Fresha vs SimplyBook.me
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentFresha compared with SimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is a highly configurable booking system sold on a booking-count basis with a modular feature catalogue, and it works across far more industries than beauty and wellness. It has no consumer marketplace and no real POS depth. Fresha is narrower but far more complete inside its vertical. Choose SimplyBook.me for an unusual booking workflow; choose Fresha for a salon or spa that also needs a till.
Choose Fresha if
Salons, spas, barbershops, nail bars, and wellness clinics that want a full operating system for the business and are actively trying to fill empty appointment slots with new clients from a consumer marketplace.
Choose SimplyBook.me if
Consumer-facing service businesses that need to be discoverable (Reserve with Google, Instagram, Facebook, a real booking website) and that want to assemble exactly the commerce features they use, at a booking volume that fits inside a plan allowance.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fresha | SimplyBook.me |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Scheduling | Scheduling |
| Starting price | $19.95 per month (Independent, one bookable calendar) (free plan available) | €0 (Free), then €11.90 per month billed annually (Basic) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Per bookable calendar or per bookable team member subscription, plus a one-off percentage commission on new clients acquired through the Fresha consumer marketplace, plus published card processing rates. Priced per market, so local currency figures vary. | Freemium subscription metered on two axes: bookings included per month and how many optional custom features can be active at once, with providers also capped per tier. SMS, WhatsApp, AI voice, extra bookings, and a custom domain are sold separately. |
| Free plan | None. Fresha retired its long-running free subscription model in 2025 and now requires a paid plan. | 50 bookings a month, one service provider, and one custom feature, on the core booking system with a booking website and calendar sync. |
| Free trial | 7 days | 14 days with access to most premium features and 50 bookings, no credit card required |
| Best for | Salons, spas, barbershops, nail bars, and wellness clinics that want a full operating system for the business and are actively trying to fill empty appointment slots with new clients from a consumer marketplace. | Consumer-facing service businesses that need to be discoverable (Reserve with Google, Instagram, Facebook, a real booking website) and that want to assemble exactly the commerce features they use, at a booking volume that fits inside a plan allowance. |
| Setup time | One to three days for a small salon: service menu, staff, hours, and client import are the bulk of it. Payments onboarding adds identity and bank verification, and a marketplace profile worth publishing needs photos and copy, which takes an afternoon on its own. | Half a day for a basic setup, and realistically a week for a business using the commerce features properly. The extra time is spent choosing custom features against your plan allowance and configuring the booking website, not fighting the software. |
| Learning curve | Low to moderate. The calendar and checkout are approachable for staff with no software background. Owners need time on the reporting, memberships, and marketing automation, which are where the value beyond a basic diary sits. | The steepest in this dossier. The custom feature model is powerful and unfamiliar, the settings surface is large, and the interaction between memberships, packages, coupons, and services rewards reading the documentation rather than guessing. |
| Platforms | Web dashboard, iOS and Android partner app, iOS and Android consumer marketplace app, Hosted booking page and website embeds | Web app, Generated booking website with CMS, iframe, button, and contact widgets, WordPress and Joomla plugins, Reserve with Google, Facebook, and Instagram booking, Mobile apps |
| Compliance | PCI DSS for payments, GDPR, UK and EU data protection obligations as a London-headquartered operator | GDPR, PCI handled through the connected payment processor |
| Founded | 2015 | 2011 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom | Cyprus, with offices in Ukraine and Iceland |
| Ownership | Venture-backed and private-equity-backed | Privately held, operated by Notando Iceland Ltd |
Strengths and limitations
Fresha
Strengths
- The consumer marketplace is a genuine demand channel rather than a directory, and no flat-fee competitor offers an equivalent.
- The commission is charged once per new client rather than on every booking, so a marketplace client who becomes a regular is acquired very cheaply.
- Commerce depth is strong for the price: memberships, prepaid packages, gift cards, inventory, and stock control are native rather than add-ons.
- Team pricing at $14.95 per bookable member is competitive, and cheaper per head than the solo plan.
Limitations
- The marketplace lists your competitors alongside you and encourages clients to think of Fresha as the brand they book with, which is a strategic cost as well as a financial one.
- The 20 percent new client fee with a $6 minimum bites hardest on low-priced services, where the commission can be a large share of the ticket.
- The free plan is gone, so the reason many businesses originally chose Fresha no longer exists, and the 2025 change damaged trust with part of the installed base.
- The economics assume Fresha Payments; using an outside processor undercuts deposits, no-show fees, and much of the automation.
