What asphalt sealcoating need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of a sealcoating business well: bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, invoicing, and an outside bookkeeper who almost certainly already knows it. Its 800+ integrations matter here because the trade's central task sits outside it. Bids are by the square foot and sealer is bought by the gallon, so each estimate needs an adjustable coverage rate. Trade press points to about 60 sq ft per gallon on ordinary pavement, more product on old, oxidized, unshaded lots, and up to about 100 on newer surfaces, and advises using a supplier-confirmed rate in every estimate. Nothing in QuickBooks' feature list converts area to gallons, and nothing records which sealer went on which job. That second gap matters because Minnesota law (Statutes 116.202) bars applying coal tar sealant on asphalt, so a quote's product line can depend on the job's location. The higher Plus plan has up to 40 classes and locations, which could tag jobs by place. That tags the place, though, not the product, and Plus costs more than the $38 plan.
Nexa has the field-service basics: estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, a client pay portal that takes cards through your own Stripe account, jobs with costing and profit per job, crew assignment, and each day's stops sent to Google Maps in time order. It also has time tracking, a payroll CSV, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and a simple stock count per product. It does not do the gallon conversion or per-job product records either, and a client record has no street-address field, so a job's location is harder to keep on file. It does not run payroll, has no QuickBooks sync or import, and has no integration library, dispatch board, route optimization, or full inventory management. 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 onboarding.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month costs $1,368. Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. The price gap is real, but it doesn't fix the missing gallon math or product record in either tool. The one thing only QuickBooks offers this trade is an integration route: its large app library gives you a place to look for a separate estimating tool that handles coverage rates, and Nexa has no such route and no QuickBooks import. Check that any such tool exists before counting on it. If you already use QuickBooks or an outside bookkeeper, stay. Keep gallon math and per-job product notes in a spreadsheet or estimating tool until you find one that fits. A solo or small owner-run crew starting fresh, with no accountant tied to QuickBooks and happy to keep gallon math elsewhere, can reasonably choose Nexa to save money.
Our read for asphalt sealcoating: Neither tool does the gallon conversion or per-job product record, but QuickBooks at least offers an integration route and accountant familiarity that Nexa lacks, so keep it unless the lower cost of a one-device, self-run tool matters more to you.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs asphalt sealcoating $456/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 7.3 months it has cost less than QuickBooks, 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 QuickBooks 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 asphalt sealcoating: Stay with QuickBooks 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 $1,368 for QuickBooks 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. QuickBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $38/month — $456 a year, from QuickBooks'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 $1,089 less.
If QuickBooks 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.
Today's sticker price only tells you what a subscription costs today. These are dated changes, each linked to the announcement or report it comes from. Tap one for the numbers.
For renewals on or after February 1, 2026, Pro Plus and Mac Plus went from $999 to $1,149 a year for one user, and each extra seat from $200 to $230.
Source: SWK Technologies, Insightful Accountant (Dec 2, 2025)
From July 1, 2025: Simple Start $35 to $38, Essentials $65 to $75, Plus $99 to $115, Advanced $235 to $275 a month.
Source: Woodard Report (May 27, 2025)
After September 30, 2024, new US customers can no longer buy these Desktop editions. Existing subscribers can keep renewing.
Source: Intuit
Only changes we can link to a vendor announcement or a named publication are listed. Plans, add-ons and discounts vary, so check the vendor's current pricing page before you decide.
| Feature | QuickBooks | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $38/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,368 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for QuickBooks come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as QuickBooks lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from QuickBooks's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
QuickBooks is the better call if you need industry standard - accountants know it specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
QuickBooks Online is aimed at freelancers and new businesses, small and mid-size businesses, product-based businesses, and nonprofits. Larger or more complex operations are pointed to Desktop Enterprise (up to 40 users) or Intuit Enterprise Suite (multi-entity). (quickbooks.intuit.com)
What people outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa say:
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 sealcoater: 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 sealcoater'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.
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median sealcoater earns $55,000/year. At $456/year, QuickBooks 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 asphalt sealcoating. You own it like you own your Sealcoat spray rig with agitated tank.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small asphalt sealcoating 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.
He checks the radar before he checks anything else, because sealcoat and rain don't mix and a surprise afternoon storm turns a finished lot into a washed-out mess and a free redo. Today's clear and warm enough, so he rolls to a strip mall lot at dawn. Prep is the unglamorous half of the job: blowing every leaf and pebble off the asphalt, scrubbing the oil-dripped stalls with degreaser and priming them so the seal will actually stick, then melting crack-fill and pouring the cracks that would otherwise spider through the new coat by spring. He blocks the lot with cones and tape, because the whole thing has to stay tire-free until tomorrow. He agitates the tank, checks his sand-and-additive mix so the surface won't be slick, and starts spraying, cutting clean edges along the curb with a squeegee. The black goes down wet and glossy, transforming the gray faded lot, and that's the part the customer loves. The part they don't see is the crack-fill and primer under it that makes the difference between a coat that lasts three years and one that flakes in one. By midafternoon he's coated, the lot's roped off, and he's explaining to the impatient property manager one more time why nobody can park here until tomorrow.
Real asphalt sealcoating near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a sealcoater? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every sealcoater 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 $5,790–$28,670 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 sealcoater'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 sealcoater — 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 asphalt sealcoating and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. QuickBooks may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
QuickBooks has features like Industry standard - accountants know it and 800+ app integrations that some businesses rely on. For most solo asphalt sealcoating, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $38/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.3 months. After that: $456 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