What event rental companies need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the paperwork side of an event rental business well. Every plan includes invoices, payments, proposals, contracts, a client portal and templates, and the higher plans add a scheduler, automations, SMS reminders and a QuickBooks Online integration. Its listed features say nothing about the trade's specific needs. They don't mention booking dates that leave room for tent permit lead time, or delivery, pickup and damage waiver as separate invoice lines taxed under the job state's rules. Those rules vary by state: a 1987 Virginia ruling allowed separately stated transportation charges to be removed from a rental tax assessment, but it kept damage waiver charges taxable. Before relying on HoneyBook for either, check how its invoices handle separate lines and tax.
Nexa has invoices, estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM, a public booking page with intake forms, jobs with costing and profit per job, crew assignment, sales tax tracking, and a full set of bookkeeping reports. Its listed features don't say how invoice lines or per-line tax rates work, so check that for delivery, pickup and waiver lines before you commit. Nexa has no text messages, no QuickBooks sync or import, no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file), and no full inventory management. It also has no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years HoneyBook at $36 a month comes to $432 a year, or $1,296. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for the same period. If you rely on HoneyBook's SMS reminders, QuickBooks link or support, stay put. If you only need invoicing, a booking page and bookkeeping, and you're happy to run software yourself on one device, Nexa costs much less. Whichever you pick, test one real job with a delivery line, a pickup line and a damage waiver line in your state's tax rules first.
Our read for event rental companies: Stay with HoneyBook if you use its SMS reminders, QuickBooks integration or hosted support, which Nexa lacks, and consider Nexa only if you want to own your software and don't need those.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs event rental companies $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.
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 event rental companies: Stay with HoneyBook 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 $1,296 for HoneyBook 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. HoneyBook solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
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.
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 | 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.
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.
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.
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)
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 event rental company: 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.)
HoneyBook plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Event Rental Company earns $42,000/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 event rental companies. You own it like you own your Inventory of tents, tables, chairs, and dance-floor panels.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small event rental companies 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 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.
Weekends are a logistics machine. The warehouse pull starts at dawn: staff load box trucks against pick lists, counting out two hundred chairs here, a forty-by-sixty tent there, dance-floor panels, and linens fresh from the laundering station. Routing is everything, because one truck might hit four venues before noon and a missed turn cascades into a late install. At the venue the crew lays out and raises the tent, staking into turf or ballasting with water barrels on concrete, then sets tables and chairs to the floor plan. The whole time I am tracking what is committed where, because the same hundred Chiavari chairs cannot be at two Saturday weddings. Pickups run opposite the deliveries, often the same exhausting day. Back at the warehouse the returns pipeline never stops: tents get unrolled and pressure-washed and dried before they mildew, linens are inspected for stains and burns and laundered, chairs are wiped and damaged ones pulled for repair. Then it all gets counted back into inventory so the next pull list is accurate. A single miscounted return turns into a shortage that blows up a future event, so reconciliation is the quiet job that keeps the loud one running.
Real event rental companies near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an event rental company? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every event rental company on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $34,200–$136,900 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.
We build an event rental company'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 event rental company — 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 event rental companies 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.
HoneyBook has features like Beautiful proposals and contracts and Client portal that some businesses rely on. For most solo event rental companies, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $36/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.8 months. After that: $432 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