7 Best Salon Management Software in 2026, Compared

Quick comparison

The best salon management software

#1

Fresha

Best for: Solo stylists and small salons that want new clients to find them through a booking marketplace

Visit fresha.com

Starting price$19.95/month (Independent, 1 bookable team member; Team $14.95/month per member)

Free planNo — 7-day free trial

Fresha is the cheapest way into a full salon system, and the only tool here that brings clients to you. The Independent plan costs $19.95 a month for one bookable team member and covers online booking, POS, client records, memberships and marketing. Clients can book through your own website or Instagram, or find you in the Fresha Marketplace, which lists the salon alongside nearby competitors.

The catch is the marketplace commission: the first appointment of every new client who finds you through Fresha costs a one-time 20% commission, though repeat visits and direct bookings cost nothing. A team pays $14.95 a month per bookable member, so four stylists cost $59.80 a month. Pick Fresha when the salon is new and needs clients more than it needs advanced reporting.

What we like

• No monthly fee on repeat or direct bookings — you keep the full value of loyal clients
• The Fresha Marketplace puts the salon in front of clients searching for a salon nearby
• Independent costs $19.95 a month for one bookable team member, with no long-term contract
• Online booking, POS, client records, memberships and marketing sit in one login

Watch out for

• A one-time 20% commission applies to the first appointment of every new client found through the Fresha Marketplace
• The Independent plan covers one bookable team member, so a team pays $14.95 a month per member on Team
• Text and email allowances are capped, then charged pay-as-you-go

#2

Vagaro

Best for: Small salons that want one subscription for booking, POS, marketing and client management

★★★★★★★★★★4.6/5 on G2 (393 reviews, checked Nov 2026)

Visit vagaro.com

Starting price$30/month (1 bookable calendar; $23.99/month for the first 6 months)

Free planNo — 30-day free trial

Vagaro is the all-rounder in this list: one subscription covers online booking, POS, client management, email marketing, memberships, packages and gift cards. It starts at $30 a month for one bookable calendar, with a $23.99 promotional price for the first six months, and each extra calendar costs $10 a month. There is no long-term contract, and the 30-day trial is long enough to run a real month of bookings.

The price scales honestly with headcount — a four-staff salon pays $60 a month before add-ons — but text and email campaigns are billed on top, so a salon that markets heavily should budget for them. Card processing is 2.6% plus 10 cents on swiped payments. Choose Vagaro when you want one system for the whole salon and a price that grows with the team, not ahead of it.

What we like

• One subscription covers online booking, POS, client management, email marketing, memberships and gift cards
• Per-calendar pricing scales with headcount: a solo salon pays $30, a four-staff salon pays $60 a month
• No long-term contract, and the 30-day free trial is long enough to run a real month of bookings
• Card processing is 2.6% + 10 cents on swiped payments, in line with the rest of this list

Watch out for

• The $30 starting price covers one bookable calendar; each extra calendar costs $10 a month
• Marketing add-ons such as text and email campaigns are billed on top of the subscription
• The $23.99 promotional price lasts only for the first 6 months, then the price rises to $30

#3

GlossGenius

Best for: Independent stylists and booth renters who want their own branded booking website

★★★★★★★★★★4.9/5 on G2 (85 reviews, checked Nov 2026)

Visit glossgenius.com

Starting price$28/month (Standard, billed monthly; $24/month billed annually)

Free planNo — 14-day free trial

GlossGenius is built for independent beauty professionals, and it shows in the plan structure: Standard costs $28 a month billed monthly, or $24 billed annually, and includes a customizable booking website, online booking, payments, POS, client and inventory management, and email and text marketing. There is no per-staff charge on Standard, and deposits and no-show protection are built in.

The limits arrive when the business grows. Staff management, forms and waivers, and Google booking wait for Gold at $48 a month billed annually, so a salon with a team should budget for Gold from the start. Reviewers rate it 4.9 out of 5 on G2, the highest score in this list. Pick GlossGenius when the salon is one stylist, or a small team that wants its own branded booking site.

What we like

• Every plan includes a customizable booking website, online booking, payments, POS and marketing
• The highest reviewer score in this list: 4.9 out of 5 on G2 from 85 reviews
• Flat pricing with no per-staff charge on Standard, so a solo stylist pays the same as a small team
• Deposits and no-show protection are built in, so empty chairs cost less

Watch out for

• No free plan — the cheapest way in is Standard at $28 a month billed monthly
• Staff management, forms and waivers, and Google booking wait for Gold at $48 a month billed annually
• Card-present processing is 2.4% + 15 cents, and online payments cost 3.4% + 15 cents

#4

Square Appointments

Best for: Salons already taking payments through Square that want booking in the same account

Visit squareup.com

Starting priceFree (Free plan, one location; Plus $49/month per location)

Free planYes — Free plan ($0, one location)

Square Appointments is the only tool here with a real free plan: $0 a month for one location, with unlimited staff calendars, a booking website, online booking, automated reminders, deposits and invoices. Booking, payments and POS live in one Square account, so the calendar and the checkout never drift apart, and a salon already taking Square payments can switch booking on without a new vendor.

