What swim coaches need from their software, from sources outside Acuity Scheduling and outside Nexa:
Acuity Scheduling covers the booking side of a swim business well. It has class scheduling, packages, memberships, gift certificates, deposits, intake forms and cancelation policies. Text reminders and an appointment waitlist come with the Standard plan, and Google Calendar sync is among its 15 integrations. Payments run through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo. It does not appear built for the paperwork a pool permit asks for: proof of lifeguard/CPR and water safety instructor certification, liability and abuse-and-molestation insurance certificates, or a written employee-versus-contractor decision for each assistant coach. You would keep those records elsewhere.
Nexa covers a different mix. It has a public booking page with intake forms, group-class capacity, and reschedule and cancel links. It can assign jobs to team members, track time, and produce a payroll CSV and 1099 summaries, which help once you have decided how each assistant is classified. It also has invoices, payment plans and full bookkeeping. It does not decide that classification for you. It has no waitlist, no recurring booking series, no text messages and no Google Calendar sync, since its calendar export is an .ics file. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Card payments go only through your own Stripe account. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years Acuity Scheduling on the $34/month plan costs $1,224 ($408 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. Coaches who run full weekly classes with a waitlist, text reminders or calendar sync should stay on Acuity, because Nexa lacks all of those. A solo coach on a single device who mostly wants invoicing, 1099 tracking and bookkeeping in one owned tool could reasonably move to Nexa to save money. Either way, keep certification, insurance and contractor-status records in a separate file system.
Our read for swim coaches: Stay with Acuity Scheduling if you rely on waitlists, text reminders or calendar sync, since Nexa has none of them.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Acuity Scheduling costs swim coaches $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 swim coaches: 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 swim coach: 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.)
Acuity Scheduling plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median swim coach 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 swim coaches. You own it like you own your Pool partnership (Y, community center, or aquatic facility rental).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small swim coaches 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.
The alarm goes at 4:45 so I'm on deck by 5:30 for my morning group at the pool I rent by the lane-hour. Twelve swimmers, a sprint set: 8 x 50 freestyle on the 1:00, then 4 x 100 IM off the pace clock with me calling splits. I watch for dropped elbows on the catch and kids who breathe every stroke on the last lap when they're tired. At 7 I have a private stroke-correction lesson, the third of six with a high-school freestyler whose kick is dragging her hips. We do side-kick drill with fins and catch-up drill, then I film a few lengths from the deck so she can see the crossover in her entry. Off deck by 8, coffee, and I go through meet entries: who's swimming the 100 back, who has the qualifying time for regionals, and which parents still owe the entry fee. Afternoon practice at 4 is the same group working turns and underwaters, then dryland in the lobby: planks, streamline jumps, band work for shoulders. After that it's parents: carpools for Saturday's meet, a question about why their son moved down a lane, a mom asking for private lessons at the group rate. At night I copy the morning's times into my binder by swimmer and stroke, compare them with last month's time trial, and work out whether this month's pool bill leaves anything once I've paid for the extra lane I booked for meet warm-up.
Real swim coaches near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a swim coach? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every swim coach 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 swim coach'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 swim coach — 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 swim coaches 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 swim coaches, 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