What hunting guides need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the client-facing paperwork well. That means proposals, contracts, a client portal, invoices and payments, with unlimited clients and projects on every plan. Those give you a dated record for each client and each prepaid hunt. It also offers things Nexa does not: SMS reminders, a QuickBooks Online integration, and 24/7 email and chat support. The plan that does the core job is $36/month. HoneyBook's own feature list says nothing about per-hunt revenue and head-day tracking for Forest permit fees, or about licence-renewal reports, so you would likely build those yourself in either tool.
Nexa covers the same core: estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans for prepaid hunts, and a client pay portal where clients pay by card through your own Stripe account. It adds jobs with costing and profit per job, a CRM, time tracking, and bookkeeping with expenses, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries. It also works offline, which suits field use. It has no text messages or calls, and no sync or import with QuickBooks or Xero. Its automated emails (sequences, workflows, reminders) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device.
Over three years HoneyBook at $36/month is $1,296. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. Stay with HoneyBook if you rely on SMS reminders, the QuickBooks link, or hosted support. Consider Nexa if offline use, per-hunt costing and the lower three-year cost matter more, and you are comfortable keeping the app open for automated emails to go out.
Our read for hunting guides: Stay with HoneyBook if you need SMS, QuickBooks or hosted support; otherwise Nexa does the core job for $279 once, or $458.64 over three years with Cloud Sync, against $1,296.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs hunting guides $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 hunting guides: 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.
Scheduling, client records 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 actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every hunting guide: 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.)
HoneyBook plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Hunting Guide 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 hunting guides. You own it like you own your Rifles or shotguns and a spotting scope and binoculars for glassing.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small hunting guides 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.
Scheduling, client records 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.
Long before any client arrives, I am scouting. Weeks of it, pulling trail-camera cards, glassing ridgelines at dawn with a spotting scope, patterning where the elk water and where the bucks bed, building a picture of the country no client ever pays me for directly. When a hunt finally lands, the day starts in the dark, because you want to be set in the blind before the animals move at first light. I check the wind constantly, because one swirl carrying our scent ends the hunt before it starts, and I position my hunter downwind and talk him through holding still when every instinct says fidget. Some days we fill a tag and the work shifts to field dressing, quartering, and the brutal pack-out on the game cart, and some days we glass for ten hours and see nothing, and the client still owes the day rate because he paid for my expertise and effort, not a guarantee, which is an awkward conversation if it wasn't set straight up front. Out-of-staters book me a full year ahead and put down deposits to hold the dates against their tag draws, so I am tracking each hunter's tags, licenses and season windows constantly. The seasons are short and the legal days are finite, so every booked day matters.
Real hunting guides near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a hunting guide? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every hunting guide 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 hunting guide'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 hunting guide — 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 hunting guides 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 hunting guides, 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