What zine makers need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
Disclosure first: the publisher of this page makes Nexa, so we gain if you buy it. Read what follows with that in mind. For a zine maker, QuickBooks covers the bookkeeping well. Accountants know it, it reconciles bank feeds, and it has comprehensive reporting, 800+ integrations and multi-currency support. Those matter if you sell abroad or hand your books to a tax preparer. Its Plus tier adds inventory tracking and up to 40 classes and locations, and a maker could try to use those as one location per shop. We can't confirm that handles consignment, and it sits above the $38 a month plan. The jobs that decide whether a zine business runs smoothly are not in the facts we have for QuickBooks. These are copies placed, sold and owed per shop and per title, a per-title ISBN flag, a Media Mail check, and per-state sales totals.
Nexa covers the money side: invoices, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, sales tax tracking, receipt scanning and a simple stock count per product. It lacks what the trade most needs. It has no consignment records, no ISBN field, no Media Mail check, and no full inventory management, meaning no multi-location stock for copies sitting in several shops. It has no QuickBooks sync or import, no app marketplace, and no hosted support desk or vendor onboarding. You own it and run it yourself. If you use its automated emails, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. So on the trade's core need, Nexa does not beat QuickBooks, and it gives up the accountant familiarity and integrations QuickBooks has.
The consignment terms show what the missing tool would have to do. A shop like Sticky Institute keeps 20% of your retail price. It holds up to ten copies per title, restocks only after all current copies sell, and pays all at once when everything has sold or after six months. Buffalo Street Books wants an ISBN, a barcode and the same price everywhere, including your own direct sales. Sticky does not stock zines with an ISBN. That means you need one row per shop and title with the ISBN status, copies placed, copies sold, the date placed and the amount due. Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month costs $1,368 ($456 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. If your accountant works in QuickBooks, keep it for the books. If you work alone from one device and want a lower price, Nexa's bookkeeping is adequate. Either way, run the per-shop ledger in a spreadsheet or a dedicated consignment and inventory tool.
Our read for zine makers: Neither tool tracks per-shop, per-title consignment, ISBN status or Media Mail eligibility, so use a spreadsheet or a dedicated consignment and inventory tracker for that and keep whichever bookkeeping tool you already have.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs zine makers $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 zine makers: Neither QuickBooks 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 $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
The books and job tracking 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 zine maker: 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.)
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median zine maker earns $15,000/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 zine makers. You own it like you own your Risograph or printer access.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small zine makers business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling into a large team with dedicated admin staff, a bigger platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
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 →The books and job tracking 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.
You printed 100 copies of your new zine — $1.20 each at the print shop. You sell them for $8 online and $6 at zine fairs. You dropped 20 copies at 3 local shops on consignment (60/40 split). A zine fair next month costs $40 for a table. Your Etsy shop has 5 different zines. Total revenue last month was $340. Monthly software would eat 16% of that.
Real zine makers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a zine maker? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every zine maker 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 zine maker'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 zine maker — 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 zine makers 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 zine makers, 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