You can’t keep up with the business world today unless you modernize and automatize the systems you use. This is utterly important for small businesses in the health, beauty, and wellness industries. Owners are looking for more and more possibilities to meet the needs of their clients. An important aspect is the scheduling process, which is, thanks to plugins and software, online.
On this line, there’s a highly debated topic — a continuous comparison between two scheduling programs, Vagaro and Mindbody. Both of them are mostly used by wellness, beauty, and health companies.
We prepared a detailed analysis of the features, costs, advantages & disadvantages of both Vagaro and Mindbody.
Vagaro vs Mindbody: General View
Vagaro
Vagaro is a powerful modern salon software with a lot of features that can help you manage your business.
From appointment scheduling to marketing your brand online, Vagaro can always be of great help. It can send automated email notifications and reminders and help you improve your business website or social media page.
It works as a search engine and its main criterion is the geographic position of the users. Vagaro will search for the best nearby salons or spas and search them for the prospective client.
From a different perspective, business owners have a lot of advantages, too. They get access to a lot of potential clients while building their websites and marketing their business. The main promotion tools are emails and SMS notifications. Business owners can also save and analyze a client’s history.
This is incredibly useful when trying to make strong connections with your customers; you get to know what they like, what they dislike, and which marketing strategy worked in each particular case. Thus, you can bring your business in front of more and more people.
Mindbody
Another solution for your management problems is Mindbody – a salon software that promises to ease your work strain.
The target companies of this product work in the health and wellness industry. Their daily performance depends on their professional scheduling systems. We also recommend Mindbody due to its advanced features and compatibility with a lot of third-party programs.
Have you ever thought that efficiently organizing your employees’ days can result in the major growth of your business? This is because today people appreciate professionalism, pragmatism, and proper customer care. And with Mindbody, you can do all these things.
Mindbody software provides the basic features of an appointment scheduling program – online booking, notifying, and gathering feedback. But this is not all. It can also run the marketing and branding system for your company. This implies sending sales offers to customers, reporting statistics, and tracking interactions.
Vagaro vs Mindbody: Features and Possibilities
Vagaro
Vagaro has drawn so much attention to itself mainly thanks to the wide variety of its features. From timeline management to basic customer service, this cloud-based program can master it all. We prepared a detailed list of Vagaro’s features that will help you choose your side in the Vagaro vs Mindbody battle. This is what Vagaro can do:
- Manage accounting, invoices, inventory, and payroll
- Keep your clients notified about appointments, offers, and payments through email or SMS
- Works as a search engine that will show your business as a suitable choice for your prospective clients
- Booth Rental Management
- Help keep salons and customers meet and keep in touch through business and personal accounts
- Provide up to date charts and statistics depicting the performance of your business
- Provide accessibility for managers and customers from multiple locations
- Set up recurring appointments
Mindbody
Mindbody is the software that wants to make sure people return to your place again and again. This is what Mindbody can do to reach that goal:
- Show availability in real-time and create waitlists
- Integrate on your business’s Facebook page
- Send automated reminders and marketing emails
- Create members’ communities through offers, promotions, and alerts
- Help your employees by performing check-ins/outs, and payment processing
- Booth Rental Management
- Create profiles for clients and businesses for better communication
- Manage employees’ profiles, setting rating rates and feedback
- The ability to be used with POS from multiple locations
Vagaro vs Mindbody: Plans and Price
Vagaro
When it comes to Vagaro’s pricing, its packages vary depending on how many users you want to have.
There are 7 plans available, starting from $25/month for 1 user. For every extra user, you add $10 to your monthly payment. Yet, if you have 7 or more users, the price is fixed – $85/month.
Mindbody
If you ever wondered about how much Mindbody is, you should know that it proposes four flexible plans:
- Essential – $129/month
- Accelerate – $239/month
- Ultimate- $349/month
- Ultimate Plus – $529/month
All packages include 1-on-1 setup and training, live customer support, and unlimited staff logins. These add up to the unlimited device access and data migration support.
The other plans also provide email building options, automated emailing, and feedback strategies.
Benefits of Vagaro and Mindbody
Vagaro
There are some specific benefits Vagaro will bring to your company:
- Quicker and safer online booking and payments
- Accessibility for clients on different platforms
- Both mobile and PC payments options
- Email notifications and SMS to help you to keep in touch with your clients
- Increased show-up rate
- Automated marketing
- Birthday offers and automatic campaigns that help to bring old clients back
Mindbody
Equally effective, Mindbody also has some advantages that you might like:
- You won’t have to worry about the scheduling, editing, or canceling processes, because they will all be automated.
- Staff members are always informed about future appointments and any scheduling changes.
- Mindbody processes online payments can read credit cards and works with POS.
- Payment can be done before the appointment.
- Mindbody builds charts and reports you can analyze with your accountants. They depict membership evolutions, staff ratings, revenue, and the general performance of your business.
- Generates automated marketing content.
Disadvantages of Vagaro and Mindbody
Vagaro
No program is perfect and Vagaro has its flaws. You should consider them before buying a subscription:
- It isn’t very efficient when you have more employees.
- There are limited merchant processing possibilities.
- It works as a search engine and the competition is significant.
- You can’t be the unique brand prospective clients see.
Mindbody
- It requires some time and energy to learn the functions at the beginning.
- The price is sometimes too high for smaller businesses.
- It still has some bugs that appear when a client wants to configure a profile.
- The program doesn’t let businesses protect their old customers from certain rate modifications.
- Some features are useless and outdated. Users get stuck when trying to understand how these features work.
- The customer support service isn’t top-rated.
- The program promotes other similar businesses like your own.
Vagaro’s and Mindbody’s Customer Support
Vagaro
A huge advantage of Vagaro is its customer support system. They are available 24/7 on phone, mail, and website chat. All you have to do is describe your problem and wait for their solution.
Their staff is in charge of the researching part, too. Isn’t that wonderful? They will help you not only by solving normal problems and bugs but with several other services. You can see them all in a clear list on their website.
Mindbody
Mindbody’s client support system works non-stop on the phone and online chat. This is how you can solve urgent inquiries. Your tickets will be prioritized and properly researched, then someone will get in touch with you and give proper solutions to your problems.
Another option to access useful information about the platform is Mindbody’s blog. They regularly post articles about frequent problems, bugs, and difficulties. Each of them comes with the best solutions. You can receive important advice on how to schedule appointments, how to manage employees, and how to increase sales.
If neither of the above options gives you the answer you need, you can still search for your solution on forums or in the FAQ section. The knowledge base of this company is what makes its customer support service so recommendable.
Get an even better app to use
Staying organized has never been easier.
You can now manage your business and grow your brand with a single, powerful software that keeps all of your appointments in line, your clients organized and your business booming.
Trafft is perfect for business owners who need to streamline their online booking experience both for their staff and their clients.
Trafft handles everything for you, even sending automated email or SMS reminders to your clients. No-shows? Not anymore!
The Trafft booking software adapts to different industries for a blissful online booking experience and employee management.
Want to know more? Check out Trafft’s awesome features to see what you are missing.
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