Their app lets you book clients.
Ours delivers them.
GlossGenius' Gold Plan is $56/month, their Platinum plan is $168/month, with no client-discovery marketplace.
StyleSeat is $35/month, — it includes everything you need to run and grow your business.
The short answer
You get software — growth is on you
You grow the business you want
Fees, side by side
Every figure below is sourced from each company’s own published rates, verified September 12, 2026. (Scroll left to right on your phone)
| FEATURE | GlossGenius | StyleSeat |
|---|---|---|
| THE BASICS | ||
| Monthly subscription | $56/mo Gold · $168/mo Platinum | $35 flat |
| 24/7 Online booking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Payments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Client profiles, notes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deposits, cancel policies | ✓ | ✓ |
| MARKETING & AI | ||
| Email marketing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reserve with Google | Gold+ ($56+/mo) | Included at $35 |
| Google review requests | Gold+ ($56+/mo) | Included at $35 |
| AI email & SMS | Gold+ ($56+/mo) | Included at $35 |
| AI social post builder | Not offered | Included at $35 |
| Text/SMS marketing | 2,500/mo then billed per message | 500 included, no credit cap |
| Client loyalty & rewards | Not built in | Included at $35 |
| GROWTH & TRUST | ||
| New client acquisition | None — no marketplace | Marketplace-sourced, 30% capped $50, once |
| Smart Pricing | Not offered | Smart Pricing, capped 5.5% or $16.50 |
| Waitlist | Gold+ ($56+/mo) | Included — pros average $3,600/yr from this feature |
| Payment processing | 2.6% flat | 2.5%+$0.30 in person · 2.6%+$0.30 online |
| App Store rating | 4.5★ (4.3K ratings) | 4.91★ (288K+ ratings) |
Don't overpay for software. Get paid and grow your business.
Switching from GlossGenius to StyleSeat actually pays you. You gain $3,643 in revenue per year, when you add up StyleSeat's growth features minus its subscription cost.
Even on Gold, GlossGenius has no client loyalty & rewards program and no AI social post builder — not at any tier, including Platinum ($168/mo).
New Client Connection, Smart Pricing, Waitlist, client loyalty & rewards, AI social post builder — all in the $35.
Breakdown of StyleSeat's average revenue and fees per year
Pros who made the switch
“I love the fact that stylist will promote you and help you get new clients. I was a new braider when I signed up and it help bring a lot of NEW people.”
“StyleSeat is literally like my personal / online assistant. Clients can find me easily, StyleSeat does the marketing part while I just sit back and see my schedule fill up. Thank you for helping me grow my business.”
“I love waking up to new bookings overnight and when my gaps get filled without me having to do a thing. It's kept my books full even in this difficult economy. Highly recommend.”
“You guys have built my barber clientele tremendously by bringing me new clients! I can't thank you enough! I greatly appreciate you!”
“Before I started using StyleSeat, I spent a lot of time texting back and forth to confirm appointments… Once I got on StyleSeat, clients could see my availability in real time and book themselves. It's helped me raise my prices confidently over time because clients see the value clearly.”
“I have been using StyleSeat for over 10 years and I can honestly say it has truly 100% grew my business!”
“Been using StyleSeat for three years. My clientele has expanded far beyond my expectations. Not to mention the innovative tools to help my business become what it is today. Highly recommend.”
“Being a Top Pro on Styleseat has been extremely beneficial to my business. I've been connected to over 40 new clients since the beginning of the year.”
“I recently had a situation with a client who complained to StyleSeat about a deposit, which is non refundable. I like how StyleSeat supported me and made me feel confident about my business policies. I have gotten 38 new clients from January to July 1st.”
“I love that I can require deposit, it is super easy for my clients to book… I absolutely love that I can link it to my Instagram or any social media.”
“Client history and reminders are fantastic.”
Where GlossGenius specializes
If deep payroll and commission-split tooling for a large team is your top priority, GlossGenius’s Platinum plan ($168/mo) is built further in that direction. StyleSeat is built for small salons and independent pros who want new clients found for them — not a system for managing a big staff’s payroll.
Frequently Asked Questions
StyleSeat advertises your business for you across Google, YouTube, the Apple App store, Google Play store, Instagram and Facebook. When we drive you a client who came from the ads, you can choose to accept or decline them. If you accept the client, we charge what the ad cost us to run, or 30% of a new client’s first appointment, capped at $50 no matter the service price, charged once per client and never again, only after the appointment is complete. On a $100 service, that’s a $30 fee — you keep $70, plus tip (about $90 total assuming a 20% tip).
Typical advertising makes you pay regardless of whether the ad drives a new client or not. With us, you only pay when the client is sitting in your chair.
