What childbirth educators need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Acuity Scheduling handles the booking side of a childbirth-education practice well. The $34/month plan covers class scheduling, intake forms, packages and subscriptions, gift certificates, HIPAA compliance (Powerhouse) and a Squarespace integration. Its Standard tier adds text reminders and an appointment waitlist. Where it falls short is the other half of the job. Nothing in its feature list tracks a credential's renewal cycle or continuing-education hours. That matters here: Lamaze (LCCE) needs 25 contact hours every three years, and ICEA needs 24 credits. ICEA's fixed expiry dates are also the educator's own responsibility, and its office says it cannot be held responsible for a missed deadline. An educator holding both credentials has two separate cycles, hour counts and fee schedules to watch, and Acuity does not help with that.
Nexa covers a similar booking ground: a public booking page with intake forms, group-class capacity, and reschedule and cancel links. It adds invoices, payment plans and a client pay portal that runs through your own Stripe account. It has no text messages, no waitlist, no recurring booking series and no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file). Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, and it is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. It does not list credential or continuing-education tracking either.
Over three years Acuity's $34 plan costs $1,224 ($408 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99/month, which you need if you want it on more than one device. If you rely on text reminders or a waitlist, stay with Acuity. If you mainly want to take class bookings and payments and can live without those, Nexa is the cheaper option. Either way, tracking LCCE and ICEA renewals and hours is a separate job, so keep a dedicated credential and continuing-education tracker alongside whichever you use.
Our read for childbirth educators: Neither tool tracks credential renewals or continuing-education hours, so use a dedicated credential tracker for that and keep Acuity Scheduling for bookings if you need text reminders or a waitlist.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Acuity Scheduling costs childbirth educators $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 childbirth educators: Neither Acuity Scheduling nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with software built for it. Nexa only makes sense beside it, at $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 the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every childbirth educator: 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.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed engagement — the terms and the retainer set.
The work you're paid for — with the hours, tasks, and expenses tracked against the engagement instead of reconstructed at month-end.
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 actual 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 childbirth educator'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 childbirth educator 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 childbirth educators. You own it like you own your Pelvic model and baby doll (for demonstration).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small childbirth educators 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.
At 9 I prep for tonight's 6:30 class, week three of a six-week series with eight couples. Tonight is the stages of labor and comfort measures, so I pack the birth balls, rebozos, the knitted uterus and pelvis model, and handouts on counter-pressure and positions. At 11 I have a one-on-one prenatal consult with a mom whose partner travels for work, so we go over her birth preferences, what to pack in the hospital bag, and when to call the unit (contractions five minutes apart, a minute long, for an hour). At 1 I call back a couple from last week because the partner has questions about epidurals, nitrous and unmedicated coping, and I explain the options without steering them, then tell them to bring the medical questions to their provider. At 3 I have a call with the hospital's education coordinator about renewing our partnership for next year, which pays a per-couple rate much lower than my private series, and we talk class sizes and room booking. At 6:30 I teach for two hours: a slow-dancing position for back labor, hip squeezes, breathing through a simulated contraction with ice cubes in their hands, then a tour of what happens at admission. One mom sends word that she's in labor at 36 weeks and will miss the rest, so after class I work out her partial refund under my policy. At 9 I log attendance, write down which partners came, and send the week's handout by email.
Real childbirth educators near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a childbirth educator? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every childbirth educator 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 $740–$3,110 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 childbirth educator'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 childbirth educator — 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 childbirth educators 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 childbirth educators, 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