Last Updated on August 28, 2025 by Ewen Finser
Today I’m reviewing Booksy vs. Boulevard, based on professional needs, size, and preferences. Both Booksy and Boulevard are subscription-based services that offer things like appointment reminders, marketing messages, and, in some cases, comprehensive front desk features, communication tools, and report generation.
I’m going to compare Booksy vs. Boulevard for businesses considering some of top business concerns, including:
- Front Desk/Administrative Help
- User Interface
- Calendar Management
- Bookings
- Client Management
- Client Communication
- Price
So let’s look at these seven top features that might be the most important to your business and see which platform is the best investment.
Front Desk/Administrative Help
If your business is looking to scale, one of the main areas you might be interested in is some sort of feature that consolidates all of your front desk activities and makes it easy to see things like all of your staff members who are currently working, who has checked in or is already on the calendar for the day, and so on.
If this is you, you’re going to want Boulevard. There is no comparison. Booksy doesn’t have this feature; in fact, most software solutions for salons and Med spas fall short when it comes to the front desk function of Boulevard.
With Boulevard, the front desk is the page that automatically opens when you log in. It easily lays out things like:
- Unconfirmed appointments for the day
- Confirmed appointments
- Walk-ins
- Customers who have arrived
- Customers who have completed their appointment
If anyone calls your business line to book an appointment, it automatically pops up in this area and with a single click, you can add someone to a calendar or change an existing appointment.
Winner: Boulevard
User Interface
When you run a business or you are jumping from appointment to appointment throughout the day, you likely have very little time to search for key information. That’s why having a well-designed user interface can be a lifesaver.
You don’t need to waste any time trying to fish around for the information you need or click on the wrong thing, especially when a customer is waiting for you.
In this regard, I still find myself leaning toward Boulevard as the user because the layout is incredibly easy to use, clear, and direct, and not just because of the front desk feature; booking new clients is made easy with simple pop-ups that do not take up the whole screen. They make judicious use of purple color contrasted by the otherwise mostly black and white background, so the important buttons really stand out.
I don’t like the Booksy layout because I’m very particular about side panels versus headers and about iconography versus typography.
Personal preference: I want my list of designated areas or functions to be in a header running along the top, just like additional tabs are laid out when you are researching things online, and I prefer written words to designate what each menu item is, rather than icons that aren’t as clear.
Don’t get me wrong, we will forever use a floppy disk to indicate saving something on a computer even though we haven’t used floppy disks in decades, but some of the icons that Booksy uses are very small in their size and difficult to understand in their design.
So, for me, it’s just difficult to navigate, and when I am pressed for time, the last thing I want is to struggle clicking on every picture until I get to the part I need.
Winner: Boulevard
Calendar Management
When you look at the calendar section on Boulevard, it is laid out with individual columns for each employee. Similarly, each employee, including their respective profile pictures and their appointments for the day, has a separate color designation.
This ties into the user interface, whereby you can look directly at the calendar and see when each of your employees is booked with a quick glance based on their color.
Booksy, by comparison, doesn’t have the same color designations. Also, because the user interface is designed with a side panel on the left instead of a header, it has a tiny calendar located directly on the left side of the daily calendar.
Now, I will admit that for some people, being able to use the “jump by week” function to quickly skip ahead one, two, three, four, five, or even 6 weeks might be a feature so desperately worth having that the other shortcomings don’t matter. However, I am not “some people.”
Winner: Boulevard
Bookings
Not trying to sound like a broken record here, but when it comes to making your bookings, Boulevard still has a far better function.
I’ve made this conclusion based on several functionalities, let’s call them “quirks,” with Booksy.
- When you initially book an appointment using the calendar function, it blocks off a 15-minute segment of time. You then have to add each of the services for that respective appointment and only after you confirm the booking will the calendar feature adjust the amount of time for those services. But this means you end up with a lot of conflicting appointments because the block of time wasn’t originally the correct length.
- Another “quirk” with Booksy ties into limited client management; with new bookings, there isn’t a whole lot of client detail on the calendar function, so you don’t have as many places to store things like photos or client notes.
- Finally, each booking is designated in a different color on the calendar function, so one appointment for a client at 10:00 a.m. might be a creamy mustard yellow, and the next appointment immediately after is in pink.
So, I will say that in this regard, Booksy might be a very close second, if not contender for first place for some people. If, for example, you are working by yourself as an independent stylist, you might prefer the calendar function that lets you visualize your daily schedule with different colors because you don’t have multiple employees you are trying to manage, and therefore you don’t need separate colors for each employee.
