The Fresha alternative with no monthly fee and no commission
You pay Fresha every month, and then a cut of what each new client from its marketplace spends on her first visit — with a floor under it, so a brow tint and a balayage are not charged the same way. This page works out what that adds up to over a year using Fresha's own published rates, and says plainly where Fresha is still the better buy.
What Fresha charges today: £14.95 a month on the Independent plan, or £9.95 per bookable team member on Team — and then 20% of what a new marketplace client spends on her first visit, never less than £4 per client. Their pricing page, read on .
Who is asking
- 358 salons are registered on Slotora across the United Kingdom, Hungary, Romania and Poland.
- No monthly fee and no commission on your bookings. The things you can choose to pay for are text credit, Nita the AI assistant and the AI phone receptionist.
- Card payments land in your own Stripe account. We take nothing out of them; Stripe's own processing fee is paid to Stripe.
Counted on . We quote no star ratings and no testimonials on this page, because we have none we could source.
What Fresha's fees cost you in a year
Move the three sliders. The arithmetic is shown underneath so you can check it against your own invoices — and it counts only the clients Fresha's marketplace introduced, because those are the only ones it charges that fee on.
Clients who found you on Fresha's marketplace, not those who used your own booking link.
The average bill for a first visit, before any repeat bookings.
What Fresha prices the subscription on. One person is the Independent plan.
Fresha, over a year
£1,043.40
£179.40 subscription + £864 new-client fees
Slotora, over the same year
£0
Slotora charges nothing a month and takes nothing from a booking, whoever the client is and however she found you. Card payments run through your own Stripe account, and Stripe's own processing fee is paid to Stripe.
The arithmetic
- One bookable person, so the Independent plan: £14.95 a month × 12 = £179.40.
- 20% of £45 = £9 on that first visit, the floor of £4 not reached.
- £9 × 8 marketplace clients a month × 12 = £864.
- £179.40 + £864 = £1,043.40 over a year.
Counted once per new client, as Fresha charges it: their repeat visits are not in this total, and neither are card-processing fees, text messages or hardware on either side.
Or read it off: a year of Fresha at four salon sizes
| New marketplace clients a month | First visit | Team | Fresha, a year | Slotora |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | £35 | 1 | £515.40 | £0 |
| 8 | £45 | 1 | £1,043.40 | £0 |
| 12 | £60 | 2 | £1,966.80 | £0 |
| 20 | £80 | 4 | £4,317.60 | £0 |
Fresha prices by the country you are in, and serves whatever your connection suggests. Every figure here is the British list, in pounds, read from Fresha's own pricing page on the date printed beside the table. If you are outside the UK, check what it quotes you.
What happens to the bookings you already have
The honest answer, before the steps: the client book, your services and your photos come across as files. The appointments already sitting in your Fresha diary do not — we have no importer that reads a diary out of another system. Here is what that means in practice.
Your client list comes across as a spreadsheet
In Fresha: Clients, then the ... menu, then Export client list. In Slotora the migration centre reads .xlsx, .xls or .csv, guesses which column is which from your headers, and shows you the matches to correct before anything is written. Names, emails, phone numbers, notes, tags and addresses, up to 2,000 rows a file. How the import works
Your services and prices come across the same way
The same wizard, on its own tab: service name, price, duration and category. Services are matched by name, so running the file again corrects prices rather than making a second copy of your menu. Gallery photos have a tab of their own — pick them off your phone, thirty at a time.
The appointments already booked do not import — so run the two diaries side by side
Slotora has no importer for them, and saying so here is better than you finding out on the evening you switch. What salons do instead: stop taking NEW bookings on the old system, leave its diary open until the last appointment in it has happened, and put the coming weeks into Slotora by hand. A UK wellness studio entered 27 appointments into its diary on its first day. If the salon's hours already live in Apple Calendar or another CalDAV calendar, connect it and whatever is in there shows up in your Slotora diary as busy time, so the same hour cannot be booked twice. Calendar sync
And you can take it all back out whenever you like
Clients, bookings, services or the lot, as a file, from a button in the same migration centre. No ticket, no notice period, no request to support — the same as we would want from anyone we were leaving.
Slotora and Fresha, point by point
Fresha is the biggest name in salon software, and its marketplace is a real source of new clients rather than a line in a brochure. The question is what you pay for it. Every figure below comes from Fresha's own pricing page.
