Fresha vs Treatwell Connect (2026): Commission, Fees and the Flat-Fee Alternative

Fresha vs Treatwell: What You Are Actually Choosing Between

If you run a salon, barbershop, nail bar or clinic in the UK, these are the two platforms you will be pushed towards hardest. Both do the same two jobs at once: they run your calendar, till and client records, and they list you on a consumer marketplace where people search for treatments and book. Both make their money the same way — a one-off commission when a stranger from that marketplace books with you for the first time.

That shared model makes the comparison narrower than it looks. The software is broadly comparable; the two numbers that decide it are the commission rate and how much of your new business really comes through the marketplace. Everything below uses published UK figures as of July 2026, with the caveat that Treatwell does not print a UK software price publicly and both companies change their rates — verify on fresha.com and treatwell.co.uk before you sign anything. There is also a third option neither platform will mention: flat-fee software with no marketplace and no commission at all, which is a worse deal if you need clients and a better one if you already have them.

What “Treatwell Connect” Actually Means

People searching Fresha vs Treatwell Connect often end up confused, because Treatwell splits its naming and Fresha does not. Treatwell Connect is the salon-facing product: the digital calendar, client history and notes, consultation forms, staff rosters and permissions, stock, reports, the POS and the iOS and Android apps you run the day on. Treatwell without the suffix generally means the consumer marketplace; Treatwell Pay is the payments layer, and Treatwell Pro appears as a separate platform for larger businesses.

Fresha bundles all of that under one name, so Fresha vs Treatwell Connect is the same question as Fresha vs Treatwell — with one useful clarification. You can use Connect purely as a calendar and take every booking through your own Book Now button, and those carry no commission. On both platforms commission is triggered by marketplace discovery, not by using the software.

At a Glance

The Commission Maths

This is the number most people came for. Both platforms charge a one-off fee on the first appointment of a client who discovers them through their marketplace, and both charge nothing on that client's subsequent bookings. The rates are not close.

Fresha takes around 20% with a minimum of about £4. Treatwell takes around 35%, and its own material states that commissions and fees are subject to VAT — at the UK rate that makes the effective deduction roughly 42% of the booking value. A VAT-registered salon reclaims that portion; a salon below the threshold does not, and the gap widens.

Read fairly, though, neither rate is a scandal. It is customer acquisition with the risk moved onto the platform: you pay only when a real person turns up in your diary. If that £60 client rebooks four times a year, Treatwell's £25 finder's fee bought £300 of annual revenue — cheaper than most advertising and far more certain. The problem is never the rate in isolation. It is the rate applied to clients you would have won anyway.

What the Software Itself Costs

Here the two diverge in structure, not just in price. Fresha publishes its plans and charges per bookable team member; Treatwell publishes no UK monthly figure at all, but its paid tier includes unlimited staff. For a one-chair business Fresha is the cheaper and more transparent buy. For a ten-chair salon the arithmetic can flip.

Fresha's tiers gate people rather than features — POS, stock, forms, memberships, gift cards, deals, marketing and the mobile app are on both self-serve plans, so growing unlocks nothing, it simply costs more. Ten bookable staff on Team is roughly £99.50 a month for the product three staff had at £29.85, and several add-ons are priced per member too. Fresha also ended its free-forever plan: as of July 2026 there is a 7-day trial and then a paid plan at every business size, which is why so much older advice about it is now wrong.

Treatwell's lack of a published UK price is a genuine mark against it. The 35% commission and the 2.5% prepayment fee are on its own site, but the monthly software fee arrives in a conversation with a salesperson, and third-party listings disagree with each other. Get the number in writing, with the notice period, before you migrate a client list onto it.

Where Each One Genuinely Wins

Fresha is stronger on transparency, reach and rate

The 20% commission is materially cheaper than 35% plus VAT, and prices are published per country so you can model your bill before speaking to anyone. Reach is broader: Fresha reports operating across roughly 120 countries against Treatwell's dozen or so European markets. Its published UK in-person card rate of around 1.19% + 20p is genuinely competitive — lower, in fact, than Stripe's standard UK rate, so a salon taking most of its money over the counter pays less to process through Fresha than through a Stripe-based platform. Retail is properly handled, with suppliers and purchase orders rather than a bolted-on shop, and many clients already have the app.

