Technology & Software

The Ultimate Zenoti Software Review 2025

January 7, 2025 Updated: January 7, 2025
Editorial note: We're committed to providing correct and up-to-date software reviews that help guide you to the solutions that best fits your needs. The Salon Business is a subsidiary of Mangomint (a salon and spa software we love). However, any opinions shared are solely based on our editors' first-hand experience using the tools we review. Learn more...

Have you been breaking your brain trying to find salon software that gives you full control over your business?

Then you’re 1000% going to want to hear what I’m about to share with you.

What is Zenoti?

In 2024, Zenoti is a major player in the salon, spa, and wellness software space.

They offer a ton of features and a redone mobile app, and they’re worth, like, a billion dollars.

But reputation aside — is Zenoti the right choice for you?

In this Zenoti review, I’ll share all the details you need to know before you pull the trigger on one of the most important purchasing decisions your salon or spa will ever make — whether or not you should sign a 12-month contract and entrust your booking and marketing (and $6,000 of your revenue per year) to Zenoti.

In this Zenoti software review, I’ll break down the pros and cons of Zenoti and look in depth at the features and add-ons available to you as a business customer of the platform.

Sound like a plan?

Good!

Let’s get into the Ultimate Zenoti Salon Software Review.

Zenoti is just one of our top salon software picks for this year. To see our choices for the best salon software of 2025, check out our full list here.

Zenoti Review Summary

Let’s cut to the chase: Zenoti packs all the essential features you’d expect, from online booking and POS to inventory management and marketing tools. Plus, it throws in some fancy KPI and reporting features for good measure (if you’re willing to shell out extra $$$).

The level of detail here is both impressive and a bit overwhelming – you can customize practically everything, right down to the smallest employee settings. While this can make navigation tricky, Zenoti handles it better than competitors like Mindbody, even if it’s not exactly winning any design awards.

Zenoti website homepage

Here’s the thing: Zenoti suffers from what I call “legacy software syndrome” – build it once, keep it running, add features occasionally, and market aggressively. The result? A platform that feels stuck in a time capsule from the early 2000s.

The desktop interface is plain and dated, with features buried in nested menus. Ironically, their iPad app looks modern and sleek – it’s what you see plastered all over their marketing materials.

Fun fact: During my demo call, I actually thought they were showing me an older version of the software – that’s how different the desktop experience is from their marketing materials. And speaking of the demo call, you’ll need one just to get basic pricing information, as pricing is nowhere to be found on the Zenoti website.

Zenoti website page

Despite these quirks, Zenoti maintains surprisingly positive ratings across review sites. Users seem willing to overlook the dated design and learning curve, focusing instead on the robust functionality.

Zenoti is just one of our top salon software picks for this year. To see our choices for the best salon software, check out our full list here.

So, Is Zenoti the Best Salon Software for Me?

So let’s break this prospect down for a second.

Perhaps there’s a bit of copium going into some of those review assessments, considering once you sign up, you’re locked in for 12 months, and no one likes coming to terms with buyer’s remorse.

Or maybe there are a lot of business owners who haven’t had the chance to try a ton of the other salon software options available these days.

Either way, the reviews for the Zenoti mobile app on the Apple App Store (2.5) and Google Play Store (1.4) paint a very different picture — coming in at less than half the score of the reviews on sites like G2 and Software Advice (more on that later.)

Now, I’d be lying if I said that the desktop app experience in Zenoti isn’t an improvement over Booker and Mindbody in a lot of ways.

But if I’m being honest, that’s a pretty low bar.

The real truth is that most salon and spa software still feels stuck in the dark ages of early Web 2.0 — and if the entire host of front-runner options looks similarly bland and poorly designed, where’s the incentive to modernize or improve?

Look, Zenoti will get the job done. It won’t look good doing it, but it will function as needed for your standard salon or spa management needs. The functionality is there, and you could absolutely do worse, but…

You have to be 100% sure that this is THE software solution for you before you sign on the dotted line — because you’re going to be locked into Zenoti for at least the next year, and you won’t be able to click a single button inside of the app until you sign that contract.

For my money (and yours), there are definitely more streamlined, simple, and modern salon software options available at that $300-$600 price point that offer the same or better features and don’t require you to be locked in for a year.

But, if you want a salon software option that gets the job done, rarely goes down, and has all the tools you need to run your business, then Zenoti might be a good choice for you.

