Home › Vagaro, Booksy & Mindbody costs
The advertised price is never the price. Here's the honest breakdown of what booking platforms charge salons, spas and studios once staff seats, add-ons and marketplace cuts are counted — and the three-year math on owning your app instead.
Vagaro advertises a $30/month starting price. Booksy and Fresha advertise "free" or near-free tiers. Then the real invoice shows up, and salon and studio owners discover what actually drives the number: per-staff charges, paid add-ons, and a cut of your bookings.
Here's what these platforms genuinely cost, and what it looks like to own your booking software instead of renting it forever.
| Platform | Advertised | What drives the real bill |
|---|---|---|
| Vagaro | ~$24–30/mo | About $10/month per additional bookable staff member, plus paid add-ons for texting, forms, and kiosk mode — and roughly $100–200/month more if you want the app carrying your brand instead of theirs. Card processing on top. |
| Mindbody | Sales call only | Tiered monthly pricing that climbs quickly with features, a branded-app add-on, an annual contract, and commission on clients who book you through their marketplace. |
| Booksy | ~$30/mo + staff | Per-staff pricing, plus a percentage of the first appointment for clients who arrive through the marketplace — which owners report firing on people they were already serving. |
| Fresha | "Free" | Per-member fees plus a new-client commission with a minimum charge, which can trigger on regulars who happen to book through the platform. |
| GlossGenius | ~$24–48/mo flat | The most honest pricing in the category, but you still don't own anything, and memberships and kiosk workflows are limited. |
Add it up for a typical three- to five-person salon, spa or studio and the all-in number usually lands somewhere between $300 and $500 a month once staff seats, add-ons and processing are counted — roughly $4,000–5,500 a year, every year, forever. And at the end of it you own nothing: not the app, not the software, and in some cases not even easy access to your own client list.
The add-on that tells you everything: the platforms charge extra — often $100 to $250 a month — to put your business name and logo on the app your clients use. Three years of that fee alone costs more than having your own app built from scratch.
A custom booking app is your own software. Your brand, your clients, your Stripe account, your rules. Clients book, pay, and manage memberships in an app that belongs to you — with no per-staff tax, no marketplace commission, and no monthly ransom on your own customer list.
TaskPilot builds these from $3,500 as a one-time project, with an optional $99/month care plan covering hosting, monitoring, backups, fixes and an hour of changes each month. The care plan is optional — and here's the part that matters: cancel it and your app keeps working, because you own it. Cancel Vagaro and you lose everything.
| Booking platform | Your own app | |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | ~$4,000–5,500 | $3,500 + optional $1,188 care |
| Year 2 | ~$4,000–5,500 | $1,188 care — or $0 |
| Year 3 | ~$4,000–5,500 | $1,188 care — or $0 |
| 3-year total | ~$12,000–16,500 | ~$7,064 (or $3,500 without care) |
| New-client fees | 20–30% of first visit | $0 |
| Per-staff fees | $10–40/mo each | None — same at 2 staff or 10 |
| Your brand on the app | $100–250/mo add-on | Included |
| At the end | You own nothing | You own the app |
Card processing (Stripe, about 2.9% + 30¢) applies either way — and we don't mark it up.
We built a Sarasota youth boxing gym their own app. Members sign up on a wall-mounted iPad in about three minutes — photo, digital waiver, saved card, fully bilingual. Stripe bills every family automatically with prorating, retries and late-fee rules; receipts and contracts go out by text; the owner gets a daily summary on his phone. It handles about $7,300/month in billing across roughly 33 members and four plan types, and saves 6–10 staff hours a week. No booking platform, no per-member fees, no commission on anybody.
We'll say this plainly, because it isn't true for everyone:
Where it clearly wins: memberships and recurring billing, multiple staff, and repeat clients who already know you — gyms, studios, salons and spas with a real book of regulars.
You own the code, the Stripe account and the client list. Any developer can pick it up. That's a promise no platform makes.
Cards are held by Stripe — the same processor sitting underneath most of these platforms. We never see or store card numbers.
Weeks, not months, and you get a timeline with your fixed quote before anything starts.
The advertised entry price is around $24–30/month, but that covers one bookable staff member. Additional staff are roughly $10/month each, and texting, forms, kiosk mode and a branded app are separate paid add-ons — the branded app alone commonly runs $100–200/month. Card processing is charged on top. A typical three-person salon usually lands somewhere between $300 and $500/month all-in.
It depends on your size. A solo operator is usually best served by a cheap flat-rate platform like GlossGenius. Businesses with several staff, memberships or recurring billing often do better owning a custom booking app: a one-time build (from $3,500 at TaskPilot) replaces $4,000–5,500 a year in platform fees and removes per-staff charges and marketplace commissions entirely.
Several do for clients who arrive through their marketplace — commonly 20–30% of the first appointment. The frequent complaint from owners is that it can trigger on people they already knew, because the client happened to book through the platform's app rather than directly.
TaskPilot builds them from $3,500 as a one-time project, with an optional $99/month care plan for hosting, monitoring, backups, fixes and an hour of changes per month. You get a fixed quote before any work starts.
Yes. You own the code, the Stripe account and the client list, and can export your data at any time. If you ever stop working with us, the app keeps running and any developer can maintain it.
Yes, and sometimes that's the smart move. If the marketplace genuinely sends you new clients, keep the listing as an advertising channel while running your own booking and billing through your app — so you stop paying per-staff fees and commissions on your regulars.
We import your client list and set up your plans and pricing before launch, so your regulars keep booking and their recurring billing continues without interruption.
Book a free 10-minute call and we'll map exactly where your business is losing time or leads — the written summary is yours whether you hire us or not.
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