Wave vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Handmade Jewelry Makers
Wave
$19/mo ($228/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 14.7 months at Wave's current price.
Does Wave Fit Handmade Jewelry Makers? Our Read
What handmade jewelry makers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Makers who sell vermeil need product records that show the base metal, the gold fineness and the gold thickness. Under the FTC Jewelry Guides, 'vermeil' means a sterling silver base coated or plated on all significant surfaces with gold of at least 10 karat fineness. The gold must be at least 2.5 microns thick throughout. Using the term over a nickel base plated with gold is deceptive unless that is disclosed. (law.cornell.edu)
Makers who sell silver jewelry need to track the purity of the silver they buy and the plating on finished pieces. The FTC Jewelry Guides require at least 925/1,000ths pure silver for a 'Sterling' mark. Describing a product as silver plated is misleading unless all significant surfaces carry a silver plating of reasonable durability. (law.cornell.edu)
Makers who buy metal, stones and findings for resale need to track which purchases were made under a resale certificate. In California, tax is generally not paid at purchase when materials are bought for resale, and it is collected when the item is sold at retail. If you keep resale merchandise for yourself, give it away or donate it, you generally owe use tax. A resale certificate should not be used for a purchase you already know won't be resold. Display fixtures, equipment, supplies and maintenance materials are subject to sales or use tax. (cdtfa.ca.gov)
Makers who sell through online marketplaces or payment apps need their own sales records that reconcile with payment-platform reports. The federal Form 1099-K threshold for third-party settlement organizations is more than $20,000 in gross payments and more than 200 transactions. The earlier plan to lower it to $600 no longer applies. Payment card transactions have no threshold. A state may set a lower threshold, so a maker can get a 1099-K below the federal level. The article summarizes IRS Fact Sheet 2025-08. (cpapracticeadvisor.com)
Wave covers the money side of a jewelry business well. It handles invoices and bookkeeping, and Pro adds automatic bank transaction import, receipt capture, and late-payment reminders at 3, 7 and 14 days. A maker who wants books that tie out to payment-platform reports gets that from Pro's bank import. Wave's feature list says nothing about the product-level records this trade depends on. Those are base metal, gold fineness and gold thickness for vermeil claims, and silver purity and plating for sterling and silver-plated claims. It also says nothing about marking purchases made under a resale certificate or separating items kept or given away, which can trigger use tax. Those gaps matter because the FTC rules turn on exactly those facts.
Nexa covers more of the bookkeeping and stock side. It has expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, balance sheet, sales tax tracking, purchase orders, receipt scanning and a simple stock count per product. Those could help with reconciling sales and tracking what you buy, but nothing in Nexa's listed features records base metal, fineness or plating thickness, or flags resale-certificate purchases. Its stock count is simple, with no valuation or reorder points. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no point-of-sale or card reader, and online card payments go only through your own Stripe account. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk. If you use its automated emails or reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
On cost, Wave Pro is $19 a month, which is $228 a year and $684 over 3 years. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 over 3 years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa without sync stays at $279 but runs on one device. A maker who only needs invoices and books can use either, and Nexa costs less over three years. Neither one gives you product records for metal content or resale tracking. Keep that in a spreadsheet, or use an inventory or product-catalog tool with custom fields, alongside whichever bookkeeping tool you pick.
Our read for handmade jewelry makers: Neither tool lists product records for base metal, fineness and plating or resale-certificate tracking, so use an inventory tool with custom fields for those 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.
