You spent years building your salon's name — the cut that made someone's week, the review they left, the mate they dragged in. That's your marketing, and you paid for it in work, not ad spend.
So it's worth knowing exactly what your booking app charges you for, because they don't all charge the same way.
There are broadly two models. Flat fee: you pay the same each month whether you're quiet or slammed. Commission: the app is cheap or free to start, then takes a percentage of the new clients it sends you through its marketplace.
The numbers are public, and they're not small. On the big booking marketplaces, the cut lands on that first booking — the new client the marketplace sends you — and runs from around 20% up to 35% of it. On the ones who come back, it usually drops to nothing. But the first visit, the client you're most trying to turn into a regular, is exactly where they take their slice.
The client you're trying to turn into a regular is exactly the one they take a cut of.
That can be a fair trade. The marketplace genuinely brings you someone who'd never have found you — and a slice of a booking you'd otherwise never have had beats all of nothing. For a quiet salon building a name, it can be worth it.
But it's a trade, and it should be a choice you make with your eyes open — not a default you never clocked. Do the sum on your own numbers, not ours: new marketplace clients last month, times your average first-visit spend, times a third. That's what came off the top, quietly, on the way in.
There's another way to think about it. Most of your enquiries don't come from a marketplace at all — they come to your WhatsApp, from people who already found you. Those clients are already yours. Nobody should take a cut of them.
That's how we built Luna. She lives on the WhatsApp your clients already message, answers in seconds, and books them in — first-timers and ten-year regulars alike — for a flat £69 a month. She takes a slice of exactly nothing. Have a good month, and you keep the good month.
Want to see how she'd handle your bookings? Try her on the salons page — message her like one of your clients and see if you can catch her out. Or read the rest of the notes.