HairConnect vs Fresha

Fresha is software and a marketplace at once. Clients look for a salon near them on fresha.com and book there; the salon runs its calendar, till, client records and payments on it. They call themselves the largest booking platform for beauty and wellness and state on their own home page more than 130,000 partner businesses and 450,000 professionals across 120 countries.

There are two plans. Independent costs € 14.95 a month for one bookable team member. Team costs € 9.95 per bookable team member a month, for unlimited members. Both show "7 day trial". Above twenty team members they point to Enterprise, without an amount. At the foot of the pricing page it says explicitly that all rates are exclusive of 21% sales tax — so that is one gap we do not have to leave open.

Until recently it was different. On the archived version of that same pricing page from 15 September 2024 it read, literally, "totally subscription-free" and "Free for all, no monthly fee", alongside a 20% commission on a new marketplace client and a minimum of six dollars. The business model has not been broadened but inverted: the subscription arrived, the commission disappeared for Belgium.

Because the marketplace costs nothing here today. Against "Fresha marketplace - New clients" it says "Free", and the same for returning clients. This is not an oversight: their help centre describes at length how a marketplace new client fee works and refers to the pricing page for the amount — where, for Belgium, it is zero. In their own pricing data the rate is a per-country setting.

The money therefore comes from elsewhere. Online payments cost 1% + € 0.20 per transaction, in-person payments 0.89% + € 0.10, plus € 0.10 per Tap to pay authorization. Paying in instalments through Klarna costs 3.49% + € 0.50. A terminal starts at € 119 per device, free on Team subject to processing volumes. After twenty free messages a month a text costs € 0.18 and a WhatsApp € 0.15 to € 0.21; marketing texts cost € 0.23 each, marketing emails € 0.02 beyond the first fifty.

On top of that a range of things are paid add-ons: Client Loyalty € 59.95 per location a month, Google Rating Boost € 13.95, Team Connect € 2.79 per team member, Insights € 9.95 per bookable team member, Xero € 8.95, and the Data connector € 215 per location a month. On Independent, phone support costs € 14.95 a month extra; on Team it is included.

Their partner terms say the partner must give at least 30 days' notice in writing and remains liable for fees during that period. The same terms say Fresha may change the fees and the rate of commission at any time on 30 days' prior written notice, and that continued use after such notice is deemed acceptance. The pricing page, in its FAQ, says there is no minimum commitment and that you can cancel at any time. We put those two side by side and leave them there.

On what salons make of it we are careful, because Fresha runs a large consumer marketplace and that pollutes almost every review profile. So we counted only the partner side, and only what we could open ourselves: the "Fresha for business" app sits at 4.3 from roughly 8,300 reviews in the Google Play Store, and at 4.9 from 48 in the Belgian App Store — that last number is too small to mean anything. Trustpilot and Capterra blocked us with a bot check; we do not work around those and so do not cite them. In the readable reviews one complaint recurs that fits the shift described above: users writing that they have had more trouble since the subscription arrived than in all their years on the free plan.