Best Salon Software of 2026

What is salon software?

Salon software is a digital tool that helps automate and streamline operations, including appointment scheduling, customer management, employee shift handling, and payment processing, at hair salons, beauty parlors, and spas. It sends automated reminders about upcoming appointments to clients. It often includes inventory management capabilities to ensure adequate supplies are always in stock. It also integrates with cash registers, barcode readers, and point of sale (POS) hardware to track sales and provide secure checkouts to clients.

Some salon management solutions provide marketing tools such as email campaigns and loyalty programs to attract and retain clients. Others assist with more specific needs, such as collecting client preferences for services or products used during their previous visits to provide personalized care.

What are the core features of salon software?

• Appointment scheduling: Allow clients to book, reschedule, or cancel appointments online. The software sends automated reminders and confirmations via SMS or email about upcoming or canceled appointments.

• Client database: Store and organize client information, including their contact details, appointment history, and service preferences. The client database helps track customer interactions, manage feedback, and provide personalized services based on past interactions.

What are the benefits of salon software?

• Facilitates online booking: Salon software allows clients to schedule appointments online at any time, from anywhere. This feature shows available slots in real time and lets customers book services directly into the calendar, reducing the chances of double booking or overbooking. It also sends automated reminders to reduce no-shows.

• Tracks inventory levels: Salon software automatically tracks product usage and sends alerts when stock levels are running low to prevent potential loss of business due to unavailable items. It maintains a record of all products sold or used to ensure popular items are always available for customers. It also reduces wastage by preventing overstocking of perishable goods.

• Improves employee management: Salon software offers a unified dashboard to create staff schedules, assign tasks, track performance metrics (e.g., client satisfaction scores, commissions earned), and manage attendance and time off. This organized approach simplifies routine operations, reduces administrative burdens, and helps optimize workforce productivity.

• Enables personalized client experience: Salon management software allows you to maintain detailed client profiles with details such as service preferences, past treatments or services, products bought, and preferred staff members. This information can assist your stylists and staff in providing personalized recommendations and services, creating a more tailored and satisfying experience for clients.

What are the potential issues with salon software?

• Payment processing errors: Technical glitches or connectivity issues can lead to transactional errors such as double charges, failed transactions, or refund complications. These issues can impact clients’ experience, leading them to seek services elsewhere. To minimize these risks, ensure the availability of reliable payment gateways.

• Scheduling conflicts: If the system isn’t properly set up or managed, it could lead to double bookings, missed appointments, or miscommunication between staff and clients. All these issues can disrupt your salon’s daily workflow and affect customer experience. A consolidated scheduling dashboard that offers a real-time overview of scheduled and canceled appointments can mitigate these conflicts by keeping everyone updated.

• Limited customization options: Your salon business may have specific needs or guidelines to adhere to. For instance, you may want to capture clients’ product preferences or budget ranges. Limited customization may hinder the software platform’s adaptability to the unique needs of your salon, potentially resulting in irrelevant or insufficient data collection, compromising the service quality, and affecting your sales outcomes. Similarly, limited booking or billing customizations may not fully accommodate the specific services or pricing structures of individual salons.

How much does salon software cost?

Most salon software products on the market are priced on a “per month, per user” basis, and their entry-level pricing plans range from $1.05 to $248+.* An enterprise tool that’s priced higher may include additional features such as multi-location appointment management, advanced inventory management, reputation management, and robust marketing automation tools.

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offerings found on vendor websites as of Jan. 31, 2024.

What is salon software used for?

The use of salon management software goes beyond simply taking appointments and managing calendars. It’s a central hub for standardizing salon operations and fostering client relationships. The software can have multiple use cases based on the data you feed into it and the available features. 

• POS system: Salon software can be used as a POS system, allowing your stylists to collect and process payments, invoices, and receipts for services availed. This can help speed up the checkout process, improve cash flow, and maintain financial records.

• Staff scheduling: Salon software can be used to create and manage employee schedules, ensuring optimal coverage during peak hours and effective utilization of staff resources. This feature aids in minimizing scheduling conflicts and maintaining smooth workflows within your salon.

• Marketing and promotions: Salon software can be used to create and send email marketing campaigns, track the results of social media campaigns, and manage loyalty programs. This capability can help attract new clients and retain existing ones.

Considerations when purchasing salon software

• Assess client relationship management functionality. The salon software you shortlist should let you manage client information, preferences, and service history from a centralized location. You can use this data to create tailored services and personalized experiences to improve client satisfaction. The software should also help segment your client base based on demographics, preferences, or purchase behavior for targeted marketing campaigns. Additionally, it should automate customer communication, including reminders or promotional messages, to save time and improve overall business efficiency.

• Check integrations with payment processing systems. Ensure the software integrates with your preferred payment processor for credit card transactions, gift cards, and other digital payment methods. This integration improves customer experience by offering multiple payment methods and simplifying the checkout process.

• Examine the reporting and analytics capabilities. Your shortlisted software should generate detailed reports on appointment schedules, revenue trends, client behavior, staff performance, and product sales. These reports provide insights into business performance and help make informed decisions to streamline salon operations or enhance marketing strategies for better growth prospects. You should also consider customizable reports and real-time analytics to stay agile in response to changing business needs.

Source

Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s salon software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in Software Advice’s directory that offer them.

Disclaimer: This salon management software buyers guide was authored by Software Advice’s content team. We develop our guides using the author’s expertise, insights from 2M+ unique user reviews, and our proprietary data science algorithms to identify trends in user sentiment, preferences, and priorities. Some text was generated with assistance from AI tools.