What print on demand sellers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the bookkeeping side of this trade well. The free Starter plan includes unlimited invoices and bookkeeping records. Pro at $19 a month adds automatic bank transaction import and categorizing, which helps a seller keep marketplace payouts and own-store card payments apart. Receipt capture and a mobile app cover expenses, and live chat and email support is available on weekdays. What Wave does not list is a way to flag sales as marketplace-facilitated or direct for sales tax. It also has no record of where each design came from or whether the seller has permission to use it.
Nexa covers more of the bookkeeping than you might expect. It has expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, 1099 summaries, sales tax tracking and receipt scanning. Jobs with costing show profit per job, and clients can pay by card through the seller's own Stripe account. It does not list bank import. It also does not list a facilitated-versus-direct sales flag or a design-permission log. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account, so marketplace payouts would have to be recorded by hand. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no hosted support desk or onboarding, since you own and run it yourself. It runs on one device unless you add Cloud Sync.
Over three years Wave Pro costs $684 ($228 a year), and the free Starter plan costs nothing. Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Nexa is cheaper than Wave Pro, but not cheaper than Wave's free plan. A seller already on Wave should stay, because Wave's free plan, automatic bank import and vendor support do what this trade leans on. Nexa is worth a look only if you want jobs, profit per job and a client portal in one owned tool. For design permissions, keep a separate rights or asset log in a spreadsheet or database tool, because neither product lists one.
Our read for print on demand sellers: Keep Wave: its free plan and automatic bank import cover the payout-tracking job, and Nexa lists no bank import and no design-permission records either.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs print on demand sellers $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 print on demand sellers: Stay with Wave if the needs in our read above apply to you. If they don't, Nexa covers the core invoicing, scheduling and books for $279 once against $684 for Wave 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. 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 print on demand seller: 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A print on demand seller'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 print on demand seller earns $20,000/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 print on demand sellers. You own it like you own your Design software (Adobe, Canva, Procreate).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small print on demand sellers 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 →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.
I never touch the products I sell; a print partner makes and ships each order after it's paid for, so my job is design, listings and the numbers. Most of my week is creating designs for a niche I know well, then checking them against what's actually selling, because a design I love can sit for months while a simple one sells daily. Every design goes onto mockups for several products, shirts, mugs and posters, with the colours and print areas each product allows. Listings live or die on search: titles, tags and photos that match what buyers type. The margin is thin, so I price every product off the print partner's base cost, the marketplace fees and shipping, and a $24 shirt might leave me six dollars. When something goes wrong, a misprint or a lost parcel, I'm the one the customer contacts, so I handle replacements with the print partner behind the scenes. Copyright is a line I don't cross: no brand logos, characters or lyrics, because one takedown can close a shop. I spend evenings on new designs and weekends reviewing which ones to drop.
Real print on demand sellers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a print on demand seller? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every print on demand seller 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 print on demand seller'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 print on demand seller — 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 print on demand sellers 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 print on demand sellers, 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