Fresha alternative: keep your commission, own your bookings

The commission bill that never stops growing

Picture this: it's the end of the month. Your column is full, your team is tired in the right way, and you're running the numbers. Revenue looks good — £30,000 through the door. Then you spot the Fresha line.

New-client bookings from the marketplace: £6,000 gone. That's 20% of every appointment Fresha sent you this month — handed straight back to a software company in exchange for the privilege of someone finding you in their app.

Do that every month and you've written Fresha a cheque for £72,000 by the end of the year.

That's not a software fee. That's a member of staff. It's a second treatment room. It's the marketing budget you never had. And it compounds — because as your reputation grows and your column fills, your Fresha bill grows with it. The better you get at your job, the more you pay them.

This post is for the salon owner who has done that maths and is looking for a real **Fresha alternative** — not just a cheaper app, but a system you actually own. We'll walk through exactly what Fresha charges (it's more layered than it looks), what a commission-free booking stack costs to run, and what it takes to make the switch without losing clients along the way.

What Fresha actually charges — and why it's easy to miss

Fresha markets itself as free software. And in a narrow sense, that's true: the management tools — calendar, client records, stock — are included in the monthly subscription. But that's not where the cost lives.

The three charges you need to map before you can compare any Fresha alternative:

**1. Monthly subscription.** The solo plan is £14.95/mo (ex VAT). For a team, it's £9.95 per bookable member per month. A salon with four chairs pays around £40–£50/mo just to have the software.

**2. Marketplace commission.** When a new client discovers you on Fresha's marketplace and books that first appointment, Fresha takes **20%** of the service value (minimum £4 per booking). Returning clients don't trigger this fee — but if you're actively growing, you're always generating new clients, which means the commission never stops.

**3. Payment processing.** If you use Fresha Payments to take deposits or full payment online, there's an additional 1.2% + 20p per transaction. This sits on top of the commission, not instead of it.

For a busy London salon doing £30,000/mo of revenue — let's say half of that comes via new marketplace clients — that's £3,000/mo in commission alone, plus processing fees on top. Over a year: above £36,000 from commission, potentially more depending on how many new clients you're acquiring through the platform.

What a commission-free booking system actually looks like

A **Fresha alternative** worth switching to isn't just a tool — it's a different model. Instead of paying a percentage of your revenue indefinitely, you build and own a booking system once and pay only the card-processing cost of each transaction.

Here's what the STACKD Commission-Free Studio stack looks like in practice:

**Booking layer.** A self-hosted scheduling engine sits on your own infrastructure, connected to your website. Clients book directly — no third-party marketplace, no algorithm between them and your calendar. You own every client record from the first interaction.

**Payments.** Stripe handles card processing at standard UK rates. For UK-issued cards that's 1.5% + 20p per transaction. If your clients are predominantly UK-based, a £30,000 month of online bookings costs roughly £450 in Stripe fees — compared to the £3,000–£6,000 you'd hand to Fresha depending on your mix of new vs returning clients.

**CRM and retention.** Client history, visit frequency, rebooking prompts, and loyalty logic all live in a Frappe CRM instance you operate. Not on someone else's servers, not governed by someone else's data policy. When a client hasn't rebooked in six weeks, an automated n8n workflow sends a personalised reminder — from your name, linking to your booking page, on your domain.

**No-show management.** Deposit rules, cancellation policies, and automated pre-appointment sequences are all configurable. The system sends reminders at 48 hours and again at two hours before each appointment. If a client cancels inside your policy window, Stripe captures the deposit automatically.

The upfront cost to build this system runs between £18,000 and £26,000 depending on complexity — number of staff, existing website infrastructure, whether you need multi-location support.

The payback calculation

At £30,000/mo of bookings — with, say, 40% of revenue coming via new marketplace clients — you're paying Fresha around £2,400/mo in commission (20% of £12,000). That's £28,800/yr on commission alone, before the subscription or processing.

An owned system at the same volume costs roughly £480/mo in Stripe fees (1.5% + 20p, spread across a typical mix of appointment sizes) plus around £30/mo in hosting. Call it £510/mo — about £6,120/yr in ongoing costs.

**Difference: roughly £22,680/yr saved from year two onwards.**

With a build cost of £18,000–£26,000, that's a payback period of under 14 months at this revenue level. From month 15, the system is net positive every single month.

And that's the conservative model — assuming no improvement in rebooking rate, no increase in average spend, no uplift in client retention from owning your own communications.

