Last Updated on August 28, 2025 by Ewen Finser
As a spa or salon, you have several options for booking platforms, but you have equally high options for other aspects of managing your business, like POS, ecommerce, marketing, and so forth.
So where do you even start?
Let’s look at Square, a highly competitive option in terms of price used by a lot of independent stylists, especially when they first start out, and Boulevard, a modern and comprehensive suite designed to be an all-in-one tool for small to medium-sized businesses that are looking to scale.
I am going to compare them in terms of cost, their target audience, client management, marketing, communication, booking features, reports, and customer service.
Cost
Cost is a very important figure for many people, but it’s important to see what the cost includes.
Square
Square starts out free.
Hooray. This is great if you are just beginning, are working as an independent, or are on a budget.
The thing is, as you grow, so will your costs.
As you can see in the image above, while Square starts “free”, there is still a charge for things like transaction fees, and your features are limited.
Even if you scale up, your costs jump pretty high, to $49 per month, which, if you only have a partner, can be pretty high.
Even the Square Premium service starts to get pretty pricey for such limited features, especially if you have multiple locations.
Boulevard
Boulevard, by comparison, is more expensive, especially at the most basic membership, but you get so much more.
Why?
Boulevard is an all-in-one tool: scheduling, POS, marketing, inventory, reporting, client management, communication, staff management, and more. It isn’t just a booking software that lets you manage your calendar.
When you start with Boulevard, you can expect to pay around $150 per month, which is roughly what the Premium charges are for Square.
But let’s say you have two locations. Now, using Square Premium, you are charged $300 per month, and you still aren’t getting all the features that Boulevard offers.
I want to break this down with a quick example:
Crazy Nails has one location downtown and is opening a second next month, one town over. Right now, they use Square Premium for booking and payment processing at $150. Next month, they will start to pay $300 per month for both locations. They also pay a marketing company $100 per month to manage their social media pages and generate marketing emails. Crazy Nails has to pay $30 per employee for payroll reports.
This means that Crazy Nails is going to spend $430 per month for basic booking features, social media generation, and payroll functions compared to the $450 for the most advanced Boulevard membership that includes all of this and more, and won’t change based on the number of employees or the number of locations. Moreover, Crazy Nails can always opt for a less expensive version that still gives the same benefits, costing only a few hundred dollars per month with Boulevard.
Target Audience
One of the most important differences between these two is the target audience, whom the platform was designed to help.
Square
Square is meant to help manage payments, calendars, and a few other features. Their interface is broad.
It is meant to be.
Why?
Because it is designed for basically any industry, like restaurants, spas, appointment-based bridal shops, even appointment-based car repair.
For all those other industries, especially the people just starting out, that generic design and those limited features can seem appealing.
But as any business grows, it starts to require more specialized support. Even the Square Plus is not going to have the same salon/spa based features that are truly required for a scaling business.
Boulevard
Boulevard, by comparison, was designed by people in the industry, founders who worked in salons who understand the pain points of running a salon.
The design focuses on avoiding confusing reports that lack any smidge of discernible data, as well as a comprehensive tech stack that combines systems for email marketing, inventory, POS, and booking.
The target audience is really more spas, salons, barbers, and med spas, basically anyone in the health field. Boulevard has features like HIPAA compliance that Square doesn’t because restaurants and bridal shops don’t have to worry about such things.
Boulevard focuses on every touchpoint for salons and spas in particular–before, during, and after the appointment.
Customer Service
So what happens when you first sign up with a platform and you need help figuring out where everything is, or something goes wrong, and you have to pick up the phone for help?
Square
Square gives you in-app support, but this is mostly tutorials that have to do with the point of sale app or the register. They do have a phone number, but here is where it’s important to pay attention: the hours of availability for that phone number vary based on your subscription. So, they claim to have 24/7 phone support, but that’s only if you have a specific, paid subscription and are using their register or terminal.
Otherwise, they effectively tell you “Bonne chance!” and give you chat support through an AI assistant or email support. Even the chat support is only available Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Psh.
Boulevard
When you first start out, Boulevard gives you robust onboarding support. No longer will you be confused by over or underutilized tools, lack of personalized support, and confusing layouts. Rather, you get a dedicated onboarding specialist who helps you avoid the tech overwhelm of having to use multiple platforms and instead looks specifically at all the areas that your business needs to integrate or automate.
When things go wrong, you can also call customer service and get a real person who knows what your issue is and is knowledgeable about solutions.
Client Management
Managing your clients and maintaining good client profiles is a critical part of any spa or salon, although less so for things like restaurants or bridal shops. I mean, hopefully, a client visiting a bridal shop only needs to show up once.
