Looking for a MijnSalon alternative? First work out whether switching solves anything
You are looking around because something is grating: the admin is piling up, you have lost the overview, or the costs no longer feel right. That feeling is usually justified, but it does not automatically point at your software. A good share of the complaints that send salon owners shopping simply move along with them to the next package. This article helps you sharpen your own situation first: which complaint you fix with an afternoon of tidying up, which one needs a different supplier, and which one only becomes clear once you do the maths. After that you will read which four features genuinely justify a switch, how to compare payment costs fairly, and how to bring your client list across without losing anything.
Outgrown is not a diagnosis
Before you line up suppliers, it pays to name exactly what is going wrong. In practice the complaints fall into three groups, and only two of them are solved by a different system.
It is your setup. Your calendar is full of treatments whose duration was never adjusted, your services are listed twice, or nobody ever switched on the automatic reminders. This feels like a software problem, but it moves along with you to every next package. An afternoon of tidying up in your current system does more here than a switch, and it costs you nothing.
A feature you genuinely need is missing. You want to connect your own payment account, you need a separate place for health data, or your team needs to work in different languages. These are reasons to switch, because no setting will solve them.
The costs no longer add up. You are paying for capacity you do not use, or you are missing features that sit in a cheaper plan elsewhere. That is a real reason too, but only once you have done the maths instead of estimating.
Salon software has become a mature category. The basics - calendar, point of sale, client list and online booking - are included by virtually every supplier, including the Dutch packages that have been around for decades. The difference sits at the edges, and those edges only become visible once you know which of these three groups your complaint belongs to.
Four features that do justify a switch
If your complaint falls into the second group, the follow-up question is which feature you are actually missing. Four of them come up most often in salons. What they have in common is that no setting and no tidying-up afternoon will fix them.
Payments into your own account. Some owners want to connect their own Mollie or Stripe account, so that iDEAL and card payments land directly in their own bank account and they negotiate the rates with their payment provider themselves. Whether your current package allows this is rarely stated on the pricing page. Ask your supplier before you draw conclusions.
A separate place for health data. If you work with allergies, medication use, skin conditions or pregnancy, those fall under article 9 of the GDPR: special category personal data with stricter requirements than an ordinary client note. A free text field on the client card is not designed for that. Salonnare stores this data encrypted in a separate vault, apart from ordinary notes, with its own per-staff permission and on servers inside the EU. What the rest of the client card looks like is on the page about client management.
A team that does not all speak the same language. If you work with colleagues or clients who would rather read English, German, French or Spanish, the interface language is not a side issue. Salonnare runs in those five languages and every staff member picks their own, without the salon having to set anything up twice.
Permissions per staff member. Not everyone needs access to revenue figures, settings or health notes. With per-staff permissions you decide by role who sees what. That matters as soon as you work with a second or third pair of hands, and it is exactly the kind of feature you often will not find in a free entry plan.
Do the maths on payment costs before you compare
Costs are the most cited reason to look around, and at the same time the one most often judged on gut feeling. A fair comparison has three items, and you need all three.
The subscription. The fixed monthly amount, for the number of staff you actually have. Watch the threshold above which you move to a more expensive plan: that threshold sets your price the moment you hire a colleague.
Your payment provider's costs. What Mollie, Stripe or your card terminal charges per transaction. This sits outside your software and does not change when you switch, unless you also change payment provider.
What the platform itself takes per payment or per booking. This is where suppliers differ most, and where reading the small print matters most. Some charge a percentage on new clients who book through their marketplace, others a fixed amount or percentage per online payment, and others nothing at all.
For Salonnare that last point works as follows. Salonnare charges nothing per appointment and no marketplace commission on new clients who book with you through Salonnare. You pay a fixed plan: Free for €0, Starter for €29 or Pro for €59 per month. Every online or card payment does carry a transaction fee of 0.5%, with a minimum of €0.30 per payment. Your payment provider also charges its own transaction costs. The current plans are on the pricing page.
Put those three items into a sum for your own turnover and within fifteen minutes you will know whether your cost complaint holds up. Often the difference is smaller than expected, and your question shifts back to the features from the previous section.
MijnSalon and Salonnare side by side
MijnSalon (mijnsalon.nl) is one of the longest-running Dutch salon packages: more than 25 years in operation and fully cloud-based, with a calendar, point of sale, online booking, stock, staff and marketing. There is a free version, and according to their own pricing page the paid plans sat between roughly €9.95 and €39.95 per month when we checked in July 2026. If the lowest monthly price is your main criterion, that is a sharp entry point and that is not a detail.
