What sound designers need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the paperwork side of sound design well. Commissioned film and TV work needs a signed written work-made-for-hire agreement the client can file, and the contract has to be kept with each client job. HoneyBook is built around proposals and contracts, a client portal and templates, and every plan has unlimited clients and projects. That suits a freelancer who sends a package quote, a contract and an invoice in one flow. It also integrates with QuickBooks Online on the higher plans and has 24/7 email and chat support. Where it is weaker is per-project money. Nothing in its feature list points to job costing or profit per project, which matters when income is lumpy and tied to individual productions. Some of the features a solo designer would use are also on higher plans: automations, the scheduler, and removing the 'Powered by HoneyBook' label.
Nexa covers the money side of the trade. It has estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, so it can handle a package price or a time-based one. It tracks time and does jobs with costing and profit per job, and it has expenses, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries. Clients pay by card through your own Stripe account and can sign estimates in the pay portal. It also works offline, which helps on location. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, so bookkeeping stays inside Nexa. It does not have SMS, and it has no app marketplace or integration library. If you use automated emails, sequences and 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.
Over three years, HoneyBook at $36 a month comes to $432 a year, or $1,296. Nexa is $279 once and runs on one device. Adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings three years to $458.64. If you rely on HoneyBook's contracts to get work-for-hire agreements signed and filed with each client, and you're happy with it, stay. Nexa's cost and profit-per-job tracking won't replace that. If you mostly need estimates, invoices, time tracking and per-project profit, and you're comfortable running your own software, Nexa is much cheaper.
Our read for sound designers: If you rely on HoneyBook's contracts to get work-for-hire agreements signed and stored with each client job, stay; switch only if per-project profit tracking and a lower three-year cost matter more to you.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs sound designers $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 sound designers: 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.
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 sound designer: 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 Sound Designer 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 sound designers. You own it like you own your Pro Tools DAW.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small sound designers 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.
A lot of my job is inventing sounds for things that have no sound. This morning it's a creature that doesn't exist, so I'm layering a recorded animal growl, a slowed-down metal scrape, and a pitched human breath until it reads as alive and dangerous, then I have to sell the director on a sound they've never heard before and can't reference. By mid-morning I'm in RX cleaning a dialogue track the production swore was fine — there's a plane overhead and an HVAC hum under the key line, and they assumed post would fix it for nothing. After lunch I'm cutting footsteps and cloth movement to picture and laying room tone so a scene feels like a place instead of a vacuum. Then the editor sends a new cut: the scene I locked yesterday is re-timed, and every footfall and effect has to re-sync to the new picture. Late afternoon is the mix, and the deliverable has to hit the platform's loudness spec exactly, in the right channel config — stereo for one client, 5.1 or Atmos for another — because a spec miss bounces the whole thing back. I record a few new effects in the booth before I leave, building the personal library that makes the next job faster. Then a new project spots tomorrow.
Real sound designers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a sound designer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every sound designer 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 sound designer'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 sound designer — 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 sound designers 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 sound designers, 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