What ppc specialists need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the paperwork side of PPC work well. It has proposals, contracts, invoices, payments, a client portal and templates, and every plan has unlimited clients and projects. The contract tools suit the terms this trade needs in writing: who owns the ad accounts, who holds the logins and billing details, and how prepayment works. Its QuickBooks Online integration (on Essentials and Premium) matters for the bookkeeping question of reporting resold ad spend gross or net. The material provided doesn't show tiered fees driven by monthly ad spend, tracking of client prepayments against actual spend, or a record of card fees. Expect to handle those in a spreadsheet or in your accounting system.
Nexa has the billing basics: invoices, recurring invoices, payment plans, and proposals that convert to invoices. Clients can pay by card through your own Stripe account. On the bookkeeping side it has expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, a balance sheet and cash flow. It does not sync or import with QuickBooks or Xero, and it has no manual journal entries. Those are the gaps that matter if your accountant needs to book ad spend as gross or net. Nexa's automated emails, such as sequences and reminders, send only while it is open on one of your devices. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account.
Over three years HoneyBook at $36 a month comes to $1,296 ($432 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 over three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. Nexa is the cheaper option, but a specialist who hands books to an accountant working in QuickBooks, or who wants contract and portal tooling for account-ownership terms, should stay with HoneyBook. Check that the plan with the QuickBooks integration fits your budget. A solo specialist who keeps simple books in one place and bills through their own Stripe account could reasonably try Nexa.
Our read for ppc specialists: Stay with HoneyBook if your accountant relies on QuickBooks to book ad spend; Nexa is a cheaper fit only for simple, self-contained bookkeeping.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs ppc specialists $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 ppc specialists: 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, 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 ppc specialist: 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 PPC Specialist 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 ppc specialists. You own it like you own your Google Ads.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small ppc specialists 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.
I open Google Ads before coffee because overnight is when search-term reports surprise you. First pass: scan yesterday's spend across five accounts, pull the search-query report, and add negative keywords for the junk that slipped past broad match. One account spent forty percent of its daily budget on 'free' modifiers, so I tighten match types and pause two ad groups. Mid-morning is bid work: a roofing client's cost-per-lead crept above target, so I shift budget toward the campaigns converting on mobile and rewrite two responsive search ads to lift Quality Score. I check Microsoft Advertising for the B2B account because Bing's older demographic converts cheaper there. After lunch I build the weekly Looker Studio report, but the GA4 conversion count doesn't match the Ads interface again, so I spend an hour reconciling attribution windows before I trust the ROAS number I'm about to send. Late afternoon is the client call where I defend the management fee against the platform spend they can see in their own login. I close by setting tomorrow's bid adjustments and noting which landing pages need the dev to fix before the next push. Every account is a separate login, a separate budget pacing curve, and a separate person waiting on a number.
Real ppc specialists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a ppc specialist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every ppc specialist 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 ppc specialist'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 ppc specialist — 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 ppc specialists 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 ppc specialists, 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