Why I now only take bookings through Appointy and blocked my DMs
Ethan Sheikh
🏪 VIP Seller
🥇 Gold Seller
Aesthetic Clinic · Oxford · 7mo ago
I want to be honest about this because I wasted money making the wrong choice first. I started with Phorest when I opened my brow studio in Cardiff 8 years ago. It looked great on the surface but the client-facing booking page was clunky and I had eight people drop off mid-booking every week. Switched to Vagaro a year ago and haven't looked back. Here's what the switch actually involved and what I think matters most when choosing a system.
First thing: don't just look at the price. Look at the booking flow from a client's point of view. I had a client tell me my old booking page made her feel like she was filling in a tax return. That stung but she was right. Vagaro took me about half a day to set up properly, and within the first week I noticed clients were actually completing their bookings rather than dropping off halfway through.
Second: SMS reminders are non-negotiable. Email reminders get ignored. My no-show rate went from roughly 20% down to almost nothing once I turned on the automated text reminder 48 hours before each appointment. Worth every penny of the monthly cost.
Third: deposits. I introduced a £25 deposit about a year after switching and honestly I should have done it from day one. The people who complained were the people who would have wasted my time anyway. My regulars didn't blink.
First thing: don't just look at the price. Look at the booking flow from a client's point of view. I had a client tell me my old booking page made her feel like she was filling in a tax return. That stung but she was right. Vagaro took me about half a day to set up properly, and within the first week I noticed clients were actually completing their bookings rather than dropping off halfway through.
Second: SMS reminders are non-negotiable. Email reminders get ignored. My no-show rate went from roughly 20% down to almost nothing once I turned on the automated text reminder 48 hours before each appointment. Worth every penny of the monthly cost.
Third: deposits. I introduced a £25 deposit about a year after switching and honestly I should have done it from day one. The people who complained were the people who would have wasted my time anyway. My regulars didn't blink.
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The no-show stats in this post match my experience almost exactly. I was losing roughly £20 a month to no-shows and cancellations before I introduced deposits. That money was just gone. Now it's protected. The maths on deposits is completely obvious once you see it.
#1
I've been in this industry for 10 years and the switch to online booking was the best operational decision I ever made, full stop. Not even close. The time saving is enormous and the professionalism it adds to your brand is something clients notice and comment on.
#2
The point about filtering your client base with deposits is something I wish someone had told me when I started. It sounds harsh but your business actually runs better with fewer, more committed clients than with a packed diary full of flaky ones.
#3
This is really relatable. I went through almost the exact same process 6 months ago. The biggest thing for me was realising that the clients who pushed back hardest on deposits were the ones who'd let me down before. Once I saw it that way the decision became very easy.
#4
The deposit psychology point is spot on. I've said this for years — a £10 deposit doesn't stop genuine clients, it stops time-wasters. Anyone who values the appointment enough to actually show up doesn't think twice about a deposit.
#5