Leaving Vagaro? What owners report about the fees
Leaving Vagaro or Fresha: what owners report about fees and deposits, who is well served by staying, and what owning your booking software changes.
Leaving Vagaro and leaving Fresha are searches that usually begin with a statement rather than a feeling: a line on the monthly bill the owner did not expect, or did not expect to be that size. A salon booking platform is often several things at once -- the diary, a card terminal, a marketplace that sends new clients -- and each part can arrive with its own charge.
This page quotes what owners have written in public about exactly that, says who is better off staying, and describes what moving the diary involves.
What owners report
Each of the following is one owner's report of their own experience, quoted exactly as it was written. It is evidence of what that owner reported, not a finding about either company.
I cannot do deposits without having the shopping cart purchased so I pay an extra fee just to collect fees to protect my business
-- an owner reviewing Vagaro on Capterra, April 2026 (the review page)
the features that are optional I find are necessary to add and it increases the pricing exponentially
-- an esthetician reviewing Vagaro on Capterra, April 2026 (the review page)
On another occasion, a client physically came into OUR premises and purchased a gift voucher for a family member. The family member later used Fresha Marketplace to book their appointment with us using that gift voucher. Fresha then treated that person as a 'new client' they had acquired for our business and charged us a Marketplace fee.
-- a salon owner reviewing Fresha on Trustpilot, August 2026 (the review page)
The system therefore clearly shows that although the appointment was accidentally marked as completed, the payment was REFUNDED and the treatment NEVER TOOK PLACE. Despite this, Fresha is still charging us the Marketplace new-client fee because the appointment was marked as completed.
-- the same owner, same review (the review page)
Two mechanisms are described. The first two accounts are about features sold separately; the last two, from one salon owner, are about a marketplace fee and when it applied. Neither is a verdict on the diary itself. Both are about what sits around it.
Who is well served by staying
Many salons and spas are well served by these platforms, and the reason is the very part the complaints are about: both are marketplaces as well as diaries. Fresha pairs its marketplace with integrated payments and terminals, and Vagaro's own page offers a free card reader to businesses that sign up for its merchant service.
That is a real service. A salon that wants new clients arriving from an app, and wants cards taken where the diary lives, is well served by staying, and for that salon the marketplace fee can be a fair trade. Slotly brings no clients. It is booking on your own website, and nobody discovers you through it.
What switching involves
Moving a diary has one awkward property: bookings already made point into the future.
The terms come first. A plan, a card-processing agreement or a terminal arrangement each has its own end date and cancellation terms, written in the agreement and the terms it points to. Reading them first decides when a move can happen.
Then the records, and the promises inside them. The client list, the appointment history and the service menu are the obvious export. Less obvious are the commitments sold through the old system that outlive the switch: gift vouchers, packages and deposits paid for appointments still to come. A list of everything sold but not yet delivered is part of the export. On the receiving side, Slotly takes customers in from a CSV file with a mandatory dry run, so a file is checked before a single row is written.
Then a cut-over, rather than a long overlap. Two live diaries for one chair is how a double booking happens. A switch is therefore usually a date: from it, new bookings go to the new page, while appointments already booked are honoured where they were made.
What owning the copy changes
The bill stops having parts. The licence is bought once and covers the installation, and nothing is charged per booking, because no booking passes through anybody else. Deposits come with the same licence rather than behind another feature: set per service, quoted on the booking page, paid on a page your own payment provider runs.
There is no marketplace, so there is no marketplace fee and no argument about who counts as a new client. The other side of that sentence is equally true: there are no marketplace clients either.
And the client list stays with you, in one database on a server you chose.
What Slotly does, and what it does not
- Booking that cannot double-book: a clash is refused in the database, even when two customers take the same slot at the same instant.
- Staff hours with split shifts, buffers, blackout dates, minimum notice and booking windows.
- Group sessions with a capacity, never one booking more than the ceiling.
- Deposits, coupon codes and tax per service, and email reminders through your own SMTP server once one cron line is in place.
- An admin calendar, walk-in bookings, reports by service and by staff member, and read-only calendar feeds.
What it does not do: it never processes cards, so there is no in-app refund and no stored card. Calendar feeds run one way only. It runs one business per installation, is not built for a multi-vendor marketplace, and brings no clients of its own.
Questions people ask
Can Slotly take a deposit without buying another feature? Yes. Deposits come with the one licence: set per service and quoted on the booking page, with your own payment page beside the amount. The card is taken by your payment provider, never by Slotly.
Will Slotly send me new clients? No. There is no marketplace and no directory; clients reach the booking page from your own website or a link you send. That is also why there is no new-client fee.
What happens to appointments already booked on the old platform? They stay where they were made until they happen; Slotly does not read another platform's diary. From the cut-over date, new bookings go to the new page.
Where to look next
The product page is Slotly, with its limits in the product's own words, and the Studio Suite holds it alongside Gymora. The Vagaro alternatives page and the Fresha page set each platform against what this store sells, with a source and a read date for every statement, and the side-by-side puts the rented options together. For what any of them charges, including the fees on top of a plan, read the observatory: every figure there sits beside the date it was read and a link to its source. Prices are on the observatory; read them on the date shown there.
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