Online booking for a salon or clinic: Bookio, Reservio or Fresha?
What Bookio, Reservio, Fresha, Booksy and Calendly cost a salon or clinic in 2026, who keeps the client, SMS reminders, deposits and GDPR for health data.
Nikolay Tolmachev, Founder, Tolman Studios
8 min readWebsites
In short
€8-12a month for the cheapest paid plan of Bookio, Reservio or Fresha, one person, excl. VAT (price lists, July 2026)
- For one person, the cheapest paid plans of Bookio, Reservio and Fresha cost about €8-12 a month without VAT. SMS reminders usually cost extra, about €0.07-0.15 per text.
- Marketplaces like Fresha and Booksy can bring you new clients, and they charge for them. Booking on your own website keeps the client relationship with you.
- For clinics: a booking can reveal health information, and GDPR treats that as special category data. Ask only for what you need and sign a processing agreement with the tool.
On this page
For one hairdresser or one therapist, online booking costs about €8-12 a month without VAT on Bookio, Reservio or Fresha. A small team pays roughly €40-60 a month once you add SMS reminders. The bigger question is where clients book: inside a marketplace app, or on your own website.
Below are the prices from the tools' own price lists in July 2026. After that come the parts that matter more than the price: who keeps the client, reminders, deposits and, for clinics, health data.
What do the booking tools cost?
All prices are per month, without VAT, from each tool's public price list. Bookio is from Bratislava, Reservio from the Czech Republic. Fresha and Booksy are international apps with their own marketplaces. Calendly and Cal.com are made for meetings and consultations.
| Tool | Free or cheapest plan | For a team | SMS reminders | Fee for new clients |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bookio | Freemium €0 (1 user, 100 bookings). Easy €8.90 | Standard €38.90, up to 5 users | Paid, €0.074 per SMS in Slovakia | None on the price list |
| Reservio | Free €0 (40 bookings per 30 days). Starter €8 | Pro €30, several users with their own login | Credits, €0.09-0.15 per SMS in Slovakia | None on the price list |
| Fresha | Independent €11.95 | €7.95 per team member | 20 free per person a month, then €0.15 | One-time fee for clients from its marketplace |
| Booksy (Irish price list) | €44, all features | +€5 per extra person | Confirmations and reminders free | Boost: 30% of the first visit, optional |
| Calendly | Free plan. Standard $10-12 per seat | Teams $16-20 per seat | Not listed on the price page | None |
| Cal.com | Free for individuals | Teams $12 per user (yearly) | Email and SMS notifications listed | None |
A few notes. Bookio's €8.90 is with monthly billing; yearly it is €6.90. Reservio bills at least every 6 months, and yearly is a bit cheaper. I couldn't find a Slovak price list for Booksy, so I used the Irish one in euros. On Booksy's Spanish list, the Boost fee is capped at €50.
What does a two-person salon pay a month?
Here is my own calculation for a typical case: two people, about 300 bookings a month, one SMS reminder for each. Prices without VAT, without card fees and without marketplace fees.
- Bookio Smart€18.90 + 300 SMS × €0.074€41
- Booksy€44 + €5, reminders free (Irish list)€49
- Fresha Team2 × €7.95 + 260 paid SMS × €0.15€55
- Reservio Pro€30 + 300 SMS × €0.10€60
My estimate from public price lists, July 2026, excl. VAT
The differences are small, about €20 a month. What changes the bill more is how clients find you, and what each new client costs you.
Marketplace or your own website: who keeps the client?
Fresha and Booksy are two things at once. They are a calendar for you and an app where people search for a salon nearby. That app can bring you new clients. It also shows them other salons on the same screen.
Both charge for the clients they bring. Fresha's help centre describes a one-time fee for each brand-new client who finds you on its marketplace. It is calculated from the first appointment, with a minimum and a cap. Returning clients are free. Fresha says the rate is on its pricing page, but in July 2026 that line in the table simply said "Free". Ask Fresha in writing what applies to you. Booksy's Boost is clearer: 30% of a Boost client's first visit, and you can switch it off.
One detail saves money. Fresha says bookings through your own booking link, from your website or Instagram, carry no new-client fee. So put your own link everywhere and let the marketplace work only for strangers.
Booking on your own website works differently. Bookio, Reservio, Calendly and Cal.com don't sell your clients to anyone. Clients come from Google, from Instagram or from a friend's recommendation. They book on your page, and their contacts stay in your list. Before you choose, check one thing: can you export your client list? Reservio includes data export from the Starter plan up. If you leave a tool one day, your clients should leave with you.
A marketplace app fits if
- You are new in town and nobody searches for your name yet
- You have empty slots and a new client is worth more than the fee
- You are fine with competitors on the same screen
Your own site with a booking tool fits if
- Most clients already come back to you or come by recommendation
- You want the client list and the brand to stay yours
- You run a clinic and want to control which data you collect
- You already get visits to your website from Google
Do reminders and deposits stop no-shows?
Reminders help, and the best evidence comes from healthcare. A Cochrane review of 8 trials compared patients with and without text reminders.