Zenoti is my recommendation for business owners who want a highly-detail-oriented piece of salon and spa software that offers deep data insights and great reporting and who need in-depth reputation management tools to build their brand online.

Zenoti is just one of our many top salon software picks for this year. To see our full list of the Best Salon Software, check it out here.

Zenoti Pricing

Zenoti Monthly Plans

Zenoti doesn’t offer traditional monthly plan pricing.

In fact, they intentionally don’t list pricing anywhere on their site.

As was the case with Mindbody, you have to submit your contact information via a demo request form on Zenoti’s website and wait to be contacted via phone by one of their sales representatives before you can find out a single detail about Zenoti’s pricing.

I received a call within 24 hours.

In this first touch call, you will be asked for basic details about your business, specify the number of locations you have, and detail your most desired features.

Here’s where we circle back to pricing.

It was on this first call that I first had the chance to ask for a breakdown of pricing plans.

I was told that Zenoti doesn’t offer monthly plans but that I should expect to pay somewhere between $300 – $500 per month for a single-location business.

When I asked for clarification, I was told that Zenoti charges by location rather than by plan, and there are individual add-on features that can be added to your monthly fee either a la carte or bundled into an add-on package with other paid add-ons.

Confused yet? I am.

So, to summarize, according to Zenoti’s sales team:

  • There is no “plan pricing” listed anywhere to base your purchasing decision on
  • There is no itemized list of fees to give you as a potential business customer
  • Pricing is determined on a “per-location basis”
  • There are also “packages” that include bundles of features you can pay extra for

This is by far the most convoluted and confusing method of salon software pricing I have ever seen.

At the end of the intro call, the sales representative scheduled my demo with one of Zenoti’s account executives and one of their senior sales engineers.

On the demo call, I was shown a presentation with features and benefits before being shown a “custom pricing” slide that listed three “recommended package options.”

Recommended Option #1”

$350 (per month, per location) — includes

  • “Salon Core Package”
  • ezConnect (two-way SMS feature)
  • 7500 marketing emails
  • 1000 marketing texts

Recommended Option #2”

$450 (per month, per location) — includes

  • Everything in Option #1, plus
  • “Marketing Plus Package”
    • Custom-branded client-facing mobile app
    • ezRepute (review management feature)

Recommended Option #3”

$500 (per month, per location) — includes

  • Option #1, plus
  • Smartbot (AI powered chatbot feature)

Please keep in mind that the options above were described to me as “custom pricing” based on my business needs and do not necessarily reflect the price you will pay.

Zenoti is very secretive about their pricing, and I cannot guarantee that the pricing options they provided to me as a potential customer are the same as the ones they will offer you because Zenoti refuses to commit to standardized, transparent, and well-communicated pricing.

Zenoti POS & Credit Card Processing

Zenoti offers rather flexible POS and processing options.

You can choose from a range of terminals directly through Zenoti, or you can use third-party POS hardware solutions such as a Clover POS device. Either way, you can process payments through the Zenoti desktop web app without the need for manual reconciliation at the end of the month.

My real gripe is with the checkout screen in the desktop app itself. Initiating checkout opens a separate browser window where you will need to process the transaction. This choice is baffling to me, and it offers a far worse checkout experience than any other software suite I’ve tested.

Checking out an appointment in the pop-up checkout window

It should be noted that payments through a Clover terminal or similar third-party POS devices are not done via direct integration, but they process the same as standard payments and pose no additional work (outside of a couple extra clicks at checkout).

You can also use an iPad or Android device as a POS terminal by connecting it to your system and using Zenoti’s customer-facing iOS app to allow clients to checkout.

The platform also offers industry-standard features like multi-merchant accounts and direct deposit.

For a closer look at the best salon POS and credit card processing options available right now, take a look at our list of the Best Spa and Salon POS Systems and check out the Best Credit Card Processors for Salons & Spas.

Zenoti Payments

Zenoti also offers a first-party integrated payment processing service called Zenoti Payments.

Features include an auto-update feature for card expiration dates, global card access (once a card is stored, your customer can use it at any of your locations without reentering their information), built-in dispute management, auto-reconciliation, and more.

This service collects payments through your Zenoti system and organizes payouts that are deposited into your bank account, similar to offerings from competitors such as Boulevard Payments or Mangomint Pay.

