Salonnare vs Acuity Scheduling - which fits your salon?

Pricing and cost model

Salonnare starts at EUR 0 per month with the free plan: 1 staff member and 50 bookings per month, no credit card required. Need more? Starter is EUR 9.99 per month (EUR 99.90 per year) and Pro is EUR 14.99 per month (EUR 149.90 per year). No marketplace commission on your bookings (though there is a platform fee: 0.5%, min. EUR 0.30, per transaction). See the full breakdown on the pricing page.

According to their pricing page, Acuity Scheduling has no free plan: after a 7-day trial, plans start at USD 20 per month (USD 16 per month billed annually), charged in dollars.^[1] For a European salon that means currency conversion and VAT handling that is not tailored to the local market. With Salonnare you bill in euros, everything is built for the local practice and you know up front what you pay, with no surprises.

Built for the local market

Salonnare runs on EU servers in Germany, is fully GDPR-compliant and speaks your language: the entire interface and all emails are available in English, plus Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Turkish. Clients pay via iDEAL (native through both Stripe Connect and Mollie), Bancontact, SumUp or card, using your own Stripe or Mollie account; Salonnare charges its own platform fee of 0.5% (min. EUR 0.30) per transaction on top.

The point of sale applies the VAT rate you set per treatment and product (a Dutch salon starts with 21% and 9%), and the accounting export gives your bookkeeper the sales per VAT rate. Acuity Scheduling is English-first and aimed at the US market, so iDEAL and local VAT are not a built-in part of the product. That local foundation is exactly what makes the difference for a Dutch or Belgian salon.

Features and ease of use

Salonnare is more than a calendar. Beyond online booking through a widget on your own site and a branded booking page with your own logo, you get client records, inventory management, email marketing and campaigns, recurring memberships (SEPA/iDEAL), gift cards, loyalty, no-show fees and deposits, intake forms, a GDPR Art.9 health-data vault and GDPR export. It is all in the plan, with no per-module add-on fees.

On your booking page, clients pick one or more treatments, see time slots per staff member and book in a few clicks. Acuity is a strong and flexible scheduling tool, but it is not salon-specific: inventory, salon loyalty or a health-data vault are not part of its core. You also fully own your own data and branding - no marketplace that shows your competitors to your clients.

Switching to Salonnare

Switching does not have to be a hurdle. You import your client list via CSV so your history comes along. Then you set up your treatments, staff and booking page and connect your own Stripe or Mollie account. The modern interface is set up so that even a trainee is productive within an hour. Feel free to start on the free plan to test everything at your own pace before scaling up.

Support helps you directly, from the developer. No ticket system in a different time zone, but someone who understands your salon and answers fast.

Conclusion: why Salonnare wins

To be fair: Acuity Scheduling is a mature, international product that is deeply integrated with Squarespace. If you are an English-speaking, international service provider inside that ecosystem without salon-specific requirements, Acuity is worth considering.

But for the salon this comparison is about - a hairdresser, beauty salon or nail studio in the Netherlands or Belgium - Salonnare wins convincingly. You get iDEAL and Bancontact natively, the correct local VAT with an accounting export for your bookkeeper, EU servers with GDPR, and an app in your own language. On top of that a complete salon ERP (inventory, client records, memberships, gift cards, no-show fees) with no add-on fees and no marketplace commission on your bookings (though there is a platform fee: 0.5%, min. EUR 0.30, per transaction), from EUR 0 per month. These are not empty promises but concrete features a scheduling tool does not offer. For a Dutch or Belgian salon, the choice is therefore clear.

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