What vjs (video jockeys) need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the money side of a VJ business and none of the rights side. Starter is free and gives unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping. That is enough to bill a festival or venue and keep the books. Pro at $19 a month adds bank import, categorizing, receipt capture, and file attachments on invoices and estimates. Attachments help here: a VJ can attach the signed ownership-and-usage terms to the invoice for that gig. But Wave stores a file, not a record. Nothing in its feature list tracks the license status of each clip, loop and track in a set, flags which set footage contains unlicensed third-party clips, or records where a recording may appear (live stream, YouTube replay, aftermovie) and for how long. Those records decide whether a festival has to mute or blank a segment of a broadcast. Wave also lists no fixed-asset register for section 179 treatment of laptops, media servers, controllers, projectors and LED panels, and no trip log for performance travel.
Nexa has the same gaps, so it is not a rights tool either. It has quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, estimates clients can sign through the pay portal, expenses, receipt scanning, profit and loss, and profit per job. A proposal can state the scope and price of a commission. It is not a licensing template that says who owns the visuals, whether the work is work-for-hire or licensed, or what reuse is allowed. Nexa has no clip or rights register, no depreciation or asset register for gear, and no trip or mileage log. It does not sync with QuickBooks or Xero, and it is software you own and run yourself with no hosted support desk. The publisher of this page makes Nexa, and this read comes from the published feature lists, not from running a VJ's set-prep, performance and delivery workflow in either product. The central finding does not depend on that testing: neither list contains a rights or asset feature.
Over three years, Wave Pro costs $684 ($228 a year), and Starter has no subscription fee. Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), or $458.64 over three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for 36 months. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. Because neither product tracks clip rights, ownership terms or gear assets, price should not drive the choice. A VJ who already invoices and keeps books in Wave should not move for these needs. They should add a dedicated rights-and-contracts tool, with a license log for each clip and a template for ownership and recording terms. They should also ask a tax professional about gear deductions and travel logging, since the travel source is from 2020 and the current rules need checking.
Our read for vjs (video jockeys): Neither Wave nor Nexa tracks per-clip licensing, ownership terms or gear assets, so a VJ needs a separate rights-and-contract management tool whichever bookkeeping app they use.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs vjs (video jockeys) $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 vjs (video jockeys): 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.
Scheduling, invoicing and client records 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. 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 vj: 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.)
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median VJ earns $35,000/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 vjs (video jockeys). You own it like you own your Projectors and LED panels.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small vjs (video jockeys) 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 →Scheduling, invoicing and client records 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.
Saturday starts with a load-in list. Tonight is a private event with projection mapping onto the front of a converted warehouse, $800 plus $200 in rented screens, so I'm checking the laptop, the capture card, the MIDI controller, spare HDMI and SDI runs, the lens for the throw distance and my own projector, whose lamp is down to about 500 hours. I pick the rental screens up at 2 and inspect them for tears before I sign. At 4 I'm on site measuring the facade, setting the projector on a scaffold and taping cables down where people will walk. Once it's dark enough I build the map: warping corners onto the window frames, masking the doors, lining up edges so the loops I rendered last week fit the architecture. I test clips against the DJ's opening track and fix a loop that stutters at the seam. During the event I'm triggering clips live, matching tempo, and layering the logos the client sent in the wrong format, which I recut this afternoon. Last night was a club set, $400, house visuals on the LED wall, and I got home at 4. Tonight wraps at 1, strike takes an hour, and the rented screens go back Monday. Sunday I sleep, then send two invoices from last weekend that I forgot, note which venue still hasn't paid for September, and look up what a replacement lamp costs, because I know I haven't been pricing its hours into my rates.
Real vjs (video jockeys) near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a vj? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every vj 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 vj'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 vj — 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 vjs (video jockeys) 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 vjs (video jockeys), 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