The free plan has edges. Marketing, loyalty and class bookings sit behind Plus at $49 a month per location, and text reminders cost extra once the free allowance runs out. Commission tracking and memberships are thinner than on Vagaro or Fresha. Choose Square Appointments when the salon already runs on Square, or when the budget for software is genuinely $0 and the salon can live with the free plan's limits.

What we like

• The only free plan in this list: $0 a month for one location, with unlimited staff calendars
• Booking, payments and POS live in one Square account, so checkout and the calendar never drift apart
• Plus is $49 a month per location and adds multi-location support, waitlists and class bookings
• Card-present processing is 2.6% + 15 cents on the free plan, falling to 2.4% on Premium

Watch out for

• The free plan covers one location only, and marketing, loyalty and class bookings sit behind Plus at $49 a month
• Automated reminders are limited on Free, and text reminders cost extra once the allowance runs out
• Salon-specific tools such as commission tracking and memberships are thinner than on Vagaro or Fresha

#5

Mindbody

Best for: Growing salons and studios that want client discovery through a large booking app

★★★★★★★★★★3.7/5 on G2 (519 reviews, checked Nov 2026)

Visit mindbodyonline.com

Starting price$79/month (Starter, per location)

Free planNo — demo only

Mindbody is the biggest name in this list, and its strength is discovery: the Starter plan includes a listing in the Mindbody app, where clients already search for appointments, plus scheduling, integrated payments, reporting and a done-for-you website. Pricing is per location rather than per staff member, so adding stylists does not raise the subscription, and the add-on catalogue is the widest here.

The price needs care. Mindbody's US pricing page lists Starter at $79 a month per location, while the homepage shows $99 for a higher tier with a branded app, so confirm which plan a quote covers before signing. There is no free plan and no free trial, just a demo, and reviewers rate it 3.7 out of 5 on G2. Pick Mindbody when the salon is growing and wants the app's footfall more than the cheapest subscription.

What we like

• The Mindbody app listing puts the salon in front of clients already searching for appointments
• Starter includes scheduling, integrated payments, reporting and a done-for-you website for one location
• Per-location pricing, not per-staff, so adding stylists does not raise the subscription
• The largest integration and add-on catalogue in this list, from marketing to branded apps

Watch out for

• Mindbody's own pages disagree on the entry price: the US pricing page lists $79, while the homepage shows $99 for a higher tier
• No free plan and no free trial — the only way to look around is a demo
• Reviewers rate it the lowest here, 3.7 out of 5 on G2, and mention setup effort and cost

#6

Mangomint

Best for: Salons that want every feature included in one flat price with no tiers to climb

Visit mangomint.com

Starting price$130/month (1 location, 1 user: $120 per location + $10 per user)

Free planNo — free trial

Mangomint sells one price and nothing else: $120 a month per location plus $10 a month per user, so a solo provider pays $130 a month and a four-person salon pays $160. Everything is included — online booking, POS and payments, client management, reporting, staff management, memberships, forms and HIPAA compliance — with no feature tiers to climb and no upgrade to be pushed into.

The trade-off is the entry price: $130 a month is the second highest starting price in this list, and phone, payroll and marketing are paid add-ons on top. Card-present processing is 2.45% plus 15 cents, the lowest in-person rate here. Choose Mangomint when the salon wants a single flat price and every feature from day one, and is willing to pay for that simplicity.

What we like

• One flat price covers booking, POS, memberships, forms, HIPAA compliance and integrations — no feature tiers
• Pricing is simple arithmetic: $120 a month per location plus $10 a month per user
• Express Booking and a virtual waiting room keep the front desk moving on busy days
• Card-present processing is 2.45% + 15 cents, the lowest in-person rate in this list

Watch out for

• At $130 a month for one location and one user, it is the second most expensive entry price here
• Phone, payroll and marketing are paid add-ons: phone is $70 a month per line, payroll from $50 a month
• No free plan — the only way to try it is a free trial, and onboarding is self-serve

#7

Boulevard

Best for: Established salons that want a premium client experience and AI-tuned scheduling

★★★★★★★★★★4.5/5 on G2 (135 reviews, checked Nov 2026)

Visit joinblvd.com

Starting price$159/month (Essentials, billed monthly; $143/month billed annually)

Free planNo — no free trial

Boulevard is the premium pick in this list, built around the client experience: self-check-in, smart messaging and a polished checkout, with Precision Scheduling using AI to build calendars around appointment length and profitability. Essentials costs $159 a month billed monthly, or $143 billed annually, for one location and a small team, and covers online booking, POS, text reminders, reporting and marketing.

