Fresha built its whole brand on being free booking software. It dropped its free plan in 2025, and even when it was free, the model was funded by a 20% commission on new clients from its own marketplace. If that sounds familiar, it should. Mindbody charges a similar one-time fee, capped at $30, on new clients its app delivers.
Fresha's subscription runs $14.95 per team member per month (or $19.95/month solo), plus card processing of 2.29-3.30% + $0.20 per transaction, plus a 20% commission (minimum $6) on the first booking from any new client acquired through Fresha's own marketplace. Boulevard's salon Essentials plan runs $159/month for up to 5 providers and its medspa plans start at $199/month, with no consumer marketplace and no commission line at all. New-client acquisition is on you, not a per-booking toll to Fresha.
Fresha's Team plan costs $14.95 per team member per month, or $74.75/month for 5 providers, and the solo Individual plan costs $19.95/month. Fresha adds 2.29% + $0.20 in-person processing and a 20% commission (minimum $6) on each new marketplace client's first booking. Boulevard's salon plans cost $159 to $455/month per location at regular prices, plus $65/month for forms on Essentials or Premier, with no marketplace commission.
Fresha and Mindbody charge close to the same fee. Mindbody takes 20% of a new client's first purchase when its app delivers that client, capped at $30. Fresha takes 20%, minimum $6, on a new client's first marketplace booking, with a cap on higher-value services it doesn't publish. Both make repeat visits commission-free. An owner leaving Mindbody to escape that fee will find the same fee on Fresha.
Grove exists mostly for people leaving Mindbody, and the marketplace fee comes up often. Mindbody's version is narrower than many owners assume: 20% of a new client's first purchase, capped at $30, and only when its app delivered a client you wouldn't otherwise have had. Existing clients and rebookings through the app are commission-free. We wrote up the full math on that here.
Fresha runs the same idea. It takes 20% on a new client's first marketplace booking, then goes commission-free on their repeat visits, as Mindbody does. The differences sit at the edges: Fresha charges at least $6 per new client and doesn't publish its cap on high-value services, while Mindbody's fee tops out at $30. The underlying logic is the same: a consumer marketplace sits between you and a new client, and takes a cut for the introduction. If avoiding that mechanic is why you're evaluating alternatives in the first place, Fresha is not an exit from it.
Worth saying plainly: the attribution question that generates Mindbody complaints shows up on Fresha too. Reddit threads and salon Facebook groups describe real disputes over whether a given booking should have counted as "new": clients who'd been to the business before through a channel Fresha's system didn't recognize, charged the commission anyway. Which client counts as new is decided by Fresha's system, not by you.
Fresha holds 4.8/5 on Capterra across 1,443 reviews and 4.2/5 on G2 from 3 reviews, too few to judge. Owners rate the day-to-day software well. Since the subscription became mandatory in 2025, Reddit threads call the pricing "greedy" and "deceptively expensive." Reviewers in medical aesthetics flag missing structured treatment charting and consent workflows for prescription-only treatments.
4.8/5 on Capterra across 1,443 reviews, a real, high-volume number that reflects genuine day-to-day satisfaction. On G2, Fresha sits at 4.2/5 from just 3 reviews, which is too small a sample to draw a conclusion from either way.
Before the subscription became mandatory, the recurring sentiment was "too good to be true": free software funded by commission. After, the words that repeat across threads are "greedy" and "deceptively expensive," describing owners who felt cornered into per-staff fees or losing marketplace visibility.
"It seems too good to be true" was the old line. Now it's an owner describing being cornered into new per-staff fees or losing calendar access and marketplace visibility.Source: Reddit, r/Hairstylist / r/EstheticianReddit threads, 2025-2026
Fresha markets HIPAA-compliant client records and SOAP notes, and doesn't publish whether it signs a BAA. Reviewers evaluating it for medical aesthetics flag the lack of structured treatment charting, consent workflows for prescription-only treatments, and ready-made clinical templates, the records a regulated practice gets audited on.
Fresha starts at $14.95 per staff member per month and charges a 20% first-booking marketplace commission. Boulevard's salon plans start at $159/month per location for up to 5 providers, with no commission. Both include memberships, packages, gift cards, and multi-location support. Boulevard's medspa plans start at $199/month with charting and photo markup included; Fresha markets HIPAA-compliant records and SOAP notes. Fresha offers a 7-day trial, Boulevard none.
| Feature area | Fresha | Boulevard |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $14.95/staff/mo (Team) or $19.95/mo solo | $159/mo/location (up to 5 providers); medspa plans from $199/mo |
| Payment processing | ~ 2.29%–3.30% + $0.20, varies by method | ~ Starting at 2.65%; 1% with Boulevard Offset (client pays a 3% card fee) |
| New-client marketplace commission | ✗ 20% of first booking (min $6), attribution disputes reported | ✓ None (no consumer marketplace) |
| HIPAA charting / EMR | ~ Markets HIPAA-compliant records and SOAP notes; BAA not published | ✓ Included on every medspa (Aesthetics) plan, from $199/mo |
| Memberships, packages, gift cards | ✓ Included | ✓ Included, active retention reporting |
| Multi-location | ✓ Supported | ✓ Per-location pricing |
| Open API / integrations | ✗ Zapier yes, but no public merchant API (read-only BI connector only) | ~ Zapier yes, API Enterprise-only |
| Free trial | ~ 7 days (no longer free-forever) | ✗ Not offered |
| G2 rating | 4.2 (3 reviews, very small sample) | 4.4 (110 reviews) |
| Capterra rating | 4.8 (1,443 reviews) | 4.6 (375 reviews) |
On a $150 service booked by a new client through Fresha's marketplace, Fresha takes $30 in commission and $3.64 in card processing (2.29% + $0.20), so the business keeps $116.36, or 77.6%. When the same client books a second visit directly, the commission is $0 and the business keeps $146.36, or 97.6%.
