How to choose salon software for a small salon in 2026

A small salon does not need the software a fifty-site chain needs. It needs a diary the whole team can read from a phone, a booking page that works at 11pm, client records that do not walk out when a stylist leaves, and a way to take payment that does not create a second ledger. Everything else is optional until it is not.

This is a checklist for choosing salon software when you run one site with a handful of chairs. It uses Salon100X as the example, including the things it does not do, because a checklist that only lists the good bits is a brochure.

Start with the four things you do every day

Most of the time you will be doing one of four things: taking a booking, looking at the diary, taking payment, or answering a client's question about their last visit. Judge software on those four before you look at anything else.

Online booking

Clients book when they think of it, which is often at night. The booking page needs to show real availability and confirm on the spot.

Salon100X booking runs in six steps: location, service, optional package, staff, date and time, confirm. A client can pick a stylist or choose "any available", which merges every eligible stylist's free time and assigns the first one free. Slots come in 30-minute steps, up to 90 days ahead. Confirmation goes by email to the client, the stylist and you.

One service per online booking. Staff can build multi-service appointments, with a different stylist and time on each service, from the diary. A cut and colour booked online is two bookings or one phone call, so tell your regulars.

The diary

The day view puts each stylist in a row with a live time line, so you can see at a glance who is free. There is a month view for planning. You can block time for one person or the whole salon, check clients in with notes, and track late arrivals (the default grace is 15 minutes). Appointments that are never checked in are marked as no-shows automatically once the grace period passes.

There is no drag and drop and no week view. If you move bookings around a lot by hand, try the reschedule flow in a demo before you decide.

Payments

Salon100X takes card and online payments through Stripe. A client pays from their portal, or you send a Stripe payment link by email for an appointment or a retail order. Gift card balances and loyalty points come off the bill first. Every payment for the location lands on one transactions page.

It does not replace your card terminal. There is no tap to pay in the software, so keep the terminal you have for in-person card payments and use Stripe for online and link payments. See payments for the full list.

Client records

The client profile shows upcoming, past and cancelled appointments, lifetime spend, visits and average spend, top five services, and any points, membership, gift cards or packages. Search by name, email, phone or client code.

There is no client import from another system. New clients create their own record when they book online; existing ones are added by your team. Budget an afternoon for it, or ask us about the quickest route for your list size.

Then the things that earn their keep over a year

Once the daily four are covered, three more areas make a difference to a small salon's takings.

• Repeat business. Loyalty points on every appointment, a referral scheme that gives 500 points to the referrer and 250 to the newcomer when the first visit completes, and gift cards sold online from £1 to £10,000.
• Reputation. A review request by SMS four hours after a completed visit, with four and five star ratings sent on to Google, Trustpilot or Facebook. SMS needs your own Twilio account.
• Numbers. A "Today at a glance" dashboard with net revenue, bookings, average ticket, utilisation, retail attach and no-shows, and 30 reports you can export or have emailed to you every Monday. See reports.

What you can safely ignore for now

Multi-location dashboards, payroll files for your accountant, memberships billed as subscriptions and digital consent forms are all in the product. A one-site salon with three chairs does not need them on day one. In Salon100X most modules are switched on for you when you ask, so the menus stay short until you want more.

Five mistakes small salons make when choosing

1. Choosing on price alone. A cheap system the team avoids costs more than a dearer one they use.
2. Not testing on a phone. Most of your team will use it standing up between clients. So will your clients.
3. Believing a feature exists because it is on a web page. Ask to see it in a live account. If a vendor cannot show reminders working, they are not working.
4. Skipping the switch plan. Decide who enters existing clients, when the old diary stops, and what the team does in the first week.
5. Turning everything on at once. Diary and online booking first, then payments, then loyalty and reviews.

What it costs

Salon100X is £299, with the billing period stated on the pricing page. The first three months are free and there is no card to enter at signup, so you can run the checklist above on your own salon before paying anything. Compare it feature by feature on the compare page, or book a demo and bring your diary.