A salon with four bookable staff is not paying £47. On SalonIQ's published ladder it is paying £87 a month for the software, plus setup from £175 plus VAT, plus whatever the extras come to, because online booking deposits and payments, two way SMS, a branded consumer app and integrated card payments are all listed as chargeable rather than included. None of that is hidden. It is set out on their own pricing page. It just does not add itself up for you, and the headline figure is the one that travels. So this page does the sum, states where our own pricing looks worse and leaves you with a method rather than a verdict.
The shape of the ladder is the interesting part
SalonIQ prices per bookable staff member. Solo is £47 a month. The second bookable person adds £20. Every step after that adds £10, up to £137 at eight or more, with fifteen or more quoted on application. Read that curve again, because the steepest step is the one from one person to two, and that is exactly the step a growing solo takes first. Hiring your first stylist costs you roughly 43 percent more in software before they have taken a single booking.
The other thing worth pinning down is what the ladder counts. It counts bookable staff, so a receptionist or an apprentice who never appears in the diary may not move you up a rung. Ask them to confirm precisely where that line falls for your team, and ask what happens in a month when a chair sits empty. On a ladder this steep, the definition is worth real money over a year.
VAT is not stated on the pricing page for the monthly figures. The setup fee is quoted plus VAT, which hints that the monthly prices are quoted the same way, but a hint is not a statement and you should not budget from one. Ask for the figure with VAT shown, then use that number in every sum below.
The published ladder, and what twelve months of it comes to
| Bookable staff | SalonIQ monthly, as last checked | Twelve months of software at that step |
|---|---|---|
| 1, solo | £47, charged per bookable staff member. VAT treatment not stated | £564. VAT treatment not stated |
| 2 | £67, per bookable staff member, so the second person adds £20. VAT treatment not stated | £804. VAT treatment not stated |
| 3 | £77, per bookable staff member. VAT treatment not stated | £924. VAT treatment not stated |
| 4 | £87, per bookable staff member. VAT treatment not stated | £1,044. VAT treatment not stated |
| 5 | £97, per bookable staff member. VAT treatment not stated | £1,164. VAT treatment not stated |
| 6 | £107, per bookable staff member. VAT treatment not stated | £1,284. VAT treatment not stated |
| 7 | £117, per bookable staff member. VAT treatment not stated | £1,404. VAT treatment not stated |
| 8 or more | £137, per bookable staff member. VAT treatment not stated | £1,644. VAT treatment not stated |
| 15 or more | Price on application, so no figure and no VAT treatment is published | Not published |
| Youzse for comparison | From £19 a month, charged per business. VAT treatment is set out on the Youzse pricing page | From £228, with VAT treatment as shown on the Youzse pricing page |
SalonIQ figures are taken from their own published pricing as last checked on 19 March 2026. When we tried again on 7 August 2026 saloniq.com did not respond, from two separate networks, so treat every figure here as last known rather than certainly current and confirm it with SalonIQ directly. The twelve month column is the monthly price alone. It excludes setup, extras, hardware and card fees.
Then add setup, because it is not optional
SalonIQ states that initial setup is required for all packages, and that setup fees may apply starting from £175 plus VAT. Read both halves of that sentence carefully. Required is doing the work in the first half. Starting from is doing the work in the second. So a four staff salon on £87 a month is looking at £1,044 of software and at least £175 plus VAT before a single client has booked anything.
In fairness, that fee buys real labour. Setup covers install, unlimited online training, data build or migration and the configuration of your pricing, your services and your team. If you are coming off paper, or off a system that is holding fifteen years of client history hostage, having somebody else do the migration has genuine value and plenty of owners would rather pay than lose three evenings to a spreadsheet.
What you want before you sign is the actual setup quote for your salon, not the from figure. Ask what pushes it above £175. Ask whether it scales with staff count or with the volume of data you are bringing across. Then put that real number in your year one column, not the smallest one on the page.
The extras SalonIQ lists separately, so price every one you actually need
- Onsite training, as distinct from the unlimited online training that comes with setup
- Two way SMS, so clients can reply to a reminder rather than just receive it
- A branded consumer app under your own salon name
- Online booking deposits and payments, which is the feature that protects you against no shows
- An e shop, if you sell retail online
- Integrated card payments through IQ Pay, where no rate is published and the call to action is a free rate check
- Hardware, including whatever you need on the front desk
- Anything at fifteen or more bookable staff, which moves to price on application
Where SalonIQ earns its price
- IQ Connect is an AI receptionist that picks up missed calls and enquiries around the clock and books appointments. If you lose bookings because nobody can reach the phone while three clients are mid service, that is a direct answer to a problem you actually have.
- Multiple sites are handled properly, with centralised reporting and shared client data. If you run two or three salons and a client should be recognised at any of them, this is built for exactly that.
- Integrated eCommerce with product recommendation puts retail inside the same system as the diary, which is more than a lot of salon software manages.
- It was founded by salon owners and is based in Tunbridge Wells, trading as Intelligent Salon Software Ltd. UK support in UK hours, from people who have run a salon, is worth something on a Saturday morning.
- Setup includes data build or migration and unlimited online training. For an owner with years of client history and no appetite for importing it themselves, that is the part of the deal that justifies the fee.
Where Youzse costs you more, plainly
Our card rate is higher than most. Youzse charges 2.5% plus 35p per transaction and the platform fee sits inside that rate rather than being billed to you separately. SalonIQ does not publish an IQ Pay rate, so we cannot put the two figures side by side honestly. What we can say is that if you take their free rate check and it comes back below 2.5% plus 35p, that is a real point in their favour and it belongs in your sum rather than in a footnote.
So use your own volume. Take your monthly card takings and your average transaction value, work out what 2.5% plus 35p costs you across a year, and add it to our software price. Then do the same with whatever rate SalonIQ quotes you, their ladder step for your headcount, their setup quote and the extras you genuinely need. One of those two totals will be smaller, and it will not be the same one for every salon. A busy six chair salon taking mostly cards weighs that differently from a solo therapist with a low transaction count.
On our side of the sum sits pricing you can read right now from £19 a month, a 30 day free trial with no card required, and 0% commission on new clients who find your business through Youzse. Booking, deposits, quotes, invoices, CRM, marketing, loyalty, gift cards, memberships, forms and VAT returns come as part of the platform rather than as a list of extras to price up one by one. Whether that wins on your numbers is a question only your numbers can answer, and you can start the trial and find out without booking a demo first.
Third-party pricing and features on this page were last checked on 3 August 2026. Rival platforms change their plans, so check their own site before you decide.
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