acuity Scheduling'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 Acuity Scheduling'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 bridge instructors we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Acuity Scheduling on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Acuity Scheduling'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 a bridge 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 bridge 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.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingCalendly $144/yr, Acuity Scheduling $408/yr, HoneyBook $432/yr, FreshBooks $516/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 $42,000 median we cite for the typical bridge instructor 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.
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 Acuity Scheduling replacement?
For solo bridge 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.
What does Acuity Scheduling do that Nexa doesn't?
Acuity Scheduling has features like Intake forms and Package and subscription billing that some businesses rely on. For most solo bridge instructors, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $34/month, Nexa pays for itself in 8.2 months. After that: $408 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.