What To Evaluate When Choosing A Booking System In 2025

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to The Modern Hairstylist Podcast. So, as a pretty tech-forward business educator who teaches about systems and automation all of the time, um, this is probably the number one question that I get, which is, which booking system should I use as a hairstylist? And I always have a difficult time answering this question because I'm a true believer that it really just comes down to your own personal preferences.

I care way more about how you're using the tool versus the actual tool itself, especially because in today's day and age, 2025 when we're recording this, the majority of competitive booking systems out there that are the most popular, that are the most well known, they all have the basic features and capabilities that I would be looking for as far as what I need in a booking system. Now, I do have my favorites that I'm partial to and things that I personally, uh, uh, really like, um, as far as, uh, you know, weird, quirky, personal things that I need in a booking system, such as a two-way Google Calendar integration. That is a big deal for me. But I know for a lot of people, you wouldn't even care about that, right?

I think this just comes down to personal preference at the end of the day, and how you actually use the tool, how you set up the tool, how you maximize what the capabilities are with the tool that is given to you. And I think that there's a lot of things that booking systems do to kind of increase their perceived value to make them seem more sexy and more all-in-one to you that, at the end of the day, actually does more harm than good for you and it isn't worth paying for. And I think that there's some really amazing and interesting innovative things happening with smaller booking systems who are gaining a lot of popularity, um, that are interesting but that we need to look out for and approach with caution. So, I'm gonna be talking to you today about some of the, the things that keep coming up in my conversations that I'm having with beauty professionals about what you should be considering when you're choosing one in 2025 specifically.

So, this is not gonna be, like, the 101 of this conversation. Um, you can maybe go back to an old podcast episode that I have. It's Gloss Genius versus Vigaro versus Square. Um, I recorded it a while ago so it's definitely not up-to-date.

However, I feel like I kind of go more into the 101 of choosing a booking system there, where this is gonna be the most specific, most relevant topics in my mind and a lot of beauty professionals' minds, particularly, uh, in 2025 right now. And so that way, you have a really fresh current perspective of what I believe as a business industry educator who teaches systems specifically, who sees the backend of systems all the time. Um, I'm gonna be giving you all of the tea and my perspective of what you should be taking into consideration. Now, I want to preface this by saying I do not have any official affiliation with any booking system.

So, none of these booking systems are paying me. I do have an affiliate link for Gloss Genius if you want to use that and choose that and support me. But otherwise, I don't have any affiliation, I don't have any ties, and so I'm able to just give you this information in an unbiased way And then furthermore, um, I'm gonna be telling you my, like, my four recommendations as they are now. Just remember that this is recorded in 2025 and my recommendations may change in the future.

But I know that if I don't share with you the names of the top booking systems right now that I'm gonna get a bunch of DMs asking me and I want to avoid that, so. And just give you helpful information too that you're looking for. Okay. So this might be a hot take, but I see this really hold some stylists back from just taking action and moving forward and also making the best decision for themselves and their clients and their business.

Stop obsessing over the subscription fees and your processing fees. I get it. It's a, uh, this is an expense, it's a subscription, it's recurring, and at the end of the year, you look at your P&L and you're like, "Damn, I paid a lot of money in processing fees." I totally understand.

Now, and I'm not saying that money isn't real, and I am saying, do not overpay, especially if you're an, an independent stylist. You should not be paying any more than, like, maybe 75, $85 max for a booking software subscription. And that's not with the p- processing fees, that's just for the subscription fee. But you should be paying no more than, like, 70 to $80 for a booking software if you're an independent stylist.

But, what you should do is not get tripped up over 35 to $65 a month. Come on, bro. This is literally the core software of your business. It's the most essential software of your business.

It literally runs everything for you on the backend, as far as the most important features and parts of your business. So why would you be skimpy about this? Why would you choose something that doesn't have all the features that you actually need and makes your life and your business better just so you can save some money on a subscription fee? Because you're not gonna be able to grow your business to be able to afford any booking software unless you actually invest In order to make money in time, you gotta invest money in time, right?

And so therefore, just, I beg of you to stop getting tripped up on the subscription price. Genuinely, most of them are pretty competitive and they're all very similar in one way or another, and they are absolutely worth you paying for and stop thinking about or overthinking. Start looking at the actual features and the return, evaluate the return on investment that you get from them instead of thinking about the upfront cost, because the return on investment is what is going to be more important at the end of the dayNow, when it comes to processing fees, I get it, these really add up and these actually do vary quite a bit between some booking softwares. A five dollar price increase will cover your processing fees, I promise you.

