Best Phorest Salon Software Alternatives

Last Updated on June 6, 2025 by Ewen Finser

Phorest is a great med spa software for those in the UK, Ireland, or US looking to streamline appointment setting and business growth. They have a lot of wonderful features that are geared more toward med spas, including HIPAA compliance and video consultation offerings. So, as a salon, you might be looking for something a little different and that’s why I’m going to review my top Salon software alternatives to Phorest.

The Platforms I’m Considering

All of the following platforms are great alternatives to Phorest. Let’s take a look at them side by side to show when you should consider them as a replacement.

• Vagaro
• Boulevard
• Mangomint
• Goldie

Best Alternative

Upfront, my favorite Phorest salon software alternative is Boulevard. It has a layout that is intuitive, easy on the eyes and the brain, with core features that are better tuned to salons (and med spas).

Top Phorest Pain Points and the Best Salon Software Alternatives to Solve Them

#1: Onboarding

Let’s start at the very beginning, as was said in the Sound of Music, a very good place to start.

One of the issues we ran into when trying to switch to Phorest was the onboarding process. It was very lengthy, cumbersome, and frustrating. While Phorest has a lot of features, one of the things I disliked was that there’s a high learning curve associated with many of their functions so this makes it very difficult for staff to get on board with a new software and when time is at a premium, this can be really difficult.

• Boulevard: Boulevard is my favorite when it comes to onboarding. When I worked with them, one of the things I noticed right off the bat was that you don’t have a lot of superfluous features, things that aren’t necessary but seem really cool from a marketing perspective. Second to that, you have dedicated staff, real people who work with you and your team for an onboarding process and they don’t try to shove it all down your throat in one day and call it quits; they give you an onboarding process that spans several weeks and totals around 15 hours. This was a much easier pill for our team to swallow, made even easier by the fact that the interface was very intuitive and there was next to no onboarding we genuinely needed just to get started.
• Vagaro: Vagaro has a lot of training videos and if you are setting up a new account, they have notifications when you first open it indicating what is left to do. If you click on something from your to-do list it will automatically take you to where that feature or function is with video tutorials that you can click on in the top left hand corner.
• Mangomint: When you first open the software, they help you get to know the software by creating a demo within your profile so you already have things like customers that you can look at if you’re just playing around and at any point you can turn that demo off and they’ll remove that information and leave yours. You can schedule a call with an expert at any time as well as watch how-to videos or chat. I really like the step by step setup guide that indicates how many steps you have left.
• Goldie: The configuration or setup is very similar and whether you are using the app or the desktop, they have a lot of basic videos that you can watch as you go through your setup process.

If you have a salon and you are switching either from other software or starting out as a new company, I really like the dedicated staff offerings with Boulevard, but I also like the Mangomint step-by-step guide within the platform. So, if you want someone to walk you through things and you want that dedicated staff member who can answer questions specific to your company, go with Boulevard, but if you have multiple staff members and you want to be able to set everything up at your own pace getting to know the layout and watching videos, go with Mangomint.

#2: Features

Another issue you might have with Phorest surrounds the features. They have a lot of special features that are advertised particularly with the online store and the app but these didn’t always work the way they were supposed to so some of the features we were promised weren’t fully functional at the time we signed up.

Now that’s not to say that they don’t have great features. Some of them are outstanding specifically for med spas.

One example of those is the Charting feature from Phorest. The Charting feature lets you document and track patient care with things like SOAP notes for medspas. This is an exceptional feature but one that is designed to help with HIPAA compliance so is a bit unnecessary for salons.

To that end, there are several salons software alternatives that have a similar note function that improves team communication and provides a more seamless experience for clients.

• Boulevard: Boulevard has a comprehensive client management section that generates detailed and easy to read customer profiles anytime you click on them.
• Vagaro: Vagaro gives you a very good customer profile, with a quick grid of boxes that indicate things like the number of sales they’ve had, the number of classes they’ve booked, appointments and so forth with an option of adding things like their friends and family or directly messaging them from their respective profiles but it doesn’t pop up wherever you see a customer profile like with Boulevard.
• Mangomint: Mangomint has a smaller profile section for customers, with a quick timeline of their services, packages and memberships they’ve purchased, and any saved credit card data as the most critical and visible information. If you want to look for things like notes or forms that they filled out you really have to search for it.
• Goldie: The layout for Goldie is more gamified, so when you open a customer profile, it loads things like total revenue or appointment data in the same way you might see a slot machine build your winnings. Instead of just showing you what it is, such as $572 in total revenue over the last 2 years, the revenue figure starts at zero and spins its way up to that total before your eyes. Not really functional.

