Bowled over by this system after 23 yrs of pencil & paper bookings. Glad I made the leap to Phorest

Professionalism and accuracy along with lots of feature just starting to enjoy.

Pros

The speed I can make bookings and changes. Clear, straight forward screens, easily understandable and visible. Great marketing features which I know will bring big changes to our salon. Great staff reports showing clear results of sales, targets and utilisation - a real help for one-to-ones. Appointment reminders and email marketing are a great feature which I am enjoing learning to use. Can wait for all the positive changes Phorest will bring our salon.

Cons

One or two niggly things on the screen but all about personal preference. I'd like a time scale on both sides of the page, and the hours to be shown in bold with the quarter past half past and quarter to in normal size. When I make a few selections of treatments for a client and she changes her mind the timings don't automatically bunch together - for example if the client selected an hour treatment followed by a half hour treatment the system would say book 3pm for the first and 4 pm for the second, but if the client then changed her mind with the first treatment and changed it to a half hour treatment the system keeps 3pm for the first appointment but leaves the second appointment at 4pm whereas it should automatically shift it up to 3.30pm. The only other thing we'd like is a page down button on the key board - out laptop isn't touch screen and the mouse is only a pad - it is difficult to slid up and down the page while holding a phone in one hand!

Great Software, Great Support but could be improved

The automation and easy of management saved our business 10 to 30 hours a month, its an absolute dream but i just wish it could do more and be relevant in todays market

Pros

This software is absolutely great for any salon, we use it our self in our Worthing branch and it makes managing appointments extremely easy! No training is needed as its very easy to use, the drag and drop interface makes scheduling our employees great, and if theres ever an absence its able to give us a staff by staff feature of their day plan (if its all booked in with Phorest)

Cons

What we have done to give the client complete control is integrate this software into our website, this lets them see all of their available options and times for treatments. What i would like to see in the near future is staff, so someone can book a specific appointment with a member of our team! The system itself is closed to the outside world so its quiet hard to grow your company once your using this software, its limited by its own design and before you invest i would make sure you aren't looking for any additional features before committing.

Poor customer care

As of 2019 my experience is horrific. There is nothing I like about this software anymore. I would rather go back to salon iris. I just wish they were cloud base.

Pros

Client management Client connect Email marketing

Cons

US customer support is awful! Absolutely terrible. When they were in Ireland it was amazing. I can’t wait to leave as I have tried to communicate with their teams for months but still nothing has gotten better. Software doesn’t have you tube tutorials to help problem solve many features are not easy to find or use. When a client is a no show and you collect the deposit it goes to your billing and not to your bank account. That’s just ridiculous.

Outstanding

Phorest was easy to deal with from the word go - down to earth, understanding, and trustworthy. I suffer from learning disabilities and Phorest staff are so patient with me and really help me to understand anything I need. They are right there for me even down to the stupid things like how do I open something. Or where to find something. This was a big step for me and Phorest made it so easy. It's so good I tell everyone about it. I love it and to know I have it makes me proud.

Pros

I like that the software is easy to use, nice and bright, colourful, and it changes all the time. I love how it saves looking at the same screen all the time, and Phorest listens to the client base and changes things when they need to which I think is just amazing.

Cons

I don't like the fact that there our little bits in each section so you have to really search for some things to find what you want. And I don't like that it doesn't come with a spell check as this would be so helpful.

Great software with even better customer service

Customer service reviews were important to me when I decided to go with Phorest and they had not let me down. They are always in contact and the response time is really short. We had the first training call yesterday and my receptionist (who is not very computer savvy) was very happy because of the easiness to use and manage appointments. I have gone further exploring other features and everything is basically done with a few clicks. The video tutorials are endless and the manuals and ebooks are easy to read. 100% satisfied so far.

Pros

Easy to use. Very intuitive. Great customer service. Has a report for everything. Full customized services, providers, resources, and inventory. Nice app included with the price (others charge extra). Did I mention the great customer service?

Cons

Wish they had a more configurable patient form and the option to add scanned forms and pictures. High set up fee but they input the information of your inventory, services, and client database for you before going live. Need to have the software "installed" in a pc/mac but the information is safe stored in the cloud. You can access it anytime from the your app but not from any computer.