QuickBooks vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Gutter Cleaning
QuickBooks
$38/mo ($456/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 7.3 months at QuickBooks's current price.
Does QuickBooks Fit Gutter Cleaning? Our Read
What gutter cleaning need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
Gutter cleaners need job scheduling and marketing that follow the seasons, with pre-booking windows and reminders. Practitioners report one main push from October to January, a second wave in April and May, and some storm-driven calls in summer. One operator ran a pre-booking push from September 15 to October 31 at a slight discount, then normal pricing from November 1. They start jobs around the second week of November, once the leaves are down. Another operator reported that gutter cleaning was 25% of their 2009 sales. (community.windowcleaner.com)
Gutter cleaners need to keep proof of insurance, business license and, where required, a bond on file. Basic gutter cleaning generally needs no specialty contractor's license, but a city or county business license is typically required. Installing or replacing gutters usually falls under contractor licensing. Many local jurisdictions require general liability insurance for the business license, and many commercial customers ask for proof of coverage. Cleaning-trade liability policies are cited as starting around $600 to $800 a year for $1 million in coverage. Where a contractor license is required, a surety bond is almost always required too. Residential bond amounts typically run from $2,500 to $25,000. (legalclarity.org)
Job records should separate cleaning from installation or repair work, and quotes should not be split into several invoices to stay under a dollar limit. Handyman-exemption dollar thresholds range from about $1,000 to $10,000 depending on the state, and some states have none. The threshold applies to the whole project. Splitting one job across multiple invoices to stay under it is treated as fraud in some states. (legalclarity.org)
Crew payroll and workers' compensation records matter because of ladder-fall risk. Nearly every state requires workers' compensation once an owner hires employees, usually at the first employee, though a few states set the trigger at two to five. Sole proprietors working alone are generally exempt. Gutter cleaning is described as having one of the higher injury rates among home service trades. The IRS decides whether a helper is an employee or an independent contractor by looking at behavioral control, financial control and the type of relationship. It advises documenting the factors weighed. For employees, the business must withhold and deposit income tax, Social Security and Medicare tax, and pay unemployment tax. (irs.gov)
Employers with gutter crews need safety training and incident records, because ladder falls are a leading occupational injury. CDC/NIOSH reported an estimated 34,000 emergency-department-treated occupational ladder fall injuries in the U.S. in 2011, 113 work-related ladder fall deaths, and about 15,460 employer-reported nonfatal injuries with at least one day away from work. OSHA's general industry rule requires fall protection at 4 feet or more above a lower level, but excludes portable ladders. Fall protection rules for roof-edge work depend on distance from the edge. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
QuickBooks covers the bookkeeping side of gutter cleaning well. It has bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, and 800+ app integrations. Accountants know it, which helps when a crew means payroll taxes and workers' compensation records. Its Plus plan adds project profitability, which helps separate cleaning jobs from installation or repair work. Its listed features don't include seasonal booking windows, reminders or marketing, which drive this trade's October to January rush and its spring wave. It also has no place to keep proof of insurance, a business license or a bond, and no safety-training or incident records. You would need to fill those gaps with other tools through its integrations.
Nexa covers more of the seasonal and field work. A public booking page with reminders and email drip sequences can run a pre-booking push. Recurring jobs suit repeat customers. Jobs carry costing and profit per job. Crew members get a view of their own jobs, and each day's stops go to Google Maps in time order. Time tracking and a payroll CSV total each employee's hours x rate. It also has expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss and 1099 summaries. Its limits matter for crews. It does not run payroll, so it has no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It has no text messages, no route optimization or dispatch board, no integration library, and no sync or import with QuickBooks. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk. Nothing in its feature list covers storing insurance, license or bond documents or safety records.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month comes to $1,368. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. A solo cleaner or a small owner-run operation who wants booking, reminders and job profit without a subscription should switch. An operator with employees who relies on an accountant, or on integrations to handle payroll taxes, should stay with QuickBooks. Either way, keep insurance and license records somewhere else.
Our read for gutter cleaning: Solo and owner-run gutter cleaners can switch to Nexa for seasonal booking and lower cost, while crews that need payroll taxes and accountant-friendly integrations should stay with QuickBooks.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
QuickBooks costs gutter cleaning $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.
