Hair salon software that turns gaps into bookings.

OpenChair is built for hair salons in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Pricing is in your local currency (AUD, NZD, or GBP). Payments process through Stripe with Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe Terminal in all three regions. Calendar Closures includes one-tap import of AU, NZ, and UK national public holidays. Support runs in local hours.

OpenChair Pro is capped pricing. AU: $34.95 base + $20 per additional stylist, capped at $199/month. NZ: $24.95 base + $20 per additional stylist, capped at $199/month. UK: £19.95 base + £10 per additional stylist, capped at £99/month. A free tier runs forever for solo stylists with 5 services. Card processing is 1.8% + 30c on Pro (AU; equivalent rates in NZD and GBP). No marketplace commission, no per-SMS line item, and SMS/email/Sparks (AI credits) are included up to clear seat-based caps.

Yes. Calendar Closures includes one-tap import of AU, NZ, and UK national public holidays. State-specific holidays (Victorian Labour Day, NSW Bank Holiday, the various UK regional holidays) you add manually. Closures cascade through your bookings with options to cancel and notify, reassign to a qualified stylist, or keep on the calendar with a flag.

Processing Gaps is a Pro feature that lets you add processing time to services such as colour, toner, foils, and balayage. OpenChair includes that processing window in availability, so compatible appointments can be offered without creating staff conflicts. You control which services have processing time and how long that window lasts.

Yes. You can set deposit rules by service, including percentage or fixed deposits for long or high-value appointments. Deposits are collected during online booking through Stripe. If a client cancels late or does not show, the cancellation and deposit rules protect the stylist's time according to your policy.

Yes. Clients can book from your branded storefront without creating an account. After booking, they can manage, reschedule, or cancel through secure token links sent by SMS or email. Returning clients can also use a lightweight My Bookings view if they want to see their appointment history.

Yes. Colour formulas are Pro-gated and store technique, bases, developer, processing time, and notes against the client and booking. Treatment photos are available on web and mobile, with private clinical storage, consent handling, and the option to promote approved images into your public portfolio.

OpenChair includes configurable rebooking nudges, review requests, birthday messages, and Reconnect campaigns for lapsed clients. Reconnect can run as a multi-wave SMS and email sequence with VIP exclusions and daily send limits, so you can bring clients back without manually trawling the client list.

Concierge is an AI chat assistant with access to your bookings, clients, services, revenue, and team. You ask it questions in plain language, like "who hasn't been in for 10 weeks?" or "how did last week compare?", and it answers with your real data. You can also ask it to draft a Reconnect campaign, pull a client's visit history, or check tomorrow's calendar. Concierge runs on your salon's data only; it never sees other venues, and your client information stays inside your account.

Yes. Each location runs as its own venue with separate staff, calendars, services, deposits, and storefront. You keep one login and one combined view of revenue, retention, and team performance across the group. Clients can move between locations without losing their history or formula notes. Reach out if you run more than one location, and we will help you set up the right structure for your group.

OpenChair runs in any modern web browser (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox) on Mac, PC, or Chromebook, with native iOS and Android apps for phone and tablet. Stripe Terminal handles card-present payments on the front desk. The mobile apps are designed for stylists working from the chair: check in a client, take a payment, snap a treatment photo, all one-thumb. The web app is where the owner-side work lives: Intelligence, configuration, big-screen calendar.

Fresha is strong if you want marketplace discovery, Timely is strong on simplicity, and Phorest is strong on salon marketing. OpenChair's angle is different: branded booking with zero booking commission, processing-time scheduling for hair, AI-assisted waitlist and gap recovery, colour formulas, treatment photos, deposits, commissions, and Intelligence in one capped-pricing platform.

Pro includes SMS, email, and AI credit allowances that scale with your team. You get 100 SMS plus 50 per additional seat (capped at 550 per month), 1,000 emails per seat (capped at 10,000), and 500 Sparks per seat for AI features like Concierge and Style Match (capped at 5,000, where 1 Spark equals 1 cent). If you exceed those, your Wallet covers the overage with prepaid balance and auto top-up. There's no per-SMS line item and no surprise bill at the end of the month, so costs stay predictable as your team grows.

Most hair salons are live within 24 to 48 hours of starting their trial. Your service menu, deposit rules, staff columns, processing times, and storefront branding can be configured in an afternoon. If you are migrating from another platform, we handle the client and booking history import for you in parallel. From signup to taking real bookings is usually under a week, even with a full data migration.

Yes, and migration is free. We will pull your client list, service menu, staff, and past appointments out of your existing system and into OpenChair. We support imports from Fresha, Timely, Phorest, Vagaro, and GlossGenius, plus CSV exports from anywhere else. Colour formulas and treatment notes come across where your previous system exposes them. If they do not, we help your team set up structured client memory from the first OpenChair visit forward.

Payments run through Stripe, which gives you card-present terminals, online payments, Apple Pay, and Google Pay out of the box. Calendars sync two-way with Google and Apple, so personal events stay blocked off. Instagram messages land in your unified inbox. SMS and email sending are built in, so you do not pay a separate Twilio or Mailchimp bill on top. If there is a specific integration you rely on, ask us before you switch and we will tell you straight.

Most stylists are productive within a few hours. The booking calendar, client records, and check-in flow mirror how a stylist actually works: load the day, see who is in the chair, see what they had last time, capture today's notes. We run a short onboarding walkthrough with you and the team during setup, and Concierge handles any "how do I do X" questions after that. There is no certification, no week-long training programme, no consultant required.

During setup we run a guided onboarding with you and your team that covers your service menu, deposits, processing times, and staff columns. After that you have email and in-app chat support, and Concierge can answer most "how do I do X" questions in plain language without you waiting for a reply. Founding-member salons get a direct line to the team and priority responses while we are in early launch.

No. OpenChair is month-to-month by default. You can cancel any time from your account, and you take your data with you: client history, formulas, treatment notes, the full set. Annual billing is available if you prefer to lock in a discount, where you pay for ten months and get twelve. Annual is opt-in, never the default.