Your own salon website. Lower processing fees. Built for beauty — not every small business.
Square built its reputation as a card reader for small businesses. Square Appointments is scheduling functionality built on top of that payments platform, not a purpose-built salon booking system. The product is designed around the point-of-sale terminal first — booking is the add-on. For salons where appointments, client relationships, and service experience are the core business, that difference shows in every workflow.
Square Free sounds compelling — no monthly fee. But you pay 2.6% + 15¢ per in-person transaction and 3.3% + 30¢ for online payments. On 80 card payments averaging £55 each, that is over £114/month in processing fees. A salon on DoTheBeauty Growth pays €49/month flat plus 1% via Stripe Connect — often meaningfully less in total cost once your booking volume passes a certain threshold.
Square Appointments provides a hosted booking widget and a Square-branded online booking page. You can embed a booking button on an existing site, but Square does not build you a website. Salons that want their own web presence — a professional design, their own domain name, their own copy and gallery — need to host a separate website elsewhere and pay for it separately. DoTheBeauty includes an AI website builder that creates a complete, SEO-ready salon site in about 10 minutes.
Square Appointments manages individual staff calendars, but it is not built for the complex scheduling that multi-stylist salons need. Mixed bookings — where a client books a colour service with one stylist and a cut-and-blow with another in a single visit — require manual workarounds. DoTheBeauty handles this natively: one booking, multiple stylists, automatic slot coordination so neither stylist is double-booked.
Square Appointments is used by personal trainers, dog groomers, tutors, and photographers — any business that sells time. That breadth means the product is designed for the lowest common denominator. There are no colour formula records, no salon-specific treatment categories set up out of the box, and no walk-in POS experience designed for the pace of a busy salon floor. DoTheBeauty was built specifically for hair and beauty professionals.
$0/mo (Free, solo or teams) or $49/mo per location (Plus)
Per location: Free plan or $49/mo Plus. Additional team members do not add to the monthly cost.
Your client wants a cut with Bonnie and a keratin treatment with Lisa. Traditional booking systems make them book twice. DoTheBeauty handles it in one seamless flow.
Same 2.5 hours. Traditional booking: one client, one stylist blocked. DoTheBeauty: Emma's full multi-stylist appointment AND a second client in Bonnie's freed time.
Square Appointments is a capable general-purpose scheduling tool backed by one of the best small-business payment systems in the world. If you already use Square for payments and want basic booking on top, the free plan is a reasonable starting point. The processing fees are the catch: 2.6% + 15¢ per transaction is a rate that makes sense at low volume, but a busy salon doing 80–100 card payments a month can easily spend more in fees than a dedicated platform's monthly subscription. The bigger gap is the website. Square gives you a booking widget you can embed somewhere else and a Square-branded booking page. It does not build you a salon website. If you want to appear on Google with your own domain, your own design, your own gallery and testimonials — you pay for that elsewhere. DoTheBeauty includes an AI website builder that takes about 10 minutes to set up: answer 9 questions, and you have a complete, SEO-ready salon site with your own branding. Custom domain is included on Growth (€49/mo) and Pro (€79/mo) plans. On payment processing, DoTheBeauty runs on Stripe Connect — your own Stripe account, direct payouts to your bank. The DoTheBeauty transaction fee is 2% on Starter, 1% on Growth, and 0.5% on Pro, on top of Stripe's standard rate. At a busy salon on Growth, this typically undercuts Square's free-plan rates once you factor in the online booking fee difference. For salons with multiple stylists, DoTheBeauty's mixed bookings feature is a practical differentiator. A client can book a colour service with one stylist and a cut with another in a single visit — the system coordinates both stylists' availability automatically and prevents double-booking. Square Appointments does not support this natively. For a full breakdown of what Square charges at different booking volumes, see our <a href="/blog/square-appointments-pricing-salon-cost-breakdown">Square Appointments pricing guide for salons</a>. For a broader comparison of salon booking platforms, our <a href="/blog/best-salon-booking-system">guide to the best salon booking systems</a> covers the full market. Ready to try a platform purpose-built for salons? <a href="/signup">Start your 7-day free trial</a> — no credit card details required — or <a href="/pricing">compare our pricing plans</a>. --- **Compare more alternatives:** - [Fresha Alternative](/compare/fresha-alternative) — escape the 20% new-client commission - [Booksy Alternative](/compare/booksy-alternative) — cut the 30% Boost marketplace fee - [Acuity Scheduling Alternative](/compare/acuity-scheduling-alternative) — move from generic scheduling to a salon platform