Acuity Scheduling vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Pedicurists
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 Pedicurists? Our Read
What pedicurists need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Pedicure equipment cleaning needs a dated log. Georgia's rule requires a pedicure unit to be cleaned with a chelating soap or detergent after each client, then disinfected with an EPA-registered product for at least 15 minutes. It also requires a record or log book of the dates and times of all pedicure equipment cleaning and disinfection. The log is kept in the pedicure area and shown to consumers or Board inspectors on request. Software for this trade would need a per-client cleaning and disinfection log. (law.cornell.edu)
Single-use supplies are a recurring per-service cost to track, and they cannot be reused. Georgia's rule says single-use items cannot be disinfected and should not be reused. It lists emery boards, nail files, buffers, disposable gloves, cotton balls and swabs, and pedicure slippers, and any item that cannot be disinfected falls in this category. Inventory and job costing therefore need to count these supplies for every appointment. (law.cornell.edu)
Pedicure basins must be disinfected after every client, so appointment scheduling has to allow turnaround time between pedicure clients. Maryland requires finger bowls, manicure bowls, pedicure spas and foot bath basins to be disinfected after each client. It allows an EPA-registered product effective against HIV and hepatitis viruses, or a hospital-grade tuberculocidal disinfectant. (regs.maryland.gov)
Many pedicurists are self-employed, so they handle their own tax records and set their own schedules. BLS lists self-employed workers as 23 percent of manicurist and pedicurist employment. Part-time work is common, and schedules often include evenings and weekends. Self-employed workers often set their own schedules. Booking and income records have to fit irregular hours and part-time work. (bls.gov)
Whether a nail technician renting a booth is an independent contractor or an employee affects how income is reported and taxed. The IRS says the test looks at three categories of evidence: behavioral control, financial control, and the type of relationship, such as written contracts. A booth renter's records should show the written rental agreement and the business side of the work (own clients, own pricing, own supplies). (irs.gov)
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of this trade well. Clients self-schedule online, and you get intake forms, deposits, cancelation policies, packages, gift certificates and a mobile app. Payments run through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo. The Standard plan adds text reminders and an appointment waitlist, and the site lists Google Calendar and QuickBooks among its integrations. That suits part-time, evening and weekend schedules. The listed features don't include a per-client cleaning and disinfection log, a count of single-use supplies per appointment, or booth-rental records. Georgia requires the dated log, so you would keep it separately.
Nexa covers more of the business side. It has a public booking page with intake forms and reschedule and cancel links, plus jobs with costing and profit per job. It also has a simple stock count per product, expenses, 1099 summaries and profit and loss, which help a self-employed pedicurist or booth renter with income records. Notes can be checklists linked to a client. Nexa has no text messages, no waitlist, no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file) and no QuickBooks sync. It has no full inventory management either. Its automated emails, including booking reminders, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk.
Over three years, Acuity on the $34 a month plan costs $408 a year, or $1,224. Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), and adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings it to $458.64. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. If clients rely on text reminders, a waitlist or calendar sync, stay with Acuity and keep your cleaning log on paper or in a separate log tool. If you mostly want invoices, job costs and bookkeeping in one owned tool, and email reminders sent while the app is open are enough, Nexa is the cheaper option.
Our read for pedicurists: Stay with Acuity Scheduling if you rely on text reminders, a waitlist or calendar sync, which Nexa lacks. Nexa is the cheaper choice only if you want owned bookkeeping and job costing and can live with email reminders that send only while the app is open.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Acuity Scheduling costs pedicurists $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 pedicurists: 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?
She seats the client, starts the warm soak, and the first thing she actually does is look, really look, at the feet, because feet hide things: a yellow thickened nail that screams fungus, a red swollen edge that's an ingrown going bad, the shiny tight skin of a diabetic who shouldn't have a callus aggressively cut. She knows the line she can't cross, she's a pedicurist, not a podiatrist, and part of the job is telling someone kindly that they need a doctor before she'll touch it. For healthy feet she clips and shapes the nails straight across to prevent ingrowns, eases back the cuticles, works the callus softener and rasps the heel smooth without going raw. She scrubs, massages the lower leg, the part clients live for, and lays down a clean polish. All of it from a low stool, bent over someone's feet, her back complaining by the third client. Between clients the real work nobody sees: every tool into disinfectant or the autoclave, the basin scrubbed and the jets flushed because a skipped cleaning is how infections spread and licenses get pulled. She tells the home-pedicure offender, gently, to stop attacking her own heels. She resets the towels, refills the oil, and rolls her shoulders before the next pair of feet.
