Fresha for business

Over 25 yrs I’ve used a lot of different softwares. Last one was a big name brand software for my large spa which I loved worth every penny but unfortunate circumstances changed everything and now I’m a single practitioner and didn’t make sense to be spending sooo much money on monthly subscription. Looked for a cheaper or free software, and came across Fresha, wondering how can it be free with all they offer? Yes they can be free to use booking and manually putting in payments, having clients book online from my website I can make a link. You can make lots of links for different things. I love their forms you make your own forms and email to new clients no more papers, sends email reminders. Clients get emailed to leave reviews. I can get basic reports, and more. If you want to pay, they charge if you sign up for: text reminders, text or email blasting specials to clients, detailed reports, asking new clients to put a credit card on file automatically when booking, sign up for their market place advertising (charge only if client comes in for the services 20%) first time only, if you use their credit card processor. But if you want something simple then it’s free, anything to pay you can pick and choose which ones you want to turn on and you can turn off any time. So if you want to save credit cards when booking but don’t want text reminders it up to you

I have loved this app for a very long time so many things are so easy about it but at this point there are so many things missing with the appointment cancellations. I travel for work and I have so many colleagues that use square and tell me the cancellations are super customizable. Essentially I need for there to be a 72 hour late cancellation charge of 50% and anything cancelled within 24 hours is charged 100% same for no shows. This is not uncommon in the industry. Now I have switched to deposits bc countless times I’ve had clients cancel within a 24 hour window and it only charges the 50% the only way to get it to work is charge 100% for all cancellations in that window or not charge anything until 24hours. In switching to deposits I’ve found that not one is my receptionist unable to take their card info - it’s not mandatory which means they don’t pay the deposit unless they put a card and even if the deposit is 50% if they no show me I’m not able to charge them the remainder of the service. It’s horrible as a business owner. On top of that my receptionist has to stay on high alert bc it doesn’t take their card info upon booking we have to keep track of who has or hasn’t confirmed in a 48 hour window after booking. So complicated and unnecessary. I’ve complained and tried to get it to be fixed but each solution is worse and more ineffective than the last. I’ve loved this app so much but unfortunately with this issue not being solved I have to switch.

I used Booksy for 2 months and had a bunch of issues, and Booksy costs $30/month! I have been using Fresha for about a week and I like it overall. I especially love that I can do everything I need to for free, but honestly the interface has been so much better to use than Booksy, which feels bloated and buggy. The only thing I’m missing in Fresha is choosing “individual days” instead of just repeating things daily, every 2 days, every 3 days, etc. which doesn’t work for me at all. Due to the nature of my business (personal training), I schedule multiple visits a week on various days and times. Unfortunately, of all the scheduling apps I have tried, many of them don’t account for frequent scheduling at different times/days like this (and that’s one thing I liked about Booksy; I could see a month view of a calendar and just choose whatever days I wanted). My workaround has been to schedule Mondays at x time, then Thursday at x time, and then Friday at x time and repeat each one of those for as many weeks as necessary. It’s not ideal at all, but it works for now. Overall, using Fresha has been a MUCH better experience than Booksy Biz.