Booking & Payments

It depends entirely on your volume and how you acquire clients. Fresha has no monthly subscription at all, so a low-volume practice that brings its own clients can run booking and payments for only the processing fee (roughly 2.19%-2.29% + $0.20 per transaction). Square's solo tier is also free, with Plus at $49/mo and Premium at $149/mo per location once you need multi-staff scheduling, plus processing around 2.6% + 10¢. The hidden variable on Fresha is the 20% commission on net-new marketplace clients; if a lot of your bookings come through the Fresha marketplace, that fee can outweigh Square's flat monthly tier. Model both against your own mix of repeat versus net-new clients.

Both can support medical use, but with caveats you must verify. Fresha publishes a dedicated medical-spa product, markets HIPAA-compliant booking, and offers a Business Associate Agreement to qualifying accounts. Square provides HIPAA-capable intake forms and will act as a Business Associate for explicitly HIPAA-enabled features, but its BAA coverage is limited and configuration-specific, and PHI can leak through appointment names, treatment notes, and reminder text if staff aren't disciplined. For either platform, confirm the BAA scope in writing before storing or transmitting protected health information, and keep clinical detail out of fields that aren't covered.

These are the two products' signature strengths, and they pull in different directions. Fresha's consumer marketplace is a client-acquisition engine: it puts your clinic in front of people actively searching for appointments, which pure scheduling tools can't do, but it charges a 20% commission on each net-new marketplace client and the client discovers you through Fresha rather than your own brand. Square has no comparable marketplace; instead its edge is a mature payments-and-hardware ecosystem, where card processing, terminals, payouts, retail POS, tipping, and reporting all run through one trusted Square account. Choose Fresha if you want help filling the calendar with new faces; choose Square if you want the most dependable payments backbone.

No. Both are booking-and-payments layers, not aesthetics EMRs. Neither offers detailed injectables mapping, device-treatment protocols, e-prescribing, or rigorous before-and-after photo charting. Fresha keeps documentation light; Square's intake forms are HIPAA-capable but are not a charting system. Documentation-heavy med spas typically pair either tool with a dedicated clinical charting solution and treat Fresha or Square as the front-of-house scheduling and payments layer.

Square is the stronger choice here. Its appeal is precisely that booking sits on top of Square's well-established POS and hardware lineup, so terminals, card readers, retail checkout, tipping, and payouts are mature and familiar (hardware is sold separately). Fresha includes integrated card processing and POS and supports its own payments hardware, but its center of gravity is the subscription-free software and marketplace rather than a deep retail-hardware ecosystem. If you run meaningful retail product sales alongside services, Square's POS maturity is a real advantage.