What mirror installers need from their software, from sources outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa:
Housecall Pro covers the paperwork side of mirror work well. It has estimates, a price book, professional invoicing, online payments and job costing, so you can itemize glass, bottom channel, J-mold or other hardware, mastic and labor on one estimate. It also adds scheduling and dispatching, 'On My Way' texts, vehicle GPS, QuickBooks Online sync on the Essentials plan and above, live phone and chat support, and a 14-day trial with no credit card. It is a hosted service, so the vendor runs it and supports you. What it does not do for you is the trade-specific record keeping: the sourced needs here are the license class and number for each state, certificates of insurance, safety records and how each mirror is fastened. You would have to put those in notes or line items yourself, and I can't confirm from the feature list that it has dedicated fields for any of them.
Nexa covers the core job for a small shop: estimates and quotes 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, time tracking, expenses, a payroll CSV of hours times rate, and today's job stops sent to Google Maps in time order. It works offline and has a Spanish interface. It does not have text messaging, QuickBooks or Xero sync, GPS or dispatch, a card reader, or payroll with taxes and pay stubs. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor onboarding. Any automated emails it sends go out only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Like Housecall Pro, it has no feature I can point to for tracking licenses or insurance, so you would record those yourself.
Over three years, Housecall Pro at $79 a month costs $2,844. Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for the same period. Stay with Housecall Pro if you text customers, dispatch crews or sync your books to QuickBooks, or if you want vendor support. A solo installer who works from one device, takes card payments through their own Stripe account, and doesn't need those extras can reasonably switch and keep the difference.
Our read for mirror installers: Stay with Housecall Pro if you rely on texting, dispatch, GPS, QuickBooks sync or vendor support; a solo installer who needs none of those can run estimates and invoices in Nexa for far less.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Housecall Pro costs mirror 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 mirror installers: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $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 mirror 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.)
Housecall Pro plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median mirror 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 mirror installers. You own it like you own your vacuum suction cup lifters.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small mirror 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.
Your work is custom every time, because a mirror gets cut to a specific wall and won't flex to forgive a bad measurement. The morning is a measure for a frameless bathroom vanity mirror, and you template the wall carefully, noting the outlets and the light fixture it has to cut around and checking whether the wall is plumb, because a wall that leans will leave a wedge gap at the top if you ignore it. The afternoon install is a large gym wall mirror, so you and your helper bring the heavy sheet in on the A-frame rack and move it with suction lifters. You find the studs, set a laser line dead level, and apply mirror mastic in the right pattern while supporting the bottom edge on J-channel so gravity doesn't pull it before the adhesive grabs. Big mirrors are heavy and the failure mode is ugly, so you over-support rather than trust mastic alone. On the vanity job you have to coordinate with the GC because the backsplash tile and the outlets need to be done before your mirror can go on, and if you show up early it's a wasted trip. You handle every sheet in cut-gloves and watch the edges, because a chip or a scratched corner on a polished mirror means re-ordering. You finish by cleaning the surface to a streak-free shine, since on a mirror the install and the finish are judged in the same glance.
Real mirror installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a mirror installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every mirror 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 $790–$4,550 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 mirror 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 mirror 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 mirror 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 mirror 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