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.
How the InStudio flow works
There is no self-serve builder and no generator: a person designs it. Sites hosted at instinctor.com/your-name carry a small Instinctor ribbon; the ribbon is removed with your own domain.
InStudio pricing (how much a salon website costs)
The design and the build of a salon website is a paid, one-time service (the figure comes with the walkthrough), and there are no per-booking fees and no commission on your clients. You pay only the standard costs every website has: domain, hosting, software license. Online booking and text alerts come with Pro, which is part of the software license. Here is what each part covers:
- The design and the build: a paid, one-time service. The site is yours to keep and edit. Clients send an appointment request, and Smart Chat answers them without a monthly limit.
- Pro: 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: move from
- Managed: 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). Without Pro, a salon gets a request-an-appointment form rather than instant online booking.
Booking on InStudio
- The site can show a simple "Request an appointment" form that lands in the owner's dashboard to confirm, or full self-serve booking with deposits and reminders. Both are built for you.
- 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.
- Smart chat answers without a monthly limit, on every build.
- On Pro, smart chat is unlimited.
Clients can message the salon as well as ask the chat, and those messages land in the owner's dashboard under Chats. Nothing ever pauses and no client sees an error.
The owner can see what smart chat did for them on their dashboard: how many questions it answered this month and how many leads it captured.
There is no monthly limit. Smart Chat answers every question a client asks, on every build.
What is included
- A personalized cinematic website (hero, gallery, services, team, reviews)
- Online booking (request form, or 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, unlimited
- 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.
- No design fee, 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 starts by applying 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.