Acuity Scheduling vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Cooking Teachers
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 Cooking Teachers? Our Read
What cooking teachers need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Sales tax on cooking classes depends on how the class is structured and priced, so invoicing has to separate line items. In California, the instruction fee is exempt as an educational service. If the meal has its own separate price, that price is taxable. A single lump-sum price for a hands-on class is generally treated as nontaxable instruction. Demonstration-style classes, where students don't take part, are taxable. Cookbooks, appliances and kitchen tools sold to students are generally taxable. (cdtfa.ca.gov)
Private classes and large groups are commonly billed with tiered cancellation refunds, so the software needs to track the booking date, the event date and a deposit or processing fee. One cooking school refunds public classes minus a 5% processing fee when cancelled at least 10 days ahead, and treats no-shows as non-refundable. For private classes and groups of 6 or more, it refunds fully (minus 5%) more than 20 days out, 50% from 20 to 10 days out, and nothing inside 10 days. (lacuisineparis.com)
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics classes cooking teachers who teach for recreation or self-enrichment under Self-Enrichment Teachers (SOC 25-3021). For May 2023 it reports 272,110 workers, a mean annual wage of $52,890 and a median of $45,330. The largest employing industry is Other Schools and Instruction, with 154,120 workers. Many teachers in this occupation hold multiple short-term engagements or work for several venues, so income tracking by venue or class is useful. (bls.gov)
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of a cooking class well. It has class scheduling, packages, gift certificates, coupons, deposits, cancelation policies and custom intake forms. Payments run through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo. On the Standard plan it adds text reminders and an appointment waitlist, which help fill a class when a seat opens up. It also connects to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and QuickBooks. Its feature list doesn't mention separate invoice line items for instruction, meal and kitchen tools, so a teacher who has to keep taxable and exempt amounts apart will need to check how it handles that. Its feature list also doesn't show tiered refunds based on how far ahead a private class or group cancels.
Nexa covers the money side more directly. It produces invoices and estimates, tracks sales tax, and has expenses, profit and loss, and per-job costing and profit, which suits teachers who work for several venues and want income by class. Its public booking page supports group-class capacity, intake forms, and reschedule and cancel links, and clients can pay by card through your own Stripe account. It has no waitlist, no recurring booking series, no text messages, no QuickBooks sync and no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file). Its automated emails, including reminders, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk.
Over three years Acuity Scheduling on the $34 plan costs $1,224 ($408 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa is far cheaper, but if you rely on Acuity's waitlist, text reminders, Google Calendar sync or QuickBooks connection, Nexa has no equivalent for any of them. Teachers who depend on those should stay. Teachers who mainly need invoicing, sales tax tracking and per-class profit, and who can keep the app open for reminders, could reasonably move to Nexa.
Our read for cooking teachers: Stay with Acuity Scheduling if you use its waitlist, text reminders or calendar and QuickBooks connections, since Nexa lacks all of them; switch only if invoicing and tax tracking matter more to you.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Acuity Scheduling costs cooking teachers $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 cooking teachers: 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.
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?
At 2 I prep for tonight's knife-skills class with a shrimp scampi finish, eight students. I write out the recipe cards, check the dietary forms (one gluten-free, one shellfish allergy, who gets chicken thighs and a separate board and pan), and sharpen eight chef's knives on the whetstone, 1000-grit then 6000. At 4 I go to the wholesale market for shrimp, sixteen-to-twenty count, garlic, shallots, parsley, lemons, and a case of onions and carrots for practice cuts, and I keep the receipts for the passthrough on the class fee. At 5 I get to the rental kitchen and set up the mise: each station with a cutting board on a damp towel, a bench scraper, a bowl for scraps, and a tray of vegetables to practice on. Class starts at 6:30. I teach the pinch grip and claw hand first, then dice, brunoise, julienne and chiffonade, walking the line to fix people rocking the knife with the tip off the board. Then we peel and devein the shrimp, and I demo the scampi: butter and olive oil, garlic and shallots, white wine to deglaze, reduce, shrimp in for two minutes, lemon and parsley over linguine, with the gluten-free pasta in its own pot. At 9 everyone eats what they cooked, and we clean down the kitchen as the rental requires. At 11 I reconcile the market receipts against student fees and the kitchen hourly rate, and I answer a student who wants to cancel next week's seafood night after I've already ordered the lobsters.
