Best software for spas

The kit covers three tasks a spa or med spa repeats daily: getting booked, keeping clients from skipping, and checking them out with the right package or membership balance. It sits next to our salons kit, which is built around a hair-and-beauty chair; the picks here lean toward memberships, packages and client safety records.

Our catalog has no spa-specific payroll, accounting or phone pick, so we do not list one here rather than stretch a tool built for another trade. Where a need is generic, see QuickBooks Online and Gusto, which are catalog tools for any small business.

The best spa software is the one that matches how you sell. Boulevard's site positions the platform for appointment-based self-care businesses and lists booking and scheduling, client profiles, an all-in-one point of sale, memberships and package management, marketing and loyalty, forms and charts, and client reminders and messaging.

Mindbody serves spas alongside fitness studios, salons, massage practices and chiropractic offices, and lists one schedule for staffing and booking, integrated payments, automated email and text campaigns, and booking through its app and your own website and branded apps.

Mindbody vs Vagaro and Fresha vs Vagaro cover the most common head-to-head decisions.

A spa booking system must pair a therapist with a room and a treatment length, and let clients book at any hour. Mindbody's spa page says clients can book whenever they want from any device and lists online gift cards, packages, add-on treatments and multiple sessions as upsells. Vagaro lists online booking with social media integrations and a calendar to set hours and fill empty slots.

Boulevard calls its self-booking experience Precision Scheduling and ties it to client profiles and memberships. For a deeper view of what to ask in a demo, see our online booking task page.

Medical spas add forms, charting and treatment notes to normal spa scheduling. Boulevard publishes dedicated medical spa software and spa software pages and lists forms and charts. Vagaro's spa page lists custom forms with ready-made templates for waivers and intake, plus a face mapping tool where you upload photos, add facial markups and keep SOAP notes.

We do not verify clinical or regulatory compliance for any vendor. A med spa should ask each vendor how it handles client records and what its documentation says about regulated data before signing.

Mindbody's spa page says it securely processes credit cards, gift cards and auto-renewing memberships. Fresha's features page lists gift cards and membership packages and loyalty rewards with points and tiers. Boulevard lists built-in membership and package management. The difference is in how balances and expiry rules work, so ask each vendor to show a package being sold, partly used and refunded.

Vagaro's loyalty programs let repeat clients earn points redeemable on services, products, memberships and packages. Check the pricing table on each tool page for processing fees.

Reduce no-shows with reminders and deposits together. Fresha lists automated appointment reminders by SMS, email or app notification and upfront payments, deposits and clear cancellation policies. Boulevard Messages lists automated appointment reminders and confirmations by SMS and two-way messaging for medspas, salons, spas, barbershops, massage centers and nail salons.

GlossGenius is a lighter alternative for an independent therapist. See our appointment reminders task page.

Promotion for a spa starts with the client list you already have. Mindbody says its consumer app lets spas reach new clients, and that ready-to-go email and text messages cover special offers and post-visit follow-ups. Boulevard lists integrated marketing, messaging and loyalty programs, and Fresha lists email campaigns, promotional deals and client segmentation for targeted messaging.

Use the cheapest channel first: message past clients about a package or a membership before you pay for new-client discovery. A loyalty program, as listed by Vagaro and Fresha, rewards the repeat visit that a spa depends on. Our reviews and marketing task page covers review tools that sit outside a booking platform.

Keep what a therapist needs before the client lies down: preferences, allergies, skin type, past treatments and signed forms. Vagaro lists client tracking for preferences, skin types and allergies and custom forms for waivers and intake. Fresha lists customer profiles storing allergies, patch tests, forms and notes.

Treat the client record as the single place for this information, so a second therapist or a new location sees it without a phone call.

Compare them on the facts that change your day. The table below lists the criteria we use, taken from vendor pages and our catalog.

Where a cell says to check the vendor documentation, we could not confirm the feature on the page we fetched, and we would rather say so than guess. Pricing for each tool appears in the pricing table on its page, and Booksy is another beauty-focused option in the catalog.

A solo esthetician or massage therapist usually needs one booking and checkout tool, and GlossGenius or Vagaro is a common place to start. A day spa with several therapists and treatment rooms benefits from Boulevard or Mindbody, where staff, rooms and packages share one schedule.

A multi-location spa or med spa group needs reporting across locations; Our catalog notes that Boulevard offers reporting aimed at multi-location salon and spa groups. In every case avoid running payments in a separate reader while bookings live elsewhere, because reconciling two systems is where gift card and package balances go wrong.

• Ignoring package balances. Test selling, using and refunding a package in a demo before you pay.
• Skipping deposits. A treatment room idle for an hour costs more than the deposit conversation. Use reminders and cancellation policies together.
• Keeping intake forms on paper. Store forms and allergy notes in the client record so every therapist sees them.
• Judging marketplace apps by reach alone. Mindbody says its app brings new clients, so ask how those bookings are priced in the pricing table before counting on them.
• Buying a clinical tool without asking about regulation. A med spa should ask each vendor about client records before choosing.