What plumbers need from their software, from sources outside Housecall Pro and outside Nexa:
We make Nexa, so read this as a seller's view, and check it against the tests below instead of taking our word. We built it from each vendor's published feature list and from sourced facts about the trade. We haven't run either product on a plumbing crew, and we have no independent test results or user feedback. Housecall Pro's 4.7 stars on Capterra is its own claim. A feature list can't show how a tool behaves at 9 p.m. on a burst pipe. So the useful part is a short list of plumbing-specific checks you can run yourself. Housecall Pro lists what an on-call shop leans on: scheduling and dispatching, vehicle GPS, 'On My Way' texts, online booking, and an AI that answers calls and books jobs. The BLS says plumbers are often on call, so evening and weekend emergencies are routine. Housecall Pro lists a price book, and flat-rate pricing is on the Essentials plan, not the $79 Basic plan. A flat-rate book prices each task as average completion time times the shop's hourly rate, and can carry materials and multi-unit add-ons. Test it with your own flat-rate job, including a cheaper second unit. Its 14-day trial needs no credit card and includes full access to the Max plan. Licensing and backflow records are a gap in both products. States often require 2 to 5 years of experience and an exam, and some require a separate gas license. Seattle Public Utilities won't accept a backflow report without the tester's certification and kit calibration certificates in its Tester Portal. Neither vendor's list mentions tracking either, so those records will live elsewhere whichever you choose.
Nexa covers the office side: invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, and a client pay portal through your own Stripe account. It also has a public booking page, jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, a payroll CSV of hours times rate, and bookkeeping with expenses, sales tax tracking and receipt scanning. It works offline and has a Spanish interface. It lacks what an emergency plumber depends on. It has no dispatch board, no GPS or route optimization, and no text messages or calls. It has no price book, so it can't do flat-rate billing with materials and multi-unit adjustments. It also has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and doesn't run payroll. 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. If a call comes in at 9 p.m. and you need to text the customer, Nexa won't help.
Over three years, the $79 Housecall Pro plan comes to $948 a year, or $2,844. A shop that bills from a flat-rate price book needs a higher plan and will pay more. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 over three years with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. The gap exists because Nexa leaves out dispatch, texting and the price book. If you take emergency calls, dispatch anyone, text customers or bill from a price book, stay with Housecall Pro. Run your real on-call week and a flat-rate job through its trial before deciding anything. Nexa is a reasonable choice only for a solo plumber who bills time and materials, runs the on-call calendar elsewhere, and wants invoicing, job costing and bookkeeping without vendor support. That plumber still needs a separate record of licenses and backflow certifications.
Our read for plumbers: Stay with Housecall Pro if you take emergency calls, dispatch, text customers or bill flat-rate, since Nexa has none of those.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Housecall Pro costs plumbers $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 plumbers: 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 plumber: 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 plumber'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 plumber earns $59,880/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 plumbers. You own it like you own your Pipe wrenches (multiple sizes).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small plumbers 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.
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
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.
Real, current, local — the news in your trade and the suppliers you actually buy from. It changes every week, which is exactly the point.
Headlines via Google News, refreshed 2026-06-12. Real, dated, and different every week — pick the angle that fits your area.
Your people are already online — swapping real numbers, tool picks, and war stories. Here's where to find them.
Working plumbers, technical questions, tool talk
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →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.
My day is a mix of service calls and scheduled jobs, and the phone decides the order. A service call starts with finding the actual problem: a slow drain might be a clog in the trap or a collapsed line under the yard, so I'm running a camera down it before I promise anything. Water heaters are steady work: diagnosing a failed element or thermostat, or a full replacement when the tank is leaking, with a permit and code-required expansion tank and venting. Leaks are detective work, tracing water back through walls and ceilings to where it's actually coming from. Remodels mean rough-in before the walls close and finish work after, coordinated with the other trades. I carry the common fittings, cartridges and valves on the van, because a trip to the supply house eats an hour. Emergencies don't wait: a burst pipe at night or a sewer backup on a Sunday pays well and wrecks my plans. I quote flat rates for common jobs so customers know the price before I start, and I take payment on site before I roll up the drop cloths.
Real plumbers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a plumber? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every plumber on Nexa →
A working solo plumber rolls with a kit they bought once and have leaned on for years — every piece earns its keep. That is the whole point. Tap any tool to compare the top brands.
Gripping and turning threaded pipe and fittings — the trade's signature tool.
Clearing clogs in drains, traps, and stacks; powered models for main lines.
Clean, square cuts on copper, PEX, and PVC, deburred for a tight seal.
Making fast, reliable PEX connections without solder.
Sweating copper joints — torch, flux, solder, and striker.
Pinpointing hidden leaks behind walls and under slabs before you open them up.
Seeing inside pipes and stacks to find the blockage or break without guessing.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $480–$3,570 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 plumber'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 plumber — 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 plumbers 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 plumbers, 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