What drywall contractors need from their software, from sources outside Jobber and outside Nexa:
Jobber covers the day-to-day job-running side of a drywall business well. It is built for home services, with quotes, invoices with online payments, scheduling, a mobile app for field work and a client hub. Its Connect plan adds QuickBooks Online sync and time and expense tracking. Its Grow plan adds job costing, and its Plus plan adds crew scheduling. That helps a self-employed contractor who has to track their own income and expenses and set money aside for quarterly taxes, and who needs a record for each helper or sub. Nothing in Jobber's feature list mentions progress payments with retainage held back and released, a license classification, or storing signed sub agreements. On the $49 Core plan, the expense tracking and accounting sync that self-employed work leans on are not included.
Nexa covers the money side for a one-person shop: estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, job costing with profit per job, expenses, profit and loss, bank reconciliation, 1099 summaries and sales tax tracking. Those 1099 summaries and expense records can help support how you pay helpers and subs. It can assign jobs to team members, but it does not run payroll. It has no retainage tracking, no license tracking and no signed-agreement storage that I can state. It also has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no text messaging and no route optimization or dispatch board. 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.
Over three years, Jobber's $49 Core plan costs $1,764 ($588 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa is far cheaper, and a solo contractor who mainly needs invoicing, job costing and books will find it enough. Neither tool describes retainage per progress payment, which is the need most specific to subcontract drywall. Whichever you use, keep retainage and sub agreements in a spreadsheet or file folder, or look for a construction-focused billing and accounting tool built for progress billing and retainage. Stay on Jobber if you rely on its text messaging, QuickBooks sync or support.
Our read for drywall contractors: Neither tool describes retainage tracking on progress payments, so a drywall sub who depends on it should look for a construction-focused billing and accounting tool with progress billing and retainage.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Jobber costs drywall contractors $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 drywall contractors: 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 drywall contractor: 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 drywall contractor'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 drywall contractor 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 drywall contractors. You own it like you own your Drywall lift (Telpro PanelLift or rented).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small drywall contractors 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 on the second floor of a new build by 7, looking up at a vaulted ceiling that peaks at 14 feet. My helper and I set up the drywall lift and hang 5/8 Type X on the ceiling first, 12-foot sheets perpendicular to the trusses, screws every 12 inches, then the walls in 1/2 inch, running long sheets to cut down on butt joints. On the angled ceiling every sheet needs a scribe cut, and the offcuts pile up fast. By 10 I'm taping: paper tape bedded in hot mud on the flats, metal-reinforced tape on the off-angle corners, corner bead crimped on the outside corners. That first coat has to set before I touch it again, so this ceiling is four days minimum: tape, fill, finish, sand. Lunch is in the truck, calling the GC about last month's invoice that still hasn't been paid. After lunch I patch at an occupied house where they want an orange-peel texture matched. I hang plastic and zip walls first, because dust containment is its own line on the quote, then thin the mud and test spray on cardboard until the splatter matches. At 4 I'm back at the new build knocking down ridges with a 10-inch knife so tomorrow's second coat goes on clean. At 6 I load the stilts and mud pans, and at home I write two estimates by the square foot of board, count sheets for Monday's delivery, and send the GC a reminder about that invoice.
Real drywall contractors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a drywall contractor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every drywall contractor 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 $625–$2,020 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 drywall contractor'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 drywall contractor — 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 drywall contractors 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 drywall contractors, 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