A fair question
Fresha gives a salon a public profile with services, prices, team, reviews and live booking, for free, and it works. Booksy and Vagaro do the same. So the question is reasonable: why pay for a website that seems to do the same thing? The honest answer is that the profile does one job well and three jobs badly, and whether the three matter depends on where the salon is.
What the platform profile does well
- Live booking. The core, done properly.
- Services and prices, current because they are the ones the platform charges.
- Reviews, collected automatically.
- A place to send Instagram followers, via the bio link.
- Discovery inside the platform's app, for people already browsing it.
For a new one-chair salon, that covers the essentials at no cost. Nobody should be told otherwise.
What it does badly
Search on your own name and services. The profile lives on fresha.com/a/your-salon. When someone searches "hair salon [town]" or "balayage [town]", Google may show Fresha's directory pages, which list you beside every competitor in the area, or it may show nothing of yours. Your profile does not rank as your business; the platform's page ranks as a directory. A website on your own domain, with a page per service naming your town, is what appears for those searches as you.
The client relationship. Clients who book through the platform's app are the platform's users. Their habit is to open the app, where your competitors are one scroll away and the platform's promotions are overlaid. The platform may charge a fee on clients it "introduces", including some who were yours. A website on your domain, with the Book button linking to your platform booking, keeps the platform as the diary and makes you the front door; clients who arrive via your site are yours, and typically fee-free.
Stylist-level booking from Instagram. The profile has a team list, but a stylist's Instagram bio linking to a profile page with their work, their bio and a Book-with button on your domain converts a personal following far better than a link to the salon's platform page where the follower hunts for a name.
Your brand. The profile looks like Fresha with your logo. A website looks like you. For a salon whose positioning is premium, that matters; for one whose clients come by word of mouth, it matters less.
When the profile is enough
- One chair or a very small team, first year, budget going on the salon itself.
- Clients come almost entirely by referral and Instagram, and the Instagram bio link to the profile is converting.
- No ambition to rank for services in the area.
- No stylist with a large personal following.
Use the profile, make the Instagram bio link go to it, and revisit in a year.
When a website is worth it
- The salon wants new clients from search: "salon [town]", "[service] [town]", "barber near me".
- The team is three or more, with stylists who have their own followings.
- The platform's marketplace fees on "new" clients are noticeable, and the salon wants clients to arrive as its own.
- The positioning is premium and the platform look undersells it.
- A second location is coming.
Two of those, and a website at a fixed price pays back in new clients within the year.
What the website is, and is not
The website does not replace Fresha. Fresha stays as the diary, the payments, the reminders and the client records. The website is the front door: your domain, your look, a page per service and stylist, prices from your records, a fast gallery, and every Book button deep-linked into Fresha with the service or stylist pre-selected. Clients who arrive via your site book on Fresha through your link. You keep the platform's strengths and stop depending on its directory for discovery.
The website costs mid four figures once, plus hosting in the tens per month. It does not add to the Fresha bill; it usually reduces the marketplace fee component over time as more clients arrive through your own front door.
A middle step
If the budget is not there for a full site: a one-page site on your own domain with your name, address, hours, a large Book button to your Fresha link, stylist faces with their Book-with links, and prices. It ranks for your name, gives Instagram a branded destination, and costs little. It is not the full answer, and it is more than the profile alone.
Where this sits
We build salon websites around whichever platform the salon already uses, Fresha most often, and part of the first conversation is whether the salon needs one yet. About a quarter of the salons that ask are told the profile is enough for now. The rest get a site whose job is to make the platform booking one tap from a page that is theirs.