HoneyBook vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Concept Artists
HoneyBook
$36/mo ($432/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 7.8 months at HoneyBook's current price.
Does HoneyBook Fit Concept Artists? Our Read
What concept artists need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
Track NDA terms and portfolio permissions for each project. A game-industry feature quotes concept artists saying studio NDAs can be "effective in perpetuity", that "no two NDA's I've signed are the same", and that posting work even after release is usually "still implicitly a no without studio approval". Some artists keep NDA work on password-protected portfolio pages. Each client record needs the NDA status, an expiry if there is one, and a log of what may be shown publicly. (aftermath.site)
Store signed agreements and rights terms with each job. Under US copyright law, a work made for hire makes the commissioning party the author unless a signed written instrument says otherwise. Any other transfer of copyright ownership is valid only with a writing signed by the owner. Concept artists therefore need the signed contract or assignment kept with each project, showing whether the work was licensed or transferred. The same feature quotes an artist saying that artists in games, film and animation "have no rights to the work we make for clients or studios". (copyright.gov)
Keep records that show the work is a business and not a hobby, since concept art income can be irregular. The IRS tests profit motive with factors such as time and effort, dependence on the income, and whether methods changed to improve profitability. An activity is presumed to be for profit if it makes a profit in at least three of the last five tax years. Hobby deductions are limited to the activity's gross receipts, and losses cannot offset other income. This IRS page is an archived 2008 fact sheet, so the current rules should be checked. (irs.gov)
Plan for uneven freelance income and review each contract before starting work. Concept artists in the same feature describe remote freelancers as "always in a state of feast or famine". One says that as a freelancer they "have to pop on my lawyer hat sometimes and read my contracts". Invoicing and cash-flow tracking should therefore be set up per project, with contract terms noted alongside. (aftermath.site)
HoneyBook covers the paperwork side of this trade well. It has contracts, proposals, a client portal and invoices on every plan, with unlimited clients and projects, so each job can have its agreement and billing in one place. Nothing in its feature list describes a dedicated field for NDA status, an expiry date or a log of what may be shown publicly. That tracking would still sit in notes or in your own system. Its bookkeeping depends on the QuickBooks Online integration, which needs a higher tier than the cheapest plan. At $36 a month it is a reasonable fit for artists whose work is mostly sending and signing agreements.
Nexa covers the money and records side. It has invoices, estimates that convert to invoices, payment plans and recurring invoices. Clients can sign estimates and pay by card through your own Stripe account. It also has jobs with costing and profit per job, notes and tags on each client, and bookkeeping with expenses, profit and loss, and cash flow. Those help with uneven income and with showing the work is run as a business. It does not sync or import with QuickBooks or Xero. It has no Google Calendar sync, and it does not send text messages. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails go out only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years HoneyBook at $36 a month comes to $1,296 ($432 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $279 in total without Cloud Sync. With Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for 36 months it comes to $458.64. Artists whose workflow centers on sending and signing client agreements, or who want hosted support, should keep HoneyBook. Artists who mainly want per-job profit, expense and cash-flow records, and who are comfortable running their own software, can reasonably move to Nexa and save money.
Our read for concept artists: Stay with HoneyBook if contracts and hosted support matter most; choose Nexa if per-job profit and bookkeeping at a lower three-year cost matter more.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
HoneyBook costs concept artists $432/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 7.8 months it has cost less than HoneyBook, 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 HoneyBook 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 concept artists: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $279 once against $1,296 for HoneyBook 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 HoneyBook if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in HoneyBook's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
You start by rebuilding the reference board in PureRef, dragging in screenshots, photos of real machinery, and color studies for the alien marketplace the art director wants explored. The brief says 'environment, sci-fi, lived-in,' which means the first hour is silhouettes and value thumbnails in Photoshop, twenty tiny compositions to find the strong read. You send three thumbnails by midday and the art director circles one but asks to see it 'a little more golden hour.' That's a lighting pass, so you build a quick Blender basemesh of the main structure, render a flat clay pass, and paint over it to keep the perspective honest. Afternoon is the chosen keyframe: blocking color, then detail passes on the foreground stalls and hanging cables, then a final polish so the materials read. Around three the producer emails asking whether the design can also go on a poster, which is a licensing question nobody scoped, and you flag it to discuss. You finish by exporting layered PSDs and flats, naming them with the version and date, then update your tracker with the revision round you just completed so the flat fee doesn't quietly turn into unpaid overtime.
Art directors request 'a few quick exploration thumbnails' that balloon into ten finished keyframes, and the scope creep is invisible until you compare the brief to what you actually delivered
Clients want full buyout of concept art for merch and marketing but only budgeted a single-use design fee, and the licensing conversation always happens after the work is done
Paint-overs and revision rounds are 'free' in the client's mind, so round four and round five eat into a flat project rate with no mechanism to bill them
Game and film studios sign you to NDAs that forbid showing the work, so your portfolio lags two years behind your actual output and new leads dry up
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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. HoneyBook solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What HoneyBook Actually Costs Concept Artists
Today's list price is $36/month — $432 a year, from HoneyBook's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$432
Year 2$432
Year 3$432
Three years of HoneyBook$1,296
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $1,017 less.
If HoneyBook 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
HoneyBook
Nexa
Invoicing
✓
✓
Scheduling
✓
✓
CRM
✓
✓
Time Tracking
—
✓
Full Accounting
—
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
—
✓
Works offline
—
✓
Price
$36/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$1,296
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for HoneyBook come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as HoneyBook 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.