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 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 gutter cleaning: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $279 once against $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need scheduler, task manager and invoicing in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose QuickBooks if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in QuickBooks's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
First job is a two-story colonial buried under maple leaves after a windy week, so I level the ladder on the soft lawn, add the stabilizer so I'm not denting the gutter, and start scooping by hand into a bucket clipped to the rungs. Every ten feet I'm climbing down and moving the ladder, which is most of the actual work. The back corner downspout is packed solid, so I snake it from the top and then flush with the hose until it runs clear. There's a paper-wasp nest tucked under the gutter lip on the south side, so I back off and deal with that before I get stung off the ladder. Second stop is a ranch with gutter guards the homeowner thinks mean they never need cleaning, but fine grit has built up under them, so I lift sections and vac it out. After lunch a customer calls because her gutter is overflowing and the fascia board is already soft and rotting, a problem she could have caught months ago, so I clean it and flag the wood damage for a referral. The last house is a steep three-story I do from the ground with a water-fed pole and a camera so I'm not on a forty-foot ladder. I finish by flushing every downspout to prove they drain, bag the debris, and rinse the driveway clean.
Setting and re-setting the ladder dozens of times around a house on uneven, soft ground
Downspouts clogged solid with packed leaves and shingle grit that won't flush
Customers who only call after the gutter has already overflowed and rotted the fascia
Wasps and bald-faced hornet nests tucked behind the gutter or in the soffit
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. QuickBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What QuickBooks Actually Costs Gutter Cleaning
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.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$456
Year 2$456
Year 3$456
Three years of QuickBooks$1,368
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.
What QuickBooks has actually done to its price
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.
Feb 2026QuickBooks — QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus renewals rise from $999 to $1,149 a year↓
$999/year→$1,149/year
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.
Since launchNexa — $279 once. No annual hike, no per-seat creep, no "your plan is changing" email.
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-by-Feature
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.
What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy
It buys the software, not a service contract. You install Nexa and it runs on your machine. There is no seat count, and nothing stops working if you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying.
QuickBooks's monthly fee is not only rent. It pays for their hosting, their support desk, and their engineers shipping changes every week. If those matter to how you work, that is a real thing you would be giving up.
Cross-device sync is the one optional extra — $4.99/month if you want your data mirrored between machines. Skip it and Nexa still works; you just sync manually.
The honest risk of buying once: you are betting on us still being here to improve it. The honest risk of renting: the price is theirs to raise, and the graveyard section below is a record of tools that did exactly that.
What QuickBooks Does Better
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.
Industry standard - accountants know it
800+ app integrations
Comprehensive reporting
Bank feed reconciliation
Multi-currency support
A smaller bill up front: plans start at $20/month, against $279 paid once for Nexa.
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.
What QuickBooks Is Built For
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)
Paid plans come with a user cap and a number of accountant seats. Simple Start has 1 user and Essentials 3. Plus has 5 users, and Advanced has 25 users and 3 accountant seats. (quickbooks.intuit.com)
A Free plan costs $0. It covers 1 user, income and expense tracking, 2 invoices per month (unlimited with QuickBooks Payments), the top 3 reports, 1 connected bank account and chat support. (quickbooks.intuit.com)
Plus adds transaction reconciliation, anomaly detection, budgeting, project profitability, inventory tracking, and up to 40 classes and locations. (quickbooks.intuit.com)
Advanced adds custom user permissions, automated workflows, Excel sync, batch invoices and expenses, free 1099 e-filing with Bill Pay Elite, and unlimited classes, locations and custom KPIs. It also includes Priority Circle support and training. (quickbooks.intuit.com)
Simple Start and above include bill pay with free ACH. A $0.50 fee applies per standard ACH transaction over the monthly allotment. (quickbooks.intuit.com)
QuickBooks advertises 800+ integrations. Phone support is included with a current paid subscription, and there is a 30-day free trial with no contract. The pricing page lists Essentials at $85/month and Plus at $140/month, with 50% off for the first 3 months. (quickbooks.intuit.com)
What people outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa say:
NerdWallet calls QuickBooks Online "an industry leader when it comes to accounting software" and rates its features highly. It calls reporting "one of its greatest strengths", notes it is an industry standard among accountants, and says it integrates with more than 750 apps. (nerdwallet.com)
NerdWallet says "One of QuickBooks Online's biggest downsides is its price". It says the company frequently raises prices and upsells, and that some features such as inventory tracking and project profitability need the Plus plan or higher. It reports the most recent increases took effect in August 2026. (nerdwallet.com)
NerdWallet says "an overwhelming number of online reviews criticize the quality of the help they receive". It says QuickBooks has a 1.1 star rating on Trustpilot, even though it offers many support channels. NerdWallet's own star rating does not include user reviews. (nerdwallet.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a gutter cleaning technician
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every gutter cleaning technician: 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
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
Manage the work
Do the job
↓
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
Bill for it
Send the bill
↓
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
Get paid
Collect payment
↓
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
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from QuickBooks
1
Export your data — Go to Reports → export to CSV. Download clients, invoices, expenses.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your clients and expenses by CSV; re-enter your main services.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 1-2 weeks. Verify everything transferred.
