What keynote speakers need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the paperwork side of a keynote booking well: proposals and contracts, a client portal, invoices and payments, templates, and workflow automation, with unlimited clients and projects on every plan. Those fit the deposit-at-signing and balance-before-the-event pattern. The Essentials and Premium tiers add a QuickBooks Online integration, which helps a speaker whose accountant works there. What its feature list doesn't show is a place to record a cancellation schedule per booking and work out what is owed, per-client payment terms, or tracking of W-8BEN and similar forms per payer. A speaker would handle those in contract wording and their own records.
Nexa covers the money mechanics. It has invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans for a deposit and balance, and a client pay portal where clients pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates. It also has expenses, receipt scanning, and jobs with costing and profit per job, which suits billing travel as a separate post-event invoice. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file), and no text messages. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. If you use automation, its emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Nexa's facts say nothing either way about per-booking cancellation schedules or foreign-speaker tax forms, so check those yourself before relying on it.
Over three years, HoneyBook at $36 a month is $1,296 ($432 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month to use it across devices. A speaker who relies on QuickBooks Online, wants a vendor-supported tool, or already has contracts working in HoneyBook should stay. A speaker who mainly needs deposit and balance invoices and per-engagement expense tracking, and is comfortable running their own software, can switch and save money. Neither tool clearly solves cancellation schedules or withholding paperwork, so plan to keep those records separately either way.
Our read for keynote speakers: Both handle deposits, balances and expenses, and neither clearly covers cancellation schedules or foreign-speaker tax forms, so stay if you need QuickBooks Online or vendor support and switch if you want lower cost and run your own software.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs keynote speakers $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 keynote speakers: 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.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing and time tracking 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 keynote speaker: 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 Keynote Speaker earns $55,000/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 keynote speakers. You own it like you own your Headset microphone.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small keynote speakers 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, invoicing and time tracking 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 keynote isn't a talk you give, it's a product you customize, so a non-travel day is mostly preparation and business. I start with the producer call for an upcoming conference: I want the theme, the audience makeup, the three executives whose names I should drop, the inside language of their industry, and exactly where my forty-five minutes sits in the run-of-show. The opening keynote and the post-lunch graveyard slot are different animals. Then I tailor my signature talk — keeping the spine that works, swapping the case studies and references so the room believes it was written for them. Midday is the business of being a keynote speaker: a bureau forwards a contract with a rider I need to redline, another producer needs my AV specs and travel requirements, and a prospect wants a custom proposal and fee. I review a postponement clause carefully because an event just slipped to next year and I need my deposit to hold. Afternoon I rehearse with the confidence monitor, timing the build to the close, because a keynote that runs long throws the whole agenda. I send my updated one-sheet and a fresh reel clip to a bureau that's pitching me for a corporate kickoff. The talk is the visible part; the contracts, customization, and fee protection are the business underneath it.
Real keynote speakers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a keynote speaker? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every keynote speaker 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 keynote speaker'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 keynote speaker — 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 keynote speakers 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 keynote speakers, 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