My top pick here is Boulevard. Boulevard has a uniquely accessible client management portfolio where anytime you see a client name, it’s a clickable link that pulls up an entire profile.

That complete profile contains all of the data you would need, similar to the Charting feature, but better geared toward salons, including:

1. Client history
2. Accommodations
3. Special requests
4. Any memberships or loyalty plans

With this, your staff members can check out any relevant history, who customers have worked with in the past, what services they have received, and so forth.

#3: Cost

Cost is another barrier with Phorest. It can be pretty pricey for smaller salons or independent salons. So if price is your main pain point, there are some alternatives.

• Boulevard: The pricing here is arguably the highest out of all of my alternatives to Phorest, but that’s because of how comprehensive it is and all of the services you get so if you happen to be paying for additional marketing, website functions, widgets, integrations, and sales apps you might very well be able to let go of those in exchange for doing everything in one place with Boulevard. More than that, you get to pay a flat fee no matter what the size of your business with a lot of support for scaling and your fees won’t change.
• Vagaro: The pricing is very fair, scaled based on the number of employees you have up to a limit, but several of the features and functions come at an additional cost.
• Mangomint: The pricing is very similar to Boulevard, and you can expect to pay several hundred dollars per month and that could be a little too expensive if you are an independent user but if you grow your business even a little bit, it might be worth the benefits.
• Goldie: Goldie has some of the cheapest pricing for individuals and small teams, starting at free options for individuals and going up between $20 per month and $40 per month but there are several smaller a la carte fees for additional services especially if you have the cheaper option as an independent stylist.

I would recommend Vagaro if price is your biggest concern especially if you are an independent salon or an independent stylist. Their cost is around $30 for a single person and if you happen to expand your salon it’s only $10 per month for every additional person with a $90 cap. So no matter how big your business gets your primary cost won’t be above 90.

#4: Customer Service

When you run into a problem or you need help with something, a big complaint I’ve seen with Phorest is the unresponsive customer service. It’s really difficult to get the help you need when there is a problem and this is exacerbated by how slow the response time is. If your issue needs to be resolved immediately because it has to do with payments or customer retention, you don’t need slow service, you need an immediate response.

• Boulevard: Boulevard has very positive customer service with resources like the client experience representative chat box which makes it really easy to manage appointments, the knowledge base and blogs as well as the fast responses from customer service.
• Vagaro: They have really knowledgeable staff. You might be on hold for a while if you’re having a big problem, but staff members can usually help with any and all technical issues you might have. The downside is that you’re going to have a lot of problems getting refunds especially if you’ve been charged an unexpected fee or something.
• Mangomint: Mangomint has exceptionally fast customer service. Their staff members are very friendly and knowledgeable and if you don’t want to talk to a staff member or you don’t have the time to be on hold, they have a great Learning Center online with webinars, videos, and other supportive tools to solve a lot of your key issues.
• Goldie: Goldie doesn’t have the best customer service. If you are paying for the top tier plan that’s going to cost several hundred dollars, you’d be surprised at how much better the service is compared to getting the free or cheaper service so that’s something to consider. A lot of salons have reported really unhelpful or slow customer service experiences especially when it comes to technical problems.

If you want good customer service as one of your primary components to your salon software, I would go with Mangomint or Boulevard. Both are known for their exceptional customer service and highly knowledgeable staff members. You’ll get quick responses and you have a wide array of other tools if you don’t want to call the customer service line.

Summing Up

There are a lot of good things to be said for each of the best Phorest salon software alternatives listed above and which one works best for your company is based on the needs you are prioritizing whether that is onboarding, pricing, features, or customer service.

By and large, however, Boulevard is my top favorite. It is the easiest to use, with the best onboarding support. It might be expensive, but it covers so much more than most appointment booking software or POS software, so you basically get everything you need in one place. And if there is something else you need, customer service reps are incredibly kind, knowledgeable, and responsive.