What naming consultants need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the client-facing side of naming work well. Its proposals, contracts, client portal, invoices and payments suit a fixed-fee project with a signed scope and a deposit. Its 24/7 email and live chat support and its integrations (QuickBooks, Zapier, Google Calendar and others) are also useful. Nothing in its feature list covers the trade's distinctive need, though. That need is a record, per candidate name, of which sources were screened (the USPTO database, the TMOG, an internet search for common-law use) and what turned up. The list also says nothing about 1099 tracking for freelancers such as linguists or researchers. Itemising USPTO class fees separately from the consultant's own fee would have to be done by hand in the invoice.
Nexa covers more of the money side than the client side. It offers proposals and estimates that convert to invoices, payment plans (useful for milestone payments), and expense tracking. Its 1099 summaries match the need to report payments to subcontractors. Clients can pay by card through the user's own Stripe account and sign estimates in the pay portal. Its checklist notes, linked to a client or contact, could hold a screening checklist by hand, but nothing in it is built for per-name trademark screening. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no Google Calendar sync. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails (sequences, workflows, reminders) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years HoneyBook at $36 a month costs $1,296. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync (without sync it runs on one device). If you already work comfortably in HoneyBook, stay there for proposals, contracts and billing. Track trademark screening in a separate tool built for it, such as a spreadsheet or an IP-docketing tool. If your main pain is the subscription, and you need 1099 summaries and expense tracking more than a hosted service, Nexa is a cheaper home for billing. Either way, the screening record sits outside both.
Our read for naming consultants: Neither tool tracks trademark screening per candidate name, so keep your billing tool and add a spreadsheet or IP-docketing tool for that record.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs naming consultants $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 naming consultants: Neither HoneyBook 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 $1,296 for HoneyBook over three years.
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.
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 naming consultant: 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 Naming Consultant 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 naming consultants. You own it like you own your Trademark database access (USPTO TESS / global search).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small naming consultants 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.
Naming looks like wordplay and is mostly elimination. I'll generate two or three hundred candidates for a single brief — coined words, real words bent sideways, compounds, metaphors — knowing the vast majority are already dead. By mid-morning I'm running the shortlist through trademark screening, and the name everyone would have loved collides with a registered mark in the same class, so it's gone before the client ever sees it. The survivors hit the domain check next, where the exact-match .com is parked by a squatter asking five figures, which reshapes the whole list. After lunch I do the linguistic pass: I check the finalists across the languages of any market the client wants to enter, because a name that sings in English can be crude or comic in Spanish or Mandarin, and finding that after launch is a catastrophe. The hardest part is the afternoon presentation: a committee fell for an obvious name on slide two and went deaf to the stronger, stranger candidate that actually owns a space. My job there isn't the word — it's the rationale, the story of why this name does work a safe name can't. Then a new brief lands, and I start the funnel again.
Real naming consultants near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a naming consultant? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every naming consultant 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 naming consultant'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 naming consultant — 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 naming consultants 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 naming consultants, 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