Vagaro starts at around £20 a month, plus roughly £8 to £10 for each extra team member, with card processing between 2.2% and 3.5% depending on how the payment is taken. Solovi is UK-built, custom-designed for each business, and adds 0% platform commission on top of Stripe’s standard card rate.
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Honest comparison, same product, same prices, no marketing fluff.
Head to head
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First, the fair bit
Vagaro is the deepest product in this comparison. It is a full salon and spa suite: calendars, point of sale, stock, payroll, memberships, packages, class scheduling, forms, marketing, a branded app. If you run a busy multi-room business and you want one system that does everything, that breadth is real and it is hard to assemble from smaller tools.
It is also worth saying plainly that Vagaro does not run a marketplace commission. It does not charge you a share of new clients the way the marketplace platforms do. Its money comes from the subscription and from card processing, which is a cleaner arrangement than it sometimes gets credit for.
So this is not a comparison between a good product and a bad one. It is a comparison between a broad suite you assemble from modules, and a narrow done-for-you service with the website included. Which is right depends on how much software you actually want to run.
The numbers
Vagaro starts at around £20 a month for one bookable calendar, and the price rises as you add staff or calendars. That headline is competitive and it is the number most comparisons stop at.
Two things move the real bill. First, add-ons are priced separately. A website, online forms, text marketing, check-in and similar are each their own monthly fee, so switching on a few takes a small salon into the £50 to £85 a month range. Second, and the one that catches people out, card processing runs roughly 2.2% to 3.5% depending on the card and how the payment is taken, with in-person payments commonly around 2.75%.
That processing rate is the part worth doing arithmetic on. It sits above the standard rate a lot of UK businesses pay elsewhere, for example Stripe's roughly 1.5% plus 20p, and the gap compounds with every card you take rather than staying flat.
Third-party prices change. Check Vagaro's own pricing page before you decide.
What it looks like in practice
Say you take £3,000 a month in card payments, which is a modest month for a busy chair.
At around 2.75% that is roughly £82 in processing. At a standard rate of about 1.5% plus 20p it is closer to £45 once you allow for the per-transaction pence. The difference is somewhere near £37 a month, or more than £440 over a year, on exactly the same takings.
That gap is larger than most people's entire booking subscription, and it grows as the business does. It is also invisible, because it comes off each payment rather than arriving as a bill.
None of which makes Vagaro the wrong choice. If you are using the stock control, the memberships and the payroll, you are getting something for the money that a booking page cannot replace. The question is whether you are paying suite prices for calendar features.
The actual difference
Vagaro gives you a large toolbox and expects you to set it up. That is the right shape for a business with someone whose job includes running the software, and it is why Vagaro suits multi-room salons and spas well.
Solovi is the opposite shape. You fill in one form, and we build the website, load your services and prices, set the booking rules and connect Stripe. There is nothing to configure, because configuring it is the service. That is also its limit: if you want stock control, payroll or class packages, we do not have them and are not pretending to.
The other difference is the website itself. On Vagaro a site is an add-on to the booking system. With Solovi the site is the product and the booking lives inside it, on your own domain, so the pages that rank in Google are yours rather than a listing on someone else's platform.
If you are only using Vagaro for the calendar and the card terminal, you are paying for a suite you are not using. If you are using half of it, you are probably in the right place.
If you do move
1. Export your clients and your service menu. Do this before you cancel anything. Your service list and prices save us both time when we build the site, and the client list is yours whatever you decide.
2. Work out which add-ons you actually use. This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that tells you whether moving makes sense. If you are paying for stock control and using it, stay.
3. Send us the details. One form. We build the site, load the services, set the booking rules and connect Stripe so payments go straight to your account.
4. Run both for a few weeks. Point your Google Business Profile and your Instagram link at the new site and watch where bookings land before you cancel anything.
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.
It starts at around £20 a month for one bookable calendar and rises as you add staff or calendars. Add-ons such as a website, forms, text marketing and check-in are billed separately, so a small salon running a few of them commonly lands somewhere between £50 and £85 a month.
Roughly 2.2% to 3.5% depending on the card type and how the payment is taken, with in-person payments commonly around 2.75%. That is above the standard rate many UK businesses pay elsewhere, so on higher card volumes the difference is worth calculating.
No. Unlike the marketplace platforms, Vagaro does not take a share of your bookings or charge a fee on new clients. Its revenue comes from the subscription, the add-ons and card processing. Solovi also charges 0% commission; the difference between the two is the card rate and what is included rather than a booking fee.
Only if what you need is a website with booking and payments. Solovi does not do stock control, payroll, memberships or class packages. If you use those, Vagaro is the more complete product and we would not suggest otherwise.
A website is available as a paid add-on. With Solovi the website is the product rather than an extra, it is built for you rather than assembled from a template by you, and it sits on your own domain with the booking system inside it.
Each staff member gets their own calendar, working hours, services and prices. Solo covers one, Local up to three and Bespoke is unlimited. Multi-location chains are still on our roadmap, so a business running several sites is better served elsewhere 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 and change without notice, so check Vagaro'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
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