Online booking for hair and beauty salons

A marketplace or your own booking page: two different jobs

The tools a salon can take bookings with fall into two families, and they are easy to confuse because both end in a ‘Book’ button. A marketplace is a shop window shared with other salons: clients browse by area and by treatment, and the marketplace charges for the ones it introduces. A booking page of your own sits on your website and your Google listing: it brings nobody new by itself, and it takes nothing on the client who was already looking for you.

Treatwell's Irish pricing page puts numbers on the first family. Read on 02/10/2026: a 35% commission on the first booking of a new client who comes through its marketplace, 0% on repeat bookings, and a processing fee of 2.5% + VAT when a client pays online in advance. Its FAQ also mentions a monthly fee, and the page prints no figure for it.

Plenty of salons use both, and that can be the right answer: the marketplace for discovery, your own page for everyone who knows your name. One question sorts the offers before you sign: when a regular searches for your salon and taps ‘Book’, whose page do they land on, and whose client list does their email address end up in?

Treatwell, partner pricing (Ireland), read on 02/10/2026

What salon booking systems cost in Ireland

Three of the six salon software pages and guides we opened on 02/10/2026 showed a price, so here are list prices as their Irish pages printed them that day. Booksy: €44 a month, €5 a month for each extra user, VAT added to the final price, and 2.6% + VAT on payments taken in its app. Square Appointments: a Free plan at €0 for a single location, Plus at €19 + VAT and Premium at €49 + VAT, each per month and per location. Phorest publishes no price: every plan on its pricing page says ‘Request a quote’.

Traxo's Starter plan is €50 a month excl. VAT with no commitment, or €40 a month on yearly billing, paid in one go (€480 excl. VAT for twelve months). Online payment, the full service or a deposit, costs 3% of what is paid, nothing else. Pro is €100 a month, or €80 on yearly billing.

On those list prices, Traxo is not the cheapest way to take a booking: a plan at €0 a month costs less than any subscription. What the comparison has to include is what each price covers. Traxo's covers the website itself, built around your services, your photos and your prices, and on Pro the Google listing kept up to date, a loyalty programme and gift cards. For every other tool, ask what you would still pay for separately before a client can find you and book.

Booksy, pricing (Ireland), read on 02/10/2026 · Square Appointments, pricing (Ireland), read on 02/10/2026 · Phorest, pricing, read on 02/10/2026

Your price list: what the law already asks of a hairdresser or barber

A hairdressing or barber business in Ireland must comply with the Charges (Hairdressing) Display Order, 1976, and the CCPC enforces it. Its guidance asks for a notice setting out the prices of all your services, outside or in the window when the premises are on the ground floor beside a public street, otherwise immediately inside the entrance, in lettering at least 6 mm high. The prices must be accurate, up to date and include all taxes.

The guidance carries a warning that reaches further than the window. If the prices you charge differ from those displayed, that is a misleading price indication under the Consumer Protection Act 2007. The notice is about your premises, but a client reads the price list on your website the same way. Keep one list and update both the same day: a client who booked a colour at the price they read online expects that price at the till.

The Order covers hairdressing and barbering. A beauty or nail salon isn't named in it, but the general rule the CCPC gives every business still applies: prices shown to consumers include VAT, with no hidden charges.

CCPC, guidance for hairdressers and barbers, read on 02/10/2026 · CCPC, “Pricing and price reductions”, read on 02/10/2026

VAT since 1 July 2026: 9% on hairdressing, and what a mixed salon should check

Since 1 July 2026 the 9% VAT rate applies to hairdressing, down from 13.5%. The Department of Finance's release says the measure has no end date. Revenue's own page on the second reduced rate lists hairdressing services with the same start date.

The cut is narrower than ‘salons’. In Revenue's VAT rates database, beauty salon services are listed at the reduced rate, and the page notes that sales of cosmetics and sunbed treatments are liable at the standard rate. A salon that cuts hair, does nails and sells products at the desk can therefore be working with three rates. That is a question for your accountant, not for a booking tool; what your website has to do is show each service at the price, VAT included, that you actually charge.

Department of Finance, “Government Marks Reduction of VAT Rate to 9% for Food Businesses and Hairdressers”, read on 02/10/2026 · Revenue, “Second reduced rate of VAT”, read on 02/10/2026 · Revenue, VAT rates database, “Beauty salon”, read on 02/10/2026

Deposits and cancellations: write the rule once, show it before payment

A deposit works when the client has read the rule before paying. The CCPC's guidance for businesses lists what a consumer must be told before a sale made online: the total price including VAT, your name, address and contact details, and the deposit conditions where there are any. Its advice to consumers is the mirror image: confirm in writing or by email whether the deposit is refundable in any situation, and what the cancellation charge is.

So decide the rule, write it in two lines, and put it where the booking is made. How much to ask is yours to set; neither page names an amount. A pattern that follows what an empty chair costs you:

Whatever you choose, keep what you hold in proportion to what the cancellation cost you. That is the test Citizens Information describes, and a rule a client finds fair is one they don't argue with at the desk.

• A deposit on long services, where one missing client empties half a day: colour, extensions, a bridal trial.
• A deposit, or payment in full, for a first visit, where you have no history with the client.
• Nothing on a short service for a regular, where asking may cost you more goodwill than it protects.
• A stated cut-off, 24 or 48 hours, before which the deposit comes back in full.

CCPC, “Selling services”, information for businesses, read on 02/10/2026 · CCPC, “Deposits”, read on 02/10/2026

Gift vouchers: five years, and the balance

Gift vouchers come with rules of their own under the Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Act 2019. The CCPC's guidance for businesses sets them out: a voucher that carries an expiry date must run for at least five years from the date of purchase, and the customer must be told the expiry date in writing, on paper or by email. A customer doesn't have to spend the whole voucher in one visit, and if more than €1 remains, the balance can be refunded in cash, by transfer or as a new voucher with the original expiry.

With Traxo, gift cards are part of the Pro plan: clients buy them on your website, including when the salon is closed. Whichever tool you sell vouchers with, check its expiry setting against the five-year rule before you sell the first one.

CCPC, “Gift vouchers”, information for businesses, read on 02/10/2026

Seven questions to ask before you sign

A demo shows the features. These questions show what living with the system will be like, and each has a plain answer a vendor should be willing to put in writing:

Traxo's answers, for the record: a flat subscription and 3% on online payments, no commission on bookings or on new clients; clients book on your own website; no commitment on monthly billing. If you stop, the website and the domain name stop with the subscription, and your client records are returned to you on request within thirty days, then deleted. You open your account online, build the website, pay, and put it online in one click; a free fifteen-minute launch call is there if you want it.

• What will I pay at my real size: per month, per stylist, per location, with VAT?
• Is there a commission on new clients, and does it apply to a client who found me elsewhere?
• What does taking a payment online cost, a deposit or the full service?
• Do clients book on my website, under my name, or on your app beside other salons?
• How long is the contract, does it renew itself, and how much notice do I give?
• If I leave, what happens to my client list, and in what format do I get it?
• Who changes my prices and my hours when they change, and how quickly does it show?