Bottom Line
Wave costs handmade jewelry makers $228/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 14.7 months it has cost less than Wave, 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 Wave 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 handmade jewelry makers: Neither Wave 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 $684 for Wave over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need financial suite and task manager in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Wave if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Wave's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
The bench gets the best light, so soldering and stone-setting happen in the morning when the eyes are fresh. A pair of earrings from yesterday's batch gets pickled, tumbled, and polished, then photographed in the light tent before the listing goes live. A custom commission needs attention: the client wants to swap the sapphire for a moissanite and move the setting up a finger size, which means re-sketching the design and re-quoting the metal weight. Email and DMs pile up with sizing questions and shipping requests, and a wholesale account wants to reorder a line that uses a discontinued chain, so a substitute has to be sourced. Lunch is at the bench. The afternoon is production: cutting and forming wire for a batch of stacking rings, keeping count of how much sterling is consumed so the next order to the metal supplier is right. A craft fair is three weeks out, so booth inventory gets tallied and gaps get noted. Packaging the day's online orders means hand-wrapping, including a care card, and printing labels. The last hour is the worst part: trying to price three new pieces by adding up wire weight, stone cost, and an honest count of bench hours, then second-guessing whether anyone will pay it.
Pricing is guesswork because the cost of sterling wire and gemstones swings with the spot metal market, and most pieces get underpriced when bench hours and torch time aren't counted
Custom engagement and memorial commissions involve weeks of back-and-forth on stone choice and sizing, and that thread scatters across Etsy messages, Instagram DMs, and email
A one-of-a-kind piece can't be reordered, so when it sells the listing photos, materials list, and sizing notes are gone unless they were saved somewhere findable
Quarterly craft-fair booth fees, show inventory, and online sales tax all hit at once and there's no clean record of which channel actually paid for itself
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. Wave solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Wave Actually Costs Handmade Jewelry Makers
Today's list price is $19/month — $228 a year, from Wave's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$228
Year 2$228
Year 3$228
Three years of Wave$684
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $405 less.
If Wave 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
Wave
Nexa
Invoicing
✓
✓
Scheduling
✗
✓
CRM
✗
✓
Time Tracking
✗
✓
Full Accounting
✓
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
✗
✓
Works offline
✗
✓
Price
$19/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$684
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for Wave come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Wave 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.
Wave'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 Wave Does Better
Straight from Wave's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping
Bank transaction import on Pro
Receipt capture
Late payment reminders
Simple enough to run without an accountant
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use Wave before paying anything.
Wave is the better call if you need free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What Wave Is Built For
Wave says it is built for small business owners and solopreneurs at every stage, not accountants. Its page names freelancers, contractors and consultants. (waveapps.com)
The Starter plan costs $0 and includes unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. (waveapps.com)
Pro costs $19 USD a month or $190 USD a year. It adds automatic bank transaction import (for banks Plaid supports), automatic merging and categorizing of bank transactions, and automated late-payment reminders at 3, 7 and 14 days after the due date. (waveapps.com)
Pro lets you put your logo and brand colors on invoices, remove Wave branding from footers, and attach files to invoices and estimates. It also adds user roles (admin, editor, viewer), and the payroll manager and Block Advisors tax pro roles are free. (waveapps.com)
Online card payments on Starter cost 2.9% + $0.60 (Amex 3.4% + $0.60). On Pro the first 10 transactions each month are 2.9% + $0, then 2.9% + $0.60. (waveapps.com)
Wave Advisors starts at $149 a month and includes a dedicated bookkeeper and monthly financial statements. Payroll is an add-on starting at $25 a month in one region and $40 in the other; the page does not say which price applies where. (waveapps.com)
Wave lists a mobile app for invoices, expenses and receipts, and 256-bit SSL encryption with PCI-DSS Level 1 certification. Live chat and email support runs Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 4:45 PM Eastern, and is tied to optional add-ons. (waveapps.com)
What people outside Wave and outside Nexa say:
NerdWallet lists a free plan and straightforward invoicing as pros. Its cons are no built-in third-party integrations, no advanced features such as mileage, time tracking or inventory, no live support unless you pay, and no audit trails. (nerdwallet.com)
NerdWallet says "An overwhelming number of Wave reviewers criticize its customer support." It adds that the paid plan "doesn't address Wave users' biggest complaint: customer service." (nerdwallet.com)
Tech.co praises the free tier, affordable add-ons and the way Wave "does the basics well." It concludes "Wave is definitely worth it" for side businesses that don't need specialist accounting features. (tech.co)
Tech.co criticizes Wave for lacking advanced features such as budgeting, cash flow projections, stock handling and project accounting, and for struggling to scale with growing businesses. It also says phone and live chat support come at a premium. (tech.co)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a handmade jewelry maker
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every handmade jewelry 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.
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
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Wave
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Data Export. Download customers, invoices, transactions, and accounts.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your client list and bank transactions from CSV.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 1-2 weeks. Re-create recurring invoices in Nexa and check your bank imports.
4
Cancel Wave — Cancel paid features. Your free account data stays accessible for records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Handmade Jewelry Makers
The median Handmade Jewelry Maker earns $32,000/year. At $228/year, Wave 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 handmade jewelry makers. You own it like you own your a jeweler's bench with a flex-shaft rotary tool and bench pin.
Is Nexa actually right for a handmade jewelry maker?
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 40,000 handmade jewelry makers 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 a jeweler's bench with a flex-shaft rotary tool and bench pin.
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 handmade jewelry 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.
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.
What handmade jewelry makers actually deal with
Pricing is guesswork because the cost of sterling wire and gemstones swings with the spot metal market, and most pieces get underpriced when bench hours and torch time aren't counted
Custom engagement and memorial commissions involve weeks of back-and-forth on stone choice and sizing, and that thread scatters across Etsy messages, Instagram DMs, and email
A one-of-a-kind piece can't be reordered, so when it sells the listing photos, materials list, and sizing notes are gone unless they were saved somewhere findable
Quarterly craft-fair booth fees, show inventory, and online sales tax all hit at once and there's no clean record of which channel actually paid for itself
A day in the life of a handmade jewelry maker
The bench gets the best light, so soldering and stone-setting happen in the morning when the eyes are fresh. A pair of earrings from yesterday's batch gets pickled, tumbled, and polished, then photographed in the light tent before the listing goes live. A custom commission needs attention: the client wants to swap the sapphire for a moissanite and move the setting up a finger size, which means re-sketching the design and re-quoting the metal weight. Email and DMs pile up with sizing questions and shipping requests, and a wholesale account wants to reorder a line that uses a discontinued chain, so a substitute has to be sourced. Lunch is at the bench. The afternoon is production: cutting and forming wire for a batch of stacking rings, keeping count of how much sterling is consumed so the next order to the metal supplier is right. A craft fair is three weeks out, so booth inventory gets tallied and gaps get noted. Packaging the day's online orders means hand-wrapping, including a care card, and printing labels. The last hour is the worst part: trying to price three new pieces by adding up wire weight, stone cost, and an honest count of bench hours, then second-guessing whether anyone will pay it.
The tools a working handmade jewelry maker actually owns
a jeweler's bench with a flex-shaft rotary tool and bench pin
soldering torch, third hand, and fire-resistant solder block
round-nose, chain-nose, and flush-cutting pliers
a digital gram scale and calipers for measuring stones and wire gauge
a small rolling mill or disc cutter for sheet metal
an Etsy shop plus a light tent for product photography
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
a jeweler's bench with a flex-shaft rotary tool and bench pin
soldering torch, third hand, and fire-resistant solder block
round-nose, chain-nose, and flush-cutting pliers
a digital gram scale and calipers for measuring stones and wire gauge
a small rolling mill or disc cutter for sheet metal
an Etsy shop plus a light tent for product photography
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 Wave'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 Wave'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 handmade jewelry makers we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Wave on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Wave'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 handmade jewelry 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 handmade jewelry 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.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingQuickBooks $456/yr, Wave $228/yr, FreshBooks $516/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 $32,000 median we cite for the typical handmade jewelry maker 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 Wave replacement?
For solo handmade jewelry makers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Wave may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does Wave do that Nexa doesn't?
Wave has features like Free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping and Bank transaction import on Pro that some businesses rely on. For most solo handmade jewelry makers, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $19/month, Nexa pays for itself in 14.7 months. After that: $228 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.