What videographers need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
Disclosure first: Nexa is made by the publisher of this page, so we gain if you pick it. We've limited the Nexa claims to what the product does and doesn't do, and where FreshBooks is the better fit we say so. FreshBooks covers the billing side of a videographer's work well. It's friendly to non-accountants and has time tracking, an excellent mobile app, invoice templates and a client portal. Its higher plans add proposals, receipt scanning, accountant access, double-entry reports and bank reconciliation, and Premium adds project profitability for tracking income by project. Support is also a real advantage on a busy shoot week: free phone and email support, staff based across North America, and a 30-day free trial with no credit card. Two limits matter for this trade. Client counts are capped (Lite covers 5, Plus covers 50, and archived clients still count). Nothing in its feature list stores signed footage-ownership contracts or marks a job as license or work-for-hire, which is the paperwork a videographer most needs to get right.
Nexa covers much of the same ground. It has estimates, quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, and clients can sign estimates in a pay portal. It has a CRM pipeline board for the feast-and-famine cycle, jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, expenses, receipt scanning, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, 1099 summaries, and offline use, which helps on locations with no signal. It has the same contract gap: a signed estimate isn't a stored contract, and nothing flags a job as license or work-for-hire. It has no gear or asset register beyond a simple stock count per product. It also 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. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device. Any automated emails (sequences, workflows, reminders) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43 a month comes to $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), or $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. That gap is real, but price isn't what decides this for a videographer. Whichever you use for invoicing, keep signed work-for-hire or license agreements in a dedicated contract or e-signature tool, because neither product does that job. If you rely on FreshBooks' mobile app, hosted support, or an accountant who logs in directly, stay. If you're a solo shooter who invoices a modest number of clients, can work from one device, and is comfortable owning the software, Nexa is a reasonable way to spend less. Take the FreshBooks trial or test Nexa against a real job before you decide.
Our read for videographers: Stay on FreshBooks if you value its mobile app, hosted support and accountant access; Nexa is a cheaper option for solo shooters who run their own software, and neither product replaces a contract tool.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs videographers $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 videographers: Stay with FreshBooks 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 $1,548 for FreshBooks over three years.
Client records, scheduling 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. 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 videographer: 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 videographer'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 videographer earns $48,000/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 videographers. You own it like you own your Camera bodies (Sony FX3/FX6, Canon C70, Blackmagic).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small videographers 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.
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
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 →Client records, scheduling 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.
A two-minute brand film is two days of shooting and a week of editing. Pre-production is where it's won: a call to understand what the client wants people to feel, a script or at least an outline, a shot list, locations and permissions, and a schedule that fits the light. Shoot days mean hauling cameras, lenses, lights, stands, audio recorders, lav mics and batteries, and setting up every scene so the sound is clean, because bad audio can't be fixed later. Then the edit: syncing audio, selecting takes, building the story, colour grading, sound mixing, music licensing, captions, and exporting versions for the web, Instagram and a fifteen-second cut. The client gets two rounds of revisions in my contract, and the third one is billed, which I have to point out politely every time. Weddings follow the same pattern with a harder deadline. Money comes as a deposit to book, a payment on the shoot day and the balance on delivery. I'm backing up footage to two drives the same night, because losing a card means losing the job.
Real videographers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a videographer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every videographer 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 videographer'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 videographer — 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 videographers 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 videographers, 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