BookaSalon – Online Booking for Hair Salons, Barbers & Beauty Studios

Try it before you install: a live demo salon runs at https://demo.bookasalon.dk — real plugin, real calendar, nothing is saved and no emails are sent.

BookaSalon is a WordPress booking plugin built specifically for hairdressers, barbers, beauty salons and similar appointment-based businesses — not a general-purpose scheduler with a salon skin on top.

Everything is free. Not “free to start”

Every feature below works the moment you activate the plugin. There is no locked feature, no nag notice, no “upgrade” link, and no licence key field anywhere in the admin. There is no paid tier, and there is no licensing code in the plugin at all.

Nothing leaves your server

BookaSalon makes no outbound requests of its own. Ten typefaces ship inside the plugin and are served from your own domain: no font CDN, no third-party analytics, no update check, no phoning home. The statistics you see in the admin are counted and stored in your own database, never sent anywhere. Your visitors’ IP addresses are not handed to anyone just for opening your booking page — which matters if you are the data controller under GDPR.

Two features can reach outside, and only if you switch them on yourself: Gmail sending, and the “add to calendar” links your customer clicks in their own browser. Both are documented under “External services” below.

You can see whether your emails actually arrived

Every automatic email is written to a delivery log with its result and, when something fails, the reason why. “Did the customer get the confirmation?” is the question a salon gets asked most, and you can answer it without guessing. The log keeps the last 90 days — it is a troubleshooting tool, not an archive.

Key features

• Per-staff calendar booking — customers pick a service, a preferred staff member (or “no preference”), and see only real, live availability.
• Multi-service bookings — customers can select more than one service per visit (e.g. haircut + beard trim); durations and prices combine automatically.
• Full admin control — services (name, price, duration, image), staff (photo, bio, working hours, time off), multiple locations, bookings list with status tracking.
• Individual time and price per staff member — an experienced stylist works faster than an apprentice, so duration and price can be overridden per staff member. The calendar books exactly that much time, and the customer sees exactly that price.
• Time-limited offers/discounts — percentage, fixed amount, or a fixed sale price, restricted to a date range and optionally specific weekdays/hours, handy for filling quiet periods.
• Automatic emails — confirmation, reminder, and an optional follow-up/review email, each with “add to calendar” links (Google Calendar, Outlook, .ics).
• Self-service cancellation & rescheduling — customers can cancel or move their own appointment via a secure link in their email, no phone call needed.
• Branding — accent color, font, and logo upload, so the widget matches your site.
• Two shortcodes — [bookasalon] for the full widget, [bookasalon_button] for a customizable button that opens the widget in a modal.
• A dedicated booