What laser engravers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the paperwork side of a laser shop well. The free Starter plan has unlimited estimates, invoices and bookkeeping. Pro at $19 a month adds bank transaction import, receipt capture, late-payment reminders, your logo on invoices and file attachments. It also has a mobile app and support by chat and email on weekdays. What its feature list doesn't show is anything built around the trade's pricing habits: no job costing, no profit per job, and no sales tax tracking to separate customer-supplied items from items the shop sells. Machine minutes, setup time and design work would have to go in as ordinary invoice lines.
Nexa covers more of that ground. It has quotes and estimates that convert to invoices, jobs with costing and profit per job, sales tax tracking, expenses, receipt scanning, bank reconciliation, and profit and loss. That suits a shop pricing by machine time and wanting to see which jobs earn their setup. It does not import bank transactions from a bank feed, and it has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no hosted support desk, and no payroll run. Card payments go only through your own Stripe account. Any emails it sends for you, such as reminders and sequences, go out only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so it won't chase late invoices on its own the way a hosted service can. I can't confirm from the facts I have that it handles machine minutes as a line item.
Over three years Wave Pro costs $684 ($228 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or three payments of $99, and runs on one device. Adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings it to $458.64 over the same period. A shop that wants job costing and sales tax tracking, and is fine with its books on one device or a paid sync, should consider Nexa. A shop that relies on bank import, hosted support, or reminders that go out without an app being open should stay on Wave, and the free Starter plan is enough if it only needs invoices.
Our read for laser engravers: Nexa fits laser quoting better with its job costing and sales tax tracking, but Wave is the safer choice if you depend on bank import, hosted support or reminders that don't need an open app.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs laser engravers $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.
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 laser engravers: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $279 once against $684 for Wave over three years.
The books, job tracking and invoicing 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.
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.
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 | 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.
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.
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.
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)
What people outside Wave 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 laser engraver: 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.)
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median laser engraver earns $30,000/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 laser engravers. You own it like you own your Laser engraver (Glowforge, xTool, Thunder).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small laser engravers 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, job tracking and invoicing 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 have 3 orders today: 25 custom wedding favors ($6 each), a large cutting board engraving ($45), and 100 custom keychains for a business ($3.50 each). The wedding favors need individual names — each one requires a file edit. The keychains are identical so the machine runs continuously. Your laser tube has 2,000 hours on it and costs $400 to replace. Are you factoring tube life into your pricing? Probably not.
Real laser engravers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a laser engraver? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every laser engraver 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 laser engraver'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 laser engraver — 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 laser engravers 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.
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 laser engravers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $19/month, Nexa pays for itself in 14.7 months. After that: $228 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