Booksy, Treatwell or bookings on your own website: how to do the maths before you switch

If you run a hair salon, a barbershop or a beauty studio and you pay for Booksy or Treatwell, the useful question isn't whether the app is expensive. It's how much of what you pay brings you new clients, and how much is just the calendar for the ones you already had.

Search "Booksy or Treatwell" and a good share of the top results come from the platforms themselves. Booksy's blog compares booking apps for salons and ends up recommending Booksy. Treatwell's guide gets one thing right: it tells you to look at the total yearly cost, not just the monthly fee. What neither of them does is that sum for you, or tell you what happens to your clients if you leave.

What their own pricing pages say

There's one fact that changes the conversation: neither of them charges commission on your regular clients.

• Treatwell. Its pricing page for salons in Spain says it only charges commission on the first bookings of new clients who come through its marketplace, that repeat bookings are at 0%, and that there's no commission on bookings made directly with you or through the "Book now" button on your website or social media. On top of that there's the monthly fee, a fee when the client pays online in advance, and a minimum contract of 12 months.
• Booksy. On its pricing page the fee is monthly, goes up with each team member you add, and there's no minimum term. Commission only comes in if you switch on Boost, and according to its Boost page it's charged on the new client's first visit. Visits after that, 0%.

In other words: if someone tells you "leave Booksy and you'll save on commission", be wary. You already don't pay commission on your regulars. What you pay for them is the monthly fee, every month, for as long as you stay.

You're actually paying for two things

1. Getting new clients. The marketplace puts you in front of people who didn't know you. That's paid for with the new-client commission. If those people come back, it can be a good deal.
2. The calendar. The diary, the reminders, each client's record, the booking button. That's paid for with the monthly fee, and you pay it even if almost all your appointments are people who were coming before you had the app.

A booking system on your own website replaces the second one, not the first. That's the sum you need to do.

How to do the sum with your own numbers

Pull the last three months from the app's dashboard and your invoices. Everything excluding VAT, so you compare like with like. You need four things:

• Total appointments in those three months.
• New clients who came through the marketplace. If the app doesn't flag them, look at the commissions charged: that's where they show up.
• How many of those new clients came back a second time.
• What you paid in total: fees, commissions, online payment fees and any extras.

That gives you two numbers.

What the calendar costs you. Take what you paid in total, subtract the new-client commissions and divide by three. That's what you pay each month to manage your regulars. Call it A.

What the marketplace gives you. The new clients who came back. If there are few, the marketplace isn't working for you, for whatever reason: your area, your type of service, the competition inside the app itself. If there are many, the app is earning what it charges and we wouldn't tell you to leave it.

Now the comparison. At Fast Web, your own booking system inside your website is our Web + system plan: €1,500 excluding VAT, paid once, with optional maintenance of €20 to €90 a month depending on the system. If you call M the maintenance you choose (or zero if you don't want it):

Months to pay it back = 1,500 / (A − M)

If A is close to M, switching isn't worth it. If A is clearly higher, from that month on the difference stays with you. Do the sum with your real numbers, not an example's, because the fee changes with the plan and the size of your team. If you also pay other platforms, this calculator lets you tick what you pay and see what goes out every year.

One thing to watch: this sum only works if you leave completely. If you stay on the app to get new clients, the fee carries on and A doesn't go away.

What you lose if you leave

Worth saying, because the platforms do give you things:

• Visibility inside the marketplace. Your website doesn't show up in anyone's app.
• Habit. Your clients have the app installed and know how to book there. Some will keep looking for you in it for the first few weeks.
• Reviews inside the platform. They live on the platform. The ones on your Google profile don't depend on it.

If the marketplace brings you clients who come back, the sensible thing is not to throw it away. You can have both: the app so new people find you and your website so your regulars book direct. But then you keep paying the fee, and you have to work out how to stop the same slot being booked twice from two places.

If you use Calendly

Calendly is a different case. According to its pricing page, it's a tool for sharing a booking link and it charges per person who has a calendar (they call it a seat). There's no marketplace bringing people to you: everything you pay is for the calendar.

If you work on your own, with one type of appointment and nothing charged in advance, you don't need a custom system. Calendly or Google Calendar's appointment schedules will do. Your own system starts to make sense when you have rules a generic tool doesn't handle well: several rooms or chairs, services of different lengths, a deposit to book, closures on specific dates, a team sharing one calendar.

To give you an idea of what "your own rules" means, these are the ones for Tirano Street Food, a restaurant in Barcelona, as described on our booking systems page: bookings need at least 2 hours' notice, can be made up to 60 days ahead, in 30-minute slots with a maximum of 8 guests, and same-day bookings close at 19:00. In a barbershop the rules would be different: how long each service takes, which barber does what, how much gap you leave between appointments.

What to ask before you hire someone to build your own system

Us or anyone else, and in writing:

1. Are the code, the database and the domain mine? If you leave tomorrow, you have to be able to take everything with you.
2. Can I export my clients and my appointment history? In a file anyone can open.
3. What happens if I stop paying for maintenance? With us, the website keeps working the same. Always ask.
4. How do reminders go out? Email, SMS or WhatsApp. If any of them costs per message, who pays.
5. Does it sync with my calendar? If you already use Google Calendar or iCloud, appointments should land there.
6. Can I take a deposit when people book? And which payment provider it uses and what it charges per payment, because that goes into the sum too.
7. Who changes opening hours, services and closures? You, from a dashboard, or by messaging someone every time.
8. How long does it take? Ours, 2 to 3 weeks, according to our pricing page.

MMLD Studios, a recording studio in Barcelona, takes its bookings this way, from its own website. As Vincent Zurita put it: "Having bookings running from the website took a huge amount of admin off our hands. Everything on our own platform and no commissions."

How to switch without losing appointments

If you do the sum and switching comes out ahead:

1. Don't cancel on day one. Set up your own system and run it alongside the app for a few weeks. If you're on Treatwell, check first when your contract ends.
2. Put your website's booking link where people look for you: your Instagram bio, WhatsApp Business and your Google Business Profile, which lets you add appointment links to the address you choose. If the platform had its own button there, the profile has an option to remove that provider.
3. Tell your regulars. At the front desk and in the next reminder: from now on, you book here.
4. Export your clients before you cancel. On Booksy, according to Goldie's migration guide (another booking software), the client list downloads as a CSV from the clients section, but appointments don't: you have to ask support for them. On Treatwell, ask before you request cancellation.
5. Measure for two months. How many bookings come in through your website and how many still come through the app.

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How we build booking systems and what they include is on that same page. If you'd like us to do the sum with you, send us what you pay each month and how many appointments you have, and we'll tell you whether it's worth it or not.