Solaryx vs Fresha
Fresha is free to start and earns its money on marketplace commission and payment fees. Solaryx charges a fixed subscription per salon and takes nothing on your bookings or your card payments.
The short answer
Fresha is a capable booking and point-of-sale tool and its entry price is hard to argue with. The real question for a solarium is what free ends up costing: a share of the customers the marketplace sends you, a fee on card payments, and still no bed control, no phototype file and no Belgian session rules. Solaryx is a fixed price per salon, and what you take at the counter stays yours.
Feature by feature
The same eighteen criteria for every software we compare, including the ones where we come up short.
| Criterion | Solaryx | Fresha |
|---|---|---|
| Built specifically for tanning salons | ||
| Starts, times and stops the beds itself | ||
| Phototype assessment and signed customer declaration | ||
| Session history and legal intervals between sessions | ||
| Lamp hours and equipment maintenance tracking | ||
| Session packages, prepaid minutes and subscriptions | ||
| Point of sale with products and stock | ||
| Loyalty points and gift cards | ||
| Online booking, open 24/7 | ||
| Email, SMS and WhatsApp reminders | ||
| Staff planning and leave | ||
| Several sites on one shared customer file | ||
| Salon website included | ||
| Belgian accounting export and VAT report | ||
| Bancontact and SEPA direct debit | ||
| French, Dutch, German and English, with support in Belgium | ||
| No commission on your bookings or your new customers | ||
| Consumer marketplace that sends you new customers |
Legend: a check means included as standard, a dash means partly covered or dependent on the plan, a cross means not available.
Comparison based on information published by each vendor, last checked in July 2026. Offers change regularly: confirm the current details with them before you decide. Product and company names belong to their respective owners.
Where Fresha is the better choice
There is no software bill to start
If your salon is small, seasonal or just starting, paying nothing up front is a real advantage. Solaryx asks for a setup and a monthly subscription from day one, because we install and monitor the hardware that drives your beds.
A large consumer marketplace
Fresha has a big client-facing app and directory. It is an acquisition channel on top of the software, and Solaryx has nothing equivalent.
Where Solaryx is the better choice
Four things a salon software written for hairdressers cannot do for a solarium.
The beds are part of the software
Relay boxes installed in your salon start each bed, run exactly the time that was sold, then ventilate. No member of staff watches a clock, no free minutes are given away, and a session can never run longer than what the customer paid for and the law allows.
Belgian compliance is built in, not a checklist
Phototype assessment, the signed customer declaration, the minimum interval between two sessions and eID reading all happen at the counter, automatically. When the rules change, we build the change into the product and it reaches you through the included updates.
One system instead of three
Booking, point of sale, products and stock, loyalty, staff planning and reporting run in a single tool, on a single customer file, across every one of your sites. Nothing to reconcile at the end of the day between an agenda, a till and a spreadsheet.
A Belgian price from a Belgian team
A fixed subscription per salon, no commission on your bookings and no cut on your new customers. Invoicing, VAT and accounting exports follow Belgian rules, and support answers in French, Dutch, German or English.
Questions we get
On the invoice, yes: Solaryx has a one-time setup and a fixed subscription per salon. Compare the total instead. Fresha earns on the customers its marketplace sends you and on card payments, and it still leaves you running timers by hand. Send us your figures and we will do the calculation side by side, honestly.
Yes. Your customer list and your future appointments are imported as part of the setup. Depending on your current provider and what it lets you export, migration is either included or billed once per site, confirmed with your quote.
Compare with something else
Or let us run the comparison on your own numbers: your beds, your sites, your current tools.