Fresha

In short

Fresha is a booking, point-of-sale and payments platform for salons and spas, with a calendar supporting unlimited bookings, clients and locations, plus a consumer marketplace that connects a listed business to a large pool of people already looking to book beauty and wellness services. Fresha built much of its early adoption on a free core plan, but it has since moved to paid subscription plans with per-booking marketplace fees, so a business evaluating it today should not assume the older free-plan structure still applies.

Key features for salons and spas

Who it's for

Fresha fits a salon or spa owner who wants booking, point-of-sale and payments bundled in one subscription and who wants access to a consumer marketplace with a large existing pool of people searching to book beauty and wellness services, as a discovery channel on top of the business's own customer base. It also fits a business managing multiple locations that wants staff scheduling and performance tracking centralized across sites.

Who should skip it

A business that specifically chose Fresha years ago for its free-plan model should not assume that structure still exists; if a completely free core plan is the priority, it should confirm current terms directly with Fresha rather than assume based on its earlier reputation. A business that does not want a per-booking fee on marketplace-driven bookings on top of its subscription should weigh that added cost against how much new-client volume the marketplace actually brings in before committing.

What it does well

Fresha's marketplace carries a large existing base of people already using the platform to search for beauty and wellness appointments, which is a discovery advantage a booking tool without a consumer-facing marketplace does not offer a salon relying only on its own website traffic. The marketplace fee structure specifically protects a business's existing relationships: Fresha's pricing page states plainly that returning clients and clients who find the business through its own website or social profiles are never charged that fee, so the cost applies only to marketplace-driven new-client discovery. Bundling booking, point-of-sale and payments in one subscription means a salon does not need to reconcile appointment and sales data across separate systems the way it would pairing a booking-only tool with a separate POS.

Limits to know

Fresha is no longer a free product; it now runs an Independent plan, a per-team-member Team plan and a custom Enterprise tier for larger teams, plus optional add-ons like extra marketing messages and a paid AI concierge feature. A salon whose team grows past a small size should recalculate its per-team-member cost regularly, since the Team plan's price scales with headcount rather than staying flat, and a business that draws a meaningful share of new clients through the marketplace should factor the one-time new-client fee into its real total cost.

What to check on pricing

Fresha publishes its Independent and Team plan structure, its Enterprise threshold and its marketplace new-client fee policy directly on its pricing page, along with payment processing and optional add-on costs. Verified figures appear in the pricing table on this page rather than in this text; confirm current tier pricing and add-on costs directly with Fresha before switching, especially if you remember it from its free-plan era.

Alternatives

• Vagaro if you want payroll and rent collection for multi-location accounts bundled alongside booking and a consumer marketplace app; see Fresha vs Vagaro.
• Booksy if you prefer a flat per-team-member subscription with an optional pay-per-new-client marketing feature instead of a marketplace fee on every booking.
• GlossGenius if you are a solo stylist or small team that wants simpler flat pricing without a consumer marketplace layer.

How we reviewed it

This review is based on Fresha's own site, opened directly during this session: its for-business page, its homepage, its pricing page and its help center, which together describe the booking calendar, consumer marketplace, point-of-sale, payment processing, team management, client analytics, plan tiers and marketplace fee policy referenced above. Fresha's dedicated features and standalone marketing pages returned a "page gone" response during this review, so this text relies only on the four pages that loaded; verified pricing figures appear separately in the pricing table on this page rather than in this text.