Toggl Track vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Book Cover Designers
Toggl Track
$12/mo ($144/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 23.3 months at Toggl Track's current price.
Does Toggl Track Fit Book Cover Designers? Our Read
What book cover designers need from their software, from sources outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa:
Cover designers need a way to track copyright ownership and rights granted for each job. US law lists the categories of specially commissioned work that can count as work made for hire (for example a contribution to a collective work, a supplementary work, or an instructional text). It also requires a written instrument signed by both parties. A standalone book cover is not clearly one of those categories, so the usual route is a signed written assignment or licence per project. Software that stores each client's signed terms is useful. (copyright.gov)
Cover jobs call for records of which stock images, fonts and licence tiers went into each cover, and whose licence account they sit under. A UK guide to cover designer contracts says the designer usually cannot assign stock assets because they only hold a licence from the library. It recommends recording in writing which images, fonts and licence tiers were used and where they came from. It also says most cover engagements produce a licence rather than a transfer of ownership, and that payment alone does not transfer copyright. (publishing.co.uk)
Freelance cover designers are sole proprietors with no tax withholding, so they need to track income to estimate quarterly tax payments. The IRS says people in business for themselves generally need to make estimated tax payments. This applies to individuals who expect to owe $1,000 or more when they file. A common safe harbor is paying at least 90% of the current year's tax or 100% of the prior year's tax, whichever is smaller. (irs.gov)
Self-employed designers need bookkeeping that separates net earnings from self-employment, because that figure drives self-employment tax. The IRS states the rate is 15.3% (12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare). The tax is owed when net earnings from self-employment are $400 or more. (irs.gov)
Toggl Track covers the time side of cover work well. It tracks time by project and client, produces reports, sets billable rates and invoices, and runs on web, desktop and mobile. That helps a designer see what a cover job really earned. It does not cover the trade's more specific needs. Its product page lists no place to record copyright terms or the rights granted for each job. It lists no record of which stock images, fonts and licence tiers went into a cover or whose licence account they sit under. It also lists no expense tracking, income summary or self-employment tax figure for estimating quarterly payments. You would keep those records elsewhere.
Nexa covers more of the money and paperwork side. It has estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, and clients can sign estimates through its pay portal. It also has a CRM with notes, time tracking, expense tracking, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries. Those help with income records and with working out net earnings for tax. It has no feature built for recording rights granted or stock licence sources per cover. At most, the signed estimates and CRM notes could hold that information, but that is a workaround, not a rights record. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no integration library. It runs on one device unless you add Cloud Sync. Any automated emails go out only while Nexa is open.
Over three years Toggl Track costs $432 ($144 a year at $12 a month). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. A designer who works on one device and mainly needs time tracking can stay with Toggl Track, or pay $279 for Nexa if they want invoicing and bookkeeping in one place. Either way, the core need of a rights and licence record per cover is not met by either tool, so you would still need a dedicated contract and asset-licence record.
Our read for book cover designers: Neither tool records the rights and stock licences behind each cover, so a designer needs a dedicated contract and asset-licence record; Toggl Track handles the time tracking and Nexa the invoicing and bookkeeping.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Toggl Track costs book cover designers $144/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 23.3 months it has cost less than Toggl Track, 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 Toggl Track 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 book cover designers: Neither Toggl Track 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 $432 for Toggl Track over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need time tracker, invoicing and connect crm in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Toggl Track if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Toggl Track's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
Morning starts in the inbox: an author wants the subtitle bigger and the model's face shifted left, the third revision on a thriller cover. I open the layered Photoshop file, nudge the type, and re-check it at thumbnail size because that's how it'll live on a retailer's grid next to a thousand others. By mid-morning I'm building a wraparound for a paperback going to print, pulling the exact spine width from the page count and the printer's paper-stock template, then bleeding the background art across front, spine, and back so nothing crops white. A debut novelist emails asking why the ebook cover and the print cover are separate files. I export a flattened RGB version for the ebook and a CMYK print PDF with crop marks, and double-check the title font is cleared for commercial print. Afternoon is a kickoff call: the author has three comp covers they love and a budget for one. We talk genre conventions, what the spine needs to do face-out on a shelf, and how many revision rounds the quote covers. I sketch two directions before dinner, knowing the real work is making a stranger pick this book up in two seconds.
