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Cover Beauty vs. Fresha

Cover Beauty vs. Fresha, a fair comparison

Fresha built its network by offering the software free and charging on card processing and marketplace commissions. Cover Beauty takes the opposite approach: a flat monthly fee, no marketplace commission, no cross-selling of your customers. Here's how the two compare across the features that matter most.

Feature
Cover Beauty
Fresha
Monthly software cost
Flat £29 £89
Free
Card processing
1.2% + 10p
1.29% + 20p
Marketplace commission on new clients
None
20% (bookable via Fresha marketplace)
Cross-sale of your customers to nearby salons
Never
Yes, via marketplace
Memberships built-in
Yes
Add-on
Gift cards (UK-compliant)
Yes
Yes
Multi-location scheduling
Yes
Yes
Data ownership on export
Full CSV, any time
Limited fields

Why studios pick Cover Beauty

  • You never pay a per-booking commission on customers you already own.
  • You own your customer relationship, no cross-selling of them to nearby salons.
  • Memberships and gift cards are first-class, not add-ons.
  • Reporting tells you gross, VAT, tip, product cost, and staff commission, automatically.
  • Fair pricing that scales with your team, not with your customer count.

Common questions

Is Cover Beauty more expensive than Fresha?

On paper, yes, Cover Beauty charges a monthly fee where Fresha is free. In practice, if you take 200+ bookings a month via the Fresha marketplace, the 20% commission outweighs a Cover Beauty subscription several times over. For most established salons, Cover Beauty is cheaper.

Can I migrate my client list from Fresha?

Yes. Cover Beauty's onboarding team handles the export and import for you, client records, appointment history, gift-card balances and outstanding memberships.

Does Cover Beauty have a marketplace?

Cover Beauty has a salon directory that helps discovery, but it never charges a commission on bookings and never surfaces your customers to a competing business.

Try Cover Beauty

30-day free trial. Full data migration from Fresha handled by our onboarding team.

See Cover Beauty for Business