Fresha

Our verdict: Fresha is the closest thing the category has to a free salon and spa platform, and for a lot of shops that fact alone settles the decision. There is no monthly subscription for the core booking calendar, client records and no-show protection; Fresha instead earns its keep on card processing and a marketplace that sends you new clients for a 20% cut. The trade is that those fees are where the real money goes, and the platform is tuned for beauty and wellness rather than compliance-heavy medical work.

What Fresha is, and who it is for

Fresha is an all-in-one operating system for appointment-led beauty and wellness businesses – salons, spas, barbershops, nail bars and independent stylists. You get online booking, a staff calendar, client records, automated reminders, native card payments, memberships and packages, plus a listing in the Fresha consumer marketplace, and the core of that carries no subscription fee. It is aimed squarely at owner-operators and small chains who want to run the whole front desk from one place without paying a monthly platform bill.

Reach for Fresha if you run a chair, a room or a small multi-location group and you want native payments, deposits and marketing without a fixed monthly cost eating your margin. Look elsewhere if the marketplace model does not suit you – a busy shop that already fills its own calendar may resent handing over 20% on new clients it half-sourced itself – or if you need heavy clinical documentation and charting, where a med-spa platform like Boulevard fits better. Studios that live and die by group classes and instructor rosters should weigh Mindbody or Vagaro instead.

How Fresha performs, criterion by criterion

Booking experience and vertical fit and payments are where Fresha earns its keep, the latter our highest mark for it and verified. The client-facing booking flow is clean and mobile-first, deposits and no-show protection are built in, and the whole thing is tuned for the way a salon, spa or barbershop actually runs a chair. Card processing, tap-to-pay, tipping, packages and memberships are native rather than bolted on.

Calendar and integrations is solid but narrower than the horizontal tools: two-way sync with Google and Outlook, automated reminders by email and SMS, and a marketplace listing, but a shorter third-party app catalog than Calendly or Cal.com. Team and availability is a genuine strength – staff calendars, per-stylist rosters, commission tracking and shift management scale from a single chair to a multi-location group without a per-calendar surcharge, which is where Fresha quietly beats Vagaro on price.

AI and automation is the soft spot and our lowest score here: Fresha leans on automated reminders, waitlists and marketing blasts rather than real AI, and its AI receptionist is only rolling out through 2026, so treat it as a promise rather than a shipped feature today. On value and pricing Fresha still scores well, because the near-zero subscription is real – but the honest read is that the platform is free the way a marketplace is free, with the cost moved into a 20% new-client fee and card-processing margins.

Key features

• Subscription-free core: online booking, staff calendar and client records with no monthly platform fee
• Native card payments, tap-to-pay and tipping, plus deposits and no-show protection to guard the calendar
• Memberships, packages, gift cards and automated email and SMS reminders and marketing blasts
• Fresha marketplace listing that surfaces your business to new clients searching for services nearby
• Multi-staff rosters, commission tracking and shift management that scale to multiple locations
• AI receptionist rolling out through 2026 (early), layered on top of automated waitlists and reminders

Fresha pricing and value

Fresha’s headline is that the core platform is free: there is no monthly subscription for booking, the calendar, client records or no-show protection. It makes money two ways instead. First, card processing: in the US that is 2.29% plus $0.20 for in-person payments and 2.79% plus $0.20 for online payments. Second, a marketplace fee of 20% on new clients that Fresha’s consumer marketplace sends you, with a $6 minimum, charged only on those marketplace-sourced first bookings and not on your own repeat clients.

Some regions also show optional paid subscriptions layered on top – third-party figures put a US Individual plan near $19.95 a month and a Team plan near $14.95 per member – but these vary by market and are best confirmed on Fresha directly rather than taken as a fixed global price. The honest way to budget Fresha is to model the fees, not the sticker: if most of your bookings are repeat clients you pay processing and little else, but if you lean on the marketplace for new business, that 20% is the real line item.

Pros and cons

Support and reliability

Fresha support runs through a help center, email and in-app chat, with dedicated account managers for larger businesses and multi-location groups; there is no universal phone line. The company is headquartered in London and operates globally, which is why pricing and payment rates are region-dependent and worth confirming for your market. Note that the payments and marketplace terms are the real contract here: the 20% new-client fee, the card-processing rates and deposit rules matter more to your monthly cost than any support SLA, and the platform is not positioned for heavy medical compliance or clinical charting.

Fresha vs the alternatives

If Fresha’s marketplace cut or beauty-first scope is the sticking point, the closest comparisons are Vagaro, which charges a predictable per-calendar subscription instead of a marketplace fee, Boulevard for premium salons and med-spas that need clinical depth, and Mindbody if classes and ClassPass matter. Our best salon booking software guide lines them up side by side.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides