Running a health or beauty salon involves keeping a number of balls in the air at any given time and, for many, this means spending more time on management and less time with clients. In a world where customer service is more important than ever, a lack of personal service can be disastrous for a salon. Thankfully, help is on hand in the form of the Booksy salon management app.
Booksy is an online scheduling and appointment-making app for health and beauty businesses. It allows salon owners and beauty professionals to easily manage their businesses including booking appointments, taking e-payments, and marketing to potential clients. Launched in 2017, US-based Booksy now has over 13 million customers.
Health and beauty professionals can sign up to Booksy in order to receive one app for their business and one app for their clients. The app allows customers to quickly book appointments at any time of day or night, leaving salon owners free to run their business.
Booksy is a great solution for a wide range of businesses, including:
Booksy has a large number of clients across the globe including Master Barbers, Quarter West, Burning Classic, and House Of Aesthetics.
Getting started with Booksy is beautifully simple - and here’s how it’s done:
You’ll now have access to your shiny new Booksy account and your free trial, after which, if you decide that Booksy is the right fit for you, you’ll be given instructions as to how to create a paid account.
Booksy offers three perfectly pampered pricing packages and, these are as follows:
For this you’ll get:
With the Standard Package, you’ll receive all of the goodies from the Basic Package, plus 500 marketing campaign SMS messages.
Splashing out on the Premium Package will bag you all of the features from the Standard Package with an upgrade to 2000 marketing campaign SMS messages.
Booksy offers a whole suite of features and, these are:
The jewel in the crown of Booksy’s bag of tricks, this feature allows for quick and easy booking and re-booking of appointments 24/7. A simple drag and drop system and an intuitive dashboard includes instant notifications should a client cancel an appointment.
With Booksy, there’s no need to mess about with extra hardware or software as the system integrates seamlessly with your existing tech.
Booksy makes light work of keeping track of your important sales and product inventories with its simple-to-use inventory feature.
A definite Boosky bonus is the suite of personalized marketing tools, including SMS messaging, to help health and beauty professionals reach the right people at the right time. This feature allows salons to create targeted marketing campaigns and to send out personalized, promotional emails.
Booksy makes mobile payments really straightforward and the feature also includes payment history.
This feature lets you keep tabs on your clientele and manage contact and account details.
Booksy includes some great social media integrations including a Facebook / Web Widget.
This feature is perfectly placed to help you keep all of your appointments straight and to send out reminders to clients.
Booksy’s intuitive POS system means that you don’t need to use additional technology to optimize your sales.
Booksy has a strong focus on security and, therefore, should a violation occur, you’ll receive notifications.
Booksy offers reactive customer support by email, phone, and live chat and, support is available in English, Dutch, Polish and Swedish. The customer support staff are extremely friendly and, most importantly, extremely knowledgeable meaning that you’ll get your issue resolved quickly, allowing you to get on with your day.
Booksy is compatible with:
As with any system, Boosky isn’t perfect - but it’s not far off. So, in this section, we’ll take a look at which parts are pretty as a picture and which are pimple-prone:
Price - Booksy really does deliver a lot of features for your folding and, the fact that you won’t need extras and add-ons is an absolute bonus. You’re also able to upgrade your package at any time, should you decide you want a little more oomph.
User-friendly - Systems don’t come much easier to use than Booksy. The intuitive dashboard and user-friendly app are a doddle to use, even if you’re not overly techy.
Marketing - Booksy’s marketing tools really do add value to your business. It also allows you to promote your business and upsell your services really easily. It’s absolutely worth spending a little extra on the Standard or Premium package in order to get your hands on the really useful SMS marketing tools.
Customer support - Booksy’s customer support is really reactive - which is super-important as it helps salons to avoid the risk of lost clients and appointments.
Reliability - As good as Booksy’s customer support is, you shouldn’t need to dip into this too often as this system is incredibly reliable and doesn’t feature some of the irritating bloops and glitches of other systems.
Point of sale - The fact that Booksy delivers a point of sale system which can be used either online or in-person is extremely convenient for salons and adds an extra layer of flexibility.
Payment options - Originally, there was no payment option and, while this is now available, it could be a little more comprehensive to allow more flexibility. While this could be improved, it’s certainly not a deal-breaker.
Inventory control - It is necessary to activate and incorporate inventory control functionality in order to centralize administration for the whole of your salon management.
Identification - This may be a picky one but, it would be great to incorporate some kind of photo-ID into the system to make identifying customers as they arrive a little easier. It would be great to be able to greet a new customer by name as they enter the salon, having seen their photograph on the system.
Absolutely, if Booksy doesn’t float your boat, there are a few good alternatives and, some of these are:
Based in the UK, Bookwhen is an online booking system for businesses and franchisors. It allows for simple and straightforward online appointment making and scheduling. Bookwhen will set you back between £9 and £39 per month, making it a great budget option.
A ticket and event selling solution, Ticketsetup was launched in 2017 and allows businesses to easily sell tickets online.
An all-singing, all-dancing, scheduling software, Flexbooker allows businesses to schedule appointments directly from their websites. Flexbooker costs between $39 and $79 per month.
A full-on suite of business management tools, Workadu is based in London and includes lots of features including appointment scheduling, website building, and more. Workadu prices range from £6.30 to £9.30 per month.
A booking platform suitable for a wide range of businesses, Rezdy allows for quick and easy appointment booking directly from your own website. Rezdy costs between $49 and $249 per month so not the cheapest option out there.
So, now that I’ve laid out all the facts regarding Booksy, what you really want to know is, ‘Is it any good?’ In a word, absolutely. To begin with, you really do get a lot of bang for your buck with this system. While the basic price of £40 may be more expensive than some other systems, this is balanced by the fact that you really shouldn’t need to buy any extras to go with it.
Secondly, Booksy is incredibly easy to set up and use - which I know will be a major bonus for a lot of salon owners who don’t have a handy IT team on call.
One of the best things about this tool is the amount of features you receive as standard. The scheduling, POS, notification and marketing features transform Booksy from a simple scheduling tool to an entire management suite for businesses.
While Booksy certainly isn’t the only scheduling tool out there, it is, for me, hugely superior in price, reliability and flexibility. It's a great way to be efficient and promote your business to help you get to new levels of growth and success.
