Ask three salon owners what their software costs and you'll get three answers that can't be compared — one quotes a monthly figure, one quotes a per-user rate, one says "it's free" and means they pay commission. This post lays out the models side by side and works through a realistic first-year total.
The four pricing models
Per-user monthly. You pay per staff login, usually ₹300–₹800 per person per month. Predictable at four staff, painful at fifteen, and it quietly penalises you for growing your team. Watch for whether part-time staff and the front desk need their own paid seats.
Tiered monthly. A Basic / Pro / Premium ladder, typically ₹1,500–₹6,000 a month per outlet. The catch is which features sit on which rung — inventory, marketing campaigns, and multi-location reporting are the ones most often held back for the top tier, and they're usually the ones a growing salon needs first.
Commission. Free or nearly free to use, with a percentage taken from bookings the platform sends you — commonly up to 20%, sometimes higher on promoted placements. Costs nothing when you're quiet and the most when you're busy. We worked through that arithmetic separately.
Flat yearly. One fee for the outlet regardless of team size, paid annually. Cheapest to reason about, and the only model where a good month costs you nothing extra. The thing to check is whether "flat" really means everything included, or whether there's an add-on menu behind it.
The costs that aren't on the pricing page
The sticker price is rarely the whole bill. Before comparing two quotes, ask each vendor about:
- Onboarding and data migration. Some charge ₹5,000–₹25,000 to import your existing client list and set up services. Some do it free. Some don't do it at all and hand you a CSV template.
- WhatsApp and SMS credits. Reminders are the single highest-value thing salon software does, and messaging is often metered separately. At ₹0.15–₹0.85 per message and three reminders per appointment, a salon doing 800 appointments a month can spend more on messaging than on the software.
- Payment gateway. Two questions: can you use your own gateway account, and does the software add anything on top of the gateway's published rate? A 0.3% platform markup on ₹50 lakh of annual card volume is ₹15,000 you didn't budget for.
- Extra outlets. Per-location pricing varies enormously. Some vendors charge full price per branch, some scale down, some require an enterprise contract from the second location onwards.
- Support. Whether real human support is included or sold as a premium plan tells you a lot about what the first three months will feel like.
A realistic first year
A five-chair, seven-staff single-location salon, roughly 700 appointments a month. Here's what the first year looks like under each model, using mid-range market rates:
- Software — Messaging — Onboarding — Year 1
- Per-user monthly (₹500 × 7) — ₹42,000 — ₹18,000 — ₹10,000 — ₹70,000
- Tiered (mid tier, ₹3,000/mo) — ₹36,000 — ₹18,000 — ₹10,000 — ₹64,000
- Commission (20%, 25% of bookings) — ₹0 — included — ₹0 — ₹3,60,000+
- Flat yearly — ₹15,000 — varies — ₹0 — ₹15,000–₹33,000
The commission row is the one that surprises people, and it's the one most likely to be described as "free" in a sales conversation.
Questions worth asking before you sign
- Is this price per outlet, per user, or per booking — and what happens when I add a chair?
- Which features are not in this plan, specifically?
- Do you charge for WhatsApp or SMS, and at what rate per message?
- Can I connect my own Razorpay account, and do you take anything on top of Razorpay's rate?
- What does onboarding cost, and who does the data import?
- If I leave in eighteen months, can I export my full client list and appointment history?
That last one matters more than owners expect. Data portability is what stops a pricing conversation from turning into a hostage situation two years from now.
Where Salonior sits
We use flat yearly pricing, which we think is the only model that doesn't punish a good month: ₹5,000 a year for a solo professional, ₹15,000 a year for one location with unlimited staff, ₹10,000 for each additional outlet. Every feature is in every plan — there's no tier that unlocks reporting or inventory. Payments run through your own Razorpay account at Razorpay's published rates, and we take nothing on top. Onboarding and data import are included, with a real person doing it.
The full breakdown is on the pricing page, and if you want to compare against what you're paying now, the savings calculator does the year-one arithmetic for you.
The honest summary
There is no single right answer. A two-person studio with fifty clients a month may genuinely be better off on a free marketplace plan. A fifteen-outlet chain has requirements that flat single-outlet pricing doesn't address. What matters is comparing on the same basis: total cost for twelve months, including messaging, onboarding, payment markup, and the features you'll actually need by month six — not the number on the pricing page.
Market rates cited here are indicative ranges based on publicly available pricing at the time of writing and vary by vendor, plan and region. Confirm current terms with any provider directly.