Square
So, Square has basic client profiles. You can save a few quick details to your client profile, but as the platform is designed with a far-reaching effect for many industries, you don’t have as many sections in that client profile dedicated to things that you would need for a spa or salon.
Boulevard
Boulevard does. Boulevard has very comprehensive and detailed client profiles that are linked to features like the custom forms and SOAP notes. You can use Boulevard to maintain HIPAA compliance and build better client relationships by sending forms and custom waivers ahead of time.
Boulevard also lets you capture detailed information like specialized needs, before and after photos, color formulas, preferences, allergies, and other notes that can personalize the client experience for their next booking.
Marketing
Marketing your business can be essential, depending on how you are looking to grow your client base.
Square
If you are using Square, you have basic client communication with things like follow-up messages and automated reminders. If you want to use any of the marketing features, those come with add-on costs.
If you are willing to pay more, you can send email campaigns and newsletters as well as promotional text messages. You also have moderate support for automating things like scheduling your posts on social media and sending communication for loyalty programs.
Boulevard
Boulevard has an internal marketing suite which supports things like email marketing with blasts and drip campaigns, which can be customized to your needs. At the time of booking, they also have add-ons and upsells which can further support the marketing efforts of your spa or salon.
The robust marketing suite lets you segment clients and create targeted campaigns based on things like previous visits, purchase activities, and personal preferences, and of course, you can use the two-way messaging function within the platform.
Communication
When you are managing your appointments and communicating with your staff or customers, it’s always good to have phone integration options.
Square
Unfortunately, Square offers what is called “Square Assistant”, a seemingly good idea but really just an automated message center. It doesn’t have a lot of AI support for your clients.
Square also lacks any type of support for fielding phone calls for people looking to book an appointment or communicating internally in a single location.
Boulevard
Boulevard, by comparison, has several features that support good communication within your internal and external spheres. For starters, Boulevard can integrate with an AI virtual assistant to automatically schedule appointments, handle client questions, and give quick customer support to your clients.
Boulevard also offers internal features such as the Front Desk feature, which facilitates all of your administrative needs from one location. Related to that is the feature for internal messaging. This is connected to all other aspects of the platform, so that if you send things like appointment reminders to a client and they respond with a question about changing their appointment time, it automatically populates within that message center so staff can receive a notification and update the customer immediately.
Scheduling Services/Booking
As Square is primarily a booking platform, it’s important to see how the two compare in terms of the scheduling services they offer.
Square
Square offers great resources for booking, scheduling your services, and managing your calendar. This is, in fact, one of their primary features.
Square has standard online scheduling. You don’t have a lot of intelligent capabilities here. What you see is what you get.
Boulevard
Boulevard has several supporting services for booking, including links to social media pages and Yelp or Google Business, where people can connect to your profile and your business.
There are also options specific to salons and spas, such as the smart scheduling order. Boulevard’s Smart Scheduling order will put all of a client’s appointments in the correct order, like a facial after a massage or a hair color after a cut.
With Precision Scheduling, a proprietary technology, Boulevard helps you reduce any gaps in your daily schedule and maximize your time, not just book an appointment. Using this platform reduces no-show rates by 71%.
Reports and Analytics
One area that is very important to growing businesses is being able to look at reports, but in particular, actionable reports. One of the most frustrating things as a salon or spa is a platform that is underused because of too many overly complex features and irrelevant data in the reports.
Square
Square gives you reporting features once you pay for your membership, but those reporting features are very generic, and they cannot be customized the way that Boulevard can. Basically, like most of what is offered on Square, those functions are generic because Square is generic, for all manner of booking-based industries.
Boulevard
Boulevard offers customizable reporting so you can choose within the platform the exact metrics you want to view. If you are looking at possibly closing your business on Tuesdays, these reports can be customized to reflect the amount of sales you do on Tuesdays versus your staff performance on Tuesdays compared to other days of the week. This gives you actionable insights into how your business is running so that you can improve client retention and revenue growth.
Summing Up
Overall, Boulevard is a comprehensive platform built by industry professionals for spas and salons. It has features that are designed to enhance your client base, optimize your business operations, and manage schedules with things like the Front Desk feature.
Square is a solid scheduling tool, but not much else. It has add-ons that make it possible to get some of what Boulevard offers, but at a cost that doesn’t make it worth it. Plus, many businesses end up spending out of pocket on second and third services to compensate for the gaps in features.
As a salon or spa, Square is great if you are brand new and just need to get free scheduling software, but once you are on your feet, look for something with more industry-specific heft.