Credit card processing rates listed below are what customers can expect if they decide to sign up for Zenoti Payments:

Card PresentCard Not Present
All cards except Amex2.45% + 10c2.95% + 10c
Amex2.95% + 10c3.25% + $0.10
Non-Amex Downgrade fee*3.35% + $0.35

Zenoti claims affordable and competitive credit card processing rates even if you do not choose to use their first-party payment platform. Those charges will be shared below as soon as they are made available by Zenoti.

Zenoti Premium Add-ons

Zenoti offers a handful of paid add-on features that can be purchased a la carte alongside your monthly fee or bundles as “packages.”

The full list of add-on features is listed below.

Please note that all add-on features are the technologies of Simplified.io and are licensed by Zenoti for implementation in Zenoti apps. All listed premium add-on features below are not developed or maintainted by Zenoti.

ezConnect – In-App Two-Way Text Messaging: $29 – $169 per month per location

ezConnect is Zenoti’s integrated two-way messaging suite feature.

A la carte pricing is broken down into four tiers based on the level of platform functionality you wish to include.

Zenoti’s implementation of Simplified.io’s ezConnect feature
WhatsApp Only: $29 per month
  • Includes 1000 templates
  • Share files
SMS only: $139 per month
  • Auto assignment of chats
  • Private messages
  • Guest details widget
  • In-app appointment functionality
  • Saved responses
  • Off-hours controls
SMS + MMS: $169 per month (US & UK only)
  • Send & receive images & PDF documents
  • Customers can view their files
  • Share files with clients
  • Supports images (up to 5 MB)
  • Supports PDFs (up to 600 KB)
SMS + WhatsApp only: $169 per month (some countries excluded from each)
  • Two-way SMS
  • Includes 1000 templates (via WhatsApp)
  • File sharing
Features:
  • Integrated 2-way texting: Let customers connect with your staff via SMS or MMS
  • Allows staff to pick up conversations and respond instantly
  • Customers can cancel, reschedule, or early check-in for an appointment
  • Complete visibility into guest’s profile, upcoming and past appointments, and membership information
  • Quick search, add customers, and message from your appointment book or ezConnect browser window
  • Send appointment reminders and post-service care tips and build lasting relationships with guests
  • Set keywords and notifications to ensure high-priority tasks get completed fast
  • Reusable templates for standard queries and FAQs
  • Set autoresponder to send standard replies outside business hours and on holidays

ezRepute – Reputation Management Suite: $189 per month per location

ezRepute is Zenoti’s premium reputation management feature suite. Business owners can use it to monitor feedback, catch and respond to poor reviews, prompt customers to share their positive experiences, and more.

The feature has a “Light” and “Pro” tier. In the Zenoti app’s Marketplace, I was only able to find pricing information for the “Pro” tier. Pricing is listed as follows:

Features:
  • Manage and respond to all reviews from Google, Facebook, and 250+ other sites
  • Solve guest issues and track and increase Net Promoter Score (NPS)
  • Highlight your best reviews on social media to boost SEO and SEM
  • Create listings for all locations on Google My Business, Facebook, Bing, and 50+ other sites
  • Automatically update business name, address, and phone number for all locations on 50+ sites to improve SEO and brand consistency
  • See how guests and prospects engage with your business on Google (Calls, directions, website visits)
  • Uncover trends, strengths, and weaknesses across the guest interaction process
  • Customer feedback with Natural Language Processing
  • Analyze your competitors’ data on review sites
  • Compare sentiment for products and services against industry leaders at a brand, national or local level
  • Measure your competitors’ NPS to learn what drives guest satisfaction

Smart Bot (Web / IVR): $150 – $400 per month per location

Zenoti’s Smart Bot feature is an AI-powered chatbot with a host of features that allow it to respond to frequently asked questions, check your schedule, automate booking, rescheduling, and cancellations, and make recommendations.

SMS and Web mockups of Smarbot in action from Simplified.io
Features:
  • Drive contextual conversations with a fully automated bot
  • Resolve customer queries about your store timings, services, and products instantly
  • Attend to your guest requests within 30 seconds
  • Automate booking, rescheduling, and cancelation requests
  • Reflect your own brand and update with all your locations
  • Run announcements, promotions, and discounts on your services
  • Recommend services, stylists, and appointment slots
  • Capture every call
  • Allow guests who call your business to get assistance from SmartBot instead of waiting
  • Lower your chances of losing customers to long hold times or missed calls
  • Assist customers who call outside of business hours or during holidays
  • Smooth and transparent handover to an “agent” if the Bot is unable to assist
  • Staff will be notified when their guests need the human touch and will have instant access to guests’ chat history

ezPulse – Employee Performance Tracking Suite: $49 per month per location

ezPulse offers a host of tools and dashboards to track and analyze employee performance.

