The best booking apps for salons that salon owners should try

Using a salon booking app is pretty popular among entrepreneurs because they can easily schedule the work of their employees, can manage bookings, their inventory, their sales, and even more.

Salon booking software help salon owners say goodbye to the stress of managing them on their own.

In this article, you will find a brief comparison of the best salon software out there. This should help you choose the most appropriate one for your salon business.

How do you know that a salon booking system is good?

Managing everything easier

A hairstylist’s appointment booking calendar is probably the most complicated, unorganized thing you will ever see. Replacing the manual system of managing appointments with something that is much more intuitive and easier to use will entirely change how you run your beauty salon.

You need to find a salon booking system that is easy to manage, has a clean dashboard, and is user-friendly. Don’t choose apps that look too complicated or that are built for tech-savvy people only.

The perfect user booking process

A hairdressing beauty salon is considered good when the booking process is organized. Respecting the upcoming appointments is a sign of professionalism and is a quality that clients look for the first time they try a salon.

Online appointment scheduling is the perfect solution to keep things in order. Clients can go through the booking process on the app and you can manage the appointments much better, everything on the same convenient platform.

Professional information

There are many salon booking apps that don’t present relevant information for the customer. You need to choose an app that has features such as setting reminders, sending notifications, rescheduling options, staff schedule listing, and so on. The app should be great for managing data.

Fast learning curve

An online salon booking app must be easy to comprehend. This means that a complicated interface will only lead to confusion and more mistakes in the long run, which is exactly the situation you are trying to get rid of.

The app must have all the necessary features you need, all in one single place. Avoid using multiple apps at once.

The best booking apps for salons

Now let’s look at them in detail.

Amelia

Amelia is a powerful WordPress booking plugin that works flawlessly with WordPress sites of all kinds. It has a minimal, yet powerful appointment booking interface designed to ease your workflow, automate repetitive tasks, avoid double booking, and make scheduling appointments a breeze for your customers.

You can even have email notifications and SMS notifications so that nobody forgets about their appointment bookings.

In order to book an appointment, the complete user interaction takes a few clicks with this WordPress plugin. Moreover, with it you can accept payments via PayPal and Stripe, perfect for those who want to pay in advance to book appointments online.

As a business owner, you can monitor KPIs in the WordPress dashboard and analyze other important data to keep a pulse on your wellness business. Amelia is a straightforward, no-nonsense booking calendar plugin and an amazing option for those who want an around-the-clock solution for their WordPress site.

Amelia also has an Events Calendar module integrated within its features.

You can now automate your event bookings as well. To be more precise, it means that you will be able to schedule a single day, a multi-day, and also recurring events with Amelia.

Did we mention that you can manage multiple locations and that you have Google Calendar integration?

All of these and much more are under only one license, no add-ons are needed.

To see why this is the best scheduling plugin, I’d suggest checking out the demos and seeing how things look on the front end as well as in the back end.

Here’s a apa/salon booking page demo

A dummy cosmetology scheduling site – look through different cosmetic procedures and treatments, pick an employee, and schedule appointments.

Rosy

Rosy is another salon scheduling software that is highly recommended for entrepreneurs that own small or midsize businesses. It is cloud-based and it has features such as scheduling, tracking sales, managing the inventory, creating reports, and so on.

Rosy also has premium features like credit card processing or email marketing. The only downside would be that the app doesn’t generate one single provider report for tracking, but multiple ones. Some say that the app is quite costly for what it offers as well.

Fresha

Fresha is a salon management software that is highly versatile. It is also cloud-based and it offers the necessary features to keep everything organized.

This salon software has a comprehensive scheduling feature, online booking, client management, and even retail management. It generates invoices, receipts, and tax reports. It is one of the salon booking apps you should definitely try.

Baxus

Another good salon scheduling software, Baxus comes with lots of features. Clients can book their appointments, you can set schedules, you can manage client details, set automated reminders, manage stocks, it has a point of sale feature and also a voucher management one.

The salon software also has a rescheduling management feature and clients can choose the rooms and equipment they prefer for their appointments.

Square Appointments

Square Appointments is one of the salon booking apps that offer integrated payment processing.

This salon scheduling app also offers an individualized price plan based on the number of employees in your salon. The features offered by the app are quite unique. It is perfect for salons that prefer credit card payments.

Super Salon

A great salon software, Super Salon is a management solution that is based on both cloud technology and on-premise systems.

The app offers features to manage sales, payroll, stocks, and so on. It can generate predictive purchase reports and retains what each customer bought from your company.

For each customer, the app can generate custom offers based on their preferences and history.

SimpleSpa

SimpleSpa is a salon scheduling software that is suitable for all-size spas, beauty salons, or hair salons.

The primary features of this app are online booking, marketing management, appointment management, and inventory management. It is a simple, yet effective scheduling software.

MindBody

MindBody is an enterprise-grade software, designed and marketed toward businesses providing fitness, wellness, and beauty services.

MindBody also offers digital solutions to specific business needs such as client experience, marketing, multi-location management, payment system, and more.

The application provides lots of features but the most important one is that it enables clients to schedule appointments online.

To improve brand awareness, MindBody also allows a salon owner to create a branded mobile application to provide clients with a more immersive and personalized booking experience.

Boulevard

Boulevard is a more expensive appointment scheduling app, as you will pay $75 each month. The software is highly customizable, though.

If you need tailored services for your spa business, this software is recommended, as it uses the preferences, social media accounts, and data of the customer to personalize their appointment booking experience with the salon.

Booksy (Formerly Versum)

The once called Versum, now Booksy, has advanced tracking features and email marketing features. It has very high security for data protection, it generates complex financial statistics, and more. It is also capable of sending email marketing campaigns.

SimplyBook.me

This hairdresser appointment app offers basic features and allows users to pick custom advanced features to suit their needs. This is an app that a salon business could try, even though there are better alternatives out there.

Basic features:

• Limited monthly bookings
• Offers a mobile-optimized booking website or integrates with your own business website
• Recurring appointments
• Event bookings
• Email notifications

Advanced features:

• Promotions
• Group bookings
• Classes
• Memberships
• Social media integration
• API to build custom integrations
• Video conferencing
• Metrics
• Online payments with Paypal, Stripe, or through the POS system
• SMS notifications
• Multiple locations
• Website customization

Setmore

The last one of the salon scheduling software any owner should consider for online booking is Setmore.

Setmore lets users create a booking webpage. From here, clients can choose available time slots.

Setmore has an Instagram and Facebook integration feature. This means customers can book appointments through your social media profiles.

Once a booking is complete the app sends users a real-time booking update on their mobile devices. An automatic confirmation is also sent to the client.

The app further sends automatic reminders of upcoming appointments.

Ending thoughts on the best booking apps for salons

There are a lot of options when it comes to salon scheduling, but you need to choose the booking software that suits your salon’s needs the best. Choose the salon scheduling app that is both functional and has a good price for what it offers.

If you enjoyed reading this article about the best salon booking apps, you should check out this one on salon pricing.

We also wrote about a few related subjects like the best free salon software solutions, hair salon websites, hair salon names, how to upsell salon services, beauty salon names, salon bookers, salon promotion ideas, how to open a hair salon, how to open a spa, salon management, spa websites, spa advertisements, spa scheduling software, spa WordPress theme examples, and salon booking systems.

Author Ljubica Buha

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