Salon Website vs Fresha, Treatwell and Booksy

Try this before reading any further. Open Google on your phone and search for your salon's name, exactly as a regular client would type it.

For a lot of salons and barbers in London, the first result is not their own site, because they don't have one. It is a listing on a booking platform. Sometimes that is fine. Sometimes the same page shows three other salons nearby, the reviews belong to the platform rather than to you, and a client who was already looking for you specifically is one tap away from booking somewhere else.

I spend a lot of time looking at exactly these businesses, mostly independent salons, barbers, nail studios and small clinics. Most of them run well on Fresha, Treatwell or Booksy, and I would not tell any of them to stop. The question is narrower than that: is the platform your booking system, or has it quietly become your shopfront too?

What the Booking Apps Do Well

It is worth being fair first, because these platforms solve real problems.

The diary. Online booking at any hour, staff calendars, reminders and fewer no-shows. Building that yourself makes no sense.
Payments and deposits. Card payments, prepayment and cancellation fees are handled for you.
Discovery. Their marketplaces put you in front of people who have never heard of you. For a brand-new salon, that can be the fastest way to fill empty chairs.

None of that goes away if you also have a website. The mistake is treating "we're on Fresha" as the answer to a different question: where do people land when they are looking for you?

What They Actually Charge

The software side is cheap or free. The cost sits in the marketplace, and it is easy to miss because it only applies to certain bookings. These are the figures each platform publishes itself for the UK, checked in September 2026. They change, so confirm the current terms in your own account.

Treatwell lists a 35% commission on first bookings made by new clients it brings you from its marketplace, and 0% on repeat bookings and on bookings made directly with you.
Booksy charges a £40 monthly subscription plus £5 per extra user. Its optional Boost feature adds a one-off 30% fee, with a £5 minimum, on a Boost client's first visit. Marketplace bookings with Boost switched off carry no commission.
Fresha charges a one-time 20% fee on the first appointment of each new client who finds you through its marketplace, with a minimum and a cap. Returning clients and bookings through your own links carry no fee.

Notice the pattern. All three charge on clients the marketplace finds, and none of them charge on clients who come to you through your own link. That detail is the whole argument for having somewhere of your own to send people.

Here is what the numbers look like in practice. Say the marketplace brings you ten new clients a month and their first appointments average £40. At 35% that is £14 each, or £140 a month, which comes to £1,680 a year. At 20% it is still close to £1,000 a year. For clients who genuinely discovered you through the app, that can be a fair price. For clients who already knew your name and just searched for it, it is money that did not need to leave the business.

What You Don't Own

The commission is the visible cost. The less visible one is that your presence online lives on someone else's property.

The page is theirs. Your listing sits on the platform's domain, in its layout, often next to competitors it chooses to show.
The reviews are theirs. Years of five-star reviews stay with the platform. If you ever switch systems, they do not come with you.
The ranking is theirs. Where you appear in the marketplace depends on the platform's rules, and those rules can change without asking you.
The terms are theirs. Fees and policies are set centrally. You find out when they change, you don't get a vote.

None of this is sinister. It is simply what renting looks like. The question is whether you want to rent your shopfront as well as your booking software.

When You Don't Need a Website Yet

Honestly, not every salon needs one straight away. You can probably wait if:

you are a solo stylist or barber and your diary is already full,
almost every new client comes from walk-ins, word of mouth or Instagram,
you have a complete, well-reviewed Google Business Profile with your direct booking link on it.

That last point matters more than any website. If yours is thin, fix it first. I have written a separate guide to setting up a Google Business Profile properly.

When a Website Starts Paying for Itself

The picture changes once any of these are true:

You rely on the marketplace to grow. If a large share of new clients arrive through the app, every one of them costs you commission, including the ones who would have found you anyway.
People search for you by name. A site that ranks for your own name catches those clients and sends them to your commission-free booking link.
You want to be found locally. Searches such as "barber in Putney" or "nail salon near me" are won with a Google Business Profile and a website that clearly says what you do and where. A listing buried inside a marketplace rarely competes for them. My local SEO guide for London businesses goes into that in detail.
You have more to say than a price list. A specialism, a story, before-and-after work, a team worth introducing: none of that fits comfortably in a booking profile.
You have several staff or services. Clear pages help people choose before they book, which means fewer messages asking what a treatment involves.

What a Good Salon Website Actually Needs

It does not need to be big. For most independent salons and barbers, one well-built page does the job, and a small site of four or five pages is plenty for a clinic. What matters is what is on it.

A "Book now" button that points to your direct booking link. You keep the app for the diary and payments, and bookings through your own link carry no marketplace commission on any of the three platforms above.
Services with honest prices. People compare on price. Hiding it sends them somewhere that doesn't.
Photos of your own work. Real photos from your chair, not stock images. This is the single biggest trust signal on a salon site.
Where you are and when you're open. Address, map, opening hours and how to get there, matching your Google Business Profile exactly.
Reviews. Show a selection, and link to your Google reviews so they build up somewhere you control.
Fast on a phone. Most of your visitors are on mobile, often standing outside. A slow site loses them. There is more on why in website speed and conversion rate.
The technical basics for local search. Correct page titles, business details marked up as structured data, and a clean mobile layout. Invisible to visitors, very visible to Google.

Keep the App, Add a Shopfront

The best setup I see is not either/or. Keep Fresha, Treatwell or Booksy running the diary. Add a simple site that you own, make it the thing people find when they search for you, and point its booking button at your direct link.

The platform then does what it is best at: running appointments and occasionally bringing you someone new. Your website does the part the platform was never designed for: being yours, ranking for your name and your area, and making sure the clients you have already earned book through the route that costs you nothing.

Where to Start

Search your own name first and see what comes up. If a marketplace listing beats you to it, that is the gap.

I build one-page sites for salons, barbers and clinics that plug into the booking system you already use, and landing pages start from £1,500. You can see how I price that on the pricing page. If you would rather know where you stand before spending anything, send me your current listing or site through the free audit and I will tell you what is costing you bookings.