4 Best Fresha Alternatives for Salons, Spas, and Solo Providers

Most people shopping for a Fresha alternative want one of two things:

• Free software for their solo operation as a service provider or booth renter (now that Fresha’s free tier is gone). When you’re only managing one calendar, basic booking and POS tools may be all you need, and there are still platforms that offer them for free.
• Software with deeper capabilities than Fresha. Fresha offers most of the features a solo salon or spa needs, but larger beauty businesses may need those features to do more. For example, you may need inventory that automatically creates purchase orders when stock runs low, or reporting that shows exactly how much revenue each employee brings in from services, retail, memberships, and more.

In this article, we include options for both since the right option depends on which category you belong to.

We start with our own platform, Meevo, built for growing multi-stylist and multi-location salons and spas. After decades of working with more than 100,000 salons and spas across the country, we know that a busy and growing operation needs software that can keep schedules full, take more day-to-day work off staff, and give you a clearer view of business performance.

Schedule a demo to see how Meevo handles a full book for established and growing salons.

Meevo: Software for Busy Salons & Spas That Need Tools Beyond the Basics

Meevo is an all-in-one platform for salons, spas, and med spas with five or more service providers, including businesses with multiple locations. Staff can use the tools they need for everyday tasks without having to learn or set up every feature the platform offers.

As your needs change, the tools to handle them are already there. For example, a spa may begin offering memberships that let clients exchange one monthly service for another. Meevo lets the front desk swap a client’s facial for a massage at checkout in a couple of clicks. You can add capabilities like this when they become useful without replacing your software or making everyday tasks harder for your team.

“Meevo in one word: convenient. I just find so much about it convenient for what I need to do in my day-to-day. I find it convenient at the desk when we’ve got our concierge doing the booking, doing the check-in, the checkout. The convenience and ease of use is really just amazing.”

– Paula Pelkey, Spa Director at Woodhouse Spa, Denver

• Automation and built-in revenue tools cover more of your booking and checkout. Your schedule stays fuller, your revenue per visit goes up, your team spends less time managing it, and clients have a smoother experience from start to finish.
• Reporting goes deeper than sales totals. You get a more detailed picture of where revenue is coming from and what’s influencing it, which makes business decisions much easier.
• Memberships and marketing tools bring clients back on their own. Client retention stops depending on your team constantly having to remember to follow up.
• Inventory management happens automatically. Inventory levels update with each sale, so staff can see when products are running low and need to be reordered.
• The system handles the complexity that comes with a bigger team. Hours, schedules, pay, and raises are tracked and applied by the software, so more staff doesn’t turn into more admin work.
• Onboarding and support come from actual people. A specialist moves your data and trains your team before you go live. And after that, you can easily reach a real person by phone or chat.
  Meevo support holds a 98.5% satisfaction rating.

Below, we lay out the full feature set, so you can see exactly how our software can improve your day-to-day and your bottom line.

Automated Booking Tools Fill Openings Across Every Service Provider’s Calendar

The basic function of spa or salon software is booking appointments on a calendar, managing availability, and sending automated reminders. Meevo includes all of these core booking tools, and they’re easy for both staff and clients to use.

The platform gives your front desk a color-coded, drag-and-drop appointment book, providing a quick view of the day and a simple way to move appointments around. Clients can book online 24/7 through a site customized with your colors and logo, which makes the booking experience feel professional and credible.

Salons using Meevo see a 60% higher rate of online bookings turning into appointments.

Meevo also automates routine booking work and gives staff more tools to manage clients and schedules across multiple service providers.

• Online bookings automatically create and update detailed client profiles. Each profile includes basic information, visit history, notes, preferences, and other useful details that carry over across locations. Meevo’s Intelli-Merge spots duplicate profiles and prompts you to combine them, so the client’s information stays organized.
• Calendar icons show important client details without opening their profile. Staff can immediately see things like whether someone is new, has a membership or package, or has loyalty points, without digging through their profile. That makes it easier to give each client a more personalized experience.