And if you do the math and come back to me, because I know that it goes up incr- incrementally, right? I know, it's like, okay, well if I, if I increase my f- my prices by five dollars, then I'm going to be paying more in processing fees because it goes by percentage, right? Okay. But if you do the math, even then some, although the prices- your cost is going up incrementally, you will still net more money.

You will still cover those costs. So if the processing fee is really that big of a deal for you, a very small price increase can normally cover what you would've paid in processing fees. All right? So get over it.

It is really driving me nuts how much this paralyzes people from just making decisions that are smart for their business, and it is much more worth it for you and will actually save you a lot of money in the long run to invest in something that's more expensive that has a lot of awesome features, because you'll make more money at the end of the day. Okay? So stop letting this trip you up. I'm over it.

The four booking systems that I kind of am generally like, "You guys should check this out," are Comb, Comb Booking System, C-O-M-B, Vegaro, Gloss Genius, and Square. I would argue that Vegaro and Gloss Genius are probably lower on that list, and then Square and Comb are probably higher on the list. And I, if this gives you even more perspective, I personally love Square. I, as a, uh, uh, as a, um, as a business behind a chair, I think Square is excellent.

And by the way, this is also from an independent stylist perspective. Um, I think if we were talking team perspective, these conversations would be a little bit different. Um, but for an independent stylist, I love Square for myself. Again, it's because they have a really, really excellent comprehensive two-way Google Calendar integration, and because I run two businesses and I have a very busy personal life and I use Google Calendar to organize all of those things, I joke all the time that I have no idea what I'm doing until I wake up, open my phone and look at my Google Calendar for the day.

Um, I- I need to see all of my events all in one place, and I need to make sure that my clients aren't booking over my personal things and my personal things aren't booking over my clients. And so Square has a two-way Google Calendar integration that updates as things update in Square and as things update in my Google Calendar, and it makes it so nothing... I can see all of my appointments and all of my events all in one place, and that if I put something in my Google Calendar, it's gonna go into Square and vice versa, and then things don't get booked over. Um, 'cause I used to hate with Gloss Genius, although Gloss Genius does have a- a- a Google Calendar integration, and I do believe it's two ways, but you can fact check me on that.

Um, I had Gloss Genius back in the day, maybe I just didn't take advantage of their Google Calendar integration, and, um, I used to hate having to look at my booking software calendar and then juggle my Google Calendar and then go back and forth when I'm trying to schedule a client. It was way too much for me. Um, so Google Calendar integration is very essential for me. Another thing that's really essential just for me as a nerd, as a innovative tech-forward stylist, and then also a- an industry educator, is I want my booking software to have a Zapier integration or be super integratable with other softwares.

Now, what that means is, is that Square allows you to set things up so that it can talk to other third party softwares. So let's say that I use a different email marketing software than Square's native email marketing software. I want to be able to connect my email marketing software to Square, and therefore, it has to have some sort of way for me to do that. And, uh, this brings me to w- my, one of my biggest points that I wanted to talk about during this episode was choosing a all-in-one booking software that is very beauty provider specific versus looking at softwares that aren't as beauty provider specific and are more small business general friendly, such as Square.

Because what ends up happening when you choose a software that is, uh, super niched down into beauty professionals is you kind of get pros and cons from that. You get the pros of this software really understanding and trying to understand what our needs are, and so building a software that is perfectly fit for your- us specifically, but then what ends up happening is, is you get really tied up and, uh, deep into a software where you don't have a lot of flexibility otherwise. And unfortunately, still in 2025, especially these top competitors that I'm mentioning, they don't really innovate as quickly and as well as they used to. They don't add the features that stylists actually want, and what ends up happening is, is you don't, you- you lock yourself into capabilities that don't have the extensiveness that you need to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish, or really interesting and advanced strategies that will make sure that you're ahead in 2025 like the ones that I teach my students.

And the reason that happens is because these softwares only want you to use their software. They don't want you to get wondering eyes. They want to give you an all-in-one space. They also don't believe that us as beauty professionals even want to try advance and innovative things where we may have to, you know, use another software to accomplish things.

And so then they create all-in-one solutions in which they maybe have an email marketing s- uh, uh, software within it, or a text message marketing software within it, um, or forms within it, and normally these add-ons can be things that you pay a hefty extra price for, but they are completely half-assed softwares with really shitty capabilities, and that's super unfortunate because as much as I think an all-in-one solution is super scalable, I also believe that it's r- and I've seen, it's proven, it's very hard to actually carry out a personalized comprehensive business strategy when you are locked into these native tools that don't do the things that you actually need and want them to do. And so...That's why I think it's interesting to look at the difference between an all-in-one niche down, beauty-specific booking software versus something like Square, where Square was never necessarily built for a specific type of business, um, but at least as of right now. Um, and it's more just general to any business that runs on appointments, right?

