What alarm installers need from their software, from sources outside Jobber and outside Nexa:
Jobber covers the general running of a service business well. Core at $49 a month handles online booking and scheduling, quotes, invoices with online payments and reporting, and the mobile app and route optimization suit field crews. Higher plans add job costing, two-way SMS and crew scheduling, and QuickBooks Online sync is included. What it does not list is anything specific to alarm work: tracking company and employee alarm licenses separately from contractor or electrician licenses, keeping a current ACORD liability certificate ready for the licensing board, splitting contracted recurring monitoring revenue (RMR) from one-time work with the central station cost per account, or holding permit numbers, renewal dates and false-alarm history that export by jurisdiction. Those would live in side spreadsheets. One caveat: I have not tested Jobber's custom fields or reports against these records, so check whether they could stand in before ruling it out.
Nexa covers similar general ground: invoices, recurring invoices, payment plans, estimates, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM with tags and notes, jobs with profit per job, a crew view for assigned team members, time tracking and bookkeeping reports. It has no licensing, insurance-certificate, RMR or permit tracking, so it misses the same alarm-specific needs. Its CRM also has no street-address field on a client, which makes jurisdiction-based permit records a poor fit. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no SMS, no route optimization or dispatch board and no hosted support desk, and its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Jobber does these things and Nexa does not, and a crew that relies on them should not move.
Over three years Jobber's Core plan costs $1,764 ($588 a year), and extra users or higher plans cost more. Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync; without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. The savings are real, but they only matter if you can give up Jobber's QuickBooks sync, SMS, routing and support. If you use those, stay with Jobber. Whichever you pick, a dedicated alarm-industry tool, meaning software for alarm company billing, recurring monitoring accounts and compliance records, is what would cover the licensing, insurance-proof, RMR and permit-export needs. Keep your current general tool for scheduling and invoicing.
Our read for alarm installers: Neither tool covers an alarm installer's core need (license, insurance, RMR and permit records), so look for alarm-specific software; if you keep a general tool, Jobber's QuickBooks sync, SMS, routing and support make it the safer one to stay on.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Jobber costs alarm installers $588/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 5.7 months it has cost less than Jobber, 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 Jobber 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 alarm installers: Neither Jobber 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 $1,764 for Jobber 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. Jobber solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $49/month — $588 a year, from Jobber'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 $1,485 less.
If Jobber 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 | Jobber | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | — | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $49/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,764 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Jobber come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Jobber lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Jobber's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Jobber is the better call if you need built for home services specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Jobber is built for home and commercial field service businesses. Its homepage names 12 trades, including cleaning, HVAC, landscaping, plumbing, roofing and tree care, and says it serves service pros in over 50 industries. (getjobber.com)
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 alarm 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 alarm 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.
Jobber plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median alarm installer earns $55,000/year. At $588/year, Jobber 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 alarm installers. You own it like you own your Low-voltage wire spool stock (18/2, 22/4, Cat6).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small alarm 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.
Most of my installs are homes and small businesses that want a security system they can actually rely on. It starts with a walkthrough: every door and window, the routes someone would take through the house, where the control panel and keypads should go, and whether the customer wants cameras, smoke and carbon-monoxide detection, or smart-home features too. Installation means mounting door and window sensors, motion detectors positioned to avoid pets and heating vents, glass-break sensors, sirens and the panel, and wiring or pairing every device. Then programming: zones, entry delays, user codes, and the connection to the monitoring centre, followed by testing every sensor with the monitoring station on the line. Training the customer matters as much as the install, because most false alarms come from users who don't know how their system works, and false alarms can mean fines. Many customers also want video doorbells and cameras viewable from their phone. My income is the installation plus monthly monitoring contracts, which make the business steady.
Real alarm installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an alarm installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every alarm 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 $470–$1,790 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 an alarm 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 an alarm 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 alarm installers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Jobber may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Jobber has features like Built for home services and Mobile app for field teams that some businesses rely on. For most solo alarm installers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $49/month, Nexa pays for itself in 5.7 months. After that: $588 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