What stucco contractors need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the bookkeeping side of a stucco business well. It has bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ app integrations, and it is the tool accountants already know. Its invoicing and bill pay can be used for a payment schedule tied to completed stages such as lath and coats, which California's home-improvement rules require in place of a large deposit. The state caps the down payment and says payments cannot exceed the value of the work performed. It does not cover the trade-specific paperwork: a license number and class on your records, a written silica exposure plan with a designated competent person, or lien deadlines counted from each job's start and finish. You would keep those in your own files either way.
Nexa covers more of the job-side work than the price suggests. It has estimates that convert to invoices, payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, and jobs with costing and profit per job. Time tracking and a payroll CSV of hours times rate are included. It also has expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, a balance sheet and 1099 summaries, and it works offline. It does not run payroll (no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit), and it has no sync or import with QuickBooks. A client record has no street-address field, and there is no app marketplace. Like QuickBooks, it has no silica plan or lien-deadline tracking. If you use its automated emails, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, and support is self-serve because you own and run the software.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month is $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync over the same period. A contractor who relies on an accountant, outside bookkeeping, or integrations should stay with QuickBooks, because Nexa cannot exchange data with it and does not run payroll. A small, mostly solo shop that has no accountant tied to QuickBooks and wants job costing and staged payment plans could reasonably switch. Whichever you pick, keep the license, silica and lien records separately.
Our read for stucco contractors: Stay with QuickBooks if an accountant or payroll depends on it, since Nexa has no QuickBooks sync and runs no payroll, and consider Nexa only if you are a small shop without those ties.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs stucco contractors $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 stucco contractors: 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.
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 stucco 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 stucco 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.
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median stucco contractor earns $45,000/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 stucco contractors. You own it like you own your Stucco sprayer and mixer.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small stucco 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.
Your people are already online — swapping real numbers, tool picks, and war stories. Here's where to find them.
Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →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.
Stucco looks simple from the street, but the layers underneath decide whether it lasts. On new work, we install a weather-resistant barrier and flashing around every window and door, then lath fastened into the framing, and the details at the bottom edge and around openings so water drains out rather than getting trapped behind the wall. Traditional stucco goes on in three coats, scratch, brown and finish, with curing time between each, and the weather matters: hot sun and wind dry it too fast and it cracks, cold stops it curing. Synthetic finishes have their own systems and rules. A big part of my work is repair and inspection: cracks, stains and bulges that often mean water has got behind the wall, and moisture testing to find out how far the damage goes before anyone buys the house. Matching the texture and colour of an old wall on a patch is a craft of its own. Scaffolding and material staging are part of every job, and I quote by the square foot with repairs to damaged framing listed separately.
Real stucco contractors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a stucco contractor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every stucco 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 $1,530–$6,250 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 stucco 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 stucco 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 stucco contractors 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 stucco contractors, 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