What public speakers need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks handles the invoicing side of a speaking business well. At $43/month it gives speakers proposals, retainers, receipt scanning, a client portal and professional invoice templates, and it is easy to use without an accountant. Retainers and receipt scanning map reasonably onto deposits and per-engagement expense documentation. Its hosted support is also a real advantage. But nothing in its feature list ties a deposit to a date hold, applies a cancel-within-60-days rule to a balance, or records recording and reprint permissions in the agreement. It also has no listed handling for W-8BEN, 1042-S or 1042 filings for foreign payers or hosts. The plan's client cap (50 on Plus, with archived clients counted) is a minor concern for most speakers.
Nexa covers a lot of the surrounding work. It has proposals and estimates that convert to invoices, payment plans, a client pay portal (card payments run through your own Stripe account), a CRM pipeline for tracking leads, expense tracking with receipt scanning, and a booking page. Those can approximate a deposit-then-balance schedule and a pipeline of pending dates. It does not apply timing-based cancellation terms, does not track date holds against deposits, and has no foreign-payer tax-form handling or place to record recording and reprint rights. It also has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no vendor support desk, because you own and run the software yourself. Automated emails, including reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years FreshBooks costs $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 if you add the optional $4.99/month Cloud Sync for three years. Nexa is far cheaper, but the savings don't close the gap on the core needs. A speaker already on FreshBooks who values its support and portal has no strong reason to move for these needs. A cost-sensitive speaker working from one device can use Nexa for invoicing and deposits, but should keep date holds, cancellation terms, rights language and any foreign tax forms in the contract and with a tax professional. Neither tool covers those.
Our read for public speakers: Neither tracks date holds against deposits, applies timing-based cancellation terms, or handles foreign-payer tax forms, so a speaker needs a contract and engagement management tool with tax-form support.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs public speakers $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 public speakers: 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.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing and time tracking 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. 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 actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every public speaker: 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 public speaker'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 Public Speaker earns $55,000/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 public speakers. You own it like you own your Wireless lavalier / headset mic.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small public speakers 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.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing and time tracking 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.
Half my life is in transit and the other half is on a stage, so my day depends entirely on whether there's an event. On a speaking day I'm up early to get to the venue with margin, because the real enemy is AV: I plug in my own clicker, test my adapters against their projector, walk the stage to find the dead zones in the wireless mic, and confirm the slides advance from where I'll actually stand. I'd rather discover the broken HDMI port two hours early than two minutes before doors. I rehearse the open and the close — the parts that have to land — and I tweak three or four references so the talk speaks to this room's industry instead of sounding like a recording. Then I deliver, read the energy, adjust on the fly, and stay after to shake hands because the next booking often comes from someone in this audience. On a non-event day I'm a small business: answering inquiries from event planners, sending my speaker kit and fee, negotiating travel, and following up on an invoice from a conference six weeks ago that still hasn't paid. I update my demo reel with footage from last week and block rehearsal time for an upcoming keynote. The work is feast-or-famine, road-warrior logistics wrapped around twenty minutes that have to be perfect.
Real public speakers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a public speaker? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every public speaker 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 public speaker'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 public speaker — 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 public speakers 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 public speakers, 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