Zedule vs Fresha | Honest comparison
Fresha is the salon/spa marketplace platform — your business gets listed in their consumer-facing app (free traffic) in exchange for 2-3% of every online booking processed through Fresha. Zedule is the standalone alternative — $100/year flat, no marketplace, no per-booking cut. The choice is a marketplace dependency question, not a pricing question.
Updated May 5, 2026
Fresha is the dominant salon/spa marketplace platform. Their business model is the reverse of most SaaS: instead of charging subscription, they charge per-booking (and per-payment) on bookings that flow through their system. They make money on volume.
The pitch they make to operators: “It’s free! We’ll bring you customers from our app!” — and for some businesses that’s a great deal. For others it’s an expensive one wearing a free t-shirt.
This page covers when each is the right call.
How they differ
Fresha’s economics: the more you book, the more you pay (2-3% per booking + Stripe). Their incentive is to drive bookings into their marketplace and keep your customers in their ecosystem.
Zedule’s economics: $100/year flat regardless of volume. Your customers come from your channels; Fresha’s marketplace doesn’t exist in our model.
Side-by-side
| Zedule | Fresha | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $100/yr | $0 |
| Per-booking fee | None | 2-3% on online bookings |
| Per-payment fee | None (V2 Stripe BYO) | Stripe fees ~2.9% |
| Marketplace traffic | None | Yes (Fresha consumer app) |
| Customer ownership | Yours | Marketplace customers are Fresha’s |
| Branded booking page | Custom hex, full embed | Limited |
| Multi-staff | Yes | Yes |
| Retail / inventory | No | Yes |
| Commission tracking | No | Limited |
| Reports / analytics | Basic | Deeper |
| Per-tenant data isolation | Yes (Cloudflare D1) | Shared |
| Setup time | ~30 min | ~1 hour + verification |
Where Fresha wins
- Marketplace traffic. If you’re new and don’t have customer acquisition channels, the Fresha consumer app brings real bookings. Free traffic > $0 traffic.
- Bundled payments. Customers pay through Fresha; you don’t set up Stripe separately.
- Retail product tracking. Sell shampoo, track inventory, reorder from suppliers.
- Industry-specific features. Built around salons + spas specifically (commission, gift cards).
- Established platform. Mature product, deep operator community.
Where Zedule wins
- No per-booking fees. A salon doing 200 bookings/month at $80 average pays Fresha roughly $4,800/year in fees. Zedule is $100. The break-even is at ~3-5 bookings per month — anything above that and Zedule is cheaper.
- Customer ownership. Your customers are yours. Fresha’s marketplace customers belong to the platform; we explicitly don’t run a marketplace.
- Branded experience. Custom hex booking page, your domain on emails. Fresha’s branding tends to dominate the customer-facing experience.
- Predictable costs. $100/year, period. No volume-based fees, no payment processing surprise costs.
- Per-tenant data isolation. Each business in its own D1.
- No marketplace dependency. If you decide to leave Fresha, the customers who came through their app may not follow. Zedule’s customer list is entirely yours.
Which one to pick
Pick Fresha if:
- You’re a new salon/spa without your own customer acquisition.
- You depend on the Fresha marketplace for discovery.
- Bundled payment processing is a feature, not a fee.
- Retail and commission management are core to your operation.
Pick Zedule if:
- You’re an established business with your own acquisition channels (Google, Instagram, referrals).
- You want predictable costs and customer ownership.
- The branded customer experience matters.
- Per-booking fees feel like a tax on growth.
Migration
Fresha → Zedule:
- Export your customer list from Fresha (Settings → Export). Note: customers acquired through the Fresha marketplace may have email opt-out preferences specific to Fresha; they’re yours to email but check the data.
- Re-create services in Zedule with the same names, durations, prices.
- Add staff with their hours.
- Set up a Stripe Invoices flow (or wait for Zedule V2’s native payment) for paid bookings.
- Cut over the booking URL on your Google Business Profile, Instagram, website. Update existing customers via email that you’ve moved to a new booking system.
The trickiest part is the Fresha marketplace listings — those go away when you leave. If marketplace discovery was meaningful, plan the migration around when you’ve replaced that channel.
Try it
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
- Fresha is free — why pay $100/year for Zedule?
- Fresha's 'free' is functional only if you ignore the per-booking fees. They take 2-3% of every online booking + Stripe fees. For a salon doing 200 bookings/month at $80 average ticket, that's $4-5K/year in fees — vs Zedule's $100 flat.
- But Fresha brings me customers from their marketplace — isn't that worth it?
- Sometimes. If you're a new business with no customer acquisition channel of your own, the Fresha marketplace traffic is meaningful. If you're established (your customers come from Google, Instagram, word of mouth), you're paying Fresha to broker relationships you'd have anyway.
- Who actually owns the customer data?
- On Fresha, customers booking through the marketplace are Fresha's. They can show that customer your competitors next time. On Zedule, your customers are yours — period. CSV export anytime.
- Does Zedule have a marketplace?
- No. We don't run a discovery app. You drive your own traffic through Google Business Profile, Instagram, your own website. The trade-off: no free marketplace traffic; but also no marketplace fees and no shared customers.
- What about Fresha's payment processing?
- Fresha bundles payment processing (their cut + Stripe fees). Zedule has no native payment processing in V1; you'd run Stripe Invoices or your own POS. V2 will integrate Stripe Checkout.
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