And needs to have checkout software. And so with Square, you have a Zapier integration. So I can say, with my email marketing software that I use, I can say, "When a- a new, uh, customer is created in Square, then something happens in my other software." Or, "When a form is created in Jotform, then something happens in Square."

So I can create those advanced automations and I'm getting more bang for my buck because I am spending money on third-party softwares that actually get the job done, that have the advanced capabilities that I need them to, and th- and I can still make all of those systems and softwares talk to each other. Whereas with an all-in-one software, you may pay an add-on fee to have this shitty email marketing, and it just doesn't do a good job. And with Square specifically, their add-ons suck. They suck so bad, but I don't care because I'm already using third-party softwares anyway, and Square is set up so that way I can connect those things together.

So that's why it kind of takes the cake for me. Um, whereas, like, with Gloss or Bergara or whatever it may be, I think that their add-ons and their, uh, other softwares, uh, as far as email marketing soft- uh, software goes and text messaging and all that stuff, think it's gotten better, but it's nowhere near third-party softwares that are specified, um, or specialized and niched down into carrying out those specific operations. So something to consider, the pros and cons and what you lose and what you gain by going with a company that is general and is allowing for all small businesses to do the business that they want to do the way that they want to do it, versus a super niched down, locked in, beauty professional-specific booking software. I'm also gonna say too, I think that a lot of the time, beauty-specific B2B companies, a lot of the time they underestimate us as hairstylists.

And I know that if you're listening to this podcast today, my friend, that you are a little bit more of a business-forward motivated person, right? Always makes me think of when I first became an educator for the industry, when I was, like, 19 and I was, uh, becoming a color educator for a brand, I was working with a brand that was a little bit more difficult to understand. It wasn't like you just grab the tube and, and mix a developer in it and then you're good to go. It definitely required a lot more thought as far as your formulation goes, but there were so many prom- pros to that and so much creativity and capability that came with that.

And what I learned from this brand was, it's very difficult to get hairstylists to want to learn all of the extra steps when it came to this formulation because they just want something that's easy. They just want to grab a tube, mix it up, and throw it on somebody's head. But I, as a business-oriented, motivated hairstylist, a creative, and I would say smart hairstylist who wants to learn, who's willing to go the extra mile, I wanted to work with a brand and I was willing to work with a brand that allow- that believed in me, that made it so I would go the extra mile and I had the education that I needed to go the extra mile. Where a lot of companies will just be like, "Oh, they're hairdressers.

They're not gonna listen. They're not gonna want to learn, so we're just not gonna give them this stuff and we're just gonna make it easy for them." And then they underestimate us And then us who are super motivated and willing to go the extra mile, we get left behind, right? So I think that a lot of companies kind of take us for granted and don't give us these more advanced capabilities because they think that a lot of us won't want it, and then that leaves us business-oriented people with these half-assed shitty tools and less capabilities.

Hopefully that makes sense. So I just don't fuck with that and that's not my team. Okay, so that's first thing that I wanted to talk about is beauty provider-specific booking software versus general booking software. The next thing that I'm gonna reiterate, because I have said this from the very beginning and you're probably not gonna be surprised about what I'm about to say, but one of the biggest things that we need to take into consideration when choosing a booking software is, what does this look like as far as the client's experience goes?

Because we oftentimes look at this as, how does this work for us? But we forget about how it's gonna look for the client. And we want to make sure that it is an easy process when somebody books online with us. We want to make sure that they have a lot of interesting capabilities and DIY ways of working with us.

That aligns with today's consumer behavior, so if you're not looking into how to- how you can make online booking work for you, I suggest that you do, and there's many different podcast episodes that I have about that. And also, not even just that, but, like, allowing clients to cancel and reschedule appointments on their own is a massive convenience factor that a lot of consumers are looking for and that they want and they desire in businesses Um, and then even just reminder texts and email texts. Like, being able to customize those things and making sure that the client experience is in alignment with your brand and what you want your client to see. Just making sure that the client experience is user-friendly, it is helpful, and it's aligned with your brand.

And that requires your booking system to have some sort of native setup that is intuitive and works well, but is also customizable, right? You want to make sure that you have a lot of capability and flexibility with making it so you have control over what is going out to your clients and when, in my opinion. And making it so your client experience is excellent, that it's easy to work with you when they're not in your chair or when they're not talking to you is so important in 2025. So just make sure that you're taking into consideration the client's experience.

Maybe you do a trial with all four of these softwares and you set them up and then you have a couple of your clients go through each of the softwares and you ask them what felt most intuitive to them. And so that way you're getting real data, real feedback, real surveys, and then that can give you a big insight into what the best client experience will actually be. Now, again, you need to make sure that you're using this tool well, right? So this is not just about how the software sets things up on the client experience, but how do you actually set up that software and that tool and present your services, and how do you customize things and how do you organize things to make them look good for the client and make it easy for the client?

