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Booksy offers marketplace discovery but charges per team member and takes a cut of each new client it sends you. Shopolo gives you appointment booking you own outright, free, with no per-staff fee and no marketplace cut \u2014 two staff accounts on the free core, unlimited on the Plus addon, with gift cards free core and loyalty on the Plus addon.
Booksy pricing and Boost fees from Booksy's own pages. On Shopolo, core has no monthly fee and a flat 1.9% platform fee applies to payments you process. Subject to change.
Booksy lists your salon on their consumer app, which is genuinely useful for being found by new clients. The trade-off: those clients belong to the Booksy platform. Booksy can recommend competitors in the same search results, and if you ever leave Booksy, you lose the review history and client contacts built inside their system. Shopolo gives you full ownership of every client relationship from day one.
Booksy is focused on the appointment flow and marketplace. There's no built-in way to sell gift cards or run a loyalty program for repeat clients. For salons where gift cards represent a significant revenue stream around holidays, and where a 'visit 10 times, get one free' stamp card is a simple client retention tool, the gap matters. On Shopolo, gift cards are free core beside every booking, and loyalty stamp cards are the Plus addon.
To appear higher in Booksy's marketplace search, salons pay for Booksy Boost — an additional marketing spend on top of the monthly fee. If you don't pay Boost, you compete for organic placement against salons that do. Shopolo has no marketplace, so there is no placement to buy and nothing to outbid: the booking, the gift cards and the storefront are free core, and the only paid upgrade is the Plus addon for loyalty and email.
Booksy is a good fit if you're a newer salon or stylist who genuinely needs marketplace discovery to build your client base — the Booksy app puts you in front of people searching for salons locally. Once your calendar is full from regular clients, the marketplace value decreases significantly relative to its cost. For established salons with loyal clients who book via Instagram, Google or word of mouth, Shopolo's direct model costs nothing for the booking itself, with loyalty on the Plus addon if you want it.
Booksy is $29.99/month for the business plus $20/month for each additional team member, and its Boost option takes 30% of a new client's first visit, capped at $100. Appointment booking is free core on Shopolo with no per-staff fee and no marketplace cut; loyalty and email are the Plus addon.
In salon and spa booking, the main alternatives are Vagaro, Fresha, Mindbody, Acuity, and Square Appointments. Shopolo competes differently from most of them: it adds gift cards and loyalty stamps to the booking flow instead of focusing on booking alone.
No, and that's deliberate. Booksy's marketplace helps new salons get discovered by local searchers, but it also keeps client data inside Booksy's platform and charges Boost fees for better placement. Shopolo has no marketplace and no upsell — your client list, reviews, and history stay yours from the first booking.
No hardware. No setup fees. Bookings, gift cards, ordering and your storefront — live in under 10 minutes.
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