5 Best Salon POS Software

Note that prices are per location, not per register. You can use as many devices as registers and schedulers as you want in a single location.

Square also offers add-ons such as Square Loyalty program builder (starting at $45/month) and Square Marketing (starting at $15/month), which will both help small business owners gain a more consistent customer base.

Square Appointments’ best features for independent stylists are all free, including:

• Free Booking Website: Personalize your free website with an easy-to-use website builder to make it easy for your clients to book. Already have a website? Add a Square “Book Now” button to your existing site. Guests can also book via Google integration and a generated QR code.
• Square Assistant: Feature that automatically sends appointment reminders via SMS and/or email.
• Sales Channels: Health and beauty products can be sold online for pickup and/or delivery as well as in-person during appointments.
• Custom Contracts: Make custom waivers, contracts, and other official documents for customers to sign before their appointment.
• Deposits: Square allows you to use its prepayment feature to take deposits for higher-value appointments.
• Mobile & Offline Mode: This feature allows you to get paid even if there’s no WiFi available.

No-show protection (a highly valued feature for independent contractors) is not included with the free plan. You could get around this by charging a deposit fee for every appointment.

Square Appointments offers even more features for Plus plan users:

• Confirmation Notifications: Instead of just a reminder message, clients will receive an interactive text and/or email that allows them to confirm, cancel, or reschedule their appointment.
• Cancellation Policy: Create your custom cancellation policy that requires clients to cancel within a certain timeframe and provide payment information when they book. If there is a no-show or late cancellation, you can easily charge your specified fee with the card info on file.
• Multi-location Management: With the Plus plan, you can manage your staff, calendar, and online bookings across multiple locations. You will still need to pay a monthly subscription fee per location.

Note: While you aren’t charged a fee for refunds, you will have to pay the payment processing fee whether you keep the money or refund it back to a customer who has canceled an appointment. Keep this in mind when developing your cancellation policies.

Features that are notably lacking (for now) from Square Appointments include video conferencing for service professionals who want to offer online appointments and a self-check-in feature for your clients.

Square Appointments can run on iPads, tablets, and desktop computers. Here are the prices for some of the most popular Square units:

• Square Contactless Card Reader: $49 for 1st generation ($59 for 2nd generation)
• Square Terminal: $299 or $27/month with financing
• Square Register Kit: Starts at $1,269 or $62/month with financing

There are plenty of handheld, mobile, and countertop hardware options to choose from.

• Related: Complete Buyer’s Guide To Square POS Hardware In 2023

Square requires you to use its in-house payment processor and charges the following fees:

• In-Person Payments: 2.5-2.6% + $0.10 per transaction (2.5% for Plus and Premium plans, 2.6% for Free plan)
• Online Payments: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
• Card-Not-Present/Card-On-File Payments: 3.5% + $0.15 per transaction
• AfterPay: 6.0% + $0.30 per transaction

Note: Charges to your customers, such as no-show and cancellation fees, will be subject to online payment processing fees.

Square has a transparent month-to-month contract that you may cancel at any time, so you don’t need to worry about lengthy contracts or early termination fees.

Because you don’t get a merchant account when using Square, some of the biggest complaints from users are account/fund holds that take too long to be resolved.

Square also has a great warranty coverage policy, which includes device replacements on damaged hardware that you didn’t purchase directly from Square.

Fresha is completely free to use, except for paid marketing blast campaigns and a 20% commission fee on first-time client appointments clients book through the Fresha marketplace.

This fee does not apply to any existing clients. It only applies to the very first appointment a new client books. You may not profit from these appointments, but you do have the chance to reel in a lifelong customer that, if not for Fresha, might never have found your business.

Note: Make sure to import your existing client list to Fresha before launching your business’s booking site, that way you won’t have to pay that commission fee for returning clients.