Author keeps requesting 'just one more' title-font and color tweak past the agreed round limit, and there's no signed scope to point back to
Self-publishing client doesn't understand why a 6x9 paperback needs a full wraparound with exact spine width calculated from page count and paper stock
Spine width keeps changing because the manuscript word count isn't final, forcing a re-export of the print PDF every time
Tracking which fonts are licensed for commercial book covers versus desktop-only, so a license audit doesn't surface a font that was never cleared for the print run
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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. Toggl Track solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Toggl Track Actually Costs Book Cover Designers
Today's list price is $12/month — $144 a year, from Toggl Track's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$144
Year 2$144
Year 3$144
Three years of Toggl Track$432
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $153 less.
If Toggl Track 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-by-Feature
Feature
Toggl Track
Nexa
Invoicing
✗
✓
Scheduling
✗
✓
CRM
✗
✓
Time Tracking
✓
✓
Full Accounting
✗
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
✗
✓
Works offline
—
✓
Price
$12/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$432
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for Toggl Track come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Toggl Track 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.
Toggl Track'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 Toggl Track Does Better
Straight from Toggl Track's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Simple time tracking
Desktop and mobile apps
Pomodoro timer
Project-based tracking
Good free tier
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use Toggl Track before paying anything.
Toggl Track is the better call if you need simple time tracking specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What Toggl Track Is Built For
Toggl Track's product page lists agencies and professional services teams, software and IT teams, law firms, and accounting and finance teams. It also names three sizes of customer: freelancers and solo users, growing teams, and large organizations. (toggl.com)
The product page lists cross-platform tracking on web, desktop (Windows, Mac), mobile (iOS, Android) and browser extensions. It also lists automated background tracking and a one-click timer. (toggl.com)
The product page lists timesheet and detailed time reports grouped by project, client or team. It also lists financial reports on project, client and team profitability, and estimated vs. actual time tracking. (toggl.com)
The product page lists billable rates, including 6-minute increments for law firms, and invoicing. (toggl.com)
The product page lists Boards, Gantt charts and a calendar planner. It also lists utilization and workload reports, and automatic planning around PTO and public holidays. (toggl.com)
The product page lists integrations with Jira, Asana, Notion and Slack, among others. It also lists an API and an MCP server, which can connect to Claude, Cursor and Codex. (toggl.com)
The pricing page shows a Free plan, with a stated limit of up to 3 users in its FAQ. Starter is $9 per user per month on annual billing, and Premium is $16 per user per month on annual billing. Enterprise is priced through sales. Paid plans and add-ons come with a 30-day trial. (toggl.com)
The product page says it does no screenshots, keystroke logging or webcam monitoring. It also states SOC Type 2 and ISO 27001 compliance and 99.99% uptime. It offers a free 30-day trial of all features with no credit card required. (toggl.com)
What people outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa say:
The Business Dive gives Toggl Track 4.4/5. It calls the interface "beautiful and straightforward" and says offline time tracking is supported. It also says the free version "includes all the basic features they need" for individuals and freelancers, and that invoicing is "quite valuable for agencies and consultancies." (thebusinessdive.com)
The Business Dive criticises the lack of GPS tracking, which it says rules Toggl Track out for construction, real estate and other location-dependent work. It also says "some advanced reporting and analytics tools are locked behind the more expensive plans." (thebusinessdive.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 book cover designer
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every book cover designer: 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 creative work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
1
Find the work
Land the project
↓
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the work
↓
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 creative work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Watch a job become an invoice
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A book cover designer'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.
