Housecall Pro vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Grading Contractors
Housecall Pro
$79/mo ($948/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 3.5 months at Housecall Pro's current price.
Does Housecall Pro Fit Grading Contractors? Our Read
What grading contractors need from their software, from sources outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa:
Grading contractors working on sites of one acre or more need to track stormwater permit coverage, and so do those on smaller sites that belong to a larger common plan of development. EPA says construction stormwater discharges need a permit when the work disturbs 1 acre or more, or less than 1 acre if it is part of a larger common plan of development or sale. The federal construction effluent rules (40 CFR 450.21) require erosion and sediment controls, stabilizing disturbed areas when work stops for 14 days or more, and controls on dewatering and washout. The EPA 2022 construction general permit expires February 16, 2027, so permit paperwork and renewals need dated tracking. (epa.gov)
Erosion-control inspections must be scheduled and documented per job. Minnesota DOT's inspector guide says the Erosion Control Supervisor should inspect weekly and after 1/2 inch rains. The contractor must amend the SWPPP after the pre-construction meeting to name the certified supervisor and installer (with certification cards). SWPPP changes must be submitted within 7 days of identifying the need. Perimeter controls are to be cleaned out when half full, and trackout is to be cleaned up by end of day. Records of inspections, certifications and photos need to be kept per project. (dot.state.mn.us)
Bids and invoices for public earthwork are often built on unit prices multiplied by owner-estimated quantities. Payment then follows measured installed quantities. FHWA describes this as the bid being the contractor's unit prices multiplied by the owner's estimated quantities. The owner makes partial payments based on detailed take-offs of installed quantities for each item, and keeps the risk of quantity variations by paying for actual quantities installed. Software therefore needs bid-item schedules with estimated versus measured quantities and progress billing by quantity, not only flat invoices. (fhwa.dot.gov)
Heavy hauling trucks need a check for the federal Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax (Form 2290), while off-highway machinery generally does not. The IRS instructions say highway motor vehicles with a taxable gross weight of 55,000 pounds or more are taxable. They also say specially designed mobile machinery and off-highway vehicles meeting certain conditions are not treated as highway vehicles. A vehicle expected to use public highways 5,000 miles or less is suspended from the tax, and the tax becomes due once it exceeds that limit. Per-vehicle weight and highway-mileage records therefore matter for a contractor's fleet. (irs.gov)
Housecall Pro covers the field-service side of a grading business well: scheduling and dispatching, estimates, invoicing, online payments, time tracking, payroll, job costing, vehicle GPS and live phone support. On Essentials it adds checklist automations and photo reports, which help with per-job inspection photos. What it does not describe is what this trade leans on most. Its feature list has no stormwater permit tracking with dated renewals (the EPA 2022 construction general permit expires February 16, 2027), and no inspection schedule tied to rain events. It also has no bid-item schedules with estimated versus measured quantities, and no progress billing by installed quantity, which public earthwork often needs. Nor does it track per-vehicle weight and highway mileage for the Form 2290 check on heavy trucks.
Nexa covers the general business side: invoices, estimates and proposals, jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, a payroll CSV, expense and bookkeeping tools, and a simple stock count. It works offline. It has the same gaps for this trade: no permit or inspection compliance tracking, no unit-price bid schedules or quantity-based progress billing, and no per-vehicle fleet tax records. It also lacks GPS, fleet tracking, dispatch, QuickBooks or Xero sync, and real payroll (no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit). It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor onboarding, and it takes online card payments only through your own Stripe account.
Over three years, Housecall Pro at $79 a month on Basic (1 user) costs $2,844. Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa is much cheaper, but the price gap doesn't settle this. A grading contractor with a small back office could use either as a general invoicing and job-costing tool, and Nexa makes sense if cost is the main concern. Neither handles permit and inspection records, quantity-based bidding and billing, or fleet tax records. Keep those in a construction project-management and compliance tool built for heavy civil and earthwork, and treat either product as the invoicing and scheduling layer next to it.
Our read for grading contractors: Neither covers stormwater permit and inspection tracking, unit-price bid schedules with measured-quantity billing, or per-vehicle fleet tax records, so a grading contractor needs a heavy-civil construction management and compliance tool for those.