Treatwell is stronger on team pricing and UK high-street presence

Unlimited staff at no extra cost is a real structural advantage over per-seat pricing, and it grows more valuable with every chair you fill. Treatwell has deep roots in the UK and Ireland — a name high-street clients recognise and search by — and its Reserve with Google integration puts availability where people are already looking. The software covers the ground: waiting lists, consultation forms, client notes, Tap to Pay, vouchers, last-minute discount tools, automated rebook invitations, rosters, stock and multi-salon management, with reviews on your marketplace profile where new clients read them. Reported free SMS reminders count against Fresha's 20 free texts a month, which a busy salon clears in the first week.

The Gap Both Platforms Share

Their complaint patterns rhyme, which suggests the issues are structural. Both draw criticism for limited third-party integrations, limited control over how the booking experience looks and disputes over which clients count as new; Fresha reviewers add billing surprises and the loss of the free plan, Treatwell partners add delayed payouts and difficulty cancelling. Underneath sits one thing: your client list, booking history and reviews live inside a platform that also owns the demand.

Neither gives you a website either. You get a marketplace profile and a widget or Book Now button you bolt onto a site you buy somewhere else, so the true monthly cost of either usually includes a Wix, Squarespace or WordPress subscription that never appears in any comparison table. On Fresha, clients are reportedly asked to create an account to complete a booking.

The deeper issue is where the value accrues. Every marketplace booking builds the marketplace's SEO, app installs and brand recognition — not yours; next month that client goes back to the app rather than to your site. For a new salon that is a fair trade. For an established one with a full column, it means paying a finder's fee on demand you generated yourself, indefinitely. Neither platform handles term or season billing either — course blocks, training cohorts, twelve-week programmes with mid-term joiners who should pay a pro-rated price — and neither ties booking rights to payment status, so nothing stops a member whose card failed in March from booking through April.

Where Bizzly Fits: The Flat-Fee Third Path

Bizzly is the other structure entirely: flat monthly software, no marketplace, no commission on any booking from any source, no charge per team member, and payments into your own Stripe account in your own currency. Global rather than European.

Four things drive the comparison for a beauty business.

1. A real website, not a profile page

A fully flexible drag-and-drop editor is on every plan, and it edits every page of your public site block by block — 26 components including the booking calendar, timetable, plan pricing, store with cart, testimonials, forms and the entire customer portal, dropped onto the page rather than embedded from elsewhere. Styling goes down to individual elements with a raw CSS inspector, on top of a global theme and your own colours, with per-page SEO, page version snapshots, a media library with stock photography and AI page create and refine. On Pro it runs on your own domain with branded email. Two bounds: the editor is a desktop tool, and there is no code injection.

2. Memberships, packs and season billing side by side

Monthly plans with booking quotas, session packs with expiry dates, one-off term and holiday-camp packs where mid-term joiners are pro-rated automatically and camps sell whole or per day, and season subscriptions that roll members into the next season under the cancellation policy you choose — billing-period end, a notice period, or the end of the season. Seasons bill natively through Stripe, and capacity is held while a client is at the checkout so a block cannot oversell. For an aesthetics clinic selling treatment courses or an academy running termly cohorts, that is the difference between the software doing the arithmetic and you doing it in a spreadsheet.

3. Billing and booking are one system

Booking quotas are payment-gated: a client can only book what their active plan, pack or credits cover, and a lapsed payment blocks new bookings automatically. Each plan carries its own rules for how far ahead members may book, how close to the start and how much notice they must give to cancel. Clients reschedule by cancelling and rebooking from the portal within the cancellation window — the credit returns automatically and they pick a new slot — and staff can additionally move bookings and whole sessions from the calendar.

