Last Updated on September 12, 2025 by Ewen Finser
Almost every stylist and salon owner I’ve ever met started with Square. They went from managing a few people by themselves via text or email and then realized they were experiencing growth and needed some support. But at some point, all of them realized that they had outgrown the support from Square and looked elsewhere, myself included.
I’ll say I really like the free version of Square for simple booking. If you are a new stylist or you are by yourself renting a chair, or just trying to save money, this is a good way to do it. But the biggest issue with Square for salons and spas is that Square is designed for a wide array of businesses, everything from a tire shop to a dress shop, basically any business that works with appointments. That means it doesn’t have the same type of HIPAA compliance or marketing support that a salon needs.
So I’m going to look at some top Square alts for salon businesses, including:
Let’s dive in.
Top Square Alternatives for Salon Businesses
So what are the top alts for growing businesses looking to build clientele or get more support?
#1: Vagaro
Best for: Scaling businesses with cheaper costs and a user-friendly layout
Cost is really the main reason a lot of businesses turn to Square in the first place. As I said, most stylists and salon owners start with it because it’s free for individuals. But as soon as your business scales and you add another employee, it jumps to $50 per month, per location. If you want the full features, you can expect $150 per month, per location. This adds up quickly if you are a scaling business.
So drop Square once you add a single employee and head over to Vagaro.
Price
If you are by yourself, Vagaro starts at $25 per month, which is $25 more than Square. But as soon as you add employees, Vagaro’s pricing model is much friendlier, increasing by $10 increments per employee until you reach a cap of $83.99 for 7 employees+. After you reach 7, the price doesn’t change. It only increases if you add multiple locations.
Layout
With Vagaro, you also get a much easier, cleaner layout. I think it is worlds apart from Square, because you get what you pay for, and when I was first starting out, I paid nothing for Square. But now I want to pay for better quality and better navigation. That’s what Vagaro offers.
Vagaro App/Marketplace
Vagaro not only has that easy layout but does let you use some easy marketing tools like the Vagaro App or Marketplace. This is a good feature for any salon that is trying to offer services to new clientele and wants a platform that already exists. Vagaro has their customer-facing marketplace where your salon can post things like last-minute deals and other services that are easy to find in your area.
#2: Boulevard
Best for: Scaling businesses offering multiple services, at multiple locations, with a front desk feature, and better reports
Fresha’s most expensive plan is around $150 per month, per location. Once your business has scaled to multiple locations, you’re going to need a lot more behind-the-scenes support beyond just customer booking and payments.
My top Square alt for growing salons is Boulevard.
I’ll start with the features they have that no one else does: The Front Desk.
Front Desk
The Front Desk is a very good customer management function where anyone can see who has confirmed versus hasn’t confirmed their appointment for the day, who has already arrived and checked in for their appointment, and who has completed their appointment. It is right here, at the front desk, that everything else can be very easily managed, and should a customer call for an appointment, it rings right here.
Smart Scheduling
Now let’s look at Smart Scheduling.
Smart scheduling is another unique feature. With this, you actually put all of your services in order based on how they should be scheduled, with things like a massage before a facial. Using these categories that you set up ahead of time, anytime a customer books an appointment with multiple services, it automatically schedules them in the right order.
Boulevard is more supportive of growing businesses because of the reports that it can generate. Square offers minimal reporting because it’s not meant for salons in particular, but rather any and all businesses that book appointments. So if you need reports for individual employees, individual hair products that you have sold when guests check out, or performance based on day of the week, all of that can be found under the reports section.
Client Management
Boulevard is geared towards salons in particular, created by professionals from the industry so it offers things like HIPAA-compliant form generation, something that you won’t get with Square. Where you have limited client management from Square, Boulevard offers a lot of support managing your clientele with the most comprehensive client profiles I have seen to date.
No matter where you click within the platform, anytime a client’s name pops up you can easily pull up a pop out display with all of their relevant client information and this includes photos, preferences, allergies, services, memberships, and basically anything else you could think of except for a section on the name of their pets and their favorite color although those could probably be added under the “notes” section.
Boulevard was built for real stylists, salon, and spa owners. It handles booking, checkout, and smart scheduling the way busy salons actually work. It even handles marketing, from rebooking reminders to targeted emails and texts, plus it fills open spots with waitlist requests, without the scrambling.
#3: GlossGenius
Best for: Reviews and client growth
Another contender for supporting client growth and, in particular, building your online portfolio through things like Google reviews is GlossGenius. GlossGenius lets you add things like client notes, service and product preferences, and images so you can keep track of what products you’ve used on a client in the past, and any other stylist at your salon can look up those notes and immediately do a touch-up or adjust for an extreme color correction.
Reviews
GlossGenius also has lots of functions to support reviews and communication. They automatically send a review request after an appointment has been completed, so, based on email or text preferences, clients get prompted to leave you a review that can be shared on social media.
Within the platform, you have the ability to track and manage all of your reviews across multiple channels. You can see the things that clients have sent through the automated review requests, but you can also track sentiments based on client feedback and respond to your feedback or share posts that you get on social media.
So if you need a lot more internal support to manage your reviews and customer feedback, this is a good alternative to consider.
#4: Goldie
Best for: Salons that want better form and staff management, or social media support
Square is, as I’ve said, limited in its creative functions, especially for salons. This applies to forms in particular. With Goldie, salons can use the forms feature to create customized digital forms based on their services, and that includes settings like specific forms for different services, custom forms where clients can type yes no answers, signature requirements, and frequency settings where you determine how frequently a form has to be filled out by customers.
Staff Management
Goldie also offers good staff management functions, allowing you to add unlimited team members and combine their calendars, clients, and payments in a single location. You can control your team logins and permissions so they only see the things that are relevant to their specific job, and then, as the salon manager, you can track individual performance as well as hours, revenue, and tips.
Social Media
One of the areas where they really stand out is the social media post generator. Goldie is very well known for offering marketing support, particularly on social media like Facebook and Instagram, where all you have to do is upload a photo, and then the AI assistant interprets that photo and creates captions for social media posts, stories, and other content.
Summing Up
Overall, you can find a lot of top Square alternatives for salon businesses in particular. The one how much you want to spend each month, what layout you prefer, and the features you want in addition to basic functions like booking and payment processing.
- Vagaro: This is a top Square alt for salons that are scaling and want cheaper monthly costs with a more user-friendly layout.
- Boulevard: This is one of my favorite Square alts for salons offering multiple services, at multiple locations, because it offers a unique front desk feature and better reports for internal business management.
- GlossGenius: This is a top Square alt for salons that want to work on customer feedback, reviews, and reputation management.
- Goldie: This is better for salons that want custom form generation and staff management tools without the extra cost or marketing efforts via social media.