What trade show designers need from their software, from sources outside HoneyBook and outside Nexa:
HoneyBook covers the client-facing side of exhibit work well. It has proposals, contracts, invoices, payments, a client portal and templates. The QuickBooks Online integration comes on the Essentials and Premium plans. Nothing in its listed features covers the three things this trade has to track: sales tax per job (retail versus real-property work, with resale certificates on file), cost and markup for each pass-through vendor line, and per-show insurance certificates with deadlines. HoneyBook can present a marked-up invoice, but it isn't built to compare estimate and final invoice line by line.
Nexa gets closer on the money side. It has jobs with costing and profit per job, estimates that convert to invoices, expenses, purchase orders, and sales tax tracking. Those are the right building blocks for watching markup on subcontracted labor, show services and I&D. Nexa has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no Google Calendar sync, and no app marketplace or integration library. It is software you own and run yourself, so there is no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account. If you use its automated emails, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years HoneyBook at $36 a month comes to $1,296 ($432 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99/month Cloud Sync, and it runs on one device without sync. If HoneyBook's proposals, portal and QuickBooks link are what you rely on, stay and track certificates and tax status somewhere else. If job costing and sales tax tracking in one owned tool matter more, Nexa is cheaper to try. Neither one tracks policy dates, endorsements and per-show deadlines as far as the facts here show.
Our read for trade show designers: Neither tool covers this trade's core needs of per-job tax status with resale certificates, vendor-line markup comparison and per-show insurance deadlines, so look for job-costing and project-accounting software with document and compliance tracking, and keep HoneyBook if you depend on its QuickBooks link.
Neither product on this page is built for it. These kinds of software are. The examples are not ours and these are plain links, not affiliate links; each goes to the product's own page for that capability.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
HoneyBook costs trade show 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 trade show designers: Neither HoneyBook nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with the specialist software above. 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 trade show 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 Trade Show 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 trade show designers. You own it like you own your Adobe Illustrator.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small trade show 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.
I start by pulling the hardware spec for whoever's exhibiting next — a 20-foot tension-fabric backwall prints to a completely different template than a retractable banner stand, and the SEG bleed has to wrap into the silicone edge or you get a white line on the seam. I lay out the graphics thinking in viewing distance: the headline has to land from across a 10-foot aisle, the product shot has to survive being half-blocked by a demo counter, and the logo has to read up on the hanging sign. Midday I'm cross-checking the venue's exhibitor manual — this convention center caps hanging-sign height and requires fire-rated fabric, and the rigging points aren't where the last show's were. I build a quick 3D mockup so the client can see the booth in space before we commit to print, because nobody can read a flat 20-foot file on a laptop. Afternoon is the deadline math: the printer needs files three days before the booth ships to make drayage, which means my client sign-off is really due tomorrow, not next week. I send a proof with the print-ship date in bold. Then a kickoff for a medical-device company's first show, and we talk traffic flow and what the booth has to make a passerby stop.
Real trade show designers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a trade show designer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every trade show designer on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $3,300–$12,600 on tools that last for years, and never thought twice. So why should the software cost more than your whole kit — every single year? Hold it to the same standard as a good tool: $279, once.
We build a trade show 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 trade show 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 trade show 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 trade show 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