SimplyBook.me
Strengths
- Reserve with Google, Facebook, and Instagram booking put live availability where consumers actually search, which no other product in this dossier matches.
- The product generates a full booking website with a small CMS, custom pages, reviews, and a directory listing rather than a single booking page.
- The custom feature catalogue is the widest in the category, covering memberships, packages, coupons and gift cards, tickets, add-ons, resources, classes, multiple locations, and client login.
- A permanently free plan at 50 bookings a month rather than a one-week trial, which is a far more honest evaluation path than Acuity offers.
Limitations
- Two independent meters (bookings per month and active custom features) make the pricing hard to predict and hard to compare against flat-rate competitors.
- Booking overages at $4 per 100 mean the bill rises with success, which is the opposite structure from Acuity and Setmore's unlimited-appointment plans.
- SMS, WhatsApp, and AI voice are credit packs at $8 per 100, so no-show reduction carries an explicit and ongoing running cost.
- API access starts at the €49.90 Premium tier and the High Load API is Enterprise-only, making this an expensive developer platform relative to Setmore or Cal.com.
Pricing compared
Fresha
Per bookable calendar or per bookable team member subscription, plus a one-off percentage commission on new clients acquired through the Fresha consumer marketplace, plus published card processing rates. Priced per market, so local currency figures vary.
- Independent$19.95
- Team$14.95
- EnterpriseCustom
As pure software, Fresha at $14.95 to $19.95 a calendar is fair, roughly in line with Vagaro and cheaper than Booksy per head, and the commerce layer (memberships, packages, gift cards, stock) is deeper than Square's. The real question is the marketplace. If you take 20 new marketplace clients a month at an average $70 first visit, you are paying about $280 in commission, which is a lot next to a $49 flat fee at Square, and a bargain if those clients rebook. The commission is a customer acquisition cost, not a software cost, and it should be judged against what you would otherwise spend on local ads. A full book makes Fresha expensive; an empty Tuesday makes it cheap.
SimplyBook.me
Freemium subscription metered on two axes: bookings included per month and how many optional custom features can be active at once, with providers also capped per tier. SMS, WhatsApp, AI voice, extra bookings, and a custom domain are sold separately.
- Free€0
- Basic€11.90
- Standard€24.90
- Premium€49.90
- EnterpriseCustom quote
The modular model is either excellent or exasperating depending on your feature list. If the three things your business needs happen to be three custom features, Basic at €11.90 is a bargain and undercuts Acuity's entry tier while doing more. If you need memberships, packages, coupons, classes, intake forms, and multiple locations together, you are on Standard at €24.90, which is roughly Acuity Standard's price with a booking cap attached but with far better discovery through Reserve with Google and social booking. The genuine weak spot is metered communications and metered volume: SMS credits and $4-per-100 overage bookings mean the bill moves with success, and a business doing 800 bookings a month is paying to grow. Buy it for reach and configurability, not for predictability.
Editorial verdict on each
Fresha
Fresha is two purchases wearing one price tag: competent, commerce-heavy salon software, and a marketplace that will introduce you to strangers for 20 percent of their first visit. Judged as software it is good value, with memberships, packages, inventory, and multi-location included at $14.95 per bookable team member and card rates below Square's. Judged as an acquisition channel, the commission is either the cheapest local marketing you will ever buy or a pointless tax, and which one it is depends entirely on whether your Tuesdays are empty. Buy it if you are growing and need demand. Do not buy it if you are full, have a waiting list, and would resent a platform standing between you and your clients, in which case Square Appointments costs nothing and Trafft never takes a cut. The 2025 removal of the free plan is worth remembering as evidence of how the commercial terms can change under you.
Read the full Fresha profileSimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is the most capable and least predictable product in this category. Nothing else here puts live availability into Google Search results, Instagram, and Facebook simultaneously while also generating a full booking website with a CMS, and nothing else offers memberships, packages, gift cards, tickets, resources, and AI voice booking from the same catalogue. The price of that reach is complexity and metering. You are constrained on two independent axes, bookings per month and active custom features, with $4-per-100 overages and $8-per-100 SMS credits on top, which means the bill rises as the business succeeds. Buy it if discovery is your hardest problem and you are willing to spend a week learning the configuration model. If you want unlimited appointments and a bill that never moves, Acuity is the calmer purchase, and if you simply want the fundamentals for almost nothing, Setmore is the cheaper one.
Read the full SimplyBook.me profileFresha profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; SimplyBook.me last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.