Fresha runs on a paid subscription of roughly £16 per team member a month, plus card fees of about 1.3 to 1.4% on online payments, plus a one-off 20% fee when a new client finds you through their marketplace. Solovi is a flat monthly fee for the whole business, 0% platform commission, and you only pay the standard card rate every business pays.
No credit card. No setup fee. 30-day money back on paid plans.
Honest comparison, same product, same prices, no marketing fluff.
Head to head
Want the full £ breakdown for your business? Open the earnings calculator →
First, the fair bit
Fresha is one of the best-value products in this market, and for a solo operator it is hard to beat on price alone. It built its reputation on charging nothing for the software, and while that era is over, the subscription is still lower than most of the alternatives.
The marketplace is the other half of it. Someone in your town can open Fresha, search for a treatment, and find you without ever having heard your name. For a business that is new, or new to an area, that kind of discovery is genuinely difficult to build on your own, and it is the thing you are really paying for.
The software itself is capable too. Calendars, deposits, no-show protection, stock and reporting have all been refined over years, and a great many salons run happily on them. So this page is not an argument that Fresha is bad. It is an argument that Fresha and Solovi solve different problems, and which one fits depends almost entirely on where your clients come from.
The numbers
Fresha's UK pricing page shows around £14.95 a month for a solo user, or about £9.95 per bookable team member a month on the Team plan. Like most of the market those prices exclude VAT, so a solo user who cannot reclaim it actually pays closer to £17.94.
On top of the subscription there are two more lines. Card processing on payments you take through Fresha, and the part that catches people out: a 20% fee, minimum £4, on the first booking of any new client who finds you through the Fresha marketplace. It is charged once per new client, not on every visit, and your own regulars are never charged a commission.
You may have seen Fresha described as taking "2.19% of every booking". That figure circulates widely and it is not accurate. Fresha does not charge a flat commission on every booking, and we would rather say so than let a wrong number make our case for us.
Third-party prices change and are quoted excluding VAT. Check Fresha's own pricing page before you decide.
What it looks like in practice
The monthly fee is not where the difference lives. Fresha's subscription is lower than ours, and for a solo therapist who never touches the marketplace it will stay lower.
It changes when the marketplace starts working. Say ten new clients find you on Fresha in a month and each books a £60 first appointment. That is £600 of new business and about £120 in new-client fees, on top of the subscription and card processing. Whether that is good value depends entirely on one thing: would those ten people have found you anyway?
If they genuinely would not have, the fee bought you ten clients you did not have, and it was money well spent. If most of them searched your name, or came from your Instagram, or walked past your window, then you paid a commission on business you had already won.
That is the honest question, and it is not one we can answer for you. Ask the next ten clients how they found you. The answer decides which of these two products you should be paying for.
The actual difference
On Fresha, your booking page lives on fresha.com. That is the point of it, not a flaw. The marketplace can introduce you to someone who has never heard of you, and in exchange your clients book through a shared app where other salons are one tap away.
Solovi does the opposite. We build you a website on your own domain, put the booking system inside it, and connect Stripe so payments land in your own bank account. There is no marketplace, no shared listing, and no other business alongside yours.
The part people notice later is what happens if they leave. A profile on someone else's platform is not an asset you keep. The domain is theirs, the pages search engines have learned to trust are theirs, and on the day you go there is nothing to redirect. A site on your own domain keeps accumulating whether you stay with us or not.
There is a newer version of that argument too. People increasingly ask an assistant rather than scrolling a results page, and assistants answer from pages they can read and cite. Your own site and your Google Business Profile are readable in that sense. A record inside a booking app largely is not.
Plenty of businesses run both for a while, and that is a sensible thing to do. Keep the marketplace for discovery, send your regulars to your own site, and see over a few months which one is actually earning its fee.
If you do move
1. Get your client list out first. Export your customers from Fresha before you cancel anything. It is your data and you will want it whatever you decide.
2. Send us your services and hours. You fill in one form. We build the site, load your service menu and prices, set up the booking rules and connect Stripe so deposits and payments go straight to your account.
3. Run both for a few weeks. Point your Instagram link and your Google Business Profile at the new site, and leave Fresha running while you watch where the bookings actually land. If the marketplace is carrying you, you will see it.
4. Then decide. Cancel Fresha, or keep it for discovery and take your regulars direct. Nothing about Solovi requires you to switch off anything else.
We are live in 7 days or your money back, and paid plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee, so the downside of trying it is small and bounded.
Not any more. Fresha spent years setting itself apart by charging nothing for the software, and a lot of older guides still describe it that way. Its UK pricing page now shows a subscription of around £14.95 a month for a solo user, or about £9.95 per bookable team member on the Team plan, both excluding VAT.
No, and the "2.19% of every booking" figure you see repeated online is not accurate. You pay the subscription, card processing on payments taken through Fresha, and a one-off 20% fee with a £4 minimum on the first booking of a new client who found you through the marketplace. Repeat visits and your own regulars are not charged.
Export your client list before you cancel and you keep their details. Regulars usually move with a link in your bio and on your Google Business Profile, because they book with you for you. The ones worth thinking hardest about are clients who only ever found you through the marketplace in the first place.
Yes, and for a lot of businesses that is the sensible middle. Keep the marketplace for discovery, send your regulars to your own site so those bookings cost you nothing extra, and see over a few months which one is actually earning its fee.
Not on the monthly fee. Fresha's subscription is lower, and for a solo user who never touches the marketplace it stays lower. Solovi is a flat £19 to £79 a month depending on tier, with 0% commission and a website built for you included rather than a profile on a shared platform. Which works out cheaper depends on how many new clients you take through a marketplace.
Not in the same sense. Solovi runs a UK web directory at solovi.co.uk/find where paying customers are featured above other listings, but it is a growing directory rather than a consumer app with a large existing audience. If marketplace discovery is your main need, Fresha is genuinely stronger there today.
A note on this page. This is general information to help you weigh up your options, not financial or business advice. Third-party prices are taken from public pricing pages, are quoted excluding VAT, and change without notice, so check Fresha's own pricing before you decide. Any product or company names mentioned are trademarks of their respective owners, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by them. We make Solovi, so we are not a neutral party, and we have tried to be fair and accurate throughout. If you spot anything out of date, let us know and we will put it right.
Pricing
Every penny your customers pay belongs to you. Solovi only charges a flat monthly fee, no per-booking cuts, no gift-card fees, no hidden percentages. Ever.
⭐ The 2026 rate ends 31 December
Sign up before then and these prices are locked for as long as you stay.
Solo
Get online fast
0% commission · 0% setup fee
Local
Get found locally
0% commission · 30-day money back
Bespoke
Stand out beautifully
No setup fee · 0% commission
Why Solovi wins on price
On £500/mo of bookings, you'd pay £7.50 in fees to Booksy or £10.95 to Fresha. With Solovi: £0.
⚡
Live in 7 days
Or your money back
💸
0% commission
100% of every booking is yours
🔒
30-day money back
No questions asked
Two ways in. See it working on a short call first, or tell us about your business and we start building.
Want a look first
Half an hour on Google Meet. We go through how it would work for your trade, what your site would look like and what it costs. Ask anything, no obligation.
Ready to go
Tell us about your business and we start building this week. Nothing to pay until you are happy with the result.
Start free →We'll only email you about Solovi. No spam, ever. Unsubscribe any time.
Useful reading