Fresha Review: Features, Pricing, Pros and Cons (2026)

Key takeaways

Fresha dropped its subscription-free model in 2025. It now runs on paid plans: Independent at $19.95 per month and Team at $14.95 per bookable team member.

On top of the subscription, Fresha charges a 20% one-time commission (minimum $6) on new clients booked through its marketplace, plus card processing fees.

Reviewers rate Fresha highly for ease of use, marketplace exposure, and strong mobile apps. It scores 4.8 out of 5 on Capterra.

Fresha suits salons, spas, and wellness businesses. Regulated medical aesthetic clinics that need deep clinical documentation often move to practice management software like Pabau.

This Fresha review pulls together what verified users say on Capterra, Trustpilot, and G2, alongside where the platform fits and where it falls short. If you run a salon, spa, or aesthetic practice, here’s an honest look. We cover what Fresha does well, what it costs, and who it suits.

Fresha has built a huge following among salons, barbershops, and independent beauty and wellness professionals. The reviews split along a clear line. Solo operators and small teams praise how quickly they got started and how the marketplace brought in new bookings. Practices with heavier documentation or compliance needs tend to run into limits.

What is Fresha, and who is it for?

Fresha is a booking and business management platform for salons, spas, and wellness businesses. It’s used by hundreds of thousands of professionals across more than 120 countries, and it’s best known for its consumer marketplace. Clients can search the Fresha directory, find a nearby business, and book in a few taps.

The platform covers scheduling, payments, marketing, inventory, and client records in one place. Fresha started life as a free, subscription-free tool and made its money through payments and marketplace commissions. That changed in 2025, when it moved to paid subscription plans.

It’s a strong fit for salons, barbershops, nail and beauty studios, and solo practitioners who want low upfront cost and a built-in discovery channel. It wasn’t built as a medical or clinical practice management system, and that distinction matters once regulated treatments enter the picture.

Fresha features overview

Fresha packs a broad feature set into an interface reviewers consistently call easy to learn. Here’s what you get across the platform:

• Online booking and marketplace: Clients can book through the Fresha marketplace, your own booking page, Google, or social channels. The marketplace listing doubles as a discovery channel for new clients.
• Calendar and scheduling: Appointment management with waitlists, recurring bookings, and resource scheduling. This is the feature users rate most highly.
• Payments and POS: Integrated card payments, same-day checkout, and a Fresha card terminal, so bookings and payments live in one system.
• Marketing: Email and SMS campaign tools, including automated messages for birthdays, lapsed clients, and promotions.
• Forms and client notes: Intake and consultation forms clients can complete and sign, plus client notes and file or image storage against each record.
• Inventory: Stock tracking, supplier management, and purchase orders for retail and back-bar products.
• Memberships, packages, and gift cards: Tools to sell and manage recurring revenue and prepaid treatments.
• Deposits and no-show protection: Card-on-file requirements and deposits to reduce no-shows.
• Reporting: Standard financial and sales reporting, with deeper analytics available through a paid Insights add-on.
• Mobile apps: Separate business and client apps for iOS and Android. The consumer Fresha app is rated highly on both app stores.

Fresha pricing

Fresha starts at $19.95 per month for a solo user (the Independent plan) or $14.95 per month per bookable team member (the Team plan), having moved off its free model in 2025. Its pricing is the most-discussed topic in Fresha reviews, and it’s worth reading carefully. Fresha’s fees stack in three parts: the subscription, a marketplace commission on new clients, and card processing fees.

The marketplace commission is where costs can surprise people. Fresha charges a 20% one-time fee (minimum $6) on each new client who finds you through its marketplace. Returning clients, and clients who book through your own site, Google, or social channels, are free.

Fresha pros and cons

What users praise about Fresha

Fresha’s 4.8 out of 5 on Capterra reflects genuine satisfaction in its core market. For solo operators and small beauty businesses, it delivers real value.

• Low entry cost: At $19.95 per month for a solo user, Fresha is one of the cheaper ways to get a full booking system running.
• Marketplace exposure: The Fresha directory puts your business in front of clients actively searching for nearby appointments, and you only pay when a new client books.
• Ease of use: Setup is fast and the interface needs little technical configuration. New staff tend to pick it up quickly.
• Strong mobile apps: Both the business app and the consumer booking app are rated highly on iOS and Android.
• Payments built in: Integrated POS and card processing mean you’re not stitching a separate terminal into your workflow.

Common Fresha complaints

• Costs stack as you grow: The subscription, marketplace commission, and processing fees add up, and several reviews note the total runs higher than the headline price suggests.
• Billing disputes: Reviews on Software Advice and ProductReview.com.au cite unexpected charges and difficulty getting them resolved. One reviewer wrote that Fresha “failed to acknowledge their error, investigate the issue, or process refunds.”
• Support costs extra on the entry plan: Phone support is a paid add-on on the Independent plan, which some users find frustrating when an issue is urgent.
• Limited branding and customization: Reviewers note the booking page offers little control over appearance, and clients are generally required to create a Fresha account to book.
• Thin clinical documentation: Fresha has forms and client notes, but not the structured treatment charting, consent workflows, or before-and-after photo management regulated clinics rely on.
• Reminder reliability: Some users report appointment reminders that failed to send, which can affect attendance.