What fits the core need in grading contractors
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.
Earthwork estimating and progress-billing software (unit-price bid items, quantities, pay applications): Builds unit-price bids, tracks completed quantities by item, and turns them into progress payment applications, which flat invoicing tools do not do. Examples: TCLI Estimating Link and Billing Link, ProfitDig.
Earthwork takeoff and progress-tracking software: Calculates earthwork volumes and material quantities from plans and tracks production and progress against them, supporting estimated-versus-measured quantity work. Examples: AGTEK Gradework and Trackwork.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Housecall Pro costs grading contractors $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.
Can it pay for itself?
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 grading contractors: Neither Housecall Pro 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 $2,844 for Housecall Pro over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need time tracker, invoicing and task manager in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Housecall Pro if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Housecall Pro's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
I walk the site first with the plans and the grade stakes, checking the surveyor's hubs against the design because everything I do today is chasing tenths of a foot. The job is a building pad and a driveway that has to drain to the street. I fire up the grade-control system, and the GPS keeps the blade on the design surface as I make passes - but the subgrade clay is wet from last night, so I'm spreading and letting it dry before I compact, because rolling wet clay just pumps and fails later. Mid-morning the erosion inspector swings by; my silt fence is trenched in and the inlet protection's good, so no stop-work, but I've seen jobs shut down over a torn fence. I cut the high side, move the spoil to fill the low corner - keeping cut and fill balanced so I'm not trucking dirt I didn't bid. Afternoon is fine grade: box blade passes until the pad is flat to tolerance and the driveway falls a clean two percent to the gutter. I roll it in lifts, proof it, and shoot grades across the pad to prove it drains and meets spec for the as-built. Last hour is photographing the finished grades, marking the lifts I compacted for the inspector, invoicing for the dirt actually moved, and confirming tomorrow's site has the stakes set and access for the lowboy.
Hitting precise slope and drainage specs - a pad or driveway has to fall the right percentage to drain, and being off a fraction means water ponds, a slab cracks, or the engineer rejects the as-built
Soil moisture and compaction - grading wet clay or failing to compact in lifts means the fill settles later and the customer blames the finished surface that looked perfect on day one
Erosion-control and stormwater (SWPPP) compliance - silt fence, inlet protection, and stabilization the inspector checks, with stop-work orders and fines if the site sheds mud into a storm drain
Balancing cut and fill across a site - misjudging the earthwork quantities means importing or hauling dirt that wasn't in the bid, and grade-tolerance disputes when the surveyor's as-built doesn't match
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.
What Housecall Pro Actually Costs Grading Contractors
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.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$948
Year 2$948
Year 3$948
Three years of Housecall Pro$2,844
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-by-Feature
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.
What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy
It buys the software, not a service contract. You install Nexa and it runs on your machine. There is no seat count, and nothing stops working if you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying.
Housecall Pro's monthly fee is not only rent. It pays for their hosting, their support desk, and their engineers shipping changes every week. If those matter to how you work, that is a real thing you would be giving up.
Cross-device sync is the one optional extra — $4.99/month if you want your data mirrored between machines. Skip it and Nexa still works; you just sync manually.
The honest risk of buying once: you are betting on us still being here to improve it. The honest risk of renting: the price is theirs to raise, and the graveyard section below is a record of tools that did exactly that.
What Housecall Pro Does Better
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.
Online booking for home services
GPS tracking
Postcard marketing campaigns
Professional invoicing
Review collection
A smaller bill up front: plans start at $79/month, against $279 paid once for Nexa.
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.
