Fresha vs Timely vs Custom Booking (2025): The Best Salon Appointment System for UK Businesses
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Fresha vs Timely vs Custom Booking (2025): The Best Salon Appointment System for UK Businesses
Choosing booking software is a business decision first and a technology decision second. Most UK salons start with an off-the-shelf platform because it is quick to set up and the feature list is impressive. The pain arrives later: rising fees, limited control over marketing, and workflows that do not fit the way your team actually works.
This article compares Fresha, Timely and a custom Next.js booking stack across pricing, ownership, marketing, integrations and day-to-day operations. The goal is to help you match the solution to your stage of growth rather than chase features you will not use.
Who Each Option Suits
Fresha suits very small teams who want aggressive marketplace exposure and do not mind paying per booking. Timely suits owner-operators and boutiques who prefer predictable monthly billing and polished calendar tools. A custom build suits multi-site salons and clinics that need specific flows, tight integrations and full control of brand and data.
If marketing, SEO and upsells are central to your growth, a custom stack gains value quickly because you control URLs, page speed and the booking funnel. If you simply need a calendar tomorrow, start with an off-the-shelf vendor and revisit later.
Pricing and Total Cost of Ownership
Off-the-shelf tools look cheap until scale arrives. Commission per booking compounds. Multiple locations add user licences. You may also pay for SMS reminders, extra staff accounts and card processing on top.
With a custom system you pay more at the start, but recurring costs are mainly hosting, SMS and payment fees. If you do 800 to 1,000 bookings per month, the break-even point often appears within 12 to 18 months, especially if you move repeat clients to direct booking links.
Ownership and Portability
Vendor systems are rented. You cannot change their checkout steps, add custom validation or design a multi-service bundle that behaves exactly as you want. Data exports exist, but some structures are opaque and card tokens do not move. A custom stack is owned: you control database schema, roles, audit logs and how consent and retention are handled for GDPR.
SEO, Pages and Speed
Marketplace profiles rank for the vendor, not for you. You will still want your own service pages for long-tail searches such as biab nails infill pricing or brow lamination aftercare. A custom stack lets you publish a page per service and location, add Service schema and push lightning-fast pages that convert. Timely and Fresha can embed widgets, but you inherit their layout and scripts which can add weight to your pages.
Calendar and Staff Scheduling
Fresha and Timely ship mature calendars with staff permissions, buffers and no-shows. A custom build needs parity for core features: working hours per staff member, service durations, prep and cleanup buffers, room resources and split services for colour processing. Start with the 80 percent of rules you use daily and add edge cases later.
Payments and No-Shows
Most salons reduce no-shows by taking small deposits. With Stripe you can capture a fixed amount or a percentage at booking, and charge the balance in person. Use webhooks to auto-cancel if a payment fails after a short retry window. For refunds, set clear rules: deposit refundable until 24 hours before, otherwise a credit note. Document this in the booking flow, not just in terms and conditions.
Reminders and Messaging
Reminders work best as a chain: confirmation email at booking, SMS 24 hours before, and a last-minute SMS for first-time clients. For a custom stack, queue messages in a background worker to avoid blocking the UI. Store delivery receipts and expose a toggle per client for SMS consent.
Reporting That Actually Helps
Timely and Fresha offer clean dashboards. For custom, focus on a handful of reports owners use weekly: bookings per staff member, new vs returning clients, rebook rate, top services by margin, and unfilled hours by day. Avoid building a BI platform; export CSVs and use Google Sheets for deep dives.
Integration Examples
- Accounting: Export payouts and fees to Xero with a nightly job.
- Marketing: Send new-client events to your email tool to trigger a welcome series.
- Reviews: Text a review request 2 hours after checkout with deep-link to Google.
- Analytics: Server-side events for conversions so ad platforms see real bookings.
Migration Plan You Can Trust
- Export clients, services and appointments. Clean duplicates and normalise phone numbers.
- Build the service catalogue and staff schedules in the new system.
- Soft-launch with one location or a subset of services.
- Run both systems for 2 weeks while you verify reminders, deposits and reporting.
- Switch booking links in Google Business Profile and social bios on the same day.
When to Stay With a Vendor
If you are under 300 bookings a month or you lack an in-house owner who will champion the project, stick with Fresha or Timely for now. Revisit once you hit consistent capacity and the fees start to bite.
When to Go Custom
If you want service bundles, exact deposit logic, deeper SEO control or multi-location routing, a custom system pays back quickly. You also remove the risk of account suspension or feature changes that do not fit your business.
The Bottom Line
There is no best universal choice. There is only the option that matches how you acquire customers and operate the diary. Use a vendor for speed, then graduate to a custom stack when control, brand and margins matter most.
Need help deciding or planning a migration? DevsMint designs and builds booking systems that respect your brand, data and growth goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
Upfront, yes. Over 12 to 24 months, a custom stack can be cheaper if you pay high commission on every booking or require integrations that remove manual work.
Both platforms provide exports, but formats vary and some data such as card tokens cannot be exported for security reasons. Plan for partial migration plus a short overlap period.
Next.js for the web app, PostgreSQL for data, Stripe for payments, and a hosted queue such as Upstash or Cloud Tasks for reminders and webhooks.
Yes if you ship fast pages with service-specific landing pages, schema and internal links. The advantage is full control of URLs and content.