The objections — and what actually happens

"My clients are used to Fresha. Won't they just not rebook?"

Some won't find you immediately — but most will. The migration approach matters here. Before you switch off Fresha, you send an email and an SMS to your entire client list. Direct booking link. A note from you. Clients who like you will rebook with you wherever you are. The clients who were only there because Fresha surfaced you are the ones paying your commission anyway.

Halcyon & Co. in London ran this migration over a six-week window — Fresha remained live while the owned system was being built, then was wound down once direct bookings were self-sustaining. Rebookings via the new system were 38% higher than the equivalent Fresha period, attributed primarily to the automated post-visit sequence and personalised reminder cadence.

"What about new clients — how do they find us without the marketplace?"

Fresha's marketplace is a real discovery channel — and walking away from it means building your own. That's largely a Google Business Profile and SEO problem, not a booking-software problem. A salon with a well-optimised Google Business listing, a fast-loading website, and a direct booking link in the bio of an active Instagram account doesn't need a marketplace. It owns its acquisition.

This is also why some salons run a hybrid for a period: they keep Fresha live purely for marketplace discovery, but route returning clients to the direct booking link and stop paying commission on the 80% of appointments that aren't new clients anyway.

"What happens if something breaks? With Fresha I just call support."

This is a real concern and the honest answer is: you need a systems partner, not just a one-time build. The STACKD Commission-Free Studio comes with an ongoing relationship — hosted infrastructure, monitoring, and a direct line when something behaves unexpectedly. It's not a SaaS helpdesk, but it's not a one-and-done agency handoff either.

"We use Fresha for staff rotas and stock management — do we lose that?"

The booking and payment layer is separate from salon management tools. The STACKD stack doesn't replace every feature of Fresha's management suite out of the box — if you need complex stock management or payroll integration, that's scoped separately. Most salons find the booking, payments, CRM, and automation layer covers 90% of the daily need.

Is a bespoke build right for you?

A commissioned system isn't for everyone. If you're a solo operator doing £5,000–£8,000/mo, the maths are less compelling — the payback period stretches, and the upfront investment is proportionally larger. In that range, a flat-fee subscription tool (there are several UK-focused options that charge £15–£40/mo with no marketplace commission) is probably the right call.

The STACKD Commission-Free Studio is built for salons doing above £15,000/mo in online bookings — where the commission is already painful enough that the payback is fast, and where the business is complex enough that a generic SaaS tool won't cover the full workflow.

It's also built for multi-chair and multi-location businesses where staff scheduling, per-stylist commission tracking, and location-level reporting mean you need more than one off-the-shelf tool bolted together.

If that's you — or if you're not sure — the [STACKD Commission-Free Studio](/en/solutions) page walks through the full system architecture, what's included, and what the typical timeline looks like.

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Frequently asked questions

Does Fresha charge commission on all online bookings?

No. Fresha's 20% commission applies specifically to new clients who discover and book your business via the Fresha marketplace for the first time. Returning clients — and any clients who book through your own direct booking links, website widget, or social profiles — are not subject to the marketplace commission. You do still pay Fresha's payment processing fee (1.2% + 20p) on transactions if you use Fresha Payments.

What is the cheapest Fresha alternative for a UK salon?

If cost is the primary concern, flat-subscription tools such as Beu, Slick, or BeSeat charge £15–£40/mo with no per-booking commission. These work well for smaller or solo operations. For salons above £15,000/mo in online bookings, a self-owned booking system (paying only Stripe's 1.5% + 20p on UK cards) typically becomes cheaper than any subscription tool once the build cost is amortised.

Can I take my client data if I leave Fresha?

Yes. You are entitled to export your client data under UK GDPR. Request a full data export from your Fresha account settings before you begin any migration — this gives you the client list, appointment history, and contact details you need to continue the relationship on your own system.

How long does it take to switch from Fresha to a commission-free system?

A typical STACKD Commission-Free Studio build takes six to ten weeks from kick-off to go-live. Most salons run Fresha in parallel during this period, then migrate clients to the direct booking link in a staged rollout — usually starting with their most loyal rebookers, then broadening over four to six weeks.

Will I lose clients by leaving the Fresha marketplace?

You may lose some discovery traffic if you stop appearing on Fresha's marketplace, but clients who already know you will follow a direct booking link without friction. Salons that invest in their Google Business Profile, keep an active Instagram with a booking link in bio, and send a clear migration email to their existing client list typically retain the bulk of their booking volume through the transition.