Scroll the table sideways to see both columns.
| Comparison | Slotora | Fresha |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription price | £0 | £14.95/mo (Independent, one calendar) or £9.95 per bookable team member/mo (Team) |
| Commission on new marketplace clients | 0% | 20% one-time fee on their first visit, minimum £4 per client |
| Commission on returning clients | 0% | 0% — Fresha charges nothing on repeat bookings |
| Bookings from your own link, Instagram, Facebook and Google | Free | Free |
| Card processing fees | 0% from us — Stripe's own fee applies, paid to Stripe | 1.40% + £0.25 online, 1.19% + £0.20 in person, plus £0.07 per Tap to Pay authorisation |
| Card terminal hardware | None to buy — a QR code at the counter takes Apple Pay, Google Pay or card | From £99 per device |
| Automated text and WhatsApp reminders | Text: pay-as-you-go credit, per-market price published. WhatsApp: built, waiting on Meta's approval of our app. Email reminders unlimited and free | 20 free a month (per team member on Team), then £0.06 per text, £0.05–£0.10 per WhatsApp |
| Marketing emails | Included | 50 free a month, then £0.02 each |
| AI assistant that answers calls and messages | Nita from £9.99/mo; AI phone receptionist £49.99 per 100 minutes | AI Concierge £79.95 per location/mo, 200 minutes included, then £0.48 per minute |
| Waitlists | Yes | Yes |
| Consultation forms | Yes | Yes |
| Gift cards, packages and memberships | Yes | Yes |
| Group bookings, processing time, patch tests | Yes | Yes |
| Team size the price depends on | None — unlimited team members at £0 | Every bookable team member; over 20, custom rates on request |
| 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 feature pages name marketing tools, an AI Concierge and stock taking; 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 | Marketing tools and marketplace listing are named; publishing to your own Facebook Page or Instagram feed is not |
Fresha’s figures were read on their own pricing page on — www.fresha.com. Prices move; check theirs before you decide.
The full Slotora vs Fresha comparison · The other UK alternatives, weighed · What Slotora costs
Where Fresha is the better choice
Fresha is the better choice if the marketplace is the point. Twenty-five million consumers browse it, and a 20% one-time fee on a client who then rebooks with you at 0% on every visit after that is a defensible price for an introduction you did not have to make. Their product is also wider than ours in places: a retail checkout for shelf goods, an online product store, quotes and estimates, wages and pay runs, and payroll-grade team reporting are all things Slotora does not do. If you want one system for a multi-chair salon's whole back office, look at Fresha properly before you look at us.
Questions we get asked
What does Fresha actually charge?
£14.95 a month on the Independent plan, or £9.95 per bookable team member on Team — and then 20% of what a new marketplace client spends on her first visit, never less than £4 per client. Repeat visits by that client are charged nothing. Read on their own pricing page on 13 August 2026. Fresha prices by the country you are in, and serves whatever your connection suggests. Every figure here is the British list, in pounds, read from Fresha's own pricing page on the date printed beside the table. If you are outside the UK, check what it quotes you.
Is Slotora actually free, or is there a catch further down?
There is no monthly fee and no commission on a booking, whoever the client is. Three things are paid and you choose whether to have any of them: text-message credit, bought in packs; Nita, the AI assistant, as a monthly subscription; and the AI phone receptionist, as prepaid minute packs. Card payments go through your own Stripe account — we take no cut of them, and Stripe's own processing fee is paid to Stripe.
Do I lose the marketplace?
Slotora has its own directory of salons, and it is smaller than Fresha's marketplace — they have been building theirs for years and we have not. If the marketplace is where most of your new clients come from, that is a real reason to weigh Fresha seriously, and the section above says so properly.
Can I try it without moving everything first?
Yes. Register, add a few services and your opening hours, and you have a booking page you can put on Instagram the same afternoon. Nothing about that requires you to close your Fresha account, and running both for a few weeks is the sensible way to do this.
Where did these Fresha numbers come from?
Fresha's own public pricing page, read on the date printed beside the table, with the link next to it. They change theirs when they like, so check the date before you rely on it — and if it has gone stale, the number to trust is the one on their page, not ours.
Take your first booking this afternoon
Register, add your services and your opening hours, and your booking page works. No card, no contract, no notice period — and you can keep Fresha running while you try it.