That is the highest entry price here, and Essentials covers one location only, so a multi-location salon pays for higher tiers. There is no free plan and no free trial — the only way in is a paid subscription or a sales demo. Pick Boulevard when the salon is established, charges premium prices, and wants the booking experience itself to feel premium.

What we like

• Precision Scheduling uses AI to build smarter calendars around appointment length and profitability
• The most polished client experience here: self-check-in, smart messaging and a premium checkout flow
• Annual billing cuts the price to $143 a month, a 10% saving on the monthly rate
• Card processing starts at 2.65%, with an offset option that can take it as low as 1%

Watch out for

• The highest entry price in this list at $159 a month billed monthly, or $143 billed annually
• Essentials covers one location and small teams only — multi-location salons pay for higher tiers
• No free plan and no free trial, so the only way in is a paid subscription or a sales demo

The best salon management software for a small salon does three jobs in one place: it fills the appointment book, takes payment at the chair, and remembers every client who sat in it. We ranked the seven tools below by fit for the most common buyer — a salon owner with one location and a small team — starting with the cheapest ways in and ending with the premium options, and every price was checked on the vendor's own pricing page on November 8, 2026.

How to choose the best salon management software

• Count the chairs first. Fresha charges per bookable team member, Vagaro per calendar, Mangomint per user, and Mindbody and Boulevard per location. The pricing unit decides your bill, so work out what four stylists cost, not one.
• Decide whether you need new clients or better operations. Fresha and Mindbody bring clients through their marketplaces; Vagaro, Mangomint and Boulevard are stronger on running the salon you already have.
• Check the free plan honestly. Only Square Appointments is free at $0 a month. Everything else is a trial, so the first paid month starts sooner than the marketing suggests.
• Read the processing fee, not just the subscription. Card fees of 2.4–2.65% plus 15 cents usually cost more each month than the software, so a cheap subscription with a high processing rate is no bargain.
• Try the booking flow as a client. Book an appointment on your own phone before you buy. If the checkout feels slow or confusing, your clients will feel it too — and they will not tell you, they will just not rebook.

A salon lives or dies on local search as much as on the chair, so the software choice is only half the job. Our local SEO service covers how a salon shows up on Google Maps and in AI answers, and the free local business schema generator builds the structured data that helps Google understand the salon's services, hours and location. If the salon also takes bookings for spa treatments, our guide to salon booking software covers the booking-first tools in more depth.

Whatever you shortlist, try it with real appointments before you pay. The trials in this list run 7 to 30 days, which is long enough to run one genuine week — your services, your staff, your clients — and that week tells you more than any review can. Check two things in the trial: that clients can book and pay without calling you, and that the end-of-day takings match what the software reports. Every tool here gives you a trial or a demo, so there is no reason to buy before the salon has run on it.

Salon management software pricing: what you will actually pay

Take a salon with four stylists and one location. On list prices, the subscription costs $0 a month on Square Appointments Free, $56 on GlossGenius Gold, $59.80 on Fresha Team, $60 on Vagaro, $79 on Mindbody Starter, $160 on Mangomint and $159 on Boulevard Essentials billed monthly. Two of those numbers need adjusting before they are real: GlossGenius Standard at $28 covers a solo stylist only, so a four-stylist team needs Gold at $48 a month billed annually or $56 billed monthly, and Vagaro's $30 covers one calendar, so three extra calendars at $10 each bring it to $60.

Over a year, that is $0 on Square Free, $672 on GlossGenius Gold billed monthly, $717.60 on Fresha Team, $720 on Vagaro, $948 on Mindbody Starter, $1,716 on Boulevard Essentials billed annually and $1,920 on Mangomint. The same four stylists and the same one location cost $0 a year at the free end and $1,920 at the dear end — a gap that comes entirely from the pricing unit and the tier, not from the size of the salon.

