Harvest vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Illustrators
Harvest
$11/mo ($132/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 25.4 months at Harvest's current price.
Does Harvest Fit Illustrators? Our Read
What illustrators need from their software, from sources outside Harvest and outside Nexa:
Illustrators need to record which rights each client has licensed, covering media, duration, geography and exclusivity. The Graphic Artists Guild's contract checklist asks whether re-licensing to others is allowed and whether a re-licensing fee is paid. The U.S. Copyright Office states that the person who makes a visual work is generally its author and initial copyright owner. A client therefore gets only the rights the contract grants. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Invoices and billing need to handle kill, cancellation and rejection fees as well as the main fee. The Guild's glossary says kill fees seen in practice range from 20 to 100 percent, depending on how far the work had progressed. It also warns that if the contract does not mention a kill fee, none is guaranteed. The Guild's checklist gives a standard schedule of 25% on assignment, 50% after sketch and 100% after final art. Its standard payment term is Net 30 days. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Contracts need to be tracked for work-for-hire clauses. The Copyright Office says a commissioning party can be treated as the author, and so as the copyright owner, if the artist signs a written work-made-for-hire agreement. The Guild's glossary says that without such a clause, independent contractors generally keep the copyright. The Guild says it is opposed to work-for-hire contracts and that an all-rights contract is always better than one. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Bookkeeping for illustrators involves a specific tax rule. Under Internal Revenue Code section 263A(h), a freelance artist working as an individual, not as an employee, does not have to capitalize qualified creative expenses. Those are expenses that would be deductible anyway. The statute defines an artist as a person whose personal efforts create a picture, painting, drawing, graphic design or similar work. The exemption excludes expenses related to printing, photographic plates, motion picture films, video tapes or similar items. (law.cornell.edu)
Harvest covers the billing side of illustration work well. It has one-click timers, invoices generated from tracked time and expenses, online client payments, automatic overdue reminders, recurring retainers, and fee-based or hours-based budgets with over-budget alerts. QuickBooks, Xero and Stripe connect on the paid Teams plan. It does not cover what is specific to the trade. Nothing on its feature list records which rights a client has licensed (media, duration, geography, exclusivity), flags work-for-hire clauses, or handles kill and rejection fees as a schedule. An illustrator would have to keep all of that in the invoice notes or somewhere else.
Nexa covers more of the business around the work. It has invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal where clients pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates. It also has expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, 1099 summaries, a CRM with a pipeline board, and time tracking. Payment plans could be used to stage a fee, but that is a workaround, not a kill-fee feature. Nothing in its feature list records licence terms or work-for-hire status either. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, so if your accountant works in one of those, Harvest is the easier fit. If you use Nexa's automated emails, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Nexa is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years Harvest on the $11 plan costs $396 ($132 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. Neither tool tracks the thing an illustrator most needs to protect, which is what each client is licensed to do with the art. Keep your current invoicing tool, whichever it is, and track licences and contract terms in a contract-management or rights-tracking tool built for that.
Our read for illustrators: Neither Harvest nor Nexa records licensed rights, work-for-hire terms or kill-fee schedules, so illustrators should add a contract and rights-tracking tool and treat the choice between these two as secondary.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Harvest costs illustrators $132/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 25.4 months it has cost less than Harvest, 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 Harvest 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 Harvest 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 $396 for Harvest over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need time tracker, invoicing and connect crm in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Harvest if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Harvest's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
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.
Pricing creative work — hourly vs per-piece vs licensing royalties
Tracking time on projects that involve research, sketching, and final rendering
Clients wanting unlimited revisions on commission work
Managing licensing agreements and usage rights across clients
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. Harvest solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Harvest Actually Costs Illustrators
Today's list price is $11/month — $132 a year, from Harvest's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$132
Year 2$132
Year 3$132
Three years of Harvest$396
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $117 less.
If Harvest 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
Harvest
Nexa
Invoicing
✓
✓
Scheduling
✗
✓
CRM
✗
✓
Time Tracking
✓
✓
Full Accounting
✗
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
✗
✓
Works offline
✗
✓
Price
$11/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$396
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for Harvest come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Harvest 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.
Harvest'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 Harvest Does Better
Straight from Harvest's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Clean, simple interface
Automatic invoice generation from time
Budget monitoring and alerts
Good integrations (Asana, Trello, QuickBooks)
70,000+ companies use it
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use Harvest before paying anything.