As I said, this really comes down to the size and scope of your business in terms of which one is best.
Winner: Boulevard
Client Management
Whether you are just starting out or managing multiple locations, building good client relationships is a critical part of your business. To that end, one of the things I like most is being able to communicate with your clients on a regular basis and share client details among your staff members.
I want to be clear that I went into Booksy really hoping that it was a better option because it was certainly the cheaper option, but it just falls short in almost every regard.
So, personally, when I go to a salon as the customer, someone who has booked an appointment, I trust all of the employees at my local salon, so I’m not very picky about who I end up with. What I am picky about is when I work with the same person every few months, and as soon as I sit in the chair, they have zero memory of who I am or what they did to my hair during my last appointment.
Ok, so why does this irk me so much?
Because it always ends with the same questions, something akin to “Ok, so, what are we doing today?” followed by my response of “Same as last time, just filling in the roots” followed by “Ok, and what color did you get last time?”
Now, let me be clear that I probably know exactly what color and exactly what brand and product was used, but most people don’t. So you have to consider that when you ask someone sitting in your chair what color they got last time, all they can probably tell you is something like “brown” or “you did brown and then blonde on top.”
That’s why it’s critical to have a section in your preferred software or platform where comprehensive client notes can be added.
Those notes should include detailed sections where, as the stylist or other professional, I can annotate exactly what products I used, maybe for how long, as well as upload photos from before and after.
Both Booksy and Boulevard have these options, although admittedly, the user interface and layout for Boulevard is significantly better and easier on the eyes. Navigation is simpler, and the areas for notes/photos/documents and forms are more robust with Boulevard.
Winner: Boulevard
Client Communication
Another reason why I ended up siding with Boulevard is their message center. So, along the top header, one of the sections is called “messages: and it’s exactly what the name suggests: a place where you can directly communicate with all of your clients.
I love this feature because it keeps all communication centralized, so no matter who might be communicating at any given time with a client, it can be done from one location, and all responses and communication history can also be seen from that same location.
I have totally been that customer racing to find parking and desperately searching for a quick number that I can call to let them know I’m on my way, and please don’t cancel my appointment. Boulevard sends automatic text message reminders for appointments, and that same number can be used by your customers who are themselves racing to find parking to quickly text you and let you know that they are on their way.
Within that message center, you can even respond back, letting them know that there’s a parking structure on the corner of 35th and Johnson Street.
Booksy simply doesn’t have anything like this, so if your company is looking to consolidate and manage communication with all of your clients from a centralized location, you won’t have that feature with Booksy.
Winner: Boulevard
Price
Ah, finally, Booksy makes it to the top of the list.
So, for a lot of businesses, especially small businesses and independents, price is really the name of the game.
A lot of the features that I think make Boulevard a winner might not be as important for an independent stylist just trying to manage their calendar and not looking for a front desk feature or the world’s most intuitive user interface.
Price is a big concern for a lot of people, and to that end, Booksy is definitely the winner here with a base subscription at only $30 per month. If you start adding team members, you’ll face an additional $20 per month. There are, however, a lot of other fees associated with the things you might use Booksy for, like Payment Processing fees and a 30% Commission on any new clients who book an appointment with you using the Booksy Marketplace.
Winner: Booksy
Marketplace
This leads me to the other area where I think Booksy has something better to offer compared to Boulevard: their marketplace.
Now, let me be clear that I don’t exactly like the layout of their respective marketplace, but it is nonetheless a good and inexpensive way to increase your marketing if you are on a tight budget or working as an independent.
When you first set up your account with Booksy, the company will ask you to set up your profile, including your contact information, your business location, and your hours of operation and services. This all gets published, and you can choose to publish immediately or publish a few days from when you sign up.
Once published, potential customers can find you on the Booksy marketplace by looking at that profile. The downside is, if they complete an appointment with you, Booksy takes 30% commission.
Winner: Booksy
Summing Up
Realistically, if you are an independent stylist, you probably don’t need all of the comprehensive features that you get with Boulevard, and you can make great use of the appointment reminders, easy marketing messages, and appointment confirmations that are included in the basic price. For that reason, I think the subscription is well worth it for anyone who is on a budget and doesn’t need to manage a growing company with a focus on building out customer relationships, generating reports, and handling internal administrative components.
By comparison, Boulevard really takes the cake in almost all other areas, including client management, client communication, front desk and administrative functions, bookings, calendar management, and most importantly to me, user interface.
So, genuinely consider which one your company needs most and what your company’s goals are. Pick the software that helps you meet those goals most effectively.