Hair salon software pricing compared per provider

Why comparing sticker prices puts you on the wrong foot

Most comparisons you find online put "Salonized 21 EUR" next to "Treatwell 35 percent" next to "Da Vinci 27.95 EUR" and conclude that cheapest is best. That is a mistake that costs you money, because those numbers do not measure the same thing.

21 EUR per month is a fixed amount for unlimited booking. 35 percent is a commission per incoming client. Those two are not on the same scale: one does not depend on how busy you are, the other entirely. In the Netherlands, a hair salon running 400 appointments a month effectively pays just over 5 cents per appointment on a fixed subscription of 21 EUR, while that same salon on a commission model can pay a multiple of that if many bookings come in through the platform.

So the honest comparison does not start with the price but with the model. In this guide I explain the three models, put the best-known providers side by side with an emphasis on which model they use, and show how to work out per provider what you really pay at your number of appointments.

The three models you will run into

Before you read a table you need to know which model sits behind each price. There are three, and they count fundamentally differently.

Fixed subscription. A set monthly price, regardless of how busy you are. Salonized, Da Vinci, EsSalon, and 1Kappersoftware work this way. You know up front what you spend. The downside: in a quiet summer month you pay the same as in December, so per appointment you get more expensive when it is slow.

Marketplace commission. A percentage per booking, usually only for new clients who come in through the platform. Treatwell is the best-known example: a marketplace that brings clients to you in exchange for commission, with Treatwell Pro as the booking software behind it from 35 EUR excluding VAT a month. So you pay a fixed monthly fee and a percentage on top that adds up as you grow.

Pay-per-booking. A small amount per booked appointment, often with a monthly cap. This model is newer in the Netherlands: around 0.25 EUR ex VAT per completed appointment with a cap near 30 EUR for a solo business. In a quiet month you pay little, and you are not tied to anything.

The difference between these three is bigger than the difference between two providers within the same model. So "which model fits me" is the first question, and only then "which provider within that model".

The providers side by side, with the model in focus

Below are the best-known hair salon software providers. Look especially at the Model column: it determines how you interpret the price. All amounts ex VAT, checked September 2026.

Source: each provider's own pricing page, fetched on 10 September 2026: salonhub.nl/prijzen.html, essalon.nl/prijzen, 1kappersoftware.nl/prijzen-1kapper-nl, looppiness.com/prijzen, zolmi.com/pricing and treatwell.nl/en/partners/pricing. Salonized via help.salonized.com, Da Vinci via dvi.nl on 8 September 2026. Salonhub, EsSalon, Salonized, Da Vinci and Treatwell state themselves that their amounts exclude VAT. 1Kappersoftware and Looppiness say nothing about VAT. Zolmi prices on an international site with no visible currency symbol, so do not read those two amounts as euros. Rates change, so check the current price on the provider's site.

The amounts above are entry rates for a sole operator or a single calendar. As soon as staff come in, providers charge on, and not in the same way. Salonized asks 5 EUR per additional staff member on Appointments and 7.50 EUR on Basic and Pro. Da Vinci does not add per staff member but moves you to a team rate, which starts at 48.50 EUR and runs via 74.00 to 86.00. Our own cap works like Salonized: 30 EUR for a sole operator plus 5 EUR per additional active staff member, so with three people it sits at 40 EUR. Compare on your own team size, because on the from price you are comparing four different things. Source: dvi.nl fetched 8 September 2026 and help.salonized.com on 10 September 2026.

The Treatwell row sits deliberately below the subscriptions, because it really belongs in its own category. Put 35 percent next to 27.95 EUR and you compare a percentage with a fixed amount, which gives a distorted picture the moment you apply it to your own revenue. Mijn Salon is also missing from this table, a Dutch boutique provider with fixed tiers from 9.95 EUR and multi-location support; how those tiers stack up against pay-per-booking is covered in the CelerBook vs Mijn Salon comparison.

Salonized and Da Vinci: two fixed subscriptions compared

Salonized and Da Vinci are in the same model (fixed subscription), but not at the same price point: Salonized starts at 21 EUR, runs via Basic at 39 EUR up to Pro at 59 EUR, and Da Vinci starts at 27.95 EUR. That 27.95 needs a footnote straight away, because it is the ZZP ONLY rate for a sole operator. With a team, Da Vinci starts at 48.50 for Booking and runs via Plus at 74.00 to Vip at 86.00 when paying annually, and ZZP ONLY COMPLEET sits at 61.50 (source: dvi.nl, fetched on 8 September 2026). So a fair one-to-one comparison uses the plan that covers your features and your team size, not the from price.

Salonized advertises no fixed contract and a 14-day trial (source: help.salonized.com, fetched on 10 September 2026). Da Vinci also runs without a contract according to dvi.nl, but with one calendar month of notice. The difference sits mainly in features and in which modules are in the base package, and at Da Vinci dvi.nl/losse-opties sells a number of those as separate modules. The full breakdown per provider is on CelerBook next to Da Vinci and CelerBook next to Salonized. With both, ask explicitly whether online booking, a calendar per staff member, and reminders are included by default, or whether you need a more expensive tier for that.

The lesson: within the same model you compare on price plus included features. Two providers asking the same monthly amount can differ a lot once one charges online booking separately and the other does not. The sticker price is the starting point, not the final bill.

Treatwell is a different animal than a subscription

Comparing Treatwell with Salonized or Da Vinci is apples to oranges, and that is not a detail. Treatwell is first of all a marketplace, with Treatwell Pro as the booking software behind it. Clients search on the platform, find your salon, and book. The Starter plan costs 35 EUR excluding VAT a month, and on top of that Treatwell charges 35 percent commission on new bookings plus a 2 percent transaction fee on prepaid appointments (source: treatwell.nl/partners/prijzen).

