A custom barber or hair salon app for sole stylists with growth ambitions, multi-location chains and niche concepts such as barbershops and luxury salons. Online bookings, no-show prevention, client history with before-and-after photos, loyalty and POS integration, all in one easy-to-use flow for your clients and your staff.
A salon runs on small details that a standard diary can't accommodate. A client who wants the same colour with the same shades every eight weeks. A barbershop with walk-in flow alongside scheduled appointments. A chain with a fixed-price concept alongside a luxury location offering bespoke treatments. We build salon apps that genuinely support these kinds of industry-specific workflows, rather than forcing your team to squeeze them into a generic calendar.
The Dutch market is covered 80% by commodity platforms such as Salonkee, Treatwell and Booksy, which is often perfectly adequate for solo stylists and small independent salons. Custom development makes sense once you grow into multiple locations, want your own branded app without paying commission to a marketplace, or have a concept that doesn't fit standard software. As with other B2C apps, it ultimately comes down to one thing: a user experience that your clients willingly open again and again.
Our clients are typically salon chains with five or more locations, barbershop concepts with a strong identity of their own, beauty salons and wellness spas with a hairdressing component, mobile stylists who visit clients at home, and hairdressing academies that want to combine training and reservations. For purely solo stylists we usually point to Salonkee or Fresha, as there is no business case for custom development there.
The Dutch market has a few notable salon chains, including Cosmo, Hairmaster, Hair-Express and the premium concepts above them, and each has taken its own technological route. Some use a standard platform, some build everything in-house, and some work with a hybrid: a commercial package for scheduling and a branded app for client loyalty. We most often come in when a chain notices that its standard platform no longer keeps pace with its concept, or that licence and commission costs are rising faster than its revenue. Compared with a general app development approach, for salons we look specifically at booking conversion, no-show impact and repeat rate, not just UX in the abstract.
It depends on your scale, your concept and how deeply the app needs to sit within your workflow. In the initial conversation we'll work out together which direction fits your business case.
For independent salons and barbershops with a strong brand of their own who want to move away from the generic look and feel of Treatwell or Booksy. Clients choose a treatment, stylist and time, optionally pay a deposit via iDEAL, and receive automatic WhatsApp reminders. Web and mobile app, with your own brand identity.
For salon chains with multiple branches that want central control over the treatment catalogue, staff rostering and pricing, while each branch keeps its own diary. Clients see all locations in one app, can switch between branches, and management gets reporting per branch. Often linked to a central POS system or a multi-tenant platform running across the branches.
For chains or luxury concepts that want to own the entire client relationship: loyalty points, personalised recommendations based on client history, before-and-after photos per treatment, product sales (shampoo, styling) with POS integration, and marketing campaigns aimed at dormant clients. Full in-house tech stack, with no commission paid to a marketplace.
One app brings together a range of client-facing and back-office flows that standard packages often keep separate. For your client it is one streamlined experience; for your staff it is one screen instead of five.
For solo hairdressers and smaller independent salons, we don't replace Salonkee, Fresha or Treatwell — they cover the basics well. Bespoke development becomes worthwhile when you run into one or more of these patterns.
Standard packages become restrictive at scale: central management doesn't sit well with local autonomy, reporting across all locations gets messy, and per-seat licence costs start to add up. A proprietary platform changes that calculation.
Luxury segment with consultation-based treatments, quick-cut concepts with walk-in, walk-out service, barbershops with a membership model, or a combination of hair salon and wellness — concepts with their own logic don't fit neatly into Salonkee's standard template.
On Treatwell, your salon appears alongside all the others in a price-comparison environment, with commission per booking. A white-label app of your own anchors your brand with the client and removes the commission layer — relevant once booking volume becomes substantial.
Tills, stock, customer records, marketing automation, accounting and your website need to work together as one system. A smart integration layer between Lightspeed, Mailchimp, AFAS or Exact and your own app delivers the unified customer view that standard packages don't offer.