So this is not just about the software, it's also about how you use it as well. So just a little bit of a reminder there And speaking about having control and customization over what is happening in your booking software, especially in the client-facing way, is..I have calls with booking softwares and also just other softwares, uh, within this industry of all sorts, all the time, because they know that I am tech-forward, and they know that a lot of people come to me for these types of recommendations. And a lot of the times in these demos, I will see, like, really innovative and awesome things that these softwares are now looking to offer the industry.

And what ends up happening is, a lot of the time with those really awesome f- uh, forward-thinking innovative strategies that are supposed to help the stylist, what I get concerned about is how much of a lack of control or autonomy that comes with those innovative things. So, for example, like, a lot of the new interesting AI-backed, um, features, especially in newer booking softwares out there, um, a lot of them do some really cool things. Like, they're supposed to check and see, like, if this client is somebody who has no-showed or last minute canceled on you before. And if so, it just automatically starts to charge them deposits, and it increases the deposit based upon what the AI thinks it should be charging them, based upon how much of a risky client they are, right?

And I think that's kind of interesting. Or they have... Or there's another software that I just saw that sends out email marketing to your clients on your behalf automatically about certain specials and certain services and things like that. So, uh, so it...

That way you don't have to do it yourself, and it's just on the backend, and you're marketing to your clients without you having to do anything. But all of this, I'm just... Like, I- g- I'm in these demos, and I'm just thinking about this, and I know how hairstylists work, and I know how I work as a hairstylist. I'm looking at this and I'm like, wow, this is really cool.

This makes, like, automation and backend marketing and all that stuff, like, a lot easier for... and boundary setting, a lot easier for stylists. But you completely lose control, right? Like, now you have no idea what is going out to these clients.

And you're a real human being. They are real human beings. You have a lot of nuance and a, uh, actual understanding of the particular circumstance of this client, and of course, of your business. So, like, let's say that you have these backend emails going out for you about certain services, because you use whatever brand, and then y- your clients get an email that is advertising X service, and you actually don't do those services, or you don't want to do those services.

Or let's say that you... this client was, like, a one-time, two-time thing, and that they had to bring their kid to the hospital, and you marked it as a last-minute cancellation or no-show just for, you know, organization purposes, and that's what it was. And because they had this tragic experience, now you're charging them this crazy deposit, and now you lose them, right? Like, that's where I think it's very important that when you are looking at automation, and especially artificial intelligence-backed features, that you take in consideration, how much control do I have?

What am I risking if I'm allowing these things to do these things for me? And what I've always taught my students how to do, from the very beginning, is how to set this stuff up yourself in a way where you don't lose control. How to automate and streamline things as much as you possibly can without relying on your booking software's parameters and the box that it fits you into, and building it out yourself in the most simple way possible to make things streamlined and automated, where you still have plenty of decisions and customization at the end of the day. And so, when you are s- getting, getting sold to on these really interesting innovative things, just approach with caution and ask details about what this actually looks like.

Examples. Um, what happens when X happens and then this happens, for all of your concerns or the risks that you can think of and come up with. Just approach those things with caution. Although, I think they're very cool.

So I'm not knocking down innovation. I'm just saying that, with innovation, we still have to be in control. And especially in this day and age of AI, where we are dehumanizing business s- more and more and more and more, I think it's so important that you still have a strong hand in your business to not incidentally create a poor client experience, because that is what is end up, ending up happening, is that there is a lot of poor customer experiences happening, because of companies leaning into automation and AI, and those things not being built to create an excellent client experience. And I would argue, and it's proven, that since the beginning, I've always taught an excellent client experience while automating and streamlining at the same time.

All right, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Modern Hairstylist podcast. I hope that this gave you some things to think about when it came to choosing the right booking system for you. If you have any questions, you can always DM me @hairbyhunty on Instagram, and I try my best to get back to every DM.

It's a little bit difficult sometimes, but I absolutely love connecting with you. Uh, if you want to have an comprehensive understanding of booking softwares, um, we have a module within my program, Modern Stylist Movement, that goes all into getting comfortable with online booking, and then also a comprehensive guide that compares all the booking softwares as well too, um, and then also gives my personal take on each as well. If you want to go more in depth than what we did in this podcast today, you can DM me @hairbyhunty if you want more information about that on Instagram. But so much love to you.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Modern Hairstylist podcast, and I'll catch you in the next one. Peace out, girl scout.

End of transcript. © 2025 Hunter Donia LLC.