4
Cancel QuickBooks — Cancel subscription. Download final backup. You're done.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Gutter Cleaning
The median Gutter Cleaning Technician earns $38,000/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 gutter cleaning. You own it like you own your Extension ladder with stabilizer arms and ladder levelers.
Is Nexa actually right for a gutter cleaning technician?
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 30,000 gutter cleaning 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 Extension ladder with stabilizer arms and ladder levelers.
Look elsewhere if
You run a 20+ gutter cleaning technician 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 gutter cleaning 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.
Gutter Cleaning by the numbers — by place
Tax, licensing & seasonality where you operate
1-13.3%income tax
CSLB (Contractors State License Board)licensing
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
DBPR (Dept of Business and Professional Regulation)licensing
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.
What gutter cleaning actually deal with
Setting and re-setting the ladder dozens of times around a house on uneven, soft ground
Downspouts clogged solid with packed leaves and shingle grit that won't flush
Customers who only call after the gutter has already overflowed and rotted the fascia
Wasps and bald-faced hornet nests tucked behind the gutter or in the soffit
A day in the life of a gutter cleaning technician
First job is a two-story colonial buried under maple leaves after a windy week, so I level the ladder on the soft lawn, add the stabilizer so I'm not denting the gutter, and start scooping by hand into a bucket clipped to the rungs. Every ten feet I'm climbing down and moving the ladder, which is most of the actual work. The back corner downspout is packed solid, so I snake it from the top and then flush with the hose until it runs clear. There's a paper-wasp nest tucked under the gutter lip on the south side, so I back off and deal with that before I get stung off the ladder. Second stop is a ranch with gutter guards the homeowner thinks mean they never need cleaning, but fine grit has built up under them, so I lift sections and vac it out. After lunch a customer calls because her gutter is overflowing and the fascia board is already soft and rotting, a problem she could have caught months ago, so I clean it and flag the wood damage for a referral. The last house is a steep three-story I do from the ground with a water-fed pole and a camera so I'm not on a forty-foot ladder. I finish by flushing every downspout to prove they drain, bag the debris, and rinse the driveway clean.
The tools a working gutter cleaning technician actually owns
Extension ladder with stabilizer arms and ladder levelers
Gutter scoop and a stiff hand trowel
Cordless leaf blower with a gutter attachment kit
Wet/dry vac with a curved gutter wand for two-story runs
Telescoping water-fed pole and a hose for flushing downspouts
Plumber's snake or a downspout auger for clearing clogs
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Extension ladder with stabilizer arms and ladder levelers
Gutter scoop and a stiff hand trowel
Cordless leaf blower with a gutter attachment kit
Wet/dry vac with a curved gutter wand for two-story runs
Telescoping water-fed pole and a hose for flushing downspouts
Plumber's snake or a downspout auger for clearing clogs
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.
How To Read This Page
We make Nexa. It is one of the two options compared here, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make QuickBooks's case the way we would want ours made — their strengths above are their own published feature list, not our summary of it.
The prices are QuickBooks's published list prices, checked on the date shown in the sources below. Plans change; check theirs before you decide.
No customer quotes appear on this page because we do not have any from gutter cleaning we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — QuickBooks on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:QuickBooks's own pricing page is the source for every figure above, read on the date shown in the sources section below.
We are not neutral about subscriptions, and that is the argument, not a hidden assumption: software you pay for once is cheaper over three years than software you rent, unless you need something only the rented one does.
How we put this guide together
We build a gutter cleaning technician'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 gutter cleaning technician — 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
Vendor pricingJobber $588/yr, Housecall Pro $948/yr, QuickBooks $456/yr, Square — taken from each company's published plans, last verified September 2026. Pricing moves; each name above links straight to that vendor’s own pricing page so you can confirm it before you decide.
Income contextThe $38,000 median we cite for the typical gutter cleaning technician is occupational median annual pay from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics), compiled April 2026. We use it only to show software spend as a share of real income — your own numbers will differ.
The field's own bodiesWe anchor what gutter cleaning actually need to the people who set the standards — NRCA. We don't speak for them; we point you to them so you can weigh this guide against the profession's own.
Three-year mathMulti-year totals are today's list price multiplied by the number of years. No price rise is projected, so the figure can be checked against the vendor's own pricing page; if they raise it, the real cost is higher.
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 QuickBooks replacement?
For solo gutter cleaning 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.
What does QuickBooks do that Nexa doesn't?
QuickBooks has features like Industry standard - accountants know it and 800+ app integrations that some businesses rely on. For most solo gutter cleaning, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $38/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.3 months. After that: $456 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.