What hardwood refinishers need from their software, from sources outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa:
Housecall Pro covers the day-to-day running of a refinishing business well. It handles scheduling and dispatching, estimates, a price book, online booking, invoicing, online payments, time tracking, payroll, job costing, GPS and 'On My Way' texts. It also comes with live phone and chat support. The plan that does the core job is $79 a month. It does not list anything for the trade's compliance needs: no field for firm or renovator EPA lead-safe certification, no flag for pre-1978 homes, and no dedicated place for sanding dust-control, respirator or lead-safe cleaning notes, or for employee safety training records. Photo reports and checklist automations sit on a higher plan and could hold some of that by workaround, but they are not built for it.
Nexa covers the business side at a much lower price: invoices, estimates and proposals, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM, a public booking page with intake forms, jobs with costing and profit per job, a crew view, time tracking, a payroll CSV, and bookkeeping. It has the same gap on compliance, with no certification tracking and no pre-1978 flag. Its job and client notes could hold dust and lead-safe practice notes as free text. It also lacks things a growing crew may rely on: no GPS, route optimization or dispatch board, no text messages, no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and it does not run 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 run yourself, with no hosted support desk or onboarding.
Over three years Housecall Pro at $79 a month comes to $2,844 ($948 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. Adding optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings it to $458.64 over three years. If you work alone or with a small crew and mostly need invoicing, estimates and bookkeeping, Nexa saves real money. If you depend on dispatch, GPS, texting, QuickBooks sync or payroll processing, stay where you are. Whichever you use, keep lead-safe certification, dust-control and training records in a separate compliance tool, because neither product is built for them.
Our read for hardwood refinishers: Neither product tracks EPA lead-safe certification, pre-1978 flags or dust-exposure records, so use a dedicated compliance and safety-records tool alongside whichever you already run.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Housecall Pro costs hardwood refinishers $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 hardwood refinishers: Neither Housecall Pro nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with software built for it. Nexa only makes sense beside it, at $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 hardwood refinisher: 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 hardwood refinisher'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 hardwood refinisher 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 hardwood refinishers. You own it like you own your Drum sander or belt sander (rented or owned).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small hardwood refinishers 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.
I'm at the house by 7 for an 800 square foot refinish, 2 1/4-inch oak strip about 60 years old. First I walk the floor, set any nails that are proud, and check for old wax, because it gums up the paper. The homeowner moved the furniture out, which keeps this job priced lower than the ones where I move it. I hang plastic over the doorways and hook the drum sander to my dust extractor. By 8 I'm on the big machine, cutting at 36 grit to get through the old finish and the cupping, then 60, then 80, working with the grain. At 10 I'm on the edger along the baseboards, with a hand scraper in the corners and under the radiator. At noon it's the final pass at 100 grit, a 120 screen on the buffer to blend the edger marks, then I vacuum everything and tack the floor with a microfiber pad. At 1 I water-pop the floor so it takes stain evenly and lay down sample boards in provincial next to the homeowner's sample until we agree on the color. Stain goes on by hand and gets wiped off in sections. It has to dry before the first coat of oil-based poly, which I roll on at 5 with a lambswool applicator, working my way out of the room. That's day one. Tomorrow I buff and apply coat two, the day after coat three, so the job runs 3 to 4 days. In the evening I write the stain formula down for my records, send the invoice for the balance due at completion, and quote two jobs from photos.
Real hardwood refinishers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a hardwood refinisher? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every hardwood refinisher 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 $4,250–$17,400 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 hardwood refinisher'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 hardwood refinisher — 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 hardwood refinishers 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 hardwood refinishers, 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