What holiday light installers need from their software, from sources outside Jobber and outside Nexa:
Jobber covers most of what a holiday light crew runs on. It is built for home services, has a mobile app for field teams, and includes route optimization, which matters when a season is a string of roof-and-ladder stops. Quotes, invoices with online payments, online booking and a client hub are in the Core plan. Higher plans add crew scheduling, two-way SMS, job costing and QuickBooks Online sync. Jobber also offers month-to-month plans with no commitment, which suits seasonal demand. The work is high-risk (falls are the main hazard), so liability insurance and job-site safety records matter. Jobber's feature list doesn't say it handles either, so you'd manage them outside the software.
Nexa covers the office side: estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, a client pay portal where clients pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates, a CRM with a public lead form, a public booking page, jobs with profit per job, assigning jobs to team members, and today's stops sent to Google Maps in time order. It also has time tracking, a payroll CSV, expenses and profit and loss reports, and it works offline. It has no route optimization or dispatch board, no text messaging, no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no Google Calendar sync and no app marketplace. It doesn't run payroll, and there is no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails (reminders, sequences, workflows) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, and without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device.
Over three years Jobber's $49/month plan costs $1,764 ($588 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. A solo installer who quotes, invoices, gets paid through Stripe and plans each day's stops by hand could save real money with Nexa and give up little. A crew that relies on route optimization, text messages to clients, crew scheduling or QuickBooks sync should keep Jobber, because Nexa has none of those.
Our read for holiday light installers: Stay with Jobber if your crew depends on routing, texting, crew scheduling or QuickBooks; only a solo installer with simple needs should consider Nexa's lower cost.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Jobber costs holiday light 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 holiday light installers: Stay with Jobber 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 $1,764 for Jobber over three years.
Scheduling, job tracking, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. 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 holiday light 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.)
Jobber plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Holiday Light Installer earns $38,000/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 holiday light installers. You own it like you own your Commercial-grade C9 and C7 LED strands with all-weather coax-style connectors.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small holiday light 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.
Scheduling, job tracking, invoicing and client records are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
My whole year happens between early November and New Year's, so every dry, daylight hour is precious and the schedule is a Tetris game against the weather. A morning install on a two-story colonial means setting the extension ladder safely, clipping into roof anchors, and running the harness, because a slip on a frosted roof ends my season and maybe more. I measure the rooflines, load clips by the hundred into my pouch, and work the ridge and gutter lines so the strands sit straight and the connectors face down out of the weather. The electrical math matters: too many strands on one circuit and I trip the breaker or, worse, melt a connector, so I meter the amperage and split runs across timers and photocells. The killers are the callbacks. A 200-foot run goes dark because one weatherproof connector backed out in the wind, and the customer is sure I wired it wrong. I keep each home's lights in a labeled tote, custom-cut and coiled, so next year I'm not untangling a mystery ball. The job nobody loves is January takedown in the cold, which they forget they agreed to, with the lights frozen to the gutter. I log what went where and pack it labeled before I move on.
Real holiday light installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a holiday light installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every holiday light installer on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
You paid for these once because good tools last. That's the bar your software should clear too — priced like a tool you own, $279 once, not a subscription that costs more than your kit every year.
We build a holiday light 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 holiday light 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 holiday light 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 holiday light 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