Let’s start where honest comparisons should: GlossGenius is a genuinely good product, and for a solo professional it might be the best deal in the industry. $24 a month (billed annually; $28 monthly), a polished app, flat 2.6% processing, unlimited reminders. If you’re one person with one chair and it’s working — keep it. This post isn’t for you yet.
This post is about the moment it stops being $24: the day you hire. All prices below are public list prices as of June 2026, from glossgenius.com/pricing — promotions vary, check the current page before quoting anyone.
GlossGenius sells three tiers — Standard ($24/mo annual), Gold ($48), and Platinum ($148). The pattern worth seeing is which features sit behind each gate:
| You want… | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Automated waitlist | Gold and up |
| Reserve with Google | Gold and up |
| Forms & waivers (with HIPAA BAA) | Gold and up |
| Time tracking | Gold and up |
| Commissions | Platinum |
| Payroll | Add-on: $40/mo + $6 per staff member |
Notice the shape: the features that matter to a team — waitlist to keep multiple books full, forms for a real front desk, time tracking, commissions — cluster in Gold and Platinum. The $24 price is real, but it’s the solo price. The working multi-chair configuration is a $48–148 decision, plus $40 + $6/head if you run payroll through them.
Two absences worth knowing before you commit a growing shop, at any price: no native loyalty program and no two-way texting — clients get your automated messages but can’t text back a question on the same thread. Whether that matters depends entirely on how your shop talks to its book.
Parlor is $79 flat: unlimited team members, forms and waivers with e-signature included, deposits, automatic no-show fees, card-on-file, reminders — none of it tier-gated, because there are no tiers.
And the other column, because a comparison that hides its own gaps is an ad: Parlor doesn’t do payroll, commissions, or an automated waitlist at all today. If commissions and payroll are the spine of how your shop pays people, GlossGenius Platinum genuinely answers that and we currently don’t — you should know that before any switch, not after.
The comparison that’s actually decidable: if what your team needs is the operational set — every chair bookable, forms signed, no-shows costing something, one bill that doesn’t move when you hire — that’s $79 here and a tier ladder there. Run your shop’s real feature list against both columns. That exercise costs nothing and settles it honestly.
Curious what the whole bill looks like on the other big platform? The 4-chair Vagaro teardown does the same math there.