Using modern computer vision, we can show clients an indication of how a specific colour or cut would look on their own photo, or automatically recommend a suitable product. These features aren't included in standard packages and set your concept apart.
Hairdressing academies, training locations or salon chains with an in-house learning programme combine treatment booking through models with a training platform for students and teachers — two worlds that no standard package brings together neatly.
Mobile hairdressers who work in clients' homes need very different scheduling logic from a fixed salon: travel-time buffers, route optimisation, GPS confirmation on location and a live ETA for the client. Standard packages are rarely set up for this; a bespoke app turns this flow into a first-class part of the service.
Wellness venues and spa resorts with a hair salon component often already use a spa management system for massages, treatments and memberships. Adding a suitable hairdressing flow on top, with shared resources (stylist plus chair plus washing station) and cross-selling between wellness and hair, requires a specific extension that off-the-shelf software rarely handles well.
A conversation in which we understand what type of concept you run, how many locations, which POS system, what standard software you currently use and where the pain points are. By the end, we'll know whether bespoke development is the right choice, or whether Salonkee or Fresha will suffice for your situation.
We speak with stylists, a salon manager and, if possible, a few regular clients. By the end: a concrete scope, the first screen flow for client and back office, and a realistic sprint plan.
A working build every two weeks that your team actually tests in the salon. First the booking flow with calendar and deposit, then client history and before/after photos, followed by loyalty and marketing automation.
Integration with your POS (Lightspeed Retail, MyPOS or a custom Square flow), with your accounting package (AFAS, Exact, Moneybird) and with WhatsApp Business for client communication. The end result is that booking, payment and product sales flow as one chain into your accounts.
Rolled out in phases, starting with one location or one type of treatment. Training for stylists, a support flow for customers, and ongoing management: security patches, App Store and Play Store updates, and further development based on what your team sees in practice.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →A hair salon handles customers' personal data, often including photos and allergy information. A good salon app records the evidence of compliance within the workflow, rather than as manual admin afterwards.
A customer history with hair colour formulas, allergy data and photos is personal data. The app is designed with privacy by design: role-based access per stylist, retention settings per category of data, explicit opt-in for photos, and straightforward customer record rights (access, correction, erasure).
Deposits, product payments and subscriptions are handled through PSD2-compliant providers such as Mollie, with iDEAL, Apple Pay and credit cards. We never touch bank account numbers ourselves and build directly on the PSP, the shortest route to compliance for a working payment flow.
For multi-location chains and salons that sell products, VAT administration quickly becomes complex. The app integrates with your till system and accounting package, so revenue and VAT land cleanly in your books by location and by category.
For colour treatments, a digital allergy test record and customer consent on the colour passport are increasingly expected. We build these industry-specific checklists directly into the treatment flow: the evidence lives in the app, not on a paper form behind the mirror.
The Dutch and international markets are well served by commodity platforms. A custom app does not replace them for the basic work, but adds its own layer around what the package does not do itself.
Salonkee is the Benelux market leader in salon software, Treatwell is a large booking platform that charges a substantial commission per booking, and Booksy is mobile-first and strong with barbers and beauty businesses. All are good for basic booking and diaries, but limited in industry-specific flows and in building your own brand experience. We integrate alongside them or build your own platform, depending on your situation.
Fresha has grown quickly in mobile booking, Phorest is popular with chains running loyalty programmes, and Mindbody covers the wider wellness spectrum. They are strong within their own ecosystems but difficult to connect to Dutch accounting and POS systems. For clients who want to move away from that ecosystem, or who want their own branded app on top of Fresha, we build the migration or the layer above it.
For tills, stock and product sales, salons often choose Lightspeed Retail, MyPOS or a custom Square flow. We don't replace these; instead we build a robust integration between your salon app and the till system, so that the appointment, treatment and any product sale are closed in a single transaction and land neatly in your accounts.
What hairdressers, salon chains and barbershop owners usually want to know before we start.
A free, no-obligation half-hour introductory call. We listen to your concept and workflow, probe where you are currently losing margin or time, and give direction you can act on, even if the advice is "stick with Salonkee for now".
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