4. A WhatsApp AI assistant in the plan, not as an add-on

From £29 a month, Bizzly includes a WhatsApp AI assistant that checks live availability including recurring slots, books and cancels appointments, suggests alternatives, joins clients to a waitlist, answers questions about their account, subscription and invoices, raises support tickets and answers business questions from your own knowledge base — around the clock, with the client verified by one-time code first. Allowances are 500 messages a month on Standard and 2,000 on Pro. Fresha's nearest equivalent, AI Concierge, is an add-on at around £79.95 per location per month with metered minutes and messages beyond its own allowance.

Alongside those: waitlists that offer a freed place with a time-limited claim link, attendance registers with Present, Late and Absent marking and a note against each mark, free trial sessions as a first-class bookable service, registration forms that capture medical, consent and emergency details, client profiles holding several people under one payer, a customer portal with live refund quotes on cancellation, discount codes through Stripe promotion codes redeemable in the store checkout and the billing portal, automated reminders and failed-payment dunning, review requests by SMS magic link that publish straight to your testimonials, online consultations through Google Meet with links sent automatically, a calendar synced with Google Calendar, HubSpot CRM, custom staff roles with a permission matrix, and Google Business Profile integration from the Standard plan.

What Bizzly does not do

These are real gaps, and they are the exact things Fresha and Treatwell get bought for. There is no consumer marketplace — Bizzly will not bring you a single client. There is no point of sale and no card terminal, so counter payments and tips are not covered. Pro has a store with variants and stock, but no supplier or purchase-order management. There are no gift cards and no loyalty scheme; discount codes are available through Stripe promotion codes in the store checkout and the billing portal, but the client types the code in — nothing is detected and applied for them. There is no native mobile app; it is a responsive web app, fine for an owner and weaker at a busy front desk than either competitor's apps. And there is no staff commission or payroll tracking, which a commission-paying salon will feel on day one. Payment methods follow your own Stripe Dashboard settings — cards and wallets by default, with UK businesses able to enable Bacs Direct Debit.

Which One to Pick

Choose Fresha if:

• You want marketplace clients and 20% is a rate you can live with
• You are solo or a small team — around £14.95 a month for the full feature set, with prices published up front
• You take most of your money over a counter, where its UK in-person card rate is competitive
• You operate outside Europe, or expect to

Choose Treatwell if:

• You are a UK or Irish high-street business and Treatwell is the name your clients search
• You have a large team — unlimited staff at no extra cost beats per-seat pricing as you grow
• Marketplace discovery genuinely fills your quiet columns, and 35% of a first visit is worth a client who rebooks
• You are happy to negotiate the software fee rather than read it, and want Reserve with Google exposure too

Choose Bizzly if:

• Your column is already full and you are paying commission on demand you created
• You want your website, SEO and client list to be assets you own
• You sell memberships, treatment courses, term blocks or seasons rather than only one-off appointments
• You have several staff and object to paying per head for software
• You want a flat bill — £19 to £49 a month, no commission — and need no till, card terminal, gift cards or stockroom

Verdict

Between the two named platforms, Fresha is the better buy for most small UK businesses on the numbers available in July 2026: materially lower commission, published prices, competitive card rates and global reach. Treatwell earns its higher rate in two specific cases — a large team, where unlimited staff at no extra cost outweighs a per-seat bill, and a UK high-street business where Treatwell is the brand local clients actually search. Neither is a bad product. Both are priced around a marketplace, and the honest way to judge them is to work out how many clients that marketplace would really send you.

If the answer is “not many, I fill my own diary”, you are choosing between two shopfronts you are not using and paying a finder's fee for people who found you themselves. That is the case for the flat-fee route: £19 to £49 a month whatever your headcount, no commission on any booking, billed in your own currency, with a fully flexible website builder, memberships and term or season billing side by side, payment-gated booking quotas and a WhatsApp AI assistant already in the price. Just go in knowing nobody will hand you clients.

For the direct head-to-head, read Bizzly vs Fresha, or the full Fresha pricing breakdown with a worked three-chair example. For the wider field, see the best software for beauty salons, how Bizzly handles the sector on the beauty industry page, or current plans on the pricing page.