Jobber vs Nexa
The Real Comparison for Auto Electricians

Jobber
$49/mo ($588/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 5.7 months at Jobber's current price.

Does Jobber Fit Auto Electricians? Our Read

What auto electricians need from their software, from sources outside Jobber and outside Nexa:

Jobber covers the general field-service job well: scheduling, quotes, invoices with online payments, reporting, a mobile app, and QuickBooks Online sync. Its Connect plan adds time and expense tracking, which helps an owner-operator log tool purchases. Its Grow plan adds job costing. Nothing in its listed features, though, covers what this trade specifically relies on. That means a separate diagnostic line with a minimum and its own rate, flat-rate versus actual-time labor, EPA Section 609 certification and recovered-refrigerant records kept for 3 years, or a record of customer approval for added work and parts the customer asked to keep. It is built for home services, so those would be workarounds.

Nexa covers the business basics. It has estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, and clients can sign estimates in its pay portal. It has jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, and expense and receipt tracking for tool purchases, plus profit and loss and sales tax tracking. It has no field for diagnostic minimums or flat-rate labor, no place for certification or refrigerant records, and no way to record approval of added work or flag parts a customer asked to keep. It also has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no text messaging, and no dispatch or route tools. Card payments go only through your own Stripe account. 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 vendor onboarding.

Over three years, Jobber Core at $49 a month comes to $588 a year, or $1,764. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 a month Cloud Sync. A solo electrician who only needs estimates, invoices, expenses and job profit can save money with Nexa and should check the gaps above first. A shop that already uses Jobber's QuickBooks sync, texting or scheduling has no strong reason to move for this trade's needs. Either way, the compliance records are still missing, so a shop doing A/C work should look at auto repair shop management software.

Our read for auto electricians: Neither tool holds diagnostic billing rules, Section 609 refrigerant records or added-work approval records, so auto electricians should look at auto repair shop management software, and Jobber users with no other reason to move can stay put.

Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.

Bottom Line

Jobber costs auto electricians $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.

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 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 auto electricians: 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.

Choose Nexa if:

  • You're done paying monthly forever
  • You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
  • You need invoicing, time tracker and task manager in one tool
  • You're tired of price increases
  • You want to own your tools like you own your equipment

Choose Jobber if:

  • You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
  • You're deeply invested in Jobber's specific workflow
  • You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet

Sound Familiar?

The first job is a no-start that cranks but won't fire, and the owner swears it's the starter even though it spins fine. You start at the battery with the multimeter, check voltage drop across the grounds, and trace power through the relays before the scan tool even comes out. Electrical work is the one trade where the diagnosis is the whole job, and you spend the morning explaining to a skeptical customer that finding the fault is the labor, not the part. After lunch you get a parasitic draw that's killing a battery overnight, so you pull fuses one at a time watching the meter, hunting the circuit that won't go to sleep. Somewhere in there you open a harness and find a rat's nest of scotch-locks from whoever wired in an aftermarket amp years ago, and now you're cutting all of it out and soldering proper splices. An intermittent dash light won't reproduce no matter how you wiggle the connectors, and you tell the customer to bring it back the moment it acts up. You close out a job that took three hours to find and twenty minutes to fix, and the customer questions the bill because the broken wire was so small.

Invoicing, time tracking, 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.

What Jobber Actually Costs Auto Electricians

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.

Three years at today's price

Year 1$588
Year 2$588
Year 3$588
Three years of Jobber$1,764

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-by-Feature

FeatureJobberNexa
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 accessYes — 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.

What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy

What Jobber Does Better

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.

What Jobber Is Built For

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.

Where business tools fit — for an auto electrician

Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every auto electrician: 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. 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. 2

    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. 3

    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. 4

    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.)

Calculate Your Full Stack

Jobber plus whatever else you're paying for:

Email yourself this comparison?

Switching from Jobber

1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Data Export. Download clients, jobs, and invoices as CSV.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your client list by CSV; re-enter your services and upcoming jobs.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 1-2 weeks. Finish scheduled jobs in Jobber; book new ones in Nexa.
4
Cancel Jobber — Cancel subscription before your next billing cycle. Download final export.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.

What This Means for Auto Electricians

The median Auto Electrician earns $48,000/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 auto electricians. You own it like you own your Digital multimeter for voltage drop and continuity testing.

Is Nexa actually right for an auto electrician?

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 12,000 auto electricians 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 Digital multimeter for voltage drop and continuity testing.

Look elsewhere if

  • You run a 20+ auto electrician 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 auto electricians 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.

Auto Electricians by the numbers — by place

Tax & registration where you operate

Invoicing, time tracking, 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 auto electricians actually deal with

A day in the life of a auto electrician

The first job is a no-start that cranks but won't fire, and the owner swears it's the starter even though it spins fine. You start at the battery with the multimeter, check voltage drop across the grounds, and trace power through the relays before the scan tool even comes out. Electrical work is the one trade where the diagnosis is the whole job, and you spend the morning explaining to a skeptical customer that finding the fault is the labor, not the part. After lunch you get a parasitic draw that's killing a battery overnight, so you pull fuses one at a time watching the meter, hunting the circuit that won't go to sleep. Somewhere in there you open a harness and find a rat's nest of scotch-locks from whoever wired in an aftermarket amp years ago, and now you're cutting all of it out and soldering proper splices. An intermittent dash light won't reproduce no matter how you wiggle the connectors, and you tell the customer to bring it back the moment it acts up. You close out a job that took three hours to find and twenty minutes to fix, and the customer questions the bill because the broken wire was so small.

The tools a working auto electrician actually owns

Local auto electricians on Nexa

Real auto electricians near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an auto electrician? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every auto electrician on Nexa →

The kit a working auto electrician owns

The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.

Core kitEssential

Digital multimeter

$60–$300
Core kitEssential

Bidirectional scan tool

$400–$2,500
Core kitEssential

Power probe circuit tester

$80–$350
Core kitEssential

Soldering iron and heat-shrink kit

$40–$200
Core kitEssential

Ratcheting crimp tool set

$40–$180
Core kitEssential

Battery and alternator load tester

$60–$300
Core kitEssential

Wire tracer and short finder

$50–$250
Upgrade

Automotive oscilloscope

$400–$2,000
Upgrade

Wiring diagram subscription

$500–$2,000
The core kit, bought once $730–$4,080

Here's the bar that matters: you spent $730–$4,080 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

How we put this guide together

We build an auto electrician'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 auto electrician — 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

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 Jobber replacement?

For solo auto electricians 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.

What does Jobber do that Nexa doesn't?

Jobber has features like Built for home services and Mobile app for field teams that some businesses rely on. For most solo auto electricians, these aren't dealbreakers.

How fast does Nexa pay for itself?

At $49/month, Nexa pays for itself in 5.7 months. After that: $588 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.

$1,764 Over 3 Years. Or $279 Once (or 3 × $99).

Own your tools. Stop renting your software.

Get Nexa — $279 Once
or 3 payments of $99
✓ 30-day money-back — save $500 or full refund

More Comparisons for Auto Electricians