Features:
  • Track performance in real-time with key metrics
  • Track KPIs by centers/employees
  • Compare performance over time
  • Drive healthy competition with employee rankings
  • Acknowledge top performers and coach employees for better outcomes
  • Share instant feedback with in-app messaging
  • Take timely action on negative trends
  • Coach your teams with issue-specific solutions
  • Define goals for your location and teams, monitor progress, and share real-time feedback
  • Set goals for your center and providers
  • Empower your teams to track progress against their goals
  • Drive healthy competition with provider rankings

Credits (Email & SMS Marketing Campaigns)

Zenoti requires customers to purchase credits to use for email or SMS campaigns, and offers them in bundles:

Email Credits:
  • 10,000 email credits: $200
  • 50,000 email credits: $500
  • 100,000 email credits: $900
  • 300,000 email credits: $1,500
SMS Credits:
  • 5,000 SMS credits: $180
  • 10,000 SMS credits: $300
  • 25,000 SMS credits: $625
  • 50,000 SMS credits: $1,000

Other Costs — Mandatory fees paid at time of sign-up

Professional Services Fee — $1,000

This fee includes configuration of the Zenoti platform with service, product, customer, and employee lists, liabilities (gift card balances, membership benefits, package credits, setup of online booking), and mobile app and virtual training.

Data Migration — $1,000

If you are able to get admin access to your old platform, your Zenoti representative and their team will handle a full data import for a fee of $1,000. This fee includes two years of transactional data migration (only applicable to historical financial or appointment history data)

Zenoti will perform a white-glove data import and pull all available information in for you. The estimated processing time (from sign-up to launch day) is 4-6 weeks.

Who is Zenoti Salon & Spa Software For?

I recommend Zenoti to up-and-coming salon or spa businesses that absolutely need the built-in reputation management features provided by the Simplified.io technologies that Zenoti has licensed, as well as Zenoti’s robust reporting toolset that Mindbody and Booker can’t quite match in terms of customizability.

Switching to Zenoti

This is a big one for any salon software option you consider.

In fact, the number one thing holding salon owners back from jumping ship to a new booking and POS app — no matter how much they may hate their current platform — is uncertainty.

How hard is it going to be to get our entire business migrated over into a new booking system, and how long will it take to get up and running?

You can’t just pause your business, so any scheduling software should be able to get you fully integrated and ready to book with no downtime.

As we touched on earlier, the process of switching over requires roughly a minimum of a month — 4-6 weeks total — that includes historical transactional data migration, platform configuration, data import, and training.

Zenoti offers white-glove data migration services, meaning that their team will handle importing and formatting your data to reduce the friction of switching systems, a welcome option that older competitors like Mindbody and Booker can’t quite match.

What Data Can Be Imported Into Zenoti From My Old Booking System?

The following data can be imported into Zenoti:

  • Appointment history
  • Future appointments
  • Credit card data
  • Services
  • Products
  • Client data
  • Employee data
  • Gift card balances
  • Membership benefits
  • Package credits

Not everything from your old system can necessarily be imported into Zenoti. According to the sales engineer we spoke to at Zenoti, internal client notes can not be brought over to Zenoti.

Does Zenoti Make You Sign a Contract?

And the million-dollar question (well, $6,000-ish question).

Just like Boulevard, Booker, and Mindbody, Zenoti requires a 12-month contract.

And, just like Booker and Mindbody in particular, you don’t even get to try the software before you buy it.

No test drive. No free trial.

That’s right, just like Booker and Mindbody – you have to sign a year-long contract before you can even log in to Zenoti for the first time.

All you get as a business customer is a demo call and a slide show to make a decision that will impact the success and well-being of your business over the next 12 months.

Echoing our sentiments shared in the reviews for Booker and Mindbody,

Refusing to offer a trial of any kind and gatekeeping all access to the platform behind a 12-month contract is simply anti-consumer and unfair to business owners who are entrusting the livelihood of their salon or spa.

