What zine makers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the bookkeeping side of zine making. The free Starter plan has unlimited invoices and bookkeeping, and Pro adds bank import, receipt capture and late-payment reminders. That is enough to invoice a shop or distro and keep the books without an accountant. The jobs a zine maker most needs to track are not in Wave's feature list. Those are copies placed, sold and owed per shop and per title, an ISBN flag per title, which titles qualify for Media Mail, and per-state sales totals for tax thresholds. The Pro plan is $19 a month and adds none of these.
Nexa has the same gap on the core need. It has invoices, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, sales tax tracking and a simple stock count per product. A stock count can hold copies per title. Nothing in Nexa's feature set tracks consignment copies per shop, holds an ISBN field, flags postage eligibility or splits sales by state, so those would need workarounds. Nexa also has no full inventory management. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device.
Over three years Wave Pro is $684, and Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with Cloud Sync for the full period. Nexa is cheaper if you want one-time pricing, and Wave's free Starter plan costs less than either if you only need invoices and books. Whichever you pick, you still need a separate per-title, per-shop consignment and inventory record. A spreadsheet or a small consignment inventory tracker would fit. Keep your existing accounting tool for the money side, and move only if the cost or ownership model appeals to you.
Our read for zine makers: Neither tool tracks consignment copies per shop and title, ISBN status or per-state sales totals, so use a consignment and inventory tracker 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.
Wave costs zine 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.
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 zine 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.
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 zine 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.
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 zine maker'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 zine maker earns $15,000/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 zine makers. You own it like you own your Risograph or printer access.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small zine 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.
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 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.
You printed 100 copies of your new zine — $1.20 each at the print shop. You sell them for $8 online and $6 at zine fairs. You dropped 20 copies at 3 local shops on consignment (60/40 split). A zine fair next month costs $40 for a table. Your Etsy shop has 5 different zines. Total revenue last month was $340. Monthly software would eat 16% of that.
Real zine makers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a zine maker? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every zine maker 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 zine 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 zine 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.
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 zine 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.
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 zine makers, 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