Who owns the client? What a first-visit commission actually buys

Three of the biggest booking platforms in the UK charge a commission on a new client's first visit and nothing at all on every visit after it. Fresha takes 20%, with a £4 minimum. Booksy's Boost takes 30%, minimum £5 plus VAT, and only if you switch it on. Treatwell takes 35% plus VAT. All three then charge 0% on repeat bookings.

That shape is not an accident, and it is worth reading it the way they wrote it: they are not selling you software. They are selling you an introduction, once, and pricing it as a share of what the introduction is worth. Everything else in the product is what makes the introduction stick.

The arithmetic on a £60 first visit

A £60 cut and finish, booked by somebody who found you on the marketplace: Fresha takes £12, Booksy Boost £18, Treatwell £21 plus VAT. If she comes back four more times that year, the commission works out at 4%, 6% and 7% of what she spent — genuinely cheap client acquisition. If she never comes back, you worked an hour for £39 to £48 and paid the rest for a name you already have.

So the number that decides whether marketplace commission is cheap or expensive is not on anybody's pricing page. It is your rebooking rate, and most salons do not know it. If you take one thing from this article, take that: count how many of your first-time clients came back within ninety days. Everything below depends on that number, and so does every advert you have ever bought.

Where it stops being an introduction

A one-off fee for a genuinely new client is a fair trade. The question is what happens on visit two, and this is where the platforms differ more than their percentages suggest. If your regulars rebook inside the marketplace app, then the platform — not you — owns the relationship, the reminder and the reason she opens her phone. You are renting an audience you already had.

Treatwell states the position most plainly of the three: its own pages say it does not sync with any other existing management system, and it does not publish a subscription price at all — both plans say "start for free", with no monthly figure. That is a coherent model, and it is one you should choose deliberately rather than drift into, because it means the client list and the diary live there.

What the no-commission systems cost instead

The alternative model is honest and unglamorous: you pay every month whether or not anybody new walks in. Timely is £22 to £39 per bookable staff member per month with no new-client commission at all — £66 to £117 a month for a three-person team. Booksy without Boost is £40 a month plus £5 per extra team member, everything included, at 0%. Fresha is £14.95 solo or £9.95 per bookable team member, with the marketplace fee only on clients the marketplace introduces.

Square Appointments is the one with a real free plan for a single location, including unlimited staff calendars — but no-show fees, waitlists and processing time sit on Plus at £29 a month per location, and for a salon those three are not extras.

Then there are the fees underneath the fees

Card processing is where a subscription-free product makes its money, and the rates are all published: Fresha 1.40% + 25p online and 1.19% + 20p in person, plus 7p per Tap to Pay authorisation; Booksy 1.29% + 20p + VAT on mobile and 0.99% + 20p + VAT for Tap to Pay, with fast payout at 1.5%; Timely 1.59% + 5p in person and 1.85% + 30p online; Square 1.75% in person on the free plan, dropping to 1.6% on Plus. Treatwell charges 2.5% plus VAT on online prepayments.

Texts, too. Fresha includes 20 free a month then charges 6p per text; Booksy includes 500 SMS marketing a month then 5p, and never charges for confirmations or reminders; Timely includes 100 to 300 per staff member depending on plan, then 9p. On a busy diary the reminder bill is not a rounding error.

The four questions worth asking before you sign

Where we sit, and what we do not have

Slotora is £0 a month, 0% commission, unlimited team members — the third stylist does not change the bill, because there is no bill. What we do not have is a marketplace the size of Fresha's or Treatwell's, and we will not pretend otherwise: we will not bring you a client who has never heard of you. We give you the booking page, the diary, the client records, the reminders and the deposits — the part that decides whether the client you already paid for comes back. Fresha and Slotora, feature by feature · All the UK comparisons · Open a free account

The sensible answer is often not either-or. If a marketplace genuinely brings you strangers, it is a marketing channel and should be budgeted as one, with a cost per client and a rebooking rate beside it. But then it is worth having somewhere of your own for the regulars to rebook, so the commission only ever applies to the people who really are new.