Fresha is a salon and spa-specific POS and booking software, and its most unique features include the ability to:

• Generate links to services, memberships, vouchers, and everything your business has to offer
• Accept walk-in and standing appointments
• Offer products and services as packages
• Set up your own deposit and cancellation fees
• Create custom consultation forms, with the option to send prior to a client’s appointment
• Allow clients to save appointments to their online calendars
• Set employee services, commission rates, availability, and scheduling rules

The software has great resource tracking capabilities, including the ability to create resource-dependent appointment bookings (e.g. a massage in a certain room) so you don’t double book anyone. You can also track your inventory and the Fresha platform has built-in invoicing, purchase ordering, and stock order receiving management.

We also like that you can generate reports on referral sources and cancellation reasons. By doing this, you can better understand why clients cancel appointments and work to alleviate any of their pain points.

Fresha is cloud-based and works on all operating systems, including iPads, smartphones, and desktop computers. The company offers a proprietary card reader, the Fresha S1, and charges a one-time fee for card readers. You simply request one via your Fresha partner platform portal.

You must use Fresha’s in-house payment processing, which charges 2.19% + $0.20 flat fee per transaction, whether its a purchase made online or in person.

This is the smallest payment processing fee out of all POS providers on this list.

Fresha is refreshingly transparent about its service offering. There are no monthly fees, so there’s no cancellation policy.

The only requirement is that if you want to accept payments for products and services listed on your Fresha account, you must use Fresha for payment processing.

Vagaro’s pricing varies depending on the number of bookable calendars. A bookable calendar is a calendar that an individual performing services can use to schedule their own appointments. Admin and front desk staff do not need their own bookable calendar.

One bookable calendar starts at $25/month and each additional bookable calendar is an extra $10/month if you only have one salon location. After seven calendars, you pay $85/month no matter how many calendars you need.

If you have multiple salons, you’ll get a custom quote on your Vagaro salon POS software.

Vagaro add-ons include:

• Self-Check-In App: $10/month
• Live Stream Classes/Consultations: $10/month
• Branded App: $200/month
• Booking Website Builder: $10/month
• Online Store: $10/month
• Text Marketing: $20/month

Vagaro is an excellent choice for several business types, including medical spas, personal trainers and stylists, massage therapists, and more.

Vagaro works for many business types thanks to the following unique features:

• SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan) notes for medical spa employees, personal trainers, etc.
• Customizable forms, surveys, waivers (paid add-on)
• HIPAA compliant software
• Live stream classes and consultations (paid add-on)

Vagaro also has one of the most comprehensive scheduling/employee calendar management software features among salon POS system providers.

With Vagaro, you can:

• Accept customers on a waitlist and automatically or manually pull from the list in the event of a cancellation
• View the status of appointments in real-time on employee calendars (e.g. in-progress, prep, post-appointment cleaning)
• Automatically assign employees to appointments and let clients choose who they work with if they want to

Plus, you get excellent general employee management features, like the ability to collect rent and commissions from independent stylists renting a booth in your salon, configure and run payroll, and automatically generate 1099 forms.

Note: If you want a more comprehensive payroll and HR software, Vagaro does partner with Gusto, one of the best payroll software for small businesses.

The software itself is cloud-based, so you may use iPads or tablets. Vagaro gives one free card reader to each new merchant.

The POS provider also offers various POS hardware screens and accessories, including a register with a built-in customer-facing display. You can purchase cash drawers, receipt printers, barcode scanners, and additional card readers for a custom-quoted price.

Vagaro breaks payment processing fees into two tiers: one for small merchants making less than $4,000/month and large merchants that make over $4,000/month.

Payment processing fees for the two tiers are the following:

• Small Merchants: 2.75% per swipe/chip/tap transaction; 3.5% + $0.15 per keyed-in transaction
• Large Merchants: 2.2% plus $0.30 per swipe/chip/tap transaction; 3% + $0.19 per keyed-in transaction; $15/year association fee

Note: Online and card-on-file transactions, such as monthly membership charges, are subject to keyed-in transaction payment processing rates.