The job Thriller ebook and paperback wraparound cover
ServiceEbook front cover design1 × $450$450
ServicePaperback wraparound (spine and back)1 × $150$150
→
The invoice builds itself
Subtotal$640
Deposit credited−$300
Invoice total$340
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Calculate Your Full Stack
Toggl Track plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Toggl Track
1
Export your data — Go to Reports → Detailed → Export as CSV. Download your full time entry history.
2
Set up Nexa — 10-minute setup. Import your client list by CSV, then set up your projects.
3
Start tracking in Nexa — Use Nexa time tracker for new entries. Import historical data if needed.
4
Cancel Toggl — Cancel subscription. Download a final export for your records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Book Cover Designers
The median Book Cover Designer earns $45,000/year. At $144/year, Toggl Track 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 book cover designers. You own it like you own your Adobe Photoshop.
Is Nexa actually right for a book cover designer?
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
Right for you if
You run solo or a small team — like the 25,000 book cover designers 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 invoicing, scheduling, and client tracking in one place — not scattered across five apps.
You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your Adobe Photoshop.
Look elsewhere if
You have a large team that needs enterprise seats, granular roles, and dedicated admin staff — Nexa is built for solo and small operators (1–5), and a bigger 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 book cover designers 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.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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 book cover designers actually deal with
Author keeps requesting 'just one more' title-font and color tweak past the agreed round limit, and there's no signed scope to point back to
Self-publishing client doesn't understand why a 6x9 paperback needs a full wraparound with exact spine width calculated from page count and paper stock
Spine width keeps changing because the manuscript word count isn't final, forcing a re-export of the print PDF every time
Tracking which fonts are licensed for commercial book covers versus desktop-only, so a license audit doesn't surface a font that was never cleared for the print run
A day in the life of a book cover designer
Morning starts in the inbox: an author wants the subtitle bigger and the model's face shifted left, the third revision on a thriller cover. I open the layered Photoshop file, nudge the type, and re-check it at thumbnail size because that's how it'll live on a retailer's grid next to a thousand others. By mid-morning I'm building a wraparound for a paperback going to print, pulling the exact spine width from the page count and the printer's paper-stock template, then bleeding the background art across front, spine, and back so nothing crops white. A debut novelist emails asking why the ebook cover and the print cover are separate files. I export a flattened RGB version for the ebook and a CMYK print PDF with crop marks, and double-check the title font is cleared for commercial print. Afternoon is a kickoff call: the author has three comp covers they love and a budget for one. We talk genre conventions, what the spine needs to do face-out on a shelf, and how many revision rounds the quote covers. I sketch two directions before dinner, knowing the real work is making a stranger pick this book up in two seconds.
The tools a working book cover designer actually owns
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Illustrator
Wacom drawing tablet
Adobe Fonts / Monotype font licenses
Calibrated monitor
Local book cover designers on Nexa
Real book cover designers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a book cover designer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every book cover designer on Nexa →
The kit a working book cover designer owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Core kitEssential
High-spec laptop or workstation
$1,500–$4,000
Core kitEssential
Colour-accurate monitor
$300–$1,200
Core kitEssential
Monitor calibrator
$150–$400
Core kitEssential
Pen tablet
$200–$600
Core kitEssential
Proofing printer for cover mockups
$500–$3,000
Core kitEssential
Ergonomic chair and desk
$300–$1,500
Upgrade
Physical proof binding kit
$60–$300
The core kit, bought once$2,950–$10,700
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $2,950–$10,700 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.
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 Toggl Track'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 Toggl Track'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 book cover designers we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Toggl Track on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Toggl Track'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 book cover designer'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 book cover designer — 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 pricingHoneyBook $432/yr, FreshBooks $516/yr, Toggl Track $144/yr, Harvest $132/yr — 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 $45,000 median we cite for the typical book cover designer 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.
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 Toggl Track replacement?
For solo book cover designers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Toggl Track may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does Toggl Track do that Nexa doesn't?
Toggl Track has features like Simple time tracking and Desktop and mobile apps that some businesses rely on. For most solo book cover designers, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $12/month, Nexa pays for itself in 23.3 months. After that: $144 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.