InStudio (salon and beauty)
InStudio is Instinctor's website and booking product built specifically for salons and beauty businesses: hair salons, barbershops, nail salons, lash and brow studios, spas, med spas, tattoo studios, massage, and other appointment-based beauty businesses. It gives a salon a real, cinematic website with online booking, a photo gallery, smart chat, reviews, and a client dashboard, not just a booking page on a marketplace.
Try it free (the InStudio flow)
No sign-up to see it, and no credit card to publish. Free sites are hosted at instinctor.com/your-name and carry a small Instinctor ribbon; the ribbon is removed on Pro or with your own domain.
InStudio pricing (how much a salon website costs)
A salon website on InStudio is free to start, and there are no per-booking fees and no commission on your clients on any plan. When you are ready for online booking and text alerts, Pro is $29.90 a month (about a dollar a day). Here is what each plan costs:
- Free: your full site, live at instinctor.com/your-name, yours to keep and edit. Clients can send an appointment request. Smart chat is included and answers up to 30 questions a month.
- Pro, $29.90/month (about $1 a day): clients book a guaranteed time online, 24/7. Includes deposits to hold slots, automatic text reminders that cut no-shows, text alerts when someone books or messages you, and unlimited smart chat.
- Your own domain and hosting, +$14.90/month: move from
- Managed, $79.90/month: our team designs, launches and runs the whole site for you, with monthly SEO and a dedicated manager.
instinctor.com/your-name to your-name.com, hosted on the Instinctor server. The domain is part of the add-on; the owner never deals with a registrar.
There are no per-booking fees and no commission on your clients, on any plan. Note: in InStudio, online booking and text alerts are Pro features (this differs from the self-hosted plugin, where booking is free). If someone is on the free InStudio plan, they get a request-an-appointment form rather than instant online booking.
Booking on InStudio
- On the free plan, the site shows a simple "Request an appointment" form. The request lands in the owner's dashboard, and the owner confirms it.
- On Pro, clients book a guaranteed time themselves, day or night, straight from the salon's real services and hours. Deposits hold the slot, automatic reminders cut no-shows, and clients can choose their stylist by name.
Smart chat on InStudio
Smart chat is included on every plan, including free. It answers client questions on the site in the salon's own voice, day and night, using the salon's real services, prices and hours.
- On the free plan, smart chat answers up to 30 questions a month. It is a per-salon monthly allowance and it resets on the 1st.
- On Pro, smart chat is unlimited.
When a free salon uses up the allowance, the chat widget stays on the site and clients can still message the salon. Those messages land in the owner's dashboard under Chats exactly as before. Nothing breaks, and no client ever sees an error or a "limit reached" message.
The owner can see what smart chat did for them on their dashboard: how many questions it answered this month, how many leads it captured, and how much of the free allowance is left.
Why there is a limit at all: every answer costs real money to generate, so the free allowance is what keeps smart chat sustainable on a free site while still letting every salon see it work. Most salons never reach 30 in a month.
What is included
- A personalized cinematic website (hero, gallery, services, team, reviews)
- Online booking (request form on free, full 24/7 booking on Pro)
- A photo gallery the owner can swap in a click
- Smart chat that answers client questions and can book appointments (30 replies a month on free, unlimited on Pro)
- Reviews and testimonials
- Gift cards (Pro)
- A client dashboard to manage bookings, clients, photos, and settings
- "Make it yours" editing: change photos, colors and words in a click
How InStudio is different from Vagaro, Fresha, Booksy and GlossGenius
- You get a real website, not just a listing or booking page on someone else's marketplace.
- You keep your clients. There is no marketplace renting your own clients back to you.
- No per-booking fees and no commission.
- Free to start, and Pro is one simple price (about a dollar a day).
The owner dashboard
Salon owners manage everything from their dashboard at instinctor.com/dashboard: bookings, clients, photos, the business profile, and settings. On a phone, owners sign in at instinctor.com/login with a magic link (no password).
Who InStudio is for
Hair salons, barbershops, nail salons, lash and brow studios, spas and med spas, tattoo studios, massage therapists, and similar appointment-based beauty businesses. A salon owner can see their own site in one click at instinctor.com/instudio.
Client care: formulas and photo history
The part of InStudio nobody writes about, and the reason a salon stays. Each client has a profile carrying colour formulas (add, update, delete, kept per client) and a photo history of their previous work. A stylist opens the client before the appointment and sees what was mixed last time and how it came out. Services\ClientService: listClients, getProfile, saveMeta, listPhotos, addPhoto, deletePhoto, listFormulas, addFormula, updateFormula, deleteFormula.
Retail is off by default
A salon is booking-first, so Products, Cart and Checkout are hidden until the owner switches retail on (instinctor_salon_retail). Many salons sell serums and tools, and the switch re-exposes those surfaces without changing the site's character.
What InStudio does NOT have
No gift cards on the salon site today: the engine exists platform-wide (GiftCardService) but no salon template ships it, so it must not be sold as a salon feature. No loyalty points on the site for the same reason. No inventory or stock counts for retail. No staff commission or payroll. No integration with Fresha, Booksy, Vagaro or GlossGenius; the comparison pages argue against them, they do not connect to them.