What mural artists need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave handles the money side of mural work well. Pro at $19 a month covers invoices and estimates, bookkeeping, bank import, receipt capture and late-payment reminders. It also lets you attach files to invoices and estimates, which is the nearest thing either tool has to keeping a signed waiver or contract next to a job. That is only a loose attachment, though. Wave doesn't track a waiver per wall, and it doesn't track insurance certificate expiry dates, permit status or building-owner paperwork. The free plan covers invoices and bookkeeping if that is all you need.
Nexa covers the business side more broadly: estimates and proposals that become invoices, payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM with notes and tags, jobs with costing and profit per job, missions with sub-steps and templates, a task board, and full bookkeeping with receipt scanning. A mission template could stand in for a permit checklist. It isn't stated to store signed documents, track certificate expiry or link paperwork to a property. Its client records have no street-address field, which is awkward when each job is a specific wall. If you use automated reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and support is self-service.
Over three years Wave Pro is $684 ($228 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. If you already run on Wave, there is little reason to move for this trade, because Nexa adds nothing for waivers or permits. Whichever you use, keep waivers, insurance certificates and permit records in a separate document-management or compliance-tracking tool, with expiry reminders and one folder per wall, and use the invoicing tool only for billing.
Our read for mural artists: Neither tool tracks per-wall waivers, insurance expiry or permit paperwork, so use a document and compliance tracker for that and keep your current invoicing tool for billing.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs mural artists $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 mural artists: 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.
Invoicing, client records, 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. 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 creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every mural artist: 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.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 creative 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 mural artist'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.
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median mural artist earns $38,000/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 mural artists. You own it like you own your Projector for design transfer.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small mural artists 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 →Invoicing, client records, 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.
A mural starts with a site visit: the wall's size, surface and condition, sun exposure, and how people will see it, from a car, across a street or up close. Then the design, which goes through rounds with the client, a business, a school or a city programme, until everyone agrees, because changing a design once it's on a two-storey wall is expensive. Wall prep is unglamorous but decides how long it lasts: cleaning, repairing cracks, and priming with the right product for brick, stucco or concrete. Transferring the design to the wall at scale uses a grid, projection at night, or a doodle grid, then blocking in colours and working up the details over days or weeks, often on scaffolding or a lift in whatever the weather is doing. Exterior murals get a protective clear coat against sun and graffiti. Public art projects involve applications, permits and community meetings before any paint is bought. I price by the square foot with complexity, access equipment and materials added, and take a deposit on design approval and payments at milestones.
Real mural artists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a mural artist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every mural artist 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 mural artist'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 mural artist — 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 mural artists 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 mural artists, 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