Per-class ingredient cost passthrough — six lobsters for the seafood night
Kitchen rental on top of class fee
Dietary restrictions intake (gluten-free, allergies) per student
Class cancellation policy on perishable-bought ingredients
Couples night vs corporate team-building pricing
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 Cooking Teachers
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 cooking teacher
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every cooking teacher: 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 Cooking Teachers
The median cooking teacher 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 cooking teachers. You own it like you own your Commercial-grade prep kitchen (rented or owned).
Is Nexa actually right for a cooking teacher?
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 cooking teachers in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for calendly 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 Commercial-grade prep kitchen (rented or owned).
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 cooking teachers 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 cooking teachers actually deal with
Per-class ingredient cost passthrough — six lobsters for the seafood night
Kitchen rental on top of class fee
Dietary restrictions intake (gluten-free, allergies) per student
Class cancellation policy on perishable-bought ingredients
Couples night vs corporate team-building pricing
A day in the life of a cooking teacher
At 2 I prep for tonight's knife-skills class with a shrimp scampi finish, eight students. I write out the recipe cards, check the dietary forms (one gluten-free, one shellfish allergy, who gets chicken thighs and a separate board and pan), and sharpen eight chef's knives on the whetstone, 1000-grit then 6000. At 4 I go to the wholesale market for shrimp, sixteen-to-twenty count, garlic, shallots, parsley, lemons, and a case of onions and carrots for practice cuts, and I keep the receipts for the passthrough on the class fee. At 5 I get to the rental kitchen and set up the mise: each station with a cutting board on a damp towel, a bench scraper, a bowl for scraps, and a tray of vegetables to practice on. Class starts at 6:30. I teach the pinch grip and claw hand first, then dice, brunoise, julienne and chiffonade, walking the line to fix people rocking the knife with the tip off the board. Then we peel and devein the shrimp, and I demo the scampi: butter and olive oil, garlic and shallots, white wine to deglaze, reduce, shrimp in for two minutes, lemon and parsley over linguine, with the gluten-free pasta in its own pot. At 9 everyone eats what they cooked, and we clean down the kitchen as the rental requires. At 11 I reconcile the market receipts against student fees and the kitchen hourly rate, and I answer a student who wants to cancel next week's seafood night after I've already ordered the lobsters.
Ingredient sourcing relationships (a meat purveyor, a produce CSA)
Why cooking teachers leave the big platforms
calendly: No per-class ingredient cost or dietary intake field.
acuity: No couples-night vs corporate pricing tiers.
honeybook: Built for weddings. Cooking class series don't fit the project lifecycle.
Local cooking teachers on Nexa
Real cooking teachers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a cooking teacher? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every cooking teacher on Nexa →
The kit a working cooking teacher owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Core kitEssential
Commercial prep kitchen access
$1,000–$8,000
Core kitEssential
Mise en place station kit
$200–$900
Core kitEssential
Chef knife sets per station
$300–$1,500
Core kitEssential
Induction burners for class
$300–$1,500
Core kitEssential
Cookware sets
$400–$2,000
Core kitEssential
Overhead camera and monitor
$150–$700
Upgrade
Refrigeration and storage
$1,000–$5,000
The core kit, bought once$2,350–$14,600
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $2,350–$14,600 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 cooking teachers 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 cooking teacher'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 cooking teacher — 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 cooking teacher 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 cooking teachers 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 cooking teachers, 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.