Two costs sit outside every number above. First, card processing: at 2.4–2.65% plus 15 cents a payment, $10,000 of card takings a month costs roughly $240–$265 in processing fees, which is more than most of these subscriptions. Second, the add-ons: text marketing on Vagaro, phone on Mangomint at $70 a month per line, and payroll on Mangomint from $50 a month are all billed separately. If the salon also sells retail, check the inventory tools too — GlossGenius and Vagaro include them on the entry plan, while Square Appointments keeps the deeper retail tools behind its paid plans.

Know the difference: booking software vs full salon management

The confusion in this category is between a calendar and a business system. Booking software handles the appointment book: online booking, reminders and deposits. Salon management software adds everything around it — POS and payments, client records, marketing, memberships, reporting and inventory. Every tool in this list is full management software, but they lean different ways: Square Appointments leans closest to booking-first, while Mangomint and Boulevard are management-first, with the booking as one part of a bigger system.

There is a second, quieter confusion: a marketplace listing is not the same as your own booking page. Fresha and Mindbody both list the salon where clients search, which brings new bookings, but those clients arrive through someone else's brand. GlossGenius and Vagaro give the salon its own branded booking website instead, so the client books with the salon directly and the salon keeps the relationship. A salon that needs new clients benefits from a marketplace; a salon with a full book benefits more from owning the booking page.

A third distinction worth knowing is the pricing unit. Fresha charges per bookable team member, Vagaro per calendar, Mangomint per user, and Mindbody and Boulevard per location. A per-location price looks expensive for one stylist and cheap for ten; a per-member price looks cheap for one stylist and expensive for ten. Work out the price for your actual team size before comparing headline numbers, because the cheapest tool for a solo stylist is rarely the cheapest for a team of six.

Quick comparison: tool type by need

Mistakes to avoid

• Budgeting on the solo price. The headline price usually covers one stylist, one calendar or one location. Price the whole team — four stylists on Fresha Team cost $59.80 a month, not $19.95.
• Forgetting the marketplace commission. Fresha charges a one-time 20% commission on the first appointment of every new client found through its marketplace. If most of your new clients come that way, the commission can cost more than the subscription.
• Ignoring the processing fee. A subscription of $30 a month is small next to $240–$265 a month in card fees on $10,000 of takings. Compare the in-person and online rates, not just the monthly price.
• Buying on the trial, then finding the team tier costs double. GlossGenius Standard is $28 a month, but a team needs Gold at $48 billed annually. Check which tier your team size actually needs before the trial ends.
• Paying for a premium experience before the salon is premium. Boulevard at $159 a month is built for established salons with premium prices. A new salon with empty chairs gets more from Fresha's marketplace or Square's free plan.

How we chose

We checked each vendor's own pricing page on November 8, 2026 and recorded the starting price exactly as shown, including the annual-billing figure where the page lists one, and we ranked the tools by fit for the most common buyer — a salon owner with one location and a small team — not by brand size. One price needed a judgement call: Mindbody's own US pricing page lists the Starter plan at $79 a month per location, while its homepage shows $99 for a higher tier with a branded app, so this list uses $79 and says so on the card. Ratings are shown only where the G2 review page could be verified on November 8, 2026; Fresha, Square Appointments and Mangomint carry no rating because their review pages could not be verified fresh that day, and we would rather show no rating than a stale or estimated one. No vendor paid for a place in this list, and none of the links here are affiliate links.

What to do next

Start with the free plan or trial of your top pick and run one real week of appointments through it. Check that clients can book and pay without calling, and that the end-of-day takings match what the software reports. If the salon is sorted but new customers are not finding you, our monthly SEO service handles the visibility side — or compare providers in our guide to salon booking software. Once your tools are in place, find out what's holding your rankings back.

Sources we checked (11)

• Fresha pricing — fresha.com/pricing (checked November 8, 2026)
• Vagaro pricing — vagaro.com/pricing (checked November 8, 2026)
• GlossGenius pricing — glossgenius.com/pricing (checked November 8, 2026)
• Square Appointments pricing — squareup.com/us/en/appointments/pricing (checked November 8, 2026)
• Mindbody pricing — mindbodyonline.com/business/pricing (checked November 8, 2026)
• Mangomint pricing — mangomint.com/pricing (checked November 8, 2026)
• Boulevard pricing — joinblvd.com/pricing (checked November 8, 2026)
• Vagaro reviews — g2.com/products/vagaro/reviews (checked November 8, 2026)
• GlossGenius reviews — g2.com/products/glossgenius/reviews (checked November 8, 2026)
• Mindbody reviews — g2.com/products/mindbody/reviews (checked November 8, 2026)
• Boulevard reviews — g2.com/products/boulevard-labs-inc-boulevard/reviews (checked November 8, 2026)