What shed builders need from their software, from sources outside Jobber and outside Nexa:
Jobber covers the general side of running a shed business well. It has quotes, invoices with online payments, scheduling, a mobile app for crews, route optimization for delivery days, and QuickBooks Online integration. Its higher plans add job costing, two-way SMS and crew scheduling. Jobber AI can also draft quotes and add line items. What its feature list doesn't show is anything built for this trade's compliance records. It doesn't mention recording a shed's size and utilities so you know which permits apply. Pittsylvania County, Virginia exempts one-story sheds of 256 sq ft or less, but electrical, plumbing and mechanical work can need their own permits, and thresholds differ by jurisdiction. It also doesn't mention tracking rent-to-own or rental sales tax by delivery location, which matters under rulings like Missouri's LR 8300, a letter ruling that binds only the business that requested it. Separate building, delivery and installation lines can matter for tax too, as in an old, fact-specific Texas Comptroller letter that should be checked against current rules. Jobber's quotes and invoices can probably carry itemized lines, but its list doesn't say they are built for any of this.
Nexa covers a lot of the business basics. It has quotes and estimates that convert to invoices, payment plans, recurring invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM, jobs with costing and profit per job, a crew view of assigned jobs, time tracking, and bookkeeping that includes sales tax tracking. It lacks several things a delivery-heavy shed business may lean on. It has no route optimization or dispatch board, no text messaging, no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and no app marketplace. Its clients have no street-address field, which is a real problem when delivery location decides the tax. It also has no hosted support desk, and its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Nothing in its feature list covers permit tracking by size and utilities either.
Over three years Jobber at $49 a month costs $588 a year, or $1,764. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 over three years with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync. Price is not the deciding factor, because neither tool is documented to handle the permit and delivery-based tax records this trade needs. If you already use Jobber for scheduling, routing and QuickBooks, stay on it and keep permit and tax details in a separate record. If you are choosing fresh, look first for contractor or dealer software with custom job fields for size and utilities, a delivery address, and tax rules by jurisdiction.
Our read for shed builders: Neither tool is documented to track permits by size and utilities or sales tax by delivery location, so look for contractor or dealer management software with custom job fields and jurisdiction-based tax, and keep Jobber meanwhile if you rely on its routing and QuickBooks sync.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Jobber costs shed builders $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 shed builders: 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 shed builder: 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 shed builder 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 shed builders. You own it like you own your framing nailer and compressor.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small shed builders 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.
Half the day is figuring out how to get the shed where the customer wants it. The gate's 34 inches, the slope drops a foot across the pad, and there's a septic lid you can't drive over, so you're either building on site or muscling a pre-built through a narrow side yard on PVC rollers. Leveling comes first either way: you set pressure-treated skids on a gravel base and shim until the torpedo level reads true in both directions, because a shed that's even an inch off will bind the door and rack the walls over a season. On a build-on-site you frame the floor, snap the walls up, set the trusses or rafters, sheath, and shingle, all in a backyard with no power and a hose for water. Customers picked the cheapest option and now want a ramp, a window, and shelving thrown in, and on a product this thin every add-on has to be priced or you're working for free. Permits surprise people constantly; they ordered before checking the setback from the property line or the HOA's rules on outbuildings, and you're the one telling them it can't go three feet from the fence. You finish leveling, hang the door, check that it swings clean, and get a signature before the gravel settles and the door starts to stick.
Real shed builders near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a shed builder? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every shed builder 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 $5,000–$25,650 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 shed builder'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 shed builder — 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 shed builders 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 shed builders, 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