That means: on top of the monthly fee you pay a share of the revenue from clients who come in through the platform. For a new salon still looking for clients that can be worth it, working as an acquisition channel that only costs when it delivers. For an established salon with a full, steady client base you pay commission on bookings you would have gotten anyway, and then a fixed or pay-per-booking model is almost always cheaper.

So the right question with Treatwell is not "is 35 percent expensive", but "how many of my bookings actually come in new through the platform, and what is a new client worth to me". Work that out on your own figures, not on the percentage alone.

How to work out per provider what you really pay

The only honest comparison is converting to your situation. Take your average number of appointments per month and do the math per model.

For a fixed subscription: divide the monthly price by your number of appointments. A 21 EUR subscription at 300 appointments is 7 cents per appointment; at 50 appointments in a quiet month it is 42 cents per appointment. The busier and steadier your calendar, the better a fixed amount works out.

For a marketplace commission: estimate how many bookings really come in new through the platform, and calculate 35 percent on the revenue of those first appointments plus 2 percent transaction fee on the rest. Bookings from your existing clients that happen to run through the platform count too, so read the terms carefully.

For pay-per-booking: multiply your number of appointments above the free tier by 0.25 EUR and check against the monthly cap. At 90 appointments (5 of them free) you pay 85 times 0.25 EUR, which is 21.25 EUR that month, with 30 EUR as the ceiling. With variable demand your yearly average often lands lower than a fixed subscription because the quiet months are cheap.

Do these three sums on your own volume and the winner falls out by itself. It is almost never the provider with the lowest sticker price.

Which model fits which type of hair salon?

The numbers are half the story, your profile is the other half. Three typical situations show how the model and the salon need to match.

A busy, established hair salon with multiple chairs and a full, stable calendar fits a fixed subscription. At hundreds of appointments per month the price per appointment drops well below 10 cents, and the predictability of a fixed monthly cost helps the bookkeeping. Salonized and Da Vinci aim squarely at this segment.

A sole trader or starter with a variable or still small calendar often pays for air in the quiet months on a fixed subscription. Here pay-per-booking usually wins, because you settle only for what you actually book and spend almost nothing in a slow summer month. The monthly cap keeps an unexpectedly busy month bounded too.

A new salon actively looking for clients can use a marketplace like Treatwell as an acquisition channel, alongside its own booking system for regulars. You pay commission only on the new walk-ins the platform brings, and keep your regulars out of the commission by letting them book directly. Many salons deliberately combine two models this way.

The thread: choose the model that fits your workload and where your clients come from, not the model with the lowest number in the ad.

Switching: what it costs and what you leave behind

The table above tells you what a package costs per month. It says nothing about what it costs to leave the one you have, and that is the bill people get caught out by. It has four parts and only one of them is denominated in euros.

Your notice period. Look at this before you choose, not after. An annual contract with four months left means four months of paying twice, or four months of waiting. What the usual terms are and where they hide in the small print is in salon software without a contract.

Your client list. These are two separate questions, and a yes to one says nothing about the other: can you get the list out, and can you get it back in at the other end. Ask both parties both questions, and ask in which format. At Booksy the export is a manual support request with a one to three working day turnaround. You are entitled to the same answer from our side: CelerBook has no automatic CSV import, you enter clients one at a time under Clients and New client, and there is no button to export your client list back out either. For a few hundred names that is an evening of work, for a file of thousands it is a conversation to have up front.

Your reviews. Those never come along. A marketplace profile with two hundred reviews is not portable, to any package. That is the real price of leaving Booksy or Treatwell, not the subscription. What the Booksy subscription itself costs per month is set out in the guide on what Booksy costs.

The link your clients have saved. Your Google Business Profile, your Instagram bio, the QR code on the counter, the link in your signature. Miss one and it keeps sending clients to a page that is no longer yours for months.

That is also where the two kinds of switch part ways. Leaving a subscription like Salonized or Da Vinci is a change of tooling: your clients know you, not the package. Leaving a marketplace like Treatwell or Booksy is cancelling a channel, because some of those clients found you there rather than the other way round. For that second kind, work out both the monthly price and how many new clients the platform brought you per month, and whether you can replace them yourself.

Everyone agrees on the order and it still goes wrong: do not cancel first. Set the new package up alongside, configure your services and hours, put your new booking link everywhere the old one sat, let them run in parallel for a few weeks, and only then cancel. The step by step version for a specific provider sits on that provider's comparison page, for example switching from Booksy. The complete step by step plan for switching away from Booksy is set out in switching from Booksy.

How to apply this next week

No rushed switch, no choice on sticker price alone. A workable plan to pick the right provider for your hair salon in 30 days.

Week 1: count your appointments over the past three months, calculate your monthly average plus peak and trough. Also note how many clients were genuinely new versus regulars.

Week 2: fill in the table above for your figures. Convert each model to price per appointment, and add separate modules and SMS costs to the sticker price.

Week 3: pick two candidates with different models (for example a fixed subscription and pay-per-booking) and start a free trial with both. Watch the daily use: how fast you book a client, how your calendar looks.

Week 4: choose and migrate calmly: services and staff first, then clients, then go live with online bookings.

For a hairdresser who does not want to be tied to a monthly subscription, CelerBook is built on pay-as-you-go: the first 5 appointments per month free, then 0.25 EUR ex VAT per completed appointment, capped at 30 EUR per month for a solo business (plus 5 EUR per additional active staff member for a team) and no contract. You get online appointment booking with a booking page per business, automatic SMS reminders and confirmation emails, client management with notes and history, staff scheduling with working hours per staff member, and a separate price per staff member for the same service. No usage means no cost. Try CelerBook for free.