What Housecall Pro Is Built For
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)
Three plans: Basic at $59/mo billed annually ($79 monthly) for 1 user, Essentials at $149/mo annual ($189 monthly) for 5 users, and Max at $299/mo annual ($329 monthly) for 8 users. Extra Max users cost $35/mo each. (housecallpro.com)
Every plan includes live phone and chat support, a free iOS and Android app in English and Spanish, offline viewing, AI team members, and card processing rates 'as low as 2.59%'. (housecallpro.com)
The free trial lasts 14 days with no credit card required, and the FAQ says it includes full access to the Max plan. The page says long-term contracts are not required. (housecallpro.com)
Essentials adds routes, flat-rate pricing, checklist automations, photo reports, employee GPS tracking, commissions and QuickBooks Online sync. Max adds a sales proposal tool, recurring service plans, route optimization, open API access, a dedicated onboarding specialist and escalated phone support. (housecallpro.com)
The feature set covers scheduling and dispatching, estimates, a price book, online booking, invoicing, online payments, financing, time tracking, payroll, job costing, vehicle GPS and 'On My Way' texts. It also has a CSR AI that answers calls and books jobs. (housecallpro.com)
Support and learning resources include a Help Center, a Pro Community, webinars, a Mastermind program and a Trade Academy. Housecall Pro lists 4.7 stars on Capterra from 2,700+ reviews, though that figure is its own claim. (housecallpro.com)
What people outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa say:
SoftwareConnect rates Housecall Pro 4.5/5 from 10 reviews. Its editorial pros are full QuickBooks integration, a large library of training tutorials, and texting customers and employees from the app. A user review calls it an 'Amazing all in one platform for running a service provider company.' (softwareconnect.com)
SoftwareConnect's editorial cons are limited CRM functionality, some reported lag, and some users needing multiple programs. Users say scheduling is 'rigid' and multi-day jobs can't be extended. One reviewer says invoices don't produce usable internal reports and had to move away from the program. Another says it does not let them add many jobs or locations to one customer. (softwareconnect.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a grading contractor
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every grading contractor: 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.
1
Find the work
Win the job
↓
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the job
↓
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
Job / project tracking
Time tracking
Expenses, materials & add-ons
then ↓
3
Bill for it
Send the bill
↓
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Invoicing
Deposits & credits
then ↓
4
Get paid
Collect payment
↓
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
Card / online payments
Automatic reminders
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.)
Watch a job become an invoice
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A grading contractor'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.
TimeLabor — tracked on the job
16 hrs× $155/hr$2,480
MaterialsStructural fill, 40 cubic yards$1,400
MaterialsDriveway base gravel$950
→
The invoice builds itself
Subtotal$6,010
Deposit credited−$1,500
Invoice total$4,510
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Calculate Your Full Stack
Housecall Pro plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Housecall Pro
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → export customers, job history, and invoices as CSV files.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your customer list by CSV; re-enter your core services.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 2 weeks. Transition dispatching and booking to Nexa.
4
Cancel Housecall Pro — Cancel subscription (check for early termination fees). Download all records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Grading Contractors
The median Grading Contractor 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 grading contractors. You own it like you own your Motor grader or a box blade on a tractor.
Is Nexa actually right for a grading contractor?
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
Right for you if
You run solo or a small crew — like the 15,000 grading contractors in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack and a pile of apps that don't talk to each other.
You want to invoice, schedule, and track from the field — not from a back office.
You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your Motor grader or a box blade on a tractor.
Look elsewhere if
You run a 20+ grading contractor fleet that needs enterprise dispatch and multi-crew routing — Nexa is built for 1–5, and a fleet platform will serve you better.
You need full payroll for a large team or deep, SKU-level inventory — that's not what Nexa is for.
You're genuinely happy paying monthly and don't mind stitching tools together. No tool fixes a workflow you already like.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small grading contractors 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.
Grading Contractors by the numbers — by place
Tax, licensing & seasonality where you operate
1-13.3%income tax
CSLB (Contractors State License Board)licensing
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
DBPR (Dept of Business and Professional Regulation)licensing
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.
