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Booksy Review: Boon or Bust for Beauty Appointments?

Back in the day, this post was originally a Lifebooker.com review. But alas, Lifebooker is now Booksy.com — so welcome to my updated Booksy review.

What is Booksy?

Booksy is a local directory and appointment-setting site. You enter your location and get a list of nearby pros in the beauty, health, and wellness space. Depending on the location, you’ll find other businesses, too, like landscapers, pet groomers, and cleaning services. But the focus is on hair and nail salons, day spas, massage, and chiropractors.

How does Booksy work?

You can use the website at booksy.com or download the Booksy app. Once you create an account, the process of finding beauty services and setting appointments is straightforward: You browse the pros in your location, review available services and time slots, and book appointments.

Account creation

You will need to provide an email address and phone number when you create your Booksy account. Booksy then authenticates your information by texting a code to your phone number.

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Note that my first attempt to create an account in Firefox failed. The website simply did not respond. I then switched to Chrome and the process worked as expected. You can create your account with an email address or by logging into Facebook.

Managing Booksy appointments

Once you set appointments through Booksy, they’ll be in your account for easy access. Booksy also sends reminders about upcoming appointments. If you need to cancel or reschedule, you can do that through your account.

Family and friends

You can create a family and/or friend network on Booksy by linking accounts. You’d do this so you could manage someone else’s appointments. This makes the most sense if you have kids. You can keep your appointments separate from your kids’ appointments, but still manage both. You’d also receive notifications for the linked accounts, including payment requests.

You might also like this setup for a partner who puts off a haircut for way too long.

The members you add to your account cannot see your personal appointments. They can only see the appointments you set for them.

What Booksy tells you about providers

Woman getting eyebrow treatment to represent Booksy review.
Source: Envato.

It’s not easy to choose a hair stylist or an aesthetician. Most of us rely on recommendations from friends and family when we can. Otherwise, we look at social media, customer reviews, prices, and location.

Booksy centralizes this information to help you find the right pro. The info you can find on each provider’s page includes:

  • Location with a map view
  • Phone number with tap-to-call functionality
  • Business hours
  • Social media links
  • Services and prices
  • Images of work where applicable (hair salons show styling pix, for example)
  • Reviews from other Booksy users
  • Payment and cancellation policies

Pay close attention to the payment and cancellation policies. Some providers may ask for payment upfront — they’ll send a payment link after you book the appointment. Some also charge a fee for late cancellations.

Is Booksy the same as Lifebooker?

Lifebooker had a similar business model — you used the site to find and book beauty appointments. But Lifebooker focused more on discounts. Providers would list their services at marked-down rates, which gave shoppers more incentive to make appointment.

Booksy doesn’t take that approach as far as I can tell. And honestly, that’s probably a good thing. In my experience, using coupons with service providers mostly lowers the quality of service you get. And you don’t want anything less than the best with beauty services. A second-rate haircut or eyebrow trim could ruin your day (or year, depending on how drastic it is).

Booksy competitors

You may have already concluded that Booksy’s business model isn’t terribly unique. There are other similar services that have the provider listings plus appointment management features. Vagaro and MindBody are two examples. There are also competing applications that focus on the appointment setting and management only, such as GlossGenius, Mangomint, and Fresha.

What Boosky does for providers

Providers list their services with Booksy to get their business in front of prospective customers, streamline appointment setting and reminders, organize their calendars, and manage payments. Providers pay a monthly subscription fee to use the app.

Booksy review: Pros

Booksy has some nice features, especially for families. You can research providers for different beauty services, browse pricing, read reviews, and set appointments. You can also reschedule your appointments and prepay for services — all through the website or app. Having this functionality available online is a perk for anyone who (like me) doesn’t like making phone calls.

Also, if you have a good or bad experience with a provider, you can let others know by leaving a review within Booksy.

Booksy review: Cons

Booksy’s main limitation is that the provider network is incomplete. When I search in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for example, there is one hair salon. Now Santa Fe isn’t exactly a hub of beauty providers, but there is definitely more than one option.

For context, I also searched Vagaro for Santa Fe providers and got a list of 69 pros. Each listing had some basic business information, but most of them had the online booking disabled. So Vagaro had more info to browse, but not much more functionality than Booksy.

Searching a bigger city, like Long Beach, Calif., returns many more results on Booksy and Vagaro.

Booksy review: Conclusion

My take on Booksy is that it’s worth a look when you’re researching beauty providers, especially if you live in a larger city or urban area.

g1na1011

Sunday 22nd of September 2013

NEVER, EVER PURCHASE ANYTHING FROM THIS SITE! They included my friend's business on there without ANY CONSENT, causing a bunch of confusion between both the business and the consumers! They have no rights to do this and should really be shut down! Please save your money for a legit business like Groupon or Living Social.

Nichole Mayers

Thursday 2nd of August 2012

I used to be an avid client of Lifebooker until earlier this year, when I purchased two Lifebooker vouchers for Soca Motion classes and after calling and writing the merchant repeatedly to schedule the classes and receiving no response, I contacted Lifebooker for a refund and was told, basically, that it was not Lifebooker’s problem.

I've had this problem with Groupon and they contacted the merchant to discuss. The merchant confirmed that they couldn't schedule me at any foreseeable time and Groupon issued a refund. Lifebooker didn't even make an effort to resolve the issue.

I haven't returned to their site since that experience, but I've had pretty good experiences with Bloomspot, Giltcity, Groupon and Living Social/Amazon Local. And to imagine-- I actually used to recommend Lifebooker all the time...

Laura

Tuesday 31st of July 2012

DO NOT USE LIFEBOOKER!!! THE COMPANIES THAT USE THEM ARE SCAM ARTISTS AND SO IS LIFEBOOKER ITSELF. THEY DON'T HAVE ANY CUSTOMER SERVICE, THEY DON'T REFUND MONEY AND THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE NUMBER IS A JOKE. SO YOU ARE SCREWED! DON'T USE THIS COMPANY, EVER!!!

John

Monday 16th of July 2012

Bad experience as well. Purchased a bottle of supplements the code appeared to have worked but after filling in all the required information, there was a problem procesing the order. Called lifebooker couldn't get an answer. Sent an email. The reply told me to call after several minutes on hold was sent to voicemail. Stick with groupon. This is my first and last experience with lifebooker.

Cindy Real

Wednesday 25th of April 2012

I had a horrible experience with Lifebooker. I will never use them again. They have poor customer service . I purchased 3 life booker coupons for a salon in Burbank. I called several times to book an appointment and was unsuccessful. There was never a live person to answer my call, so I left three messages. When a representative did call me back I informed her about the life booker coupon that I had purchased for a facial and microdermabrasion. She then stated that it would be about a month until I got an appointment and that Kasey would call me back to book it. I never got a return phone call. After several attempts I contacted life booker directly to inform them of the issues I was having, and they were unable to get me a refund but stated that I can email the salon to make an appt. I have had great experiences with Groupon and that is who I will use. Stay away from Lifebooker and any facials/microdermabrasion from a salon called Glow Skin by Kasey.

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