A Fresha alternative where the booking stays yours
Fresha is capable software with a marketplace at its centre. BookMyVenue is booking software with your website at its centre. The honest comparison between the two is about ownership and optionality rather than any single fee, and this page makes it with a source and a date on every figure.
The marketplace listing is the condition of online booking
With Fresha, taking bookings online requires being listed on their marketplace. Their help centre states it in one line: “To activate booking links, you must list your profile on the marketplace.”
Source: fresha.com help centre: add a Book button to your website · observed 2026-09-15
Unlisting runs in reverse; on their own page, “Any existing Book Now buttons and booking links will also stop working,” and appointments then need to be added to the calendar by hand.
Source: fresha.com help centre: manage your marketplace profile · observed 2026-08-27
So the Book Now button on your own website rides on the listing. Listed, it works, and marketplace exposure comes with it. Unlisted, your own site’s online booking goes dark.
BookMyVenue has no marketplace. The booking widget is a script in your own page; there is nothing to be listed on, so nothing can be unlisted.
The commission model, stated exactly
Fresha’s fee is a one-time 20%, minimum A$8, charged when a brand-new client books you through their marketplace; the page’s own data records a cap of A$200 per client. Returning clients are never charged it, and bookings through your direct links carry no commission. That is the whole model, and it is narrower than much of the criticism suggests.
20% one-time, min A$8
Marketplace new-client fee, and the page's own data records a cap of A$200 per client
Source: fresha.com/pricing (AU geo-render) · observed 2026-08-27
Source: fresha.com/pricing (returning-client and direct-link fee treatment) · observed 2026-09-15
What we’d have you weigh is the condition attached to it: every online booking requires the listing, and the listing is what routes new clients through the fee. The two halves are one mechanism.
BookMyVenue charges no commission on any booking, from any source. The subscription is the price, and every number is published on the pricing page.
From free to paid, with dates
Fresha built its base as free software, and that era has ended. From archived captures of fresha.com:
- 2024-11-26: the pricing page presents the product as subscription-free, free for all, unlimited team members.
- Around March 2025: the first paid tier appears; solo operators stay free, teams pay per member.
- Around September 2025: every account pays a subscription.
- 2026-09-15: the Australian page lists A$44.95 a month for a solo operator and A$29.95 per bookable team member, ex-GST.
The three archived captures above are Fresha’s United States render, priced in USD. No Australian capture of those pages exists in the Wayback Machine, so they are cited for the shape of the change and not as Australian prices. Only the last line is an Australian render.
Source: web.archive.org (Wayback Machine, fresha.com/pricing, US render) · observed 2026-09-15
Run a salon? The salon price by chairs sets Fresha’s per-member price next to ours at one to six chairs.
Prices change everywhere, ours included. The history belongs on this page because of what it does to optionality: the model you join is not the model you may end up on, and when your booking links are tied to the platform, re-deciding is expensive.
Fresha’s Australian prices, as observed
All figures below: fresha.com/pricing, Australian geo-render, first observed 2026-08-27 and re-verified unchanged 2026-09-15. The page has no fixed Australian URL; it renders per country. It states its rates exclude 10% sales tax, so read every figure as ex-GST.
| Charge | Amount (AUD, ex-GST) |
|---|---|
| Independent plan, 1 bookable member | A$44.95/month |
| Team plan, 2 or more | A$29.95 per bookable member/month |
| Enterprise, over 20 team members | custom, unpublished |
| Marketplace new-client fee | 20% one-time, minimum A$8; the page's data records an A$200 cap |
| Returning clients | A$0, never charged |
| Bookings via your own links and site | A$0 commission |
| Automated texts | 20 free/month, then A$0.06 each |
| Marketing texts | A$0.15 each |
| Advanced reporting (Insights) | A$15.95 per bookable member/month |
| Phone and chat support | included on Team; A$44.95/month add-on on Independent |
| Free trial | 7 days |
You won’t find a card-rate comparison on this page. Fresha publishes its Australian card rates on an ex-tax basis, and several Australian providers publish theirs inclusive of GST. Until both sit on the same basis, from real invoices, a head-to-head would mislead, so we haven’t built one.
Card-rate comparisons are handled separately: see Fresha card fees.
What cancelling does
On Fresha’s published terms, cancelling the subscription removes access to your workspace, and your profile is unlisted at the end of the billing cycle. Unlisting is the switch described above: booking links and Book Now buttons stop working.
Source: fresha.com help centre: Manage your Fresha plan · observed 2026-09-15
Cancelling BookMyVenue stops the software, as with anything you stop paying for. What it can’t do is unlist you from anywhere or switch off your website, because neither ever depended on us.
Where Fresha is fair, on their own record
A comparison you can check beats one that flatters us. On their published record: returning clients are never charged the marketplace fee; direct-link bookings are commission-free; and Fresha states those direct links won’t display other businesses in your area. The new-client fee is confined to marketplace-sourced first-timers. The thing worth weighing is structural, the listing requirement itself, and saying so beats pretending the fee lands on every booking, because it doesn’t.
One more, newer than the rest of this page: since 2026-09-10 Fresha sells a website builder at A$39.95 per location a month. So “Fresha can’t give me a website” is no longer the argument, and we won’t make it. What hasn’t changed is whose site it is and what switches it off: a Fresha-built site is a Fresha product, and activating booking links still requires the marketplace listing.
Source: fresha.com/pricing and help centre: Add a book button to your website · observed 2026-09-15
What switching involves
- Export your client list from Fresha, to Excel or CSV.
- Import it into BookMyVenue. The importer reads CSV and XLSX and has a dedicated path for Fresha’s export format.
- Dry-run first. The import shows you what it will create before anything applies; nothing lands until you approve what you saw.
- Put the widget in your site. One script tag, and your own pages take the bookings from then on.
Source: fresha.com · observed 2026-08-27