All Phorest Reviews
1-25 of 362 Reviews
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Jackie
Retail, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed September 2017
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.
PROSThe 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.
CONSOne 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!
Amy
Used free trial
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
Reviewed July 2015
Easy to use, amazing after sales team
I was recommended by a customer of mine who loved their system. I called the number listed on the website 3 times with no answer and no answer machine facility. I then filled in a contact form and someone (Brian I think!) called me straight away and apologised for the phone technical issues, they explained everything really well to me and I felt that this was the right system for me and loved the philosophy of "Let's Grow." I booked an appointment to meet with a sales rep. When the rep came, I felt a little disappointed, he wasn't really that friendly and I felt like he sped through some of the features. A few of the questions I asked he answered with "the trainer will show you that on the day" which wasn't really what I wanted to hear when I was debating wether or not to spend a lot of money on a system. I asked if I could apply a 25% discount to group of customers that have used me for 10 years and I was told "No, you'll have to do that manually for each one, each visit" (the technician today laughed and told me of course I could :) ) When I saw my customer I told her about my bad experience and she convinced me to try again (so you need to thank her- (Tej & Co)) and said she'd had nothing but good experiences, so I decided to give it another go. The technician Dave who came out to me today was amazing, really friendly and so helpful, answered all my questions and went out of his way to give me contact details and then help me again at 7.30pm to set up my home computer. He is a real credit to your company! Everybody else that I've spoken to either over the phone or via email have been great, responding quickly to everything and again really friendly but professional. I haven't heard from the rep since the day I paid my deposit, and I feel like that says it all. I never write reviews (least of all bad ones!) but I truly believe that without that recommendation or your other staff I wouldn't have come on board with Phorest, and that would have been a massive shame- I've only had it 12 hours and I love it!
Monique
Writing and Editing, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
2
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
1
FUNCTIONALITY
3
Reviewed June 2019
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.
PROSClient management Client connect Email marketing
CONSUS 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.
Reason for choosing Phorest
They had good reviews
Reasons for switching to Phorest
Because Phorest was compatible with apple products.
Kala
Hospital & Health Care, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed June 2016
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.
PROSI 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.
CONSI 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.
Matthew
Hospitality
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed December 2016
This Software Rocks!
Its been a fantastic transition from MINDBODY software to PHOREST . The Team at Phorest is nothing short of brilliant. I Just want to share Two things. 1 the software 2 The support. 1. I have been using Mindbody for over a year. I have a medium size staff of 6 stylist in total and depend on a full management software to manage my small salon. Honestly you cannot even compare the software, Phorest is way more complete, and is made for the hair industry. It works so well, No bugs. The software never crashes. It works smoothly. Its really simple and easy to navigate, book appointments , run reports. I wish I had found the software ages ago! My old software was crashing and full of bugs, constantly on the phone trying to fix an issue on the site that was the software. They have amazing social media integration. Marketing is all worked into the software, and very easy to use. They have great email campaigns all built in. Well I could write a full page here but will move quickly to point 2. 2 The service and support is amazing, we have had ongoing training for all our staff, If we are stuck on any difficulty amazing support is just a call away. I Am looking forward to making full use of this powerful tool in my Salon, and looking forward to growing my business with Phorest. Thanks to Daniel , Shane, Barbara, Martha Helen And all the guys at Phorest for all the help support and training. Looking forward to growing with Phorest. Matthew Jonathan
PROSEasy to use. A complete system. Great support
CONSNone
Anonymous
51-200 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
1
EASE OF USE
1
VALUE FOR MONEY
1
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
1
FUNCTIONALITY
1
Reviewed February 2021
Unprofessional Company with hidden charges and poor data management
I have had this software for over 5 years and they are only interested in how they can make more money out of their clients. They charge inflated prices for simple things and hide the charges so you aren't aware of them. They introduce new features which sound great but in reality don't work and then charge you a higher subscription for their software for the new features when don't work. For example they introduced a feature called client reconnect which is supposed to text clients when they are overdue their appointment but it just doesn't work, yet they charge an extra £40/month for it. Also if you have multiple sites, none of their reports or stock inventory work across multiple locations so you have to go into each location to run reports or get stock information which is very time consuming. It also doesn't link into any other software or marketing software so you have to do work arounds and manual exports if you want to use your client data in facebook or email marketing. The email and text marketing within Phorest is expensive and poor quality compared to industry specific software so another downside to Phorest. There are many much superior softwares available that are cheaper, easier to run and integrate easier into other business softwares. Having stuck with Phorest for over 5 years now I wish I had made a move to better software years ago.
PROSThe appointment diary is simple and visual but basic. There is an online reputation manager which helps you manage your online reviews but now I have seen what other systems can do I think it is basic and its only available when you are on their most expensive package.
CONSThe company has hidden charges which they deduct at source so you can't see them or audit them. They consistently over charge and apply higher charges to bills than your original contract and insist on payment by direct debit so its not easy to detect them. They manipulate your data without knowledge or consent, for example they opted many of my clients out of being able to receive marketing information without my knowledge, I only discovered by accident and it turned out to have been an issue in their software which they denied to begin with but then had to admit it was their fault. I have no idea if they corrected the fault just with my account or whether other customers who have been affected but are still in the dark. A few years ago they made a major to how their online booking system worked, but didn't inform any of their clients so all our online bookings on our website went down and again it took a few weeks for them to admit the mistake was theirs, but it still cost me thousands with my website developer to re-design my website to overcome their change which is incredibly poor change management and poor knowledge of their customers and how they use the software.
Reasons for switching to Phorest
I made the switch to Phorest after a competitive tendering system, where Phorest made various written representations about the features, benefits and pricing so came out top on the tender requirements, however when the software was installed, it came out that many of the features that they had confirmed the software did were 'in development' and some of them had still not been launched over 5 years later...
harpreet
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed September 2017
Good Software but it can be better
easy to use , one of the best software in the market , support team is great , cost effective , upgrade with new feature and improvement is always a plus .
CONSfew general things are missing , it is always good to wok on big improvements but its also important to work on few general things too for example Paymentmate software from phorest needs to be released Please bring reprint receipt option on appointment page Please add currency calculater on cash up user voice needs to be redesign
Jennifer
Used free trial
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
Reviewed February 2015
Great company, great people, great service
When choosing to go into business it was important for me to do research on salon software systems. I looked into the pros and cons of a few different companies. A couple of the things I took into consideration were the start up costs and how the company can help us grow. Phorest came out out on top by a mile. The start up cost where competitive and came with benefits that other companies where not offering (at the time) A few of the key things that where important for the business in my point of view are our online presence. Phorest a comany in my opinion are forward thinking they provided us with the means to book online directly too our appointment page, a salon branded app along side the option to post our feed back directly to facebook, Twitter and Pintrest. This has served endless benefits for us. It's provided us with new clients who have found us directly from Google based on our facebook reviews. Not to mention the benefits of having those reviews In the first place good or bad. The level of customer service received every time we have contact has been inpecible to say the least. Always greeted with a friendly voice at the other end of the phone and any and all issues are resolved promptly. There level of comunication is high and you are never left wondering what's happened when in the unfortunate instance of a glitch in the system. It is very clear they are a company who care about its clients and are always on had with great new marketing ideas and promotions! I genuinely feel our growth as a business is just as important as there own. Which in comparison to other conpanies I looked into this stood out a mile. I am very happy for choosing Phorest and I have recommend them to my salon owner friends near and far and will continue to do so.
Charley
Health, Wellness and Fitness, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed March 2017
Woukd highly recommend to everyone (and I do!)
Phorest had been absolutely amazing from day one. Unlike other companies that once they have sold you the software, you never hear from anyone again. Phorest really care about their clients. The continued support, blogs and customer service are incomparable. Not forgetting the software itself is fantastic. Everything we asked for and more so much, in fact, I probably don't use ALL the features available due to having to sit down and read through all the manual - Highly recommend this. Today was the first time we had to phone forest 're a support matter in 18months and it was resolved promptly not affecting business because the IPads and Phones were still working. Thanks a million guys
PROSOnline bookings, Reports, photos & marketing
CONSUnable to upload your own consultation forms from other companies
Amar
Health, Wellness and Fitness
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed March 2017
Phorest are leaders in their field
I just wanted to say how amazing the phorest software and the people who work for this company are! I have been approached quite a few times by their competitors and have always stuck with this company for both our clinics as they are always trying to push things forward and have always come up with great ideas to increase Revenue. This coupled with the amazing customer service gives me no reason to ever leave :-) Up the great work xxxx
PROSThe layout and ease of use
CONSThe layout and ease of use
Sharon
Retail, 2-10 employees
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
2
VALUE FOR MONEY
1
FUNCTIONALITY
2
Reviewed March 2020
Only good as a diary- old fashioned software
Disappointed with the software.
PROSGreat diary features, staff rostering also quite good.
CONSUseless for marketing, their ‘upgraded’ marketing suite is frustrating and not at all user friendly. Take hours to produce a simple newsletter it’s not worth using, and if you want to save a draft to re visit later, good luck trying to find it. Customer service don’t really want you to call, so I’ve just been cut off again. They do answer support tickets but on another day, so it’s all a bit slow, and if you’re a busy salon, it’s not the best.
Reason for choosing Phorest
It promises a great product and to be fair the diary is good.
Reasons for switching to Phorest
Opened another salon so looked at other options. Probably shouldn’t have switched.
