What fire damage restoration need from their software, from sources outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa:
Full disclosure first: the publisher of this page makes Nexa, so read this with that in mind. We wrote it so a shop that should stay with Housecall Pro is told to stay. Housecall Pro covers the operating side of a fire restoration shop well. It handles scheduling and dispatching, estimates, invoicing, online payments, job costing, time tracking, payroll, vehicle GPS and 'On My Way' texts. It also has live phone and chat support, and its trial includes full access to the Max plan. The $79 plan does the core job. Photo reports, checklist automations and employee GPS tracking sit on the higher Essentials plan, and those are the features closest to what a fire job needs for documentation. Its feature list does not show the claim-side records, though. Those are a work authorization or an assignment of insurance rights per job, with a state flag (Florida effectively eliminated assignments in 2019, and Texas and Oregon generally won't enforce them). They also include who was named on the insurer's check and what was received against each job. Invoices need to follow the room-by-room Xactimate structure (Prep Work, Removal, Cleaning, Sealing & Odor Treatment, plus general conditions) so the carrier can match them. Each job also needs an S700 work plan and event log. Nothing listed ties photos and scope decisions to estimate lines. Ask Housecall Pro whether checklists or custom fields can hold these before you rely on them. We can't confirm they can.
Nexa covers the business basics. It has invoices, and estimates and proposals that convert to invoices. It has jobs with costing and profit per job, and a client pay portal where clients sign estimates and pay by card through your own Stripe account. It also has time tracking, a CRM, and bookkeeping that includes expenses, bank reconciliation and profit and loss. We make no claim that it handles insurance-specific records. We do not list payee tracking, assignment handling, Xactimate-style line items, a work plan or an event log, or photo documentation tied to scope. So on the insurance-paperwork problem, Nexa is no better than Housecall Pro, and the gap is ours to own. It also has no GPS, fleet tracking, route optimization or dispatch board. It has no text messaging or calls and no sync with accounting software. It does not run payroll: no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit. Its automated emails 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. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device, which is a poor fit for a crew in the field.
Over three years, Housecall Pro's $79 plan costs $2,844 ($948 a year). Nexa costs $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), or $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for 36 months. The savings are real, but they come from dropping dispatch, GPS, text messaging, payroll and vendor support, and they do nothing for the insurance paperwork that decides whether you get paid. If you already run jobs, crews and payments in Housecall Pro, stay. Use its checklists and photo reports, and keep the authorization or assignment, payee and check records, Xactimate-matched invoices, work plan and event log in whatever filing system you can audit. Consider Nexa only if you are a small, single-device shop that needs invoicing, estimates and bookkeeping and has no need for dispatch or GPS.
Our read for fire damage restoration: Stay with Housecall Pro: it does the dispatch, GPS, payroll and field work a fire restoration shop runs on, neither tool handles the insurer paperwork natively, and Nexa lacks those operational tools.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Housecall Pro costs fire damage restoration $948/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 3.5 months it has cost less than Housecall Pro, 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 Housecall Pro 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 fire damage restoration: Stay with Housecall Pro 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 $2,844 for Housecall Pro over three years.
Time tracking, invoicing, job tracking and the books are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. 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. Housecall Pro solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $79/month — $948 a year, from Housecall Pro'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 $2,565 less.
If Housecall Pro 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 | Housecall Pro | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | — | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $79/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $2,844 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Housecall Pro come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Housecall Pro lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Housecall Pro's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Housecall Pro is the better call if you need online booking for home services specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Housecall Pro describes itself as 'Tailored for teams of 1 to 100+' and aimed at home service pros across 50+ industries, including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning, lawn care and pest control. (housecallpro.com)
What people outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa say:
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 fire damage restoration technician: 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.
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
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.)
Housecall Pro plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Fire Damage Restoration Technician earns $55,000/year. At $948/year, Housecall Pro 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 fire damage restoration. You own it like you own your Hydroxyl generators and ozone machines for pulling smoke odor out of structure and contents.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small fire damage restoration business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling past a handful of crews, a fleet platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
Extreme summer heat drives HVAC demand. Hurricane risk on Gulf Coast. Year-round construction. Rapid population growth in DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio creates sustained demand. Freeze events (like 2021) create emergency plumbing/HVAC surge.
Hurricane season June-November creates massive restoration demand. Snowbird season November-March boosts service volume 30-40%. Year-round construction. Pool service is year-round industry. Pest control peaks in summer humidity.
Harsh winters in upstate, moderate in NYC. Construction limited in winter upstate. NYC market is enormous but hypercompetitive. Brownstone/pre-war building maintenance is specialized trade. NYC licensing is notoriously complex.
Time tracking, invoicing, job tracking and the books are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. The sections below price both routes honestly.
He walks a kitchen fire loss first thing, and before anyone cleans he's reading the smoke: greasy wet smoke from a low slow fire behaves nothing like the dry powdery soot from a fast hot one, and protein residue from a stovetop is nearly invisible but reeks. He sets containment to keep soot out of the unaffected bedrooms and runs air scrubbers to capture the particulate that's still drifting. The crew starts on contents, photographing and inventorying every salvageable item for the pack-out because the insurer needs it tracked leaving and returning. They dry-sponge the soot off the ceilings before any wet cleaning, working top down. Midday he's running a hydroxyl generator in a sealed room and explaining to a homeowner that the smell won't fully lift until deodorization, not just cleaning, is done. An adjuster wants the contents inventory. The afternoon is structural: scrubbing char off framing and sealing it. He knows the real test is weeks out, when humidity can reactivate any odor he missed. He ends the day tracking which phase each room is in, what's still at the off-site cleaning facility, and which jobs are due for a final deodorization pass.
Real fire damage restoration near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a fire damage restoration technician? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every fire damage restoration technician 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 $5,000–$22,800 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 fire damage restoration technician'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 fire damage restoration technician — 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 fire damage restoration and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Housecall Pro may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Housecall Pro has features like Online booking for home services and GPS tracking that some businesses rely on. For most solo fire damage restoration, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $79/month, Nexa pays for itself in 3.5 months. After that: $948 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