Harvest is the better call if you need clean, simple interface specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What Harvest Is Built For
Professional services teams that bill clients by the hour, including advertising and marketing, architecture, construction, law, accounting and finance, consulting and IT, design, and software development. The site also says it serves teams of all sizes, types and industries. (getharvest.com)
Time tracking uses one-click timers, daily and weekly timesheets, and calendar-based logging. It runs on desktop (macOS, Windows), mobile (iOS, Android) and browser. (getharvest.com)
Invoices are generated from tracked time and expenses. The page also lists online client payments, automatic overdue reminders and recurring retainers. (getharvest.com)
Budgets can be hours-based or fee-based, with over-budget alerts and estimated-vs-actual rollups. Billing rates can be set per person, project or task type. (getharvest.com)
The homepage claims 40+ integrations, with Asana, Slack and Stripe named as examples. The pricing page says the Free plan has 50+ core integrations. (getharvest.com)
The Free plan costs $0 and covers 1 seat, 2 projects and up to 4 custom reports, with time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking. (getharvest.com)
Teams costs $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly) and adds team reporting, billable and cost rates, CSV import, QuickBooks Online, Xero and Stripe integrations, and scheduled phone support. Enterprise costs $14 per seat per month billed annually ($17.50 monthly) and adds profitability reporting, timesheet approval, an activity log, custom CSV exports and SAML SSO. (getharvest.com)
What people outside Harvest and outside Nexa say:
The Business Dive scores Harvest 3.9/5 and calls it "a well-rounded time tracking and invoicing solution". It praises the user-friendly interface, "smooth" invoicing that pulls in time and expenses automatically, simple timers and timesheets, and "quite massive" integrations. (thebusinessdive.com)
The Business Dive lists these drawbacks: phone support only on paid plans, no GPS tracking, and automatic time capture only through integrated apps. It also notes that Profitability and Activity Log reports need the Premium plan. (thebusinessdive.com)
ITQlick scores Harvest 91/100 and ranks it #3 of 64 time tracking products. It praises real-time budget tracking and API integrations. It criticises a dated UX, a steep learning curve for advanced features, and cost that may be too high for very small businesses. ITQlick says vendors pay it when it connects them with buyers. (itqlick.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for an illustrator
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.
1
Find the work
Land the project
↓
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the work
↓
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 the creative work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Watch a job become an invoice
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.
The job Book cover illustration
ServiceCover illustration (front)1 × $1,200$1,200
→
The invoice builds itself
Subtotal$1,600
Deposit credited−$600
Invoice total$1,000
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Calculate Your Full Stack
Harvest plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Harvest
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Manage → Export. Download time entries, invoices, and expenses.
2
Set up Nexa — 10-minute setup. Import your client list by CSV, then set up your projects.
3
Start tracking in Nexa — Begin using Nexa time tracker. Import historical time data if needed.
4
Cancel Harvest — Cancel subscription. Download a final export for your records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Illustrators
The median illustrator earns $42,000/year. At $132/year, Harvest 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).
Is Nexa actually right for an illustrator?
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 40,000 illustrators in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for freshbooks 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 Drawing tablet (Wacom Cintiq, iPad Pro with Apple Pencil).
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 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.
🎧 3 Point Perspective🎧 The Illustration Department Podcast
Forums
ConceptArt.orgMuddy Colors Blog
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.
What illustrators actually deal with
Pricing creative work — hourly vs per-piece vs licensing royalties
Tracking time on projects that involve research, sketching, and final rendering
Clients wanting unlimited revisions on commission work
Managing licensing agreements and usage rights across clients
A day in the life of a illustrator
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.
The tools a working illustrator actually owns
Drawing tablet (Wacom Cintiq, iPad Pro with Apple Pencil)
Digital art software (Procreate, Clip Studio, Photoshop)
Scanner for traditional media
Reference and art book library
Why illustrators leave the big platforms
freshbooks: $17/month for the lowest tier. Illustrators often have feast-or-famine months — paying $17 when you invoice zero clients is frustrating.
toggl: A timer that can't distinguish between sketching (billable), reference gathering (debatable), and email (not billable).
harvest: Fine for tracking hours but illustrators need to track per-piece and licensing fees, not just hourly.
Where illustrators actually talk shop
r/illustration (Reddit)
r/DigitalArt (Reddit)
r/artbusiness (Reddit)
r/freelance (Reddit)
ConceptArt.org (Forum)
Muddy Colors Blog (Forum)
Jazza (YouTube)
Marco Bucci (YouTube)
Local illustrators on Nexa
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 kit a working illustrator owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Drawing tablet (Wacom Cintiq, iPad Pro with Apple Pencil)
Digital art software (Procreate, Clip Studio, Photoshop)
Scanner for traditional media
Reference and art book library
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 Harvest'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 Harvest'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 illustrators we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Harvest on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Harvest'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 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.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingFreshBooks $516/yr, Toggl Track $144/yr, Harvest $132/yr, Wave $228/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 $42,000 median we cite for the typical illustrator 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 illustrators actually need to the people who set the standards — AIGA. 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 Harvest replacement?
For solo illustrators and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Harvest may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does Harvest do that Nexa doesn't?
Harvest has features like Clean, simple interface and Automatic invoice generation from time that some businesses rely on. For most solo illustrators, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $11/month, Nexa pays for itself in 25.4 months. After that: $132 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.