Shirley
Used daily for more than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
2
Reviewed June 2017
Good software
The support team are brilliant and always happy to support and help where they can. Customer service excellent too. I like that its iCloud based . I like the reports too when they work!!
CONSWe can not book colour online because we can't book across three chairs !! Was promised we would be able to do this in the sales pitch - yet to happen and have resigned myself to accepting that it wont work as I don't think there is a way for it to happen. We are very happy we moved over to Phorest anyway and 4 years on, we like it and have just purchased another license for you new salon ( so it cant be bad!! )
Ela
Hospitality, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 2 years
OVERALL RATING:
3
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
3
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
4
FUNCTIONALITY
3
Reviewed August 2021
Very basic, would not recommend for large operations
a very basic system, not quite what I would like in the busy spa
PROSEasy to use for staff and good visually.
CONSquite limited with reporting, cant store credit card details, can have only one confirmation email and can't re-send it.
Vendor Response
Hi Ela, I am sorry to hear that you are not fully satisfied with the service from Phorest. Since your review we have launched numerous new features that make us even better for a busy spa like yours. We'd love for you to consider Phorest again and book a demo to see all our new amazing features such as.. - Online Store - Cardless Checkout - Contactless Check-In - Curbside Pick Up ...and so many more.
Replied November 2022
Donna
Medical Practice, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed October 2016
Phorest software
I looked at lots of systems and Phorest was one of the first but I was apprehensive at paying the initial outlay especially as I had already used a system for a couple of months which didn't work for me. I trialled a few different systems but nothing fitted right with me so I re-visited Phorest and it looked amazing. I took the plunge and at the training I kept saying "I can't believe how easy this is to use" Honestly I can't believe how much time I wasted looking at other systems. All I can say is you get what you pay for. Phorest is easy to use, it does everything apart from making your patients tea and coffee! It works on iPads, iPhones, the training is excellent and company support is amazing, they really want to work with you and grow your business. It only lost one star as we can't go totally paperless at present but I know they are looking into this. Best decision I have made and it is so professional.
PROSEasy to use and easy on the eye Lots of reports Text and email templates or make your own Stock taking I love everything about it actually!
CONSWill be good to be able to go totally paperless at some point but I know this will come to the future
Amy
Health, Wellness and Fitness, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed October 2017
Everyone has been really helpful, efficient and really supportive helping me set up my new software.
I'm really hoping it is going to help me boost by business reputation online and bring in new business and help with retaining existing clients and turn them into loyal regular clients.
PROSIts really user friendly. The staff have been amazing and genuinely want to help me grow my business and do well. Love that you can link all your reviews in one place and monitor them. so much easier. Also love all stock is easily managed and the Treatcards are a great idea that my clients are really excited to get involved in. Also cannot wait to be able to use my salon app.
CONSThat its web based... I think its a real downside. But so far its only downside. Possibly would be good to be able to do more on Phorest Go! I do alot from home on my day off and it would be great to be able to see a little more on my phone/tablet rather than having to purchase another computer for home or bring my work computer home.
Shamus
Information Technology and Services, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 12 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
4
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed May 2017
Helpful system that is easy to use.
A basic ability to manage my clients and have good records for historical that is easily accessible.
PROSSimple and easy to use. A good way to monitor what is going on. It is easy to manage appointments. The support team is always on hand to support and advise with any potential issues that may arise.
CONSTricky having the initial training before the software was installed in the Salon. So some of the functionality that exists around permissions and betters ways of using the system was hard to take in at the time.
Kaitlin
Consumer Services, 2-10 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
4
EASE OF USE
4
VALUE FOR MONEY
3
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
4
Reviewed October 2022
Ehhhh
Wonderful if you have multiple locations. Constantly getting updated, and can be used on multiple platforms!
CONSThe marketing is inferior, difficult to share reviews, difficult to modify existing prices and services
Reasons for switching to Phorest
Looking for the right product for me
Pat
Law Enforcement, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
OVERALL RATING:
5
EASE OF USE
5
VALUE FOR MONEY
5
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
5
FUNCTIONALITY
5
Reviewed August 2017
I have only been using the software for a week now and already I am noticing big changes to my salon
This software has given me control of my salon as I don't work in the salon, I know what is going on and able to keep on top of my business.
PROSEasy to use and navigate around, the various colours kinda personalise the calendar but still makes it very user friendly. I did not margin for the ongoing training offered by Phorest at my convenience , I expected to be able to get hold of someone when I want for any issues that I come across and I have not been disappointed thus far. I was a little dubious about the monthly price of the software package but now I am seeing that its good value for my hard earn cash. I hope this continue but so far I have no reason to think otherwise. I am looking forward to a long and prosperous working relationship with Phorest. Phorest you rock.