What homeschool consultants need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of a consultant's practice well. Clients can self-schedule, get email reminders, and fill in custom intake forms. Packages, memberships, coupons, deposits and gift certificates are available. Payments run through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo, and Zoom, Google Calendar and QuickBooks are among its 15 integrations. It does not cover the compliance work that defines this trade. Nothing in its feature list tracks each state's rule on who may evaluate, such as Virginia's licensed-teacher or master's-degree requirement. Nothing tracks each family's own due dates, such as the August 1 evaluation deadline in Virginia or the dates a New York parent lists in the IHIP. Nothing tracks quarterly hours or the 80% coverage figure, or drafts an evaluation letter.
Nexa covers the business side with one-time software: invoices, estimates, recurring invoices and payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM with a lead form, and a public booking page with intake forms, group-class capacity, and reschedule and cancel links. It also has missions with sub-steps and templates, a task board, checklist notes linked to a client, time tracking and bookkeeping. These could hold deadlines by hand, but nothing in what we know of Nexa is built around state credential rules, per-family due dates or letter templates. It has no text messages, no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file), no waitlist and no recurring booking series. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. You own and run it yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years Acuity's $34/month plan comes to $1,224 ($408 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. If you are happy with Acuity for booking, keep it, especially if you rely on text reminders, Google Calendar sync or a waitlist. Nexa is worth a look if you want invoicing and bookkeeping in one owned tool. Neither one handles the evaluation and reporting deadlines that are the core of the work, so those need a dedicated tool for compliance tracking and document templates.
Our read for homeschool consultants: Neither tool tracks per-state evaluator rules, per-family deadlines or letter drafting, so a compliance deadline tracker with document templates is what this trade needs; keep Acuity for booking if it already works.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Acuity Scheduling costs homeschool consultants $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 homeschool consultants: 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 homeschool consultant: 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 homeschool consultant'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 homeschool consultant 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 homeschool consultants. You own it like you own your State-by-state homeschool law reference (HSLDA or equivalent).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small homeschool consultants 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 8 I'm on a video call with a Texas family withdrawing their second-grader from public school. I walk them through the withdrawal letter, what the district can and can't ask for, and how to keep a simple record of the subjects they cover. At 10 I'm building a curriculum plan for twin fourth-graders, one of whom is dyslexic: a structured literacy program for her, the same math for both, and a shared history and science unit so their mom isn't teaching everything twice. I pull the dyslexic twin's old 504 plan to see which accommodations the family wants to keep at home. Noon is email. Three families got letters from their districts, one asking for a notarized affidavit, one asking for things the law doesn't require, and one reasonable. I draft replies they can send. At 1 I research New York's requirements for a family moving there: an IHIP, quarterly reports, and an annual assessment, which is very different from what they did in Texas. At 3 I do end-of-year evaluations for two families, going through their portfolios page by page, writing samples, math worksheets, reading logs, photos of projects, and talking with each child for a few minutes. At 5 I write up the portfolio review letters. I haven't invoiced anyone in two weeks, and I still need to settle how to price the twins: per child or one flat family fee.
Real homeschool consultants near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a homeschool consultant? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every homeschool consultant 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 homeschool consultant'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 homeschool consultant — 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 homeschool consultants 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 homeschool consultants, 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