Spotting fungal infections, diabetic feet, or ingrown nails that need a medical referral, not a polish, and saying so without losing the client
Sanitation liability from pipe-jet foot spas and shared tools that can transmit infection if cleaning is cut short
Clients who soak off polish at home and gouge their own calluses, arriving with damaged feet that make the work harder
Standing, bending, and gripping at foot level all day, which wrecks the lower back and hands over a career
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 Pedicurists
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 pedicurist
Software doesn't do your clients — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every pedicurist: 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.
1
Find the work
Get booked
↓
A new client finds you and books a time — no phone tag, no double-booking.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Deliver the service
↓
The session itself — with the client history, notes, packages, and add-ons right there instead of in three different places.
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 your clients. (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 Pedicurists
The median Pedicurist earns $35,000/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 pedicurists. You own it like you own your foot file/rasp and curette for calluses.
Is Nexa actually right for a pedicurist?
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 20,000 pedicurists in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack 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 foot file/rasp and curette for calluses.
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 pedicurists 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 pedicurists actually deal with
Spotting fungal infections, diabetic feet, or ingrown nails that need a medical referral, not a polish, and saying so without losing the client
Sanitation liability from pipe-jet foot spas and shared tools that can transmit infection if cleaning is cut short
Clients who soak off polish at home and gouge their own calluses, arriving with damaged feet that make the work harder
Standing, bending, and gripping at foot level all day, which wrecks the lower back and hands over a career
A day in the life of a pedicurist
She seats the client, starts the warm soak, and the first thing she actually does is look, really look, at the feet, because feet hide things: a yellow thickened nail that screams fungus, a red swollen edge that's an ingrown going bad, the shiny tight skin of a diabetic who shouldn't have a callus aggressively cut. She knows the line she can't cross, she's a pedicurist, not a podiatrist, and part of the job is telling someone kindly that they need a doctor before she'll touch it. For healthy feet she clips and shapes the nails straight across to prevent ingrowns, eases back the cuticles, works the callus softener and rasps the heel smooth without going raw. She scrubs, massages the lower leg, the part clients live for, and lays down a clean polish. All of it from a low stool, bent over someone's feet, her back complaining by the third client. Between clients the real work nobody sees: every tool into disinfectant or the autoclave, the basin scrubbed and the jets flushed because a skipped cleaning is how infections spread and licenses get pulled. She tells the home-pedicure offender, gently, to stop attacking her own heels. She resets the towels, refills the oil, and rolls her shoulders before the next pair of feet.
The tools a working pedicurist actually owns
foot file/rasp and curette for calluses
toenail nippers and an ingrown spicule lifter
pedicure soaking basin or pipe-free spa chair
autoclave or hospital-grade disinfectant for tools
callus softener, cuticle oil, and exfoliating scrub
Local pedicurists on Nexa
Real pedicurists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a pedicurist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every pedicurist on Nexa →
The kit a working pedicurist owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
foot file/rasp and curette for calluses
toenail nippers and an ingrown spicule lifter
pedicure soaking basin or pipe-free spa chair
autoclave or hospital-grade disinfectant for tools
callus softener, cuticle oil, and exfoliating scrub
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.
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 pedicurists 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 pedicurist'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 pedicurist — 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 pricingVagaro $600/yr, Acuity Scheduling $408/yr, Square, HoneyBook $432/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 $35,000 median we cite for the typical pedicurist 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.
The field's own bodiesWe anchor what pedicurists actually need to the people who set the standards — PBA. We don't speak for them; we point you to them so you can weigh this guide against the profession's own.
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 pedicurists 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 pedicurists, 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.