What grading contractors actually deal with
Hitting precise slope and drainage specs - a pad or driveway has to fall the right percentage to drain, and being off a fraction means water ponds, a slab cracks, or the engineer rejects the as-built
Soil moisture and compaction - grading wet clay or failing to compact in lifts means the fill settles later and the customer blames the finished surface that looked perfect on day one
Erosion-control and stormwater (SWPPP) compliance - silt fence, inlet protection, and stabilization the inspector checks, with stop-work orders and fines if the site sheds mud into a storm drain
Balancing cut and fill across a site - misjudging the earthwork quantities means importing or hauling dirt that wasn't in the bid, and grade-tolerance disputes when the surveyor's as-built doesn't match
A day in the life of a grading contractor
I walk the site first with the plans and the grade stakes, checking the surveyor's hubs against the design because everything I do today is chasing tenths of a foot. The job is a building pad and a driveway that has to drain to the street. I fire up the grade-control system, and the GPS keeps the blade on the design surface as I make passes - but the subgrade clay is wet from last night, so I'm spreading and letting it dry before I compact, because rolling wet clay just pumps and fails later. Mid-morning the erosion inspector swings by; my silt fence is trenched in and the inlet protection's good, so no stop-work, but I've seen jobs shut down over a torn fence. I cut the high side, move the spoil to fill the low corner - keeping cut and fill balanced so I'm not trucking dirt I didn't bid. Afternoon is fine grade: box blade passes until the pad is flat to tolerance and the driveway falls a clean two percent to the gutter. I roll it in lifts, proof it, and shoot grades across the pad to prove it drains and meets spec for the as-built. Last hour is photographing the finished grades, marking the lifts I compacted for the inspector, invoicing for the dirt actually moved, and confirming tomorrow's site has the stakes set and access for the lowboy.
The tools a working grading contractor actually owns
Motor grader or a box blade on a tractor
GPS or laser grade-control system
Compact track loader with a grading attachment
Smooth-drum roller and plate compactor
Builder's level and grade stakes
Skid steer with a laser-guided box for fine grade
Local grading contractors on Nexa
Real grading contractors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a grading contractor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every grading contractor on Nexa →
The kit a working grading contractor owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Core kitEssential
Compact track loader with grading attachment
$40,000–$120,000
Core kitEssential
GPS or laser grade-control system
$15,000–$80,000
Core kitEssential
Box blade and land plane for a tractor
$800–$4,000
Core kitEssential
Smooth-drum roller
$8,000–$50,000
Core kitEssential
Plate compactor
$800–$4,000
Core kitEssential
Builder's level and grade stakes
$200–$900
Core kitEssential
Laser-guided grading box
$8,000–$30,000
Core kitEssential
Lowboy or equipment trailer
$8,000–$40,000
Upgrade
Motor grader
$80,000–$350,000
The core kit, bought once$80,800–$328,900
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $80,800–$328,900 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.
How To Read This Page
We make Nexa. It is one of the two options compared here, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make Housecall Pro's case the way we would want ours made — their strengths above are their own published feature list, not our summary of it.
The prices are Housecall Pro's published list prices, checked on the date shown in the sources below. Plans change; check theirs before you decide.
No customer quotes appear on this page because we do not have any from grading contractors we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Housecall Pro on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Housecall Pro's own pricing page is the source for every figure above, read on the date shown in the sources section below.
We are not neutral about subscriptions, and that is the argument, not a hidden assumption: software you pay for once is cheaper over three years than software you rent, unless you need something only the rented one does.
How we put this guide together
We build a grading contractor'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 grading contractor — 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.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingJobber $588/yr, Housecall Pro $948/yr, QuickBooks $456/yr, Square — taken from each company's published plans, last verified September 2026. Pricing moves; each name above links straight to that vendor’s own pricing page so you can confirm it before you decide.
Income contextThe $55,000 median we cite for the typical grading contractor is occupational median annual pay from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics), compiled April 2026. We use it only to show software spend as a share of real income — your own numbers will differ.
Three-year mathMulti-year totals are today's list price multiplied by the number of years. No price rise is projected, so the figure can be checked against the vendor's own pricing page; if they raise it, the real cost is higher.
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.
FAQ
Is Nexa really a Housecall Pro replacement?
For solo grading contractors 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.
What does Housecall Pro do that Nexa doesn't?
Housecall Pro has features like Online booking for home services and GPS tracking that some businesses rely on. For most solo grading contractors, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $79/month, Nexa pays for itself in 3.5 months. After that: $948 saved every year.
Can I pay in installments?
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.