Boulevard elevates our customer experience, giving us a competitive edge

Stellar. Simply put the experience from onboarding, training and ongoing support is fantastic. I hear the horror stories from other Main Street owners using the more established incumbents in the space and I am glad I made the right decision to choose Boulevard!

Pros

The single unified design, the built in messenger and online booking workflow. Compared with many established players who patch together different features with different user interface designs, Boulevard has one easy to use design. There is no jarring for the user when they switch features. It is all seamless. The Messenger has helped reduce telephone time significantly and has about a 90% open rate. It also provides a detailed record or client requests, issues and concerns. With voice calls, notes are not always taken. The online booking workflow has helped us increase self booking, allowing front desk to refocus time in other areas.

Cons

Boulevard feature development is continuous so I always feel confident that features and improvements will be added. One area that could do with improvement is the Guest Account Management. Ideally guests would like the ability to log in and see their service history and transactions in addition to being about to book. I know though that this is an area receiving some focus now and look forward to seeing improvements in 2022.

Top-tier salon management solution that continues to improve

We are very happy with our switch to Boulevard. Migration went very smoothly, we got up and running with minimal problems, support has been great since day 1. The only issues we've had have been or are currently being actively worked on in product cycles. Our day-to-day is much smoother than previous solutions, we love being on Boulevard!

Pros

Intelligent booking and client-specific service timing has saved us countless hours at the front desk and increased our service revenue 10%+. The calendar and schedule are very easy to use, our new front desk staff is trained up in half the time as previous software. The integrated booking widget that lives on our site is wonderful for preserving a fluid brand experience for clients booking online.

Cons

Add-ons for advanced features can start to add up on top of an already higher base price, and the cost to migrate from an another product can get very high (though if you are good with Excel you can prep migration sheets yourself and save a lot like we did). Reporting was initially a weak spot but has been continuously improved over the past year and is nearly at parity with our previous solution.

Solid, reliable and modern software

Solid experience. It fulfills all of my needs. The extras will come, I'm confident.

Pros

If you're like me, you want to use a software that is most importantly reliable AND beautiful. I love what they did with the user interface. Booking appointments on the software is extremely easy, and new features are released periodically. They have a messaging center where we can quickly communicate with clients via SMS and a way to reach out to customer support quickly through their integration using INTERCOM chat.

Cons

I think the analytical reporting could be better. This might be something they can take from Booker's page. Some insight like how many customers are existing and how many are new would be great. How many booked online vs manual. Also, if they can integrate with Frederick or Emma, that would be awesome too. They are integrated with mailchimp which is nice.

If you like to pay through the eyes for expensive software that isn't very intuitive, by all means

Horrible. Costs too much for the subscription and their system is not very intuitive. It takes few extra steps to do anything in the system. Extra steps create a lot of places where mistakes can be made, especially when it comes to scheduling.

Pros

It is generally easy to learn out of the box, however there is definitely learning involved.

Cons

The POS system is a joke and they force you to utilize them as a Merchant Processesor. Their rates are competitive with other premier solutions like Square, but they literally give you a $0.50 magnetic card swiper from China to process the payments. The alternative is to buy a glorified card reader for $150 (literally a block that is a glorified magnetic card swiper) that interfaces with your iPad through Bluetooth. If you have every used Bluetooth technology on your phone, you know how horribly unreliable that it can be. If the device times out when you're taking payment, be prepared to ask your clients to wait while you spend 5-10 minutes making sure that the devices are back on line. The

Boulevard

It’s a new software so it’s expected but I think a lot of things could of been better over the years. Lots of new updates to keep current and trendy but with that comes a roller coaster of trial and error. With that being said old tech should be easy but isn’t.

Pros

Seamless booking appointments online for clients and in person.

Cons

Glitches … a new one every week! As a business owner you don’t have the time to make customer support tickets and figure out how to do workarounds more often than not. But I guess that’s how it is with these softwares.