• Intelli-Booking reduces unnecessary gaps in the schedule. Meevo learns how long a specific service tends to take for each client and provider combination. For example, if Amanda’s haircut with a stylist usually takes 60 minutes and Danielle’s takes 45, the system can account for that when scheduling instead of blocking the same amount of time for both.
• Meevo suggests relevant add-ons during online booking. When a client selects a service, Meevo shows them related services they can add to the appointment. These prompts can increase average ticket totals by 10% to 20%.
• The wait list fills cancellations automatically. Meevo checks the appointment book for openings, and when one appears, it texts clients on the wait list. A client can reply to take the appointment, and Meevo books it rather than leaving your front desk to call people one by one (unless they request a call). You can also give VIP clients priority for openings.

• Customizable appointment confirmations and reminders are automated and require little to no staff follow-up. Clients who need to move an appointment can use a direct rescheduling link. Staff can see which appointments are still unconfirmed, so they know exactly who to follow up with as the appointment gets closer.
• Appointment confirmations and reminders are automated and can be customized to your brand’s voice. Clients confirm by responding to the text or email, and staff can see who hasn’t confirmed and follow up as the appointment gets closer. Reminders include a direct link so clients can reschedule themselves if needed.
• Deposits and cancellation policies help protect against no-shows. You set your own cancellation terms and can require a card on file, a deposit, or full payment when a client books. Businesses using deposits have seen no-shows virtually eliminated.
• Group bookings can include up to six people. Couples, bridal parties, and other groups can make one booking together instead of booking everyone separately. Meevo automatically coordinates the service providers and resources needed for the group without double-booking staff or other resources.
• Meevo’s AI-powered search tool, Convboar®, makes it quick and easy for staff to find what they need across the platform. For example, they can type or say something like “Jen’s openings on Friday” to pull up matching availability in seconds.

“1,000%, my favorite feature is the Meevo Convobar. I use it for absolutely everything from pulling up reports that we might need to just searching for a specific date or time with a service provider.”

– Ashley, Guest Care Director of J. Con Salon

Three-Click Checkout & Industry-Leading Uptime Keep Clients From Waiting to Pay

Your point of sale and payment processing need to be fast and reliable at a busy salon to keep clients feeling positive about the experience right before they walk out the door.

MeevoPay, our in-house payment processor, is built directly into the platform. This means Meevo can guarantee a minimum of 99.95% uptime, diminishing the chance that a system outage leaves clients inconvenienced while they’re waiting to pay and leave.

The actual checkout is designed to keep the line moving, too:

• Staff can complete checkout in three clicks and a swipe or tap. The client’s services and any applicable memberships or packages are already shown on the checkout screen. MeevoPay accepts all major cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
• Clients can pay chairside or from their own phone. This takes some of the traffic away from the front desk and keeps checkout moving when several clients finish at the same time.

• MeevoTips helps employees earn more in tips and get paid faster. Suggested tip amounts at checkout can increase tip income by an average of 22%, and employees can access their tips immediately. Both are meaningful perks that often help with employee retention.
• MeevoPay helps you fight chargebacks. If a client disputes a payment, MeevoPay handles the tedious process for you. Our team wins around 53% of chargeback disputes, compared with an industry average of 35% to 40%, and keeps its overall chargeback rate below 0.02%.

Checkout speed and reliability matter even more the busier you get. A slow checkout or system outage can frustrate clients and give them a real reason not to come back.

Detailed Reports Show Which Services, Employees, and Revenue Streams Are Driving Growth

Meevo includes more than 150 reports built specifically for salons and spas, covering everything from sales and client retention to employee performance, memberships, inventory, and more. That depth of reportingbecomes more important as your business grows, because eventually you can’t keep track of what’s working and what isn’t just by being there every day.

“It’s great for growth because you’re able to easily track where your sales are, whether it’s retail or service sales, and then go into individual reports. That can really help set up future goals to grow your business.”

