Most salon software is a till with a calendar bolted on. Bookafy is the opposite — and which one you need depends almost entirely on whether you sell retail.
Search for “salon booking software” and you will be shown Fresha, Vagaro, Boulevard and Phorest. Those are salon management systems: point of sale, stock, commission, client photo history, marketing, and a booking calendar somewhere inside all of it.
Bookafy is not that, and pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon. Bookafy is a booking layer. It takes the appointment, syncs it to the calendar each stylist already lives in, sends the reminder that stops the no-show, and can take a deposit at the moment of booking. It does not run your till.
| If this is you… | Then |
|---|---|
| You sell retail product, track stock and pay commission out of the system | Buy a salon suite. Bookafy will not do your back office. |
| You already have a POS you like and bookings are what is leaking | Bookafy. It sits on top, syncs to Google/Outlook, takes the deposit. |
| You have 2–15 stylists who each want their own calendar on their own phone | Bookafy. Two-way sync per person, so a school run blocks the slot automatically. |
| You are a booth renter — self-employed, in someone else’s shop | Bookafy. One user is free, and you keep your own client list and your own Stripe account. |
| You need memberships, packages or a class timetable | Not us. Bookafy has none of those. |
An empty chair is unrecoverable revenue — you cannot sell 2pm on Thursday twice. Bookafy sends an automated email reminder on every plan and an SMS reminder on Pro. The bigger lever is the deposit: on Pro you can require payment at booking through Stripe or Authorize.net, and that changes the client’s relationship with the slot. A three-hour colour is worth protecting with a card.
It almost never happens inside the salon calendar. It happens because a stylist’s real life is not in it. Two-way calendar sync on Pro means anything on their personal Google, Outlook, Exchange or iCloud calendar removes that slot from your booking page — nobody has to remember to block it.
A root touch-up and a full balayage are not the same appointment. A booking page offering a generic “hair appointment” will hand you a 45-minute slot for a three-hour job, and you will eat the difference. Build the menu properly: each service its own duration, its own price, assigned only to the stylists who can do it. Bookafy’s skill-based scheduling routes the booking to the right people instead of everyone.
That list is the honest reason to buy something else. It is also why Bookafy costs a fraction as much and is running by the end of the day.
| Plan | Price | What it means in a salon |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | One user, maximum. Unlimited appointments, email confirmations, a customisable booking page. No calendar sync, no SMS, no payments — a booth renter’s plan, not a salon’s. |
| Pro | $7/user/mo billed yearly | The salon plan: unlimited stylists, two-way calendar sync, SMS reminders, deposits and payments via Stripe or Authorize.net. |
| Pro+ | $11/user/mo | A second SMS reminder, custom API, optional white-label. Overkill for most salons. |
No. Bookafy is a booking and reminder system. It has no point of sale, no stock control, no commission tracking and no memberships. If you need those, a salon suite is the right purchase.
Yes, on the Pro plan. Payments run through Stripe or Authorize.net, so the money lands in your own merchant account. It is the single most effective thing you can do about no-shows on long colour services.
Yes. On Pro each staff member connects their own Google, Outlook, Exchange or iCloud calendar with two-way sync, so a personal commitment removes that slot from the booking page automatically.
Only if the salon is one person. The free plan is capped at one user and has no calendar sync, no SMS reminders and no payments. It suits a booth renter or a solo stylist starting out.
No. There is no class timetable, no membership billing and no packages. Bookafy does support group events, where many clients book into a single slot, but that is not a course or a membership.
Try it on your own calendar. Bookafy is free for one user with unlimited appointments, and Pro is $7 per user per month billed yearly.
If you are still working out which tool you need, start with the overview: appointment scheduling software — what it does, what it costs, and when you should buy something else.
Also useful: every Bookafy integration, in three honest lists — what is native, what needs Zapier, and what we simply do not do. And the pricing page, where the feature matrix is the real answer to “is that on the free plan”.