Fresha customer reviews and ratings

Fresha reviews on verified platforms are consistently positive on ease of use and value. Scheduling, the marketplace, and the mobile experience are the features users cite most often as reasons they stay.

Here’s how Fresha rates across public review platforms at the time of writing:

The positive themes are consistent: fast setup, marketplace bookings, and a clean mobile app. The negative themes are just as consistent. Billing and unexpected charges come up repeatedly, alongside the cost of marketplace commissions at higher volumes. For businesses performing regulated treatments, the gap in clinical documentation is a recurring note, which we cover below.

Who is Fresha best suited for?

Fresha makes the most sense for salons, spas, and independent beauty and wellness professionals who want a low-cost booking system and a built-in way to reach new clients.

It’s a strong fit if you:

• Run a salon, barbershop, nail studio, or solo beauty practice
• Want the lowest possible upfront software cost
• Value marketplace exposure to bring in new clients
• Have light documentation needs and no regulated clinical treatments

Fresha is a weaker fit for:

• Medical aesthetic clinics and med spas offering injectables, lasers, or other regulated treatments
• Practices that need documented consent, structured treatment notes, and before-and-after photo records
• Multi-location groups that need clinical scheduling and consolidated reporting across sites
• Businesses that want predictable costs as new-client volume grows

Fresha limitations: where clinics hit the ceiling

Fresha isn’t trying to be a medical records system, and that’s the source of most of its limits for clinical practices. The platform added forms and client notes, so basic intake and consultation capture is there. What it lacks is the depth regulated treatments demand.

For a med spa running injectables, that gap is real. Structured treatment notes tied to each service, consent workflows built for prescription-only treatments, and before-and-after photos filed against the client record are operational requirements, not nice-to-haves. Scattered or missing documentation creates legal and regulatory risk under frameworks like HIPAA in the US or the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in the UK.

Cost predictability is the other ceiling. For a busy practice acquiring lots of new clients through the marketplace, the 20% commission can add up faster than a flat subscription would. And multi-location groups tend to find the platform better suited to single sites than to coordinated clinical operations across several.

Fresha alternatives and how Pabau compares

The Fresha alternatives most salons and spas evaluate include Vagaro, Booksy, Square Appointments, GlossGenius, and Mangomint. Each targets a similar beauty and wellness market with its own take on pricing and features.

For medical and aesthetic practices, the more relevant comparison is a purpose-built clinical platform. Practice management software like Pabau sits in a different category from a salon marketplace. Where Fresha is a consumer booking platform with a business layer on top, Pabau is an all-in-one practice management system built for healthcare and medical aesthetics. You can see how Pabau compares to Fresha feature by feature on the comparison page.

Three differences stand out for clinics weighing the two:

• Clinical documentation: Pabau builds digital consent forms, structured treatment notes, and before-and-after photo management into the client record. Consent can send automatically after booking, and photos file straight against the treatment history.
• Multi-location and clinical scheduling: Multi-location scheduling across sites, multi-practitioner calendars, and consultation-to-treatment workflows are handled in one system, which suits growing clinics better than a single-site setup.
• Retention marketing: Pabau’s email and SMS marketing segments by treatment history and last visit, so recall messages reach the right clients automatically, rather than relying on a marketplace to bring them back.

The pricing models differ too. Pabau uses a subscription that scales with your team and locations, and every plan includes every feature, with no per-booking or marketplace commission on client volume. That keeps costs predictable as you grow. You can see current pricing at pabau.com/pricing.

See how Pabau handles clinical workflows

From built-in consent forms and treatment notes to before-and-after photos and multi-location scheduling, Pabau is built for the practices Fresha wasn’t designed to serve. Book a personalized demo to see it in action.

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Conclusion

Fresha earns its strong reviews in the market it was built for. For a salon, barbershop, or solo beauty business that wants low upfront cost, easy setup, and marketplace exposure, it’s a genuinely good option, and the ratings back that up.

The picture changes once a business crosses into regulated clinical territory. Documented consent, structured treatment notes, before-and-after photos, and multi-location clinical workflows aren’t optional for a medical aesthetic clinic. If your practice has moved beyond simple booking into clinical treatment, book a demo with Pabau to see how it handles the full workflow, from first booking to documented outcome.

Continue your research

Weighing Fresha against another salon platform? Fresha vs Vagaro breaks down how the two compare on pricing, features, and fit for different business types.

Running a medical spa and need clinical workflows? Medical spa software covers how Pabau supports scheduling, documentation, and compliance for med spa operations.

Want a direct, feature-by-feature comparison? Pabau vs Fresha lays out how both platforms stack up for clinic owners making a decision.

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