Forcing business owners to make a major long-term investment decision with a fraction of the information they need is no longer acceptable.

Business owners deserve the chance to confirm that a financial decision this large is the right one for their salon or spa before committing to that kind of investment.

With so many other salon and spa software options on the market right now that do offer the opportunity to try their software out for free, it’s just a shame that a company as established and mature as Zenoti (and Booker/Mindbody, for that matter) refuse to provide their potential customers the same courtesy.

Zenoti Support

*The following information is taken directly from the Zenoti support website:

Standardized response times for support requests to set your expectations

When you submit a request to Zenoti Support, we endeavor to address your problem as quickly as possible. In fact, the majority of support requests receive a response within a few minutes and are solved on the same day.

In order to ensure consistency and predictability during high volume times, your issue will be graded by severity (its impact on your business). Our response timeframe is commensurate with the business impact of your problem.

Zenoti customer support form

Impact definitions and response times*

Severity LevelImpact definitionsResponse times
Severity 1A Highly Critical Issue – multiple users impacted by performance or access issues, or the site is unreachable< 30 minutes
Severity 2A Moderately Critical and Time-Sensitive Issue – Immediate impact on guest operations – Appointments, Invoice, or Guest related issue< 2 hours
Severity 3A Non-Critical Issue or General Questionsame day

*Customers on premium support agreements have different SLA’s.

Zenoti Support by Phone

All Zenoti customers are eligible for telephone support. You can receive support through inbound or outbound calls.

Here’s how:

Preferred method: If possible, initiate a chat conversation through the messenger and request a phone call. Provide your phone number and, if necessary, any availability constraints.

Initiating a call request through the messenger automatically provides us with important details such as your name, center, organization, and more – which avoids us having to collect this information by phone.

Alternate method: You can contact Zenoti directly by calling one of the regional support numbers. The list of numbers is below.

If there is no number listed for your region, we apologize that you may need to place a toll call. You are welcome to request an outbound call via the preferred method listed above, at no cost to you.

LocationSupport Number
Australia (Brisbane)+61 261450267
Indonesia (Jakarta)+62 2129887972
United Kingdom (Manchester)+44 20 3966 8505
United States (Seattle)+1 425 654 0445

Summary & Conclusion

That’s a wrap! Well, almost.

I sincerely hope you found this review of Zenoti helpful in your search for the right salon and spa software.

Now let’s talk final thoughts:

Overall, Zenoti’s desktop experience is serviceable, but it’s ugly, old, and just as unintuitive as its long-standing competitors.

Let’s start with the good first:

Zenoti is mostly feature-complete and offers every feature that its competitors do. From the marketing suite to two-way messaging and even an AI chatbot, it has those elements available to you (usually for an additional fee).

Where it shines above its competitors is with legitimately better reputation management tools that allow business owners to take control of the conversation around their business online and make client satisfaction their top priority.

They also have a decent help center and offer a series of best practice courses on their Zenoti University site. That’s always something we like to see.

However, despite Zenoti being a veteran in the salon software space, they fail at the same weak points as each of their competitors.

This starts with the terrible mobile app experience on offer across both iOS and Android. Reviews are awful across both platforms going back at least five years, indicating a lack of innovation and improvement to one of the core pillars of any booking software.

This neglect reaches down to the accessibility level, leaving customers with vision impairment simply unable to use the app due to a lack of necessary programming to accommodate their needs.

Likewise, the desktop experience is a bit of a mess. A lack of quality-of-life features and, unsurprisingly, a lack of app labels on the calendar interface make getting the hang of the software a challenge off the bat.

And I feel like I keep having to say this in reviews, but just as was the case with Booker and Mindbody, the same pernicious complacency has led to years of status-quo software experience that has not genuinely innovated beyond carbon copy marketing and communication features.

I wish I could recommend Zenoti more highly, but to be honest, they’re barely outdoing Mindbody and offer a largely similar experience (albeit with a worse UI) to Booker at roughly the same price once you factor in comparable add-on features.

But that’s not to say that it isn’t the right choice for any business.

If you absolutely have to have in-depth reputation management features built into your software and can benefit from the marketing tools, customizable reporting functions, and AI tools available from Zenoti, then it may be a good choice for you and your business.

Request a demo of Zenoti here or check out our complete list of the Best Salon and Spa Software and see how Zenoti stacks up to the best options on the market today.

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