HoneyBook'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 HoneyBook Does Better
Straight from HoneyBook's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Beautiful proposals and contracts
Client portal
Workflow automation
Professional templates
All-in-one for creatives
A smaller bill up front: plans start at $36/month, against $279 paid once for Nexa.
HoneyBook is the better call if you need beautiful proposals and contracts specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What HoneyBook Is Built For
HoneyBook describes itself as built for anyone with clients, aimed at small businesses that work with clients. Its categories are event services, marketing, design and creative, professional services, personal services, and home and real estate. (honeybook.com)
Every plan includes unlimited clients and projects, plus invoices, payments, proposals, contracts, a client portal, templates and HoneyBook AI. Plans are Starter at $29/mo, Essentials at $49/mo and Premium at $109/mo, billed yearly. (honeybook.com)
Live lead forms are limited by plan: up to 2 on Starter, up to 10 on Essentials, and unlimited on Premium. (honeybook.com)
Essentials and Premium add a scheduler, automations, SMS reminders, removal of the 'Powered by HoneyBook' label, and the QuickBooks Online integration. Essentials allows up to 2 team members and Premium allows unlimited. (honeybook.com)
Support is 24/7 email and live chat on Starter and Essentials. Premium adds priority support and a 90-day onboarding specialist. (honeybook.com)
The pricing page offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card required, though some advanced features have eligibility limits. It also offers a 60-day money-back guarantee. (honeybook.com)
The home page lists integrations including Zoom, Mailchimp, Outlook, Gmail, Google Calendar, QuickBooks, Flodesk, Zapier and Calendly. It also lists HoneyBook AI features: email drafts, project recaps and a meeting notetaker. (honeybook.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a concept artist
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every concept artist: 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.)
Calculate Your Full Stack
HoneyBook plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from HoneyBook
1
Export your data — Go to Company Settings → export contacts and projects. Download templates separately.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your contacts and recreate your key templates.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 1-2 weeks. Transition active projects after they complete.
4
Cancel HoneyBook — Cancel before renewal. Save any contract templates as PDFs.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Concept Artists
The median Concept Artist earns $45,000/year. At $432/year, HoneyBook 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 concept artists. You own it like you own your Photoshop with a Kyle brush set.
Is Nexa actually right for a concept artist?
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 25,000 concept artists in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack 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 Photoshop with a Kyle brush set.
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 concept artists 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.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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.
What concept artists actually deal with
Art directors request 'a few quick exploration thumbnails' that balloon into ten finished keyframes, and the scope creep is invisible until you compare the brief to what you actually delivered
Clients want full buyout of concept art for merch and marketing but only budgeted a single-use design fee, and the licensing conversation always happens after the work is done
Paint-overs and revision rounds are 'free' in the client's mind, so round four and round five eat into a flat project rate with no mechanism to bill them
Game and film studios sign you to NDAs that forbid showing the work, so your portfolio lags two years behind your actual output and new leads dry up
A day in the life of a concept artist
You start by rebuilding the reference board in PureRef, dragging in screenshots, photos of real machinery, and color studies for the alien marketplace the art director wants explored. The brief says 'environment, sci-fi, lived-in,' which means the first hour is silhouettes and value thumbnails in Photoshop, twenty tiny compositions to find the strong read. You send three thumbnails by midday and the art director circles one but asks to see it 'a little more golden hour.' That's a lighting pass, so you build a quick Blender basemesh of the main structure, render a flat clay pass, and paint over it to keep the perspective honest. Afternoon is the chosen keyframe: blocking color, then detail passes on the foreground stalls and hanging cables, then a final polish so the materials read. Around three the producer emails asking whether the design can also go on a poster, which is a licensing question nobody scoped, and you flag it to discuss. You finish by exporting layered PSDs and flats, naming them with the version and date, then update your tracker with the revision round you just completed so the flat fee doesn't quietly turn into unpaid overtime.
The tools a working concept artist actually owns
Photoshop with a Kyle brush set
Wacom Cintiq or iPad Pro with Procreate
Blender for kitbashing and basemeshes
PureRef for reference boards
Gumroad library of custom brushes and 3D kits
Local concept artists on Nexa
Real concept artists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a concept artist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every concept artist on Nexa →
The kit a working concept artist owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Core kitEssential
Pen display or iPad Pro
$400–$2,500
Core kitEssential
Workstation or high-spec laptop
$1,500–$5,000
Core kitEssential
Colour-accurate monitor
$300–$1,200
Core kitEssential
Monitor calibrator
$150–$400
Core kitEssential
Reference and art book library
$100–$500
Core kitEssential
Ergonomic chair and desk
$300–$1,500
Core kitEssential
Fast storage and backup
$150–$600
Upgrade
3D blockout software licence
$400–$2,500
The core kit, bought once$2,900–$11,700
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $2,900–$11,700 on tools that last for years, and never thought twice. So why should the software cost more than your whole kit — every single year? Hold it to the same standard as a good tool: $279, once.
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 HoneyBook'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 HoneyBook'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 concept artists we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — HoneyBook on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:HoneyBook'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 a concept artist'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 concept artist — 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 pricingHoneyBook $432/yr, FreshBooks $516/yr, Toggl Track $144/yr, Harvest $132/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 $45,000 median we cite for the typical concept artist 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.
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 HoneyBook replacement?
For solo concept artists and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. HoneyBook may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does HoneyBook do that Nexa doesn't?
HoneyBook has features like Beautiful proposals and contracts and Client portal that some businesses rely on. For most solo concept artists, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $36/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.8 months. After that: $432 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.