Top 3 Salon Software Review | Salon Life vs Schedulicity vs Acuity

Salon Software is a tech solution that helps salon business owners as well as independent beauticians to manage their business operations efficiently and effectively.

This tool automates virtually all the salon industry-related day-to-day tasks such as appointment booking & scheduling, appointment confirmations, staff management, inventory tracking, interactions with potential customers, and marketing. This can be extremely useful, especially during peak times when it becomes extremely difficult to manage salon businesses.

In this article, we have featured 3 of the best salon software to help you manage your salon business.

1.   Salon Life

Salon Life’s passion for the salon industry is not easy to come across with any other app. It is a cloud-based app designed for salon and spa related businesses. This, we believe, is one of Salon Life’s greatest strengths and that is why it is featured first on our list. SalonLife is an amazing tool which saves your valuable time. Moreover, it is client-friendly meaning SalonLife makes sure that their clients are always in the right place at the right time.

This salon appointment booking app comes with an inbuilt calendar that allows the user to create new client bookings, staff breaks, as well as view customers’ dates of appointments, notes, & history.

The app’s features include automated appointment scheduling, client profiles, reporting, employee management, and import & export. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface platform also supports streamlining of operations across multiple accounts/users, unlimited access to all staff members, and integration with business websites & social media platforms.

Pricing:

Starts at $7/month

Free version: Yes

Deployment: Cloud, SaaS, and Web

Special salon Features:

• Client profiles
• Inventory management
• Employee management
• Booth rental management
• Loyalty program
• Multiple locations
• Payroll management
• Point of Sale (POS) processing
• Recurring appointments

Pros

• Specializes in the salon industry
• Intuitive drag and drop interface
• Employee performance dashboard
• A specialized reporting engine that helps you to evaluate the performance of your salon business.

Cons

• There are no such cons with this App.

2.   Shedulicity

Schedulicity, as the name suggests, is an appointment-scheduling tool designed for service professionals & small businesses. With this app, clients can book appointments, classes, and services online.

Schedulicity is a simple and powerful tool because it serves the purpose of providing an authoritative platform to help transactions between small businesses, service-based businesses and their clients.

Unlike Salon Life, this salon app caters to a wide range of professionals including personal trainers, massage therapists, barbers, hairstylists, chiropractors, and many others. It also doesn’t offer the multiple salon locations feature in the free version barber app. Instead, it is listed as a plan for the price of $5.

Pricing:

The starting price is $20/month.

Free version: Yes

Deployment: Cloud, SaaS, Web, & Mobile (iOS)

Special salon Features:

• Client profiles
• Employee management
• Multiple locations
• Recurring appointments

Pros

• Comes with an iOS mobile app

Cons

• Doesn’t come with Point of Sale processing and payroll management for salon businesses
• Lacks a loyalty program
• Lacks inventory management for salons
• Doesn’t feature booth rental management

3.   Acuity

Acuity is a salon appointment booking app that allows clients to book appointments in advance by filling custom forms online. It lets your clients see your availability in real-time and pick a time and date for the appointment. Quite unique, it also allows you to display your business logo and customize everything so that it sounds completely like you.

Same as Schedulicity, the unlimited locations feature is not offered in the free version. It also caters for a diverse range of consultants, and business owners such as freelancers & entrepreneurs.

Pricing:

The starting price is $15/month

Free Version: yes

Deployment: Cloud, SaaS, Web, as well as Android and iOS app.

Special salon features:

• Client profiles
• Multiple locations
• Recurring appointments

Pros

• Comes with both an iOS and Android mobile app

Cons

• No employee and inventory management for salon businesses
• Doesn’t feature a loyalty program
• No payroll management and POS processing
• No Booth rental management

Comparison

Here is a table that summarizes the differences and the similarities between these top salon apps:

Salon Life comes out at the top

When it comes to choosing the best salon app, beauticians typically look for easy-to-use apps with an affordable price range, inventory management, and employee scheduling. A low price point is often a factor and salon stylists need an inexpensive option with all the necessities such as calendar management, while the larger salons need more advanced options such as inventory management and POS processing. From our comparison, it’s pretty obvious that Salon Life is your best bet no matter your salon size because it ticks off all the boxes.

Marketing your beauty salon yourself can be difficult. For this reason, teaming up with a digital marketing agency to help with pay per click management is the quickest way to grow your beauty salon.

Lastly, Schedulicity and Acuity are general business management tools designed for a wide range of business settings. Because they have to cater to a variety of different industries, their salon management features are not completely exhaustive as those of Salon Life. As you may notice, their usability and layout may have some inapplicable and confusing elements not tailored towards a salon owner’s needs.