What gate installers need from their software, from sources outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa:
Nexa Industries publishes this page and makes Nexa, so weigh this read with that in mind. We haven't tested Housecall Pro; its details come from its own pages, including its review-site rating, which we can't verify. Its 14-day trial needs no credit card and is said to include full Max access, so run one real gate job through it before deciding. For a gate installer, Housecall Pro covers field operations well: scheduling and dispatching, estimates, a price book, invoicing, online payments, vehicle GPS, 'On My Way' texts, job costing, an AI that answers calls, and live phone and chat support. Its checklist automations and photo reports, which start on Essentials rather than the $79 monthly Basic plan, are the nearest thing to a per-job record of UL 325 work: at least two entrapment protection devices per area (the operator's built-in sensing counts as one), controls at least six feet from the gate, and signs visible from each side. Its feature list doesn't mention tracking CAGOI or American Fence Association renewal dates and continuing education, or matching your contractor license class, such as California's C-13, to each quote. You would keep those records yourself.
Nexa covers the office side: quotes and estimates that convert to invoices, a client pay portal where customers pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates, jobs with costing and profit per job, crew assignment with a crew view of their own jobs, time tracking, a payroll CSV, expenses and a profit and loss report. It works offline and has a Spanish interface. It has no GPS, route optimization or dispatch board, no text messages or calls, no card reader, and no accounting-software sync. It doesn't run payroll taxes 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. It lists no checklists or photo reports, no UL 325 record, no certification renewal tracking and no license-class matching, so on the gate-specific paperwork it is behind Housecall Pro on records and no better on renewals and license class. Whichever you use, keep renewal dates and license class in a system you control, such as a spreadsheet.
Over three years, Housecall Pro at $79 a month is $948 a year, or $2,844. The plans with checklists and photo reports cost more, up to $329 a month on Max. Nexa is $279 once, or three payments of $99. Adding optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings Nexa's three-year total to $458.64. Without sync, Nexa runs on one device. If you run a crew, dispatch trucks, text customers, or rely on checklists and photo reports as your UL 325 job record, stay with Housecall Pro. Nexa has none of those, and the lower price doesn't make up for losing them. A solo installer who works from one device, sends quotes and invoices, and is happy taking cards through their own Stripe account could reasonably try Nexa, but should expect to keep safety records elsewhere.
Our read for gate installers: Stay with Housecall Pro if you dispatch crews, text customers, or use checklists and photo reports to document UL 325 work; only a solo, one-device installer who mainly needs quotes and invoices has a reason to try Nexa.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Housecall Pro costs gate installers $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 gate installers: 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 gate installer: 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A gate installer's job already holds the services, the hours, the add-ons, and the materials — so the invoice builds itself from the work instead of you re-typing it at 9pm. Toggle an add-on or nudge the hours and watch it recompute.
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Housecall Pro plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median gate installer 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 gate installers. You own it like you own your Post-hole auger and concrete mixer.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small gate installers 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.
The job lives or dies on the posts, so he spends the first hour with a transit and string line getting the hinge post and latch post dead plumb and square to each other, augering holes deep enough that frost won't heave them. The driveway has a crown he clocked on the estimate, so he's calculating the swing arc to make sure the leaf clears the ground at its lowest point instead of plowing into the asphalt. He mixes concrete and sets the posts, bracing them while it kicks, because a post that drifts an inch while curing means a gate that won't latch for the next twenty years. The gate itself is a heavy ornamental steel piece the customer fell in love with from a photo; he warned them it needed the bigger hinges and a stronger operator, and the footings reflect that weight. He hangs the leaf, shims the hinges, and swings it a dozen times checking for drag and self-closing, adjusting until it stops where it should. He runs conduit for the operator and a loop for the safety sensor now, because the customer mentioned wanting an automatic opener eventually and trenching it in later means tearing up the new drive. Last is the welds ground smooth and a coat of primer on the bare steel before rust finds it. He notes the post depths and hardware specs for the file.
Real gate installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a gate installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every gate installer 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 $2,450–$12,000 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 gate installer'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 gate installer — 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 gate installers 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 gate installers, 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