Salonnare is built differently. The free plan costs €0 per month, is meant for one staff member with up to 50 appointments per month, and includes the online booking page, the point of sale for cash and card, the client list and automatic email reminders. Starter costs €29 per month for up to three staff members and adds unlimited appointments, online payments, stock management, reporting and the accounting export. Pro costs €59 per month, removes the staff limit and brings email campaigns, deposits at booking and white-label with it.
Where the two clearly differ: Salonnare runs in five languages, connects your own Mollie or Stripe account and has the encrypted vault for health data. Whether MijnSalon offers those three things we could not establish reliably, so ask their support rather than assuming. If you want to see more options side by side, there are five in our comparison of MijnSalon alternatives. How to set up such a comparison yourself is in the complete guide to comparing salon software.
The fairest test is a trial run with your own services and prices. You can do that without payment details on the free plan from Salonnare.
Bringing your client list across without losing anything
If a switch does turn out to be justified, the biggest worry is usually your data. In practice that is manageable, as long as you keep to the order.
Request your export first. Pull an export of clients, appointment history, services and products out of your current system, usually as a CSV. Do this before you cancel anything: once your subscription ends, that export is often no longer reachable.
Import with a checking step. Salonnare uses a CSV import where you first download a template, upload your file and get a preview of what is about to be written. Only once that preview looks right does anything get saved. In that preview, check the email addresses and phone numbers in particular, because that is where export formatting goes wrong most often.
Only then set up the rest. Get services, prices, staff and opening hours ready, and check that the duration per treatment is correct. This is also the moment not to move the clutter from the previous section across with you.
Switch over the booking link. Update the link on your website, in your Google Business Profile, in your Instagram bio and in your WhatsApp Business profile. This is the step most often forgotten, and precisely the one that decides whether clients find your new calendar.
Let your old system run alongside for a while. Keep your old subscription for another month so your historical data is at hand while you settle in. Cancel only after that.
Bear in mind that the accounting export is an export and not a live integration: you download a file for Moneybird, e-Boekhouden or Exact Online and load it in, rather than the two systems talking to each other continuously. Automatic confirmations and reminders go by email. What that sequence looks like is on the page about automatic reminders.
Diagnose first, compare second
Looking for an alternative makes sense the moment you know which problem it solves. If it is your setup, you save yourself a move with an afternoon of tidying up. If you are missing your own payment account, a separate vault for health data, multiple languages or per-staff permissions, then switching is the only route. And if you think it is the costs, work out your subscription, your payment provider and the deduction per payment before drawing conclusions.
Once you have that diagnosis, comparing takes surprisingly little time: you only have to watch two or three points instead of a whole feature list. If you want to test Salonnare in your own situation, set up your own services and prices on the permanently free plan and see how it goes for a week, without payment details and without cancelling your current system.
Test it with your own services and prices
Salonnare's free plan costs €0 per month, is meant for one staff member with up to 50 appointments per month, and includes the online booking page, the point of sale, the client list and automatic email reminders. No payment details needed, and you can run it alongside your current system.
Start freeFrequently asked questions
Does Salonnare charge commission per booking?
No, Salonnare charges nothing per appointment and no marketplace commission on new clients who book with you through Salonnare. You pay a fixed monthly amount: Free €0, Starter €29 or Pro €59. Every online or card payment does carry a transaction fee of 0.5%, with a minimum of €0.30 per payment, and your payment provider charges its own transaction costs on top of that.
What is included in Salonnare's free plan?
The free plan costs €0 per month and is meant for one staff member with up to 50 appointments per month. It includes the online booking page, the point of sale for cash and card, the client list and automatic reminders by email. Online payments, stock management, reporting and the accounting export start at Starter, which costs €29 per month for up to three staff members.
How do I bring my client data to another system?
First ask your current supplier for an export of clients, appointment history, services and products, usually as a CSV file. Do that before you cancel, because once your subscription ends that export is often no longer reachable. At Salonnare you load that file in through a CSV import with a preview step, so you see what will be written before anything is saved.
Is switching salon software always the answer?
Not always. Some complaints are about how your current system is set up: treatments with the wrong duration, duplicate services or reminders that were never switched on. Problems like that move along with you to every new package. If you are missing a feature that simply is not there, such as your own payment account or a separate vault for health data, then switching is indeed the only route.