The tier that costs $79 to $328 a month

There is a tier of salon software that costs between $79 and $328 a month, and roughly half of it will not tell you the price without a sales call. Phorest, Mangomint, Boulevard and Mindbody all sit there. They are good products, built for salons with staff, rooms and a front desk.

Salon software pricing in this bracket is genuinely hard to compare, which is partly the point. This page is what each one actually costs, taken from their own pricing pages, and who they are actually for. CNL Systems is $29 a month, flat, one plan, and it is at the bottom of this page rather than the top because the comparison is the point.

How much does Phorest cost?

Phorest does not publish a price. Phorest pricing lists four plans, Starter, Grow, Complete Advantage and Elite, and every single one carries a "Request a quote" button and no figure.

The page is titled "How Much Does Phorest Cost? | Plans, Pricing & Quote". It does not answer its own question.

Phorest is also unusually direct about who it is for, and this is worth quoting because it saves people time: its plans are "great for growing salons & medspas, perfect for 3+ staff."

If you are one person, Phorest has told you on its own pricing page that you are not the customer. Believe them.

How much is Mangomint?

$120 a month base, plus $10 per user. For a solo operator that is $130 a month, and Mangomint's own price calculator shows exactly that figure.

Additional locations are $120 a month each. Mangomint pricing lists the add-ons openly, which is to its credit:

Card processing is 2.45% plus 15 cents in person, and 2.90% plus 30 cents for virtual payments.

Mangomint deserves credit for how it presents this. Free onboarding with data transfer, no contracts, and its FAQ says plainly that if you leave you take your data with you. That is the right posture and it is rarer than it should be.

It is still $130 a month for one person, and the base fee exists whether you are one chair or six.

How much is Boulevard?

$140 a month per location for Essentials, currently promoted from $176, and that plan covers up to 5 professionals. Above it:

Boulevard pricing marks those rates "Limited-time offer... New customers only." Annual billing saves 10%. Card processing starts at 2.65%. Automated campaigns are $2 per completed appointment, on top.

Boulevard is a genuinely capable platform, with resource scheduling, memberships, inventory with shrinkage reporting, commission tracking and multi-location reporting. Every one of those is a floor-with-staff feature.

At $140 a month covering up to five professionals, a solo operator is paying for four seats that do not exist.

How much is Mindbody?

$79 a month per location is the published floor, and no tier price is published at all. Starter, Accelerate and Ultimate each carry a "LET'S TALK" button.

Full breakdown, including the fee that applies when a client discovers you through their app: the Mindbody alternative.

What does salon software actually cost, side by side?

Entry prices, for one person, from each company's own pricing page:

Two patterns worth naming.

The per-location and per-user models punish being small. Mindbody, Boulevard and Mangomint all charge a base figure attached to a location rather than to a person. A six-chair salon spreads that base across six earners. You do not.

Not publishing a price is a filter, not an oversight. Phorest and Mindbody both route you to a quote. A quote-based model works by sorting prospects into what each will pay, and it is aimed at businesses large enough to be worth the sales time.

Is any of this worth it for one pro?

If you run a floor, genuinely yes, and this page is not an argument against these products. Resource scheduling, memberships, commission tracking, inventory with shrinkage reporting and multi-location reporting are real capabilities and someone had to build them.

If you are one person with one chair, look at that feature list and count how many rows you would open in a year. The honest answer for most solo barbers, stylists and nail techs is none of them.

What you actually need is shorter: clients find you under your own name, they book without a text thread, a deposit holds the slot, a reminder gets them there, the payment lands in your account, and the client list stays yours.

What does CNL cost?

$29 a month, flat, one plan, no percentage of your sales, and the number is on the pricing page.

Inside it: your own website on your own domain, online booking with deposits, payments online and at the chair, automatic reminders, your client list, and email campaigns. The domain is registered at cost, about $12 a year for a .com, or connect one you already own free.

What CNL is not, and this matters more on this page than on most: there is no resource scheduling, no memberships, no commission tracking, no inventory, no payroll, no multi-location reporting. Every product above has features CNL does not. They cost between $79 and $328 a month because those features are expensive to build and someone with a floor needs them.

If that is you, buy one of them. If your business is one chair, you are being asked to fund a front desk you do not have.

The short version

Premium salon software runs $79 to $328 a month, and Phorest will not tell you at all. Mangomint is $130 for one person, Boulevard is $140 per location covering five professionals you may not have, and Mindbody publishes a floor and nothing else.

All of them are priced around a business with staff, because that is who they are built for. CNL is $29 a month for one pro, with the price printed where a price belongs.

Phorest, Mangomint, Boulevard and Mindbody prices, plan structures, add-on rates and processing rates were taken from phorest.com/us/pricing, mangomint.com/pricing, joinblvd.com/pricing and mindbodyonline.com/business/pricing on August 24, 2026. Boulevard's rates were marked as a limited-time promotion on that date. Prices move; check them before you sign anything, including ours.