The average professional earns $1,904 on average, after an average fee of $370. This is $158 per month on average, and more than pays for StyleSeat.
We think you should get paid based on what your time is worth. Styleseat is AI reviews your calendar identify your high demand time slots usually evenings and weekends and increases the price for those times based on what it calculates as your true value. This is up to 20% higher for those in demand times slots this additional revenue goes to you we keep a 5.5% fee to continue to invest in the AI algorithm.
On average this feature drives a professional $385 in the first year so buy itself it more than pays for styleseat alone. You can adjust it so that it is only active for new clients and you can remove your VIPs from this experience if you prefer if you want to turn the feature off you can also do that as well. The top 10% of pros earn more than $1000 more per year from smart pricing.
Because it doesn’t have a marketplace. GlossGenius is booking-and-payments software — it can’t send you a client you didn’t already have.
No. New Cient Delivery is optional, you can turn it off anytime. Smart Pricing is too. It’s opt-in per service, capped at 5.5% of the service cost or $16.50, whichever is lower — and it adds $385 on average to what a pro earns in a year, with the top 10% clearing $1,000+. GlossGenius has no equivalent demand-pricing tool at all.
They’re close. GlossGenius is a flat 2.6%. StyleSeat is 2.5%+$0.30 in person or 2.6%+$0.30 online. The real cost difference is the software price and what the marketplace brings you.
What GlossGenius Professionals are saying
Unedited reviews from the Google Play Store, the Apple App Store, and Reddit — the same reviews on StyleSeat’s own GlossGenius comparison page, dated and sourced.
“It is very slow to operate. Charging extra to change settings that can’t be disabled. Example: You have to pay for gold membership to be able to manage that your reviews go to Google. If not, they send automatic text to each client to leave a review on Glossgenius app where nobody sees it. And you can’t disable this option. Besides that, the response from the help center takes about a week. And mostly it is an automated one. Looking for a better option.”
“I’m getting extremely frustrated with this app. The app has been glitching a lot more lately. Today the app doesn’t open at all. I’ve tried restarting my phone, uninstalling, then reinstalling, and when it finally opens up, it freezes and says there’s no internet connection which is inaccurate. Checkout doesn’t go smoothly at all anymore. I don’t know if it’s the app or the reader, I can’t modify services at checkout. It’s frustrating and embarrassing when the client is ready to check and go.”
“This app would show that I had availability, but when I filled the time slot, it suddenly showed I was already booked. I brought this issue to Customer Service, and they replied, “this doesn’t happen with Apple phones.” I ended up switching to another service. Within a week, 5 people went missing from my books, yet they had received notifications from GlossGenius.”
“It’s convenient to have everything in the same app. That’s all the good I can say. In order for me to get some of my features back, I have to switch to gold and pay more for an app that crashes way too often. I had to let at least 5 clients leave without paying today. This is not the first time. I’ve texted, emailed, chatted and called with zero answer or resolution. In fact, my call was disconnected twice after a lengthy wait both times! The quality of the app and customer service has plummeted.”
“The app was easy to use at first and easy to learn. In the last few months the system has been crashing more frequently and customer service isn’t prompt at all. I’ve had major issues with payroll and found out they haven’t been paying my payroll taxes properly. No one will respond or fix the issue. It’s been months of battling with them, and it’s effecting my business status. I’m not sure if they got too big too fast, but the issues keep piling up. Payroll crashes frequently, as does booking.”
“Don’t refer this app to anyone because they don’t wanna give you any discount on it, they just wanna make you fool waste of time! It’s says refer and get 30 discount that’s it there is no terms and conditions written where it says whom you are referring that person ha…”
“i love the app and i’ve been using it for the past 4 years, but this new update is atrociou…”
“I currently have GlossGenius and have used it for the last 2 years with minimal complaints. My lease at my suite is about to end and I will lose my Legacy membership with them that had grandfathered me into a couple features they’ve since decided you can only have if you pay for a Gold membership vs standard. My biggest complaint is how often the site crashes. I can’t tell you how many times I haven’t been able to access the app at all to look at my books or check my clients out in the middle of my day. They never acknowledge the outages until hours later with an “oops, our bad!” I swear it feels like it happens once a month and it’s incredibly inconvenient. I haven’t personally had any issues with my clients disputing charges but have seen countless others complain that GG does nothing to help the stylist.”
Keep your chair full.
Discovery, growth, and a marketing suite included — free to try today.
Start free trialPricing and figures verified September 12, 2026 against StyleSeat’s and GlossGenius’s published rates. Reviewed by the StyleSeat data team.