The grass isn't

We were recommended Vagaro by a sales rep who promised half price and 24 hour support. The price was appealing, but from day one none of us could get on with the new system. We didn't like how it looked, we didn't like the booking system, and clients kept telling us they couldn't book online, even people who worked in tech.

The overall feel of it. SalonIQ is so clear and easy to read, everything you need is right there when you're taking payment. Vagaro had so many extra clicks and steps for the simplest things, and I'm not that tech savvy, so I just wanted something simple again.

Really straightforward, and they gave us a good price to come back. It was a huge weight off all our minds. If money's the issue, talk to SalonIQ first, because bigger and cheaper isn't always better.

I didn't really feel as though I was being treated as a business, or as an account holder in my own right. I just felt like another account number rather than the salon owner behind it. That lack of a personal, business first approach was hard to get past.

One of the biggest challenges for a small business is guest engagement, and SalonIQ's guest retention system cuts through the noise and lets us talk to guests directly. The support is more personalised too, and the team genuinely understand the hair and beauty industry. As a previous accountant, I also rely heavily on the insights, KPIs, dashboarding and reporting, there's nothing else like it. When we suggested changes to our client app, the team were happy to make them.

Very straightforward. The SalonIQ team took care of all the data migration and kept me informed throughout, so there was very little for me to worry about.

I was restructuring the business to move stylists from employed to self-employed, and Slick offered a much better deal for that side of things, no charge for terminals, no commission on card payments, no commission on tips. That was genuinely the only reason I left.

The email marketing, more than I expected to. I use it a lot and it really does bring clients back. Payroll was so much easier on SalonIQ too, it used to take me ten or fifteen minutes, on the other system I'd sometimes be doing it for an hour or more on a Saturday night. My team struggled with the usability as well, especially booking appointments in.

Really think twice and do your research on the system you're moving to. Everything I was told would work with Slick didn't really work, and I found it more trouble than it was worth. If your current system does everything you need, there's no need to move.

I was trying to cut costs like everyone is at the moment, so instead of talking to SalonIQ first, I jumped straight into Floomly. They were offering business education alongside the software too, and one or two things included that you'd normally pay extra for, so it looked like it might work out cheaper.

Within a month we weren't getting the reports I was used to, especially my P&L on stock usage. The team struggled to make appointments, at one point we had five people round the reception desk trying to work it out. We also missed the colour-coded appointments, the crown icon that flags a new client, and SalonIQ Pay, that was a big one.

Think carefully, and then don't, because the grass isn't always greener on the other side, as we found out.

We left during the second lockdown. The alternative software's marketing suite seemed more proactive and slicker, and the sales call promised everything we already had, and then some. We weren't seeing guests or our team every day at the time, so we couldn't see the real gaps until it was too late.

The new software did hundreds of things but not the one or two simple, vital ones. Rebooking a guest in front of you took three or four steps, with SalonIQ it's one. Pulling a wages report needed multiple reports, with SalonIQ it's one. The team lost confidence in it, and that was the moment I knew.

Really very simple. We lost a little data in the transition but the team were so relieved to be back they didn't care. The SalonIQ team understood us, coached us, and made sure we were getting everything from the platform we should be.