That 20-point swing between visit one and visit two is the entire pitch for the model, and it's fair for a client the marketplace found you. The trouble is the disputed cases: clients Fresha's system logs as "new" who were, in the owner's own account, referrals or repeat business through a channel the platform didn't recognize.
Fresha is stronger when its marketplace brings clients you would not otherwise get, your book is mostly repeat clients you can import, and you want the lowest subscription at $14.95 per team member. Boulevard is stronger when you are leaving Mindbody over marketplace commission, need clinical charting built into the plan, or want a flat monthly cost that does not move with new-client volume.
The 20% commission only hits a client's first visit. If the marketplace is bringing you people you wouldn't otherwise get, that's a real acquisition cost, not a pure tax.
Loyalty and repeat visits are commission-free: the model rewards businesses with an established client list, provided you import it correctly before going live.
$14.95 per team member is cheap next to Boulevard's per-location pricing, if you're comfortable modeling the commission and processing fees separately.
Boulevard doesn't run a consumer marketplace at all. There's no version of this fee to model, dispute, or budget around, for better and worse, since you also lose whatever discovery a marketplace was providing.
Boulevard's medspa (Aesthetics) plans include forms and charting, photo markup, and provider sign-off on every tier, the specific gap reviewers flag in Fresha for regulated aesthetic work.
Boulevard's cost doesn't move with how many new clients you bring in this month. Fresha's does, by design.
Operators who ran the numbers found four caveats. Fresha's free era was funded by the 20% new-client commission, and the 2025 subscription was added on top. Fresha does not publish its commission cap for high-value services. Boulevard has no free trial and starts at $159/month. Leaving Fresha's marketplace removes its client discovery along with its fee.
Even during the free-forever era, Fresha's business model relied on the 20% new-client fee and card processing. The 2025 subscription was additive, not a replacement for the commission.
Fresha's help center confirms a maximum exists for higher-value bookings but doesn't state the dollar figure. Worth asking support directly if you run $300+ treatments before assuming the math scales linearly.
Not a clean win for Boulevard. You're committing to $159+/month with no risk-free window, which is a real hurdle next to Fresha's 7-day trial.
Fresha's consumer app is a genuine acquisition channel for some businesses. Boulevard's flat pricing removes the commission and the discovery in the same move. That tradeoff doesn't favor everyone.
Run five checks before committing to Fresha or Boulevard: pull 90 days of new versus repeat bookings, import your full client list before enabling Fresha's marketplace, get Fresha's commission cap for high-value services in writing, watch a live demo of each platform's charting if you run medical aesthetics, and price both at your real provider count.
You need this number regardless of which platform you land on. It's the difference between the 20% commission being a rounding error and being a real monthly cost.
Fresha's own guidance is explicit about this. It's the single fastest way owners avoid being charged commission on clients they already had.
It exists, per their help center, but the number isn't published. Get it before you list a $300+ treatment.
Don't take "HIPAA-compliant" at face value on either platform. Ask to see structured treatment notes and consent workflows for prescription treatments, not just intake forms.
Fresha's per-seat pricing and Boulevard's per-location pricing scale differently. The gap between them narrows or widens fast depending on team size.
Fresha fits a business that values marketplace discovery now, accepts per-transaction costs, has imported its client list, and needs only compliant records and SOAP notes. Boulevard fits a business leaving the marketplace-commission model, needing structured treatment charting, preferring a flat monthly budget, and building its own client acquisition channels.
Not sure which list you're actually in? The free assessment runs the numbers on your specific setup in about two minutes.
Owners ask about Fresha's price, its new-client fee, medspa charting, and how it compares to Mindbody. Fresha is no longer free and has charged a subscription since 2025. Its 20% fee (minimum $6) applies to a new marketplace client's first booking. It markets HIPAA-compliant records and SOAP notes, without structured treatment charting.
No, not anymore. Fresha spent years marketing itself as completely free booking software, funded by commission and card processing. In 2025 it made a monthly subscription effectively mandatory: $19.95/month solo, or $14.95 per team member per month on the Team plan. On top of that, Fresha charges card processing of 2.29-3.30% plus $0.20 per transaction, and a 20% commission (minimum $6) on the first booking from any new client who finds you through its marketplace.
When a client who has never booked with you before finds your business on the Fresha marketplace and books, Fresha takes 20% of that first appointment's value, with a $6 minimum. There's an upper cap on higher-value services, though Fresha's help center doesn't publish the exact ceiling. Repeat visits and direct bookings are commission-free, but only if Fresha's system correctly identifies the client as one you already had, which is the source of a real number of billing disputes reported on Reddit and in salon Facebook groups.
Partially. Fresha's medspa pages market HIPAA-compliant client records and SOAP notes, but Fresha doesn't publish whether it signs a BAA, so confirm that directly. Reviewers comparing it to purpose-built medical spa platforms flag missing structured treatment charting, consent workflows for prescription-only treatments, and ready-made clinical templates. Boulevard's medspa (Aesthetics) plans start at $199/month and include HIPAA-compliant forms, charting, and photo markup on every tier.
Structurally, they're close cousins. Mindbody takes 20% of a new client's first purchase when its consumer app delivers that client, capped at $30, and existing clients and rebookings are commission-free. Fresha's 20% (minimum $6) also applies only to a new client's first marketplace booking, with a cap on high-value services that Fresha doesn't publish. It's the same mechanic, not a clean break from it. Worth knowing before you assume switching solves the problem.
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