- of patients came to the appointment with no reminder
- 67.8%
- Cochrane review, 2013
- came when they got a text message reminder
- 78.6%
- Cochrane review, 2013
- came after a phone call reminder, which costs staff time
- 80.3%
- Cochrane review, 2013
A salon is not a hospital, but people forget a haircut too. One text the day before costs €0.07-0.15. A missed 60-minute slot costs a lot more.
Deposits go one step further. Fresha supports upfront payments and no-show fees. Booksy has No-Show Protection, and Bookio lists online payments and deposits. Each takes a card fee. Fresha charges 1.29% + €0.20 per payment, for example, and Reservio from 1.19% to 3% + €0.10, depending on the plan. I would ask for a deposit only for long or expensive services, like colouring or a two-hour treatment. For a 20-minute cut it drives away more clients than it saves.
Clinics: what about GDPR and health data?
I'm not a lawyer, so treat this as a list of questions for your data protection adviser.
GDPR (Article 9) treats health data as a special category. A booking alone can count: the name of a patient next to "dermatology consultation" or "psychotherapy" already says something about their health. Healthcare providers may process this data, but under stricter conditions.
What I would check in any booking tool:
- A data processing agreement (Article 28). The tool processes your patients' data for you, so you need this contract with it.
- Where the data is stored. Calendly and Cal.com are US companies. Ask where the servers are and how transfers outside the EU are covered.
- A short form. Name, phone, email, service. No free-text box where patients describe their symptoms.
- Neutral reminders. "Your appointment tomorrow at 10:00", not "your gynaecology check". Phones show messages on the lock screen.
One piece of good news for small practices: Recital 91 says a single doctor processing patient data is not "large scale" processing. That matters for some GDPR duties, such as the need for a data protection officer. Doctors also have national rules on medical records on top of GDPR.
How do you choose, step by step?
- Count last month's bookings and staff. This tells you which plan you need, because most plans limit bookings or users.
- Count your no-shows. If it's more than one or two a week, SMS reminders pay for themselves.
- Decide where clients should book: your website, a marketplace, or both. If both, use your own link everywhere you can.
- Try two tools for free, 14 days each. Book an appointment on your phone as a client would.
- Check that you can export your client list and that the tool signs a data processing agreement.
- Put the booking button on your website, your Google profile and your Instagram bio.
How I would set it up
For most salons and small clinics, I wouldn't write a booking system from scratch. Bookio or Reservio already handle calendars, staff and reminders well. A year of Bookio Easy costs about €107 without VAT. I would build the website around them: a clear "Book" button on every page, the booking page in your colours, and services and prices that match on the site and in the tool.
A custom booking flow makes sense when the rules are unusual. Examples are two rooms that block each other, or a clinic that wants patients to fill in nothing but a phone number.
If your website doesn't make booking easy yet, start with what a business website should do in 2026. If you get the same questions all day on top of bookings, read when an AI chatbot pays off. And if you want a site with booking built in, here is how I make websites.
Questions people ask
What is the cheapest online booking system for a small salon in Slovakia?
Bookio Freemium (1 user, 100 bookings a month) and Reservio Free (40 bookings per 30 days) cost nothing. The cheapest paid plans start at about €8-9 a month without VAT. SMS reminders are paid separately.
Can I put Bookio, Reservio or Fresha on my own website?
Yes. Bookio gives you an iframe code for your site, Reservio has a booking page and a custom domain on its Standard plan, and Fresha has a Book button. Fresha says bookings through your own link carry no new-client fee.
Do SMS reminders really reduce no-shows?
For healthcare appointments, a Cochrane review of 8 trials found attendance of 78.6% with text reminders and 67.8% with none. Salons are not clinics, but the direction is the same: people forget.
Can a clinic use Calendly or a salon booking app?
It can, if the tool signs a data processing agreement with you and you keep the booking form short. Avoid free-text fields where patients describe symptoms, and keep reminder texts neutral. Ask your data protection adviser before you start.
Sources
- Reservio price list (Slovakia), Reservio, checked 14 July 2026
- Bookio price list, Bookio, checked 14 July 2026
- Bookio SMS prices by country (as of 2 March 2026), Bookio, checked 14 July 2026
- Fresha pricing, Fresha, checked 14 July 2026
- Marketplace new client fees, Fresha Help Center, checked 14 July 2026
- Booksy pricing (Ireland), Booksy, checked 14 July 2026
- Booksy precios (Spain), Booksy, checked 14 July 2026
- Calendly pricing, Calendly, checked 14 July 2026
- Cal.com pricing, Cal.com, checked 14 July 2026
- Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments (CD007458), Cochrane, 5 December 2013
- Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Articles 9 and 28, Recital 91, EUR-Lex, checked 14 July 2026
Facts and prices are as of the dates in the sources.
Nikolay Tolmachev
Founder, Tolman Studios
I build websites, AI chatbots and ads for small businesses, working from Slovakia. Before that I spent over 4 years managing IT projects. I hold PMP and Certified ScrumMaster certificates.