What illustrators need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the billing side of an illustration practice well. Its listed strengths are user-friendly for non-accountants, built-in time tracking, professional invoice templates, a client portal and a mobile app. The plans above Lite add proposals, retainers, financial reports, receipt scanning, accountant access and bank reconciliation. It also has free phone and email support, a 30-day free trial with no card needed, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. What its feature list does not show is anything built for the work an illustrator's contracts depend on. It has no place to record which media, duration, geography and exclusivity each client has licensed, and no way to flag work-for-hire clauses or re-licensing terms. A kill fee can only be billed if you write it onto an invoice yourself, following the Graphic Artists Guild's 25/50/100 percent schedule. Lite also caps you at 5 clients, and archived clients count toward that cap.
Nexa covers a similar billing and bookkeeping core. It has invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, recurring invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal where clients pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates. It also has time tracking, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and receipt scanning. Its CRM has notes and tags, which could hold licensing details informally, but nothing in Nexa is built to record media, duration, geography or exclusivity, or to track work-for-hire clauses. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no app marketplace, and no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding, because you own and run the software yourself. It runs on one device unless you add the optional Cloud Sync. Its automated emails, such as reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, which matters if you rely on payment reminders for Net 30 invoices. Neither product lists any handling of the section 263A(h) artist exemption, so that question stays with your accountant.
Over three years, FreshBooks at $43 a month costs $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $99 in three payments, and $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for all 36 months. Nexa is much cheaper, but cost is not the deciding factor here. An illustrator whose billing is simple and who works from one computer can reasonably use either tool. Someone who wants phone support, a mobile app, or accountant access should stay with FreshBooks. In both cases, track licenses, kill-fee terms and work-for-hire clauses in a separate contract and rights-management tool, or at least a spreadsheet, because neither product does that job.
Our read for illustrators: Neither FreshBooks nor Nexa records licensed rights or tracks work-for-hire clauses, so an illustrator needs a contract and licensing tracker alongside whichever billing tool they choose.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs illustrators $516/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 6.5 months it has cost less than FreshBooks, 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 FreshBooks 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 illustrators: Neither FreshBooks 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 $1,548 for FreshBooks over three years.
Time tracking, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. 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. FreshBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $43/month — $516 a year, from FreshBooks'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 $1,269 less.
If FreshBooks 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 | FreshBooks | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $43/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,548 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for FreshBooks come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as FreshBooks lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from FreshBooks's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
FreshBooks is the better call if you need very user-friendly for non-accountants specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
FreshBooks says it is "perfect for everyone from self-employed professionals to growing business owners." It lists four audiences: freelancers, solopreneurs, businesses with employees, and businesses with contractors. (freshbooks.com)
What people outside FreshBooks 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 creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every illustrator: 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 creative work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 creative 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 illustrator'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.
FreshBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median illustrator earns $42,000/year. At $516/year, FreshBooks 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 illustrators. You own it like you own your Drawing tablet (Wacom Cintiq, iPad Pro with Apple Pencil).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small illustrators 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 →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 →Time tracking, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. The sections below price both routes honestly.
A commission starts with a brief that's usually vague, so the first job is asking the right questions: where it will be used, what size, what the deadline really is, and which references the client loves. Then I sketch three thumbnail concepts, and once one is chosen I take it to a tighter sketch for approval before any final art, because changing a composition after I've rendered it costs days. Final art is the long part: line work, flats, colour, lighting and texture, then exporting at the right resolution and colour profile for print or screen. Every project comes down to usage rights. A book cover, a packaging label and a one-off personal gift are priced very differently, and I spell out in writing what the client can do with the image and for how long. I take a deposit before sketches and the balance before I release the high-resolution files. Between commissions I'm working on my portfolio, pitching publishers and art directors, and selling prints and stickers at a couple of conventions a year.
Real illustrators near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an illustrator? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every illustrator 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 an illustrator'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 an illustrator — 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 illustrators and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. FreshBooks may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
FreshBooks has features like Very user-friendly for non-accountants and Built-in time tracking that some businesses rely on. For most solo illustrators, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $43/month, Nexa pays for itself in 6.5 months. After that: $516 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