– Wendy, Stylist & Manager of One83 Mane Studio & Luxury Salon

With Meevo’s extensive reporting and analytics, you can:

• See which employees are actually driving revenue. You can break down service, retail, package, gift card, and membership sales by employee. That level of visibility makes it easy to see your top performers and where others may have room to improve.
• Customize how you measure client retention. Standard retention reports use a set window to decide whether a client came back, but that window doesn’t make sense for every business. Meevo lets you adjust it based on how often your clients actually return, so your retention numbers give you a more accurate picture.
• Easily notice trends, visualized on graphs and charts. Our Advanced Dashboards are interactive and cover areas like client demographics, appointment traffic, employee attrition, resource use, memberships, and sales. They make it easier to spot patterns without working through individual reports one at a time.

• See where you’re losing bookings and revenue. Meevo’s Missed Opportunities report uses your waitlist to show which appointments clients wanted but couldn’t book and the revenue you missed. Your staff can then follow up with those clients and try to get them back on the schedule.
• The Smart Center dashboard puts the numbers you care about on your home screen. Instead of running a report every time you want to check a KPI, you can build a dashboard with live metrics for things like sales, goals, and employee performance. And you can create different dashboards for owners, managers, service providers, and front-desk staff, so each person sees the information that’s useful to them when they log in.

• Check your numbers from anywhere with the Meevo Business Intelligence (BI) app. Owners and managers can pull up key business metrics from their phone, so they don’t have to be at the salon or logged into a computer to see how things are going.

The point isn’t just having more reports. It’s being able to answer more specific questions about your business, so you can make decisions based on what’s actually happening.

Flexible Memberships and Built-In Marketing Tools Build Steady, Repeat Revenue

Meevo’s membership management and marketing automation tools are designed to bring clients back more often and create more predictable repeat revenue.

• Clients can swap membership benefits without a complicated workaround. If a client’s membership includes a facial but they want a massage instead, your front desk can switch it out right at checkout in a couple of clicks.

• Meevo keeps cards on file up to date automatically. Clients can save a card for recurring membership payments, and with certain card issuers, Meevo can update the card information when it expires. That helps prevent failed payments and saves staff from having to track clients down for updated card information.

• Marketing tools can target specific groups of clients. Email and text campaigns can be sent to segments such as inactive clients, loyalty members, or clients with upcoming birthdays. You end up sending more relevant offers and reminders instead of the same message to your entire client list.

• Meevo’s client app, MeGo, gives clients another direct connection to your business. Branded to your salon or spa, the app lets them book appointments, message the front desk, check themselves in, and buy products and gift cards. You can also promote new services or special offers to bring clients back in.

Inventory Management Runs with Less Hands-On Work

Fresha includes inventory tracking, stock orders, and low-stock alerts. Meevo’s inventory management goes further with tools designed for busier businesses managing more product inventory or multiple locations.

• Meevo can build purchase orders based on your stock levels. The system keeps track of how much product you have and how quickly you use or sell it, then calculates how much you need to reorder.

• You can manage inventory across multiple locations from one place. Meevo gives you a centralized view of product inventory across all your locations so you don’t have to check and update each store separately.
• Meevo tracks product lots and expiration dates. The system alerts staff when products are approaching or have passed their expiration date.
• Staff can update inventory from the floor. They use a mobile device to scan product barcodes and enter product information while they’re physically checking stock instead of taking notes and entering everything later.

Larger Teams Stay Organized Across Schedules and Locations

Meevo’s staff management tools are built to make larger teams and more complex pay structures easier to manage.

• Employees can be paid hourly, by salary, or by commission, and you can set different hourly rates, commission rules, and deductions for things like shop or labor costs.
• Meevo keeps employee scheduling, time off, and hours worked in one place. Managers can build and adjust weekly schedules, copy recurring shifts, and see when someone has requested time off. Employees clock in and out through Meevo, which also tracks breaks and work activities for payroll.

• Employees can work across multiple locations without needing separate profiles. Their login and employee information stay consistent across the business, and their pay can still be handled through one designated location.
• Staff can manage much of their workday from the MyMeevo employee app. From their phone, they can check their schedule, request time off or schedule changes, add visit notes, and receive appointment notifications.
• Meevo integrates with RUN Powered by ADP and ADP Workforce Now, so payroll information doesn’t have to be entered into a second system by hand.

Onboarding and Support Come From People Who Know the Business

Switching software is a big job when you have years of client records, employees, appointments, services, and products in another system. Meevo helps you through the entire switch.

• A dedicated Implementation Specialist works with you before you go live, walking you through setup, data conversion, and how your business will use the system.
• You can practice with your own business data before launch. Meevo gives you sandbox access so your team can learn the system, check the converted data, and test features before anyone starts using it with real clients.
• Your staff gets trained, too. Live training can cover the Appointment Book, checkout, reporting, forms, or other parts of Meevo your team will use. Meevo Academy also gives employees role-based courses, videos, quizzes, and other training they can come back to later.
• You still have a real person to go to after launch. Each account is assigned a Client Success Manager, and US-based support is available by phone and live chat for day-to-day questions (Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. ET).

 

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Schedule a demo to see how Meevo manages booking, reporting, inventory, employees, and more as your business grows.

3 Fresha Competitors with Free Tiers

If you’re a solo service provider or booth renter, a free platform can make a lot of sense because your operation is simpler. You’re managing one calendar, your own clients, and usually fewer moving parts around daily operations.

In that case, paying for a deeper system may not be necessary. The options below offer free tiers that cover core needs like booking, scheduling, and payments.

1. Square Appointments

Square Appointments is a CRM salon and spa software option with a free tier that covers the basics of appointment management and payments. You only pay Square’s standard payment processing fees when you take payments.

The free tier includes:

• A customizable online booking site. Clients can see your availability and book appointments online 24/7, so you don’t have to coordinate every appointment yourself.
• Built-in payment processing. Your appointment calendar connects directly to Square’s POS, so you can manage the booking system and take payment in the same system.
• Square Free automates email and SMS reminders and lets clients confirm, cancel, or reschedule by text. More customized messaging and higher texting limits are reserved for paid plans.

Square Free is a practical option for a solo stylist or booth renter. Its limitations become more noticeable once you’re coordinating multiple providers, selling packages or memberships, or needing more in-depth reporting to make business decisions.

2. Goldie

Goldie’s beauty and wellness software has a free Starter plan for independent stylists and service providers who don’t need more than simple booking and client management. This plan supports one user, unlimited clients, and up to 20 appointments per month.

The free tier includes:

• A customizable online booking site. Clients can view your availability and book themselves, and you can choose whether they need to create an account to do it.
• Client reminders are included, but they aren’t fully automated. Goldie prepares the reminder, but on the free plan you have to tap to send it from your own phone.
• You can take payments through Goldie. Built-in payment processing is available on the free plan, including appointment payments and deposits.

Goldie is a practical Fresha alternative for solo providers whose booking needs are still relatively simple. If you want more in-depth features, such as loyalty programs or detailed reporting, you’ll need to look beyond its free plan.

3. Setmore

Setmore is a general appointment scheduling and booking platform used across many service industries, including nail salons, barbers, hair salons, spas, and wellness businesses. It has a free plan for up to four users, so it covers individual service providers and small teams. The free plan allows up to 200 appointments.

The free tier includes:

• Online booking system with easy cancellations and rescheduling. Clients can see your availability and book online, then use links in their emails to cancel or reschedule. Any changes update your calendar automatically.
• One-way calendar sync. You can automatically export Setmore appointments to Google, Outlook, or Apple Calendar, so your bookings also appear on the calendar you already use.
• Basic reports on appointments and revenue. You can see which services are being booked, filter appointments by staff member or service, track revenue from payments, and export the data to a spreadsheet.

Because Setmore is built for a broad range of service businesses, it works best if you mainly need straightforward booking and scheduling rather than salon- or spa-specific tools.

If you’ve outgrown basic scheduling software and want a platform that can support a busier, more complex business, book a Meevo demo. We’ll show you how our platform helps you manage more appointments, clients, staff, inventory, and revenue without adding more manual work.