There are several potential add-on payment processing fees, such as chargeback and retrieval fees. Read up on what those fees are and be sure to avoid them.

Vagaro hardware is under a one-year warranty.

Clover monthly pricing varies depending on where you buy it and how many integrations you use. If you buy directly from Clover, your pricing will also vary based on whether you purchase your equipment outright or opt for a lease.

If you purchase your hardware upfront, plans range from $14.95 to $94.85/month plus the one-time cost of your equipment. If you lease your hardware, plans range from $50 to $290/month.

All Clover users have access to the vast Clover app market, which offers everything from form builders to employee management apps to appointment schedulers. This is the real selling point of Clover as a salon POS software provider.

For example, the Sky Salon Scheduler, which gives Clover appointment management functionality, includes:

• Reminder texts for customers and service providers
• Booking with partial and full deposit payments
• Credit card saving so customers can check out faster in the future
• eSignatures on online waivers
• Custom calendar management and time blocking
• Scheduling by employee or department
• Google calendar integration

Clover’s POS hardware is flexible, with options to work in just about any size space. The actual hardware tends to retail for around about $500 to $1,800, depending on whether you opt for the handheld Clover Flex, pint-sized countertop POS Clover Mini, the full-sized solution Clover Station, or some combination thereof.

You can also purchase your hardware from an authorized Clover reseller, and pricing may vary.

If you purchase your Clover hardware from Clover, you must use Clover’s built-in payment processing, powered by Fiserv. In this scenario, you’ll pay a processing fee of 2.3% + $0.10 flat fee, or a 2.6% + $0.10 flat fee.

However, if you have a high volume of sales, consider purchasing your Clover hardware and merchant account from one of these best Clover resellers, as they use a different, more cost-effective fee structure for larger businesses.

If you do not purchase your Clover hardware and corresponding merchant account from Clover, be sure to read your contract very carefully. There are many Clover card reader scams out there that can devastate a person’s business.

Rosy Salon software pricing starts at $29/month for salon owners and $19/month for booth renters. The two software packages can connect to each other for scheduling, inventory, and rental payment purposes.

Booth renters can take their Rosy Salon software and client information with them if they choose to go totally independent or work at another booth rental place.

Note: Employees are considered stylists/practitioners who require their own scheduling calendar.

If salon owners opt into advanced features like SMS/email marketing, text confirmations, and image libraries, pricing starts at $37/month.

Rosy Salon’s most unique feature is its dedicated booth rental management software, which allows salon owners to:

• Give booth renters access to client scheduling software
• Allow renters to purchase products from your salon
• Give renters control over their own finances and client list
• Automatically deduct rent and/or commissions from booth renters
• Choose whether renters can share their clients with other renters (an excellent choice for multi-service salons)
• Allow renters to sell their own products to clients from within their booth

Renters have their own accounts and can remove themselves from a booth if/when they move salons.

Vagaro is the only other salon POS system that offers booth rental management, but it does not have the dedicated booth rental accounts that Rosy Salon does.

Other notable Rosy Salon features include:

• Rewards and referrals program builder
• Suggestive selling, which makes product recommendations to clients based on the services they received in the past and on the day of their appointment
• Front desk management software
• Automated text and email confirmations and reminders

Rosy Salon’s scheduling and salon management software runs on browsers and as an Apple/Android app. You can take card payments with a Verifone MX915, Ingenio iSMP4, or Ingenio Link/2500 card reader. Pricing varies from between $300 and $700 for card readers when you purchase them new.

You will get your own merchant account with custom payment processing fees when you use RosyPay, Rosy Salon’s payment processing solution.

Be sure to read over the terms of your merchant agreement before signing off on anything.

Since you must get a merchant account to take payments through Rosy, it’s important to note that you may face contract terms like early termination fees.

Make sure to negotiate a merchant agreement that works for your business before signing any paperwork.