What first aid instructors need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of a first aid business well. At $34/month on the plan that does the core job, it offers class scheduling, packages, gift certificates, coupons, deposits, custom intake forms, cancelation policies, payments through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo, and QuickBooks and Google Calendar integrations. Its higher plans add text reminders and an appointment waitlist. It does not cover the instructor-specific paperwork: per-course roster fees, renewal dates and a teaching log for each discipline, or quotes and invoices for employer clients are not among its named features.
Nexa covers the business-client and record-keeping side. It has invoices, estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a public booking page with intake forms and group-class capacity, reschedule and cancel links, expenses, and jobs with costing and profit per job, which can track what each class costs. Notes can be checklists linked to a client, which could hold renewal dates. It has no text messages, no waitlist, no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file) and no QuickBooks or Xero sync. Its automated emails, including reminders, sequences and workflows, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, and it is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk.
Over three years Acuity Scheduling on the $34/month plan costs $1,224 ($408 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 over three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99/month; without it, Nexa runs on one device. Stay with Acuity Scheduling if text reminders, a waitlist or Google Calendar sync matter to your classes. Consider Nexa if you mainly invoice employers and want one tool for quotes, invoices and class costs, and you can accept that its automated emails send only while Nexa is open.
Our read for first aid instructors: Stay with Acuity Scheduling if text reminders, a waitlist or Google Calendar sync matter to your classes; consider Nexa only if employer invoicing matters most and you accept that its automated emails send only while Nexa is open.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Acuity Scheduling costs first aid 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 first aid 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 the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every first aid 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.
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 first aid 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 first aid 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 first aid instructors. You own it like you own your CPR manikins (Prestan adult + infant, AHA-compliant).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small first aid 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.
I'm at a corporate office by 8 with my car full: adult and infant manikins, a bag of face shields and lung bags, AED trainers, and a box of gauze and triangular bandages. Twelve staff are booked for an on-site BLS course, so I set up stations in their conference room and check that each manikin's compression clicker works. At 9 I run the video segments and do the skills demo: scene safety, checking responsiveness and breathing, 30 compressions at 100 to 120 a minute and at least two inches deep, then two breaths with a pocket mask. Late morning is rotations. I'm on my knees correcting hand position and recoil, and calling it out when people lean on the chest. After lunch is AED practice with the trainers, two-rescuer CPR, and choking relief for adults and infants. At 3 we do bleeding control and bandaging, pressure dressings and a tourniquet station. At 5 it's the written test and the skills check-offs, one person at a time. I pack the manikins and drive home, then submit the course roster to my AHA training center, pay for the eCards, and email the contact person the completion list. Next week's public class has dropped from 8 people to 4, so I have to decide whether to hold it or move them, and I still haven't invoiced last week's two-classroom day. I also write down everyone's card expiration two years out, so I can remind them when renewal comes up.
Real first aid instructors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a first aid instructor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every first aid instructor on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
You paid for these once because good tools last. That's the bar your software should clear too — priced like a tool you own, $279 once, not a subscription that costs more than your kit every year.
We build a first aid 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 first aid 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 first aid 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 first aid 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