What henna artists need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of a henna practice well. It has online booking, custom intake forms, deposits, cancelation policies, packages, gift certificates and coupons. Payments run through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo. It syncs with Google Calendar and Apple Calendar and connects to QuickBooks. Text reminders come with the plan that includes memberships and packages, and they matter for clients who forget an appointment. It does not cover the trade's two compliance needs. Nothing in its feature list tracks licensing or permits by state or county, which matters for anyone who works across counties or states. Nothing in the list shows invoices that tax services and product sales differently. That split matters when an artist sells cones or kits alongside henna work. Those jobs stay with you.
Nexa is stronger on the money side. It has invoices, estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, expenses, profit and loss, sales tax tracking, and a public booking page with intake forms and reschedule and cancel links. It also has a simple stock count per product. It does not have text messages, Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file), a waitlist, or QuickBooks or Xero sync. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so a closed laptop means no reminders go out. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Like Acuity, it has no listed permit tracking.
Over three years, the Acuity plan that does the core job costs $34 a month, which is $408 a year and $1,224 in total. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. Adding optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings the three-year total to $458.64. Without Cloud Sync, Nexa runs on one device. If your clients rely on text reminders or your calendar lives in Google Calendar, stay with Acuity Scheduling. Consider Nexa only if you book mostly by direct message, you want invoices, estimates and bookkeeping in one place, and you are comfortable working from one device. Either way, keep your permit and tax-rule tracking in a separate compliance record.
Our read for henna artists: Stay with Acuity Scheduling if you rely on text reminders and Google Calendar sync, which Nexa lacks. Switch only if you want invoicing and bookkeeping more than booking features.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Acuity Scheduling costs henna artists $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 henna artists: 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 henna artist: 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.)
Acuity Scheduling plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median henna artist earns $28,000/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 henna artists. You own it like you own your Henna paste and application cones.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small henna artists 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.
Your people are already online — swapping real numbers, tool picks, and war stories. Here's where to find them.
Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →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.
Saturday: South Asian wedding mehendi party ($800, 4 hours, bridal party of 8). Sunday: set up at a street festival doing $15-30 designs for walk-ups all day. Tuesday: private appointment in your studio ($40 for a hand design). Three different business models in one week. Paste costs $3-5 per cone and you go through 4-6 at the wedding alone. Festival booth fee was $100. Your booking is a mix of phone calls, Instagram DMs, and a Google Form.
Real henna artists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a henna artist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every henna artist 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 henna artist'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 henna artist — 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 henna artists 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 henna artists, 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