Fresha is a marketplace first and software second. If new client volume from that marketplace is what keeps your chairs full, the 20% is buying you something real.
Zdrovia is a clinical record that also takes bookings and payments. Nobody finds you through us, and we do not charge you as though they did.
More features, simpler pricing, and a migration that takes days — not weeks.
Fresha built its business on being the one platform that cost nothing to start with. That was the reason most solo operators picked it. In July 2026 the reason went away.
The permanent free plan is gone. A solo practitioner now pays $19.95 a month and each additional team member costs $14.95. For a three-person studio that is about $50 before anyone books anything.
Fifty dollars is not the problem. Plenty of software costs more than that and earns it. The problem is that the 20% marketplace commission survived the change, so the people who were paying a percentage are now paying a subscription as well.
Flat pricing and percentage pricing feel similar when you are quiet. They stop feeling similar the month you have a good month. Twenty percent of a $1,200 filler package is $240 out of one appointment, and it repeats every time that client is counted as new.
Our version of this is 4% all-in, and it exists for the same reason Fresha's does: free software still costs someone money to run. The difference is the size of the number and the fact that it keeps dropping as you grow — 3.5% on Pro, 3% on Team — instead of staying fixed at one rate forever. Once you are processing more than about $15,800 a month in card bookings, moving to Pro costs less than staying on Free.
That break-even is not a secret we keep. It is on the pricing page, and the app will tell you when you cross it.
Fresha is very good at what it was built for. It fills calendars, it takes payment, and its marketplace really does send people to salons. None of that was designed around a medical record.
If you inject, that gap matters more every year. You need the lot number of the vial that went into a specific patient on a specific date, the consent they signed and which version of it, the photo taken before and the one taken six weeks later, and a note that reads as a clinical record rather than a comment field.
Zdrovia was built from that end. Charts carry structured fields instead of free text, so a number you write down today can be graphed against the same number in eight months. Inventory tracks lots, expiry, FEFO and quarantine, so a recall is one query rather than an afternoon with a spreadsheet. Consent forms are versioned, so you can show which wording a patient actually signed.
Canadian clinics: your patient data sits in Canadian data centres, so PIPEDA is answered without a workaround. Prices here are USD so they line up with what Fresha publishes.
Leaving Fresha, without the sales gloss.
Fresha ended its permanent free plan in July 2026. The replacement is a paid subscription of $19.95 a month for a solo practitioner and $14.95 for each additional team member, and the 20% commission on new clients booked through the Fresha marketplace stayed. Check Fresha's own pricing page before you make a decision, because terms move.
The Free plan is how we make money, so removing it would be strange. Card processing is an all-in 4% + 30¢ per transaction on Free, and that's the whole model — no separate gateway fee stacked underneath it. Move to Pro or Team and the rate drops to 3.5% or 3%, still on every card transaction, just a smaller cut.
It only applies to money you actually run through Zdrovia. Cash and e-transfer are invisible to us. Once you clear roughly $15,800 a month in card bookings, moving to a paid plan costs less than staying on the percentage, because the flat monthly fee plus the lower rate undercuts it.
Possibly, and you should be honest with yourself about how many. Pull your Fresha reports and look at what share of last quarter's new clients came from marketplace discovery rather than your own Instagram, referrals or walk-ins. If that number is large, the 20% is buying you something real and you should weigh it carefully. Most injectors we talk to find the number is smaller than they assumed.
Yes, through your own Stripe account. Money lands in your bank, the merchant relationship is yours, and you can leave Zdrovia without renegotiating your processing. Stripe's fee applies either way, on any platform.
Export your clients and appointment history from Fresha as a CSV and send it to us. Our team does the import by hand rather than making you fight a wizard, so odd column names and half-finished records get sorted out instead of dropped. It is free while we are in beta. Timing depends on how big and how messy the export is.
Charting, photo documentation, injectable inventory, consent forms, booking and payments. Free to start at 4% all-in, dropping to 3% as you grow — nowhere near 20%.
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