Slotora vs Square Appointments
Square Appointments is the strongest free plan among the UK incumbents, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. It is genuinely free for a single location with unlimited staff calendars. The difference is what the free tier does not include — and, if you take card payments, what Square charges to process them. Everything below is from Square's own UK pricing page. If you are in Ireland, read Square's Irish page instead and not ours converted: squareup.com/ie/en/appointments/pricing, read on 19 September 2026, prices Plus at €19 + VAT and Premium at €49 + VAT per location per month — cheaper than the sterling list below — and charges 1.75% + VAT in person on all three plans rather than dropping to 1.6% above Free, with 1.4% + 25c on EEA cards, 2.9% + 25c on UK and non-EEA cards, 2% keyed and 2.5% card-on-file. Which tier holds which feature is the same on both pages; the money is not.
Try Slotora free| Comparison | Slotora | Square Appointments |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription price | £0 | Free for a single location; Plus £29/mo per location; Premium £69/mo per location |
| Staff calendars on the free plan | Unlimited | Unlimited — Square states there is no employee limit |
| Commission on bookings | 0% | 0% — Square takes no booking commission |
| Card processing fees | 0% from us — Stripe's own fee applies, paid to Stripe | 1.75% in person on Free and 1.6% on Plus and Premium, 1.4% + 25p online for UK cards, 2.5% + 25p non-UK, 2.5% keyed |
| No-show and late-cancellation fees | Included | Plus and up (£29/mo per location) |
| Waitlist | Included | Plus and up (£29/mo per location) |
| Processing time — book a client during a colour development | Included | Plus and up (£29/mo per location) |
| Group and class bookings | Included | Plus and up (£29/mo per location) |
| Google Calendar sync | Included free — two-way with Google and iPhone (iCloud); Outlook gets a read-only iCal feed | Plus and up (£29/mo per location) |
| Room, chair and equipment booking | Not on this plan. Slotora does book them — you say how many pedicure chairs or treatment rooms you have and the diary stops offering a time the space cannot take — but it is part of Slotora for busy salons, free there, and this page is written for one pair of hands | Premium (£69/mo per location) — “assigning rooms, chairs, stations and other resources to the services required” |
| Second location | One location per account today | Plus and up, charged per location |
| Booking page, embeddable widget and QR code | Yes | Yes |
| Directory that brings you clients | Free listing in our directory, at 0% | None — Square does not run a consumer marketplace |
| Buy-now-pay-later | Not offered | Clearpay at 6% + 30p |
| A free slot advertised by itself — and the post taken down when it fills | Yes, free. The freed time goes to your Facebook Page with a link that books that exact slot, and the post is deleted once somebody takes it. Instagram gets the same post with your logo; deleting an Instagram post needs a Meta permission we have not been granted yet, so the booking page tells anyone arriving late that the time has gone. | Their pricing page names stock counts and low-stock alerts; advertising a freed slot and withdrawing the post is not among them |
| Posting to your own Facebook Page and Instagram from inside the system | Yes, free — live since 22 August 2026 | Instagram, Facebook and Google integrations with a “Book Now” button are named — the booking entry point, not publishing posts to your feed |
Their pricing checked on their own site, 2026-09-19. squareup.com
The honest caveat
Square deserves the credit here: its free plan is real, it is not a trial, and it comes with a hardware ecosystem and a point of sale no small platform can match. If your till is already a Square till, keeping the diary beside it is a genuine reason to choose them. Rooms, chairs and equipment used to be the thing they did and we did not; we book those now, and free — but in Slotora for busy salons rather than on this plan, where Square puts them on Premium at £69 a month per location. What Square still does that we do not is a second location on one account: one Slotora account is one address, and a salon with two shops keeps two of them. Where the comparison turns is the rest of their own table: no-show fees, the waitlist, processing time and group classes all start at £29 a month per location. Slotora is for the nail tech who needs those four from the first week and has no £29 a month to find.
Is there a team on your floor?
If several people work in your salon, and somebody else keeps the day running while you are with a client, that is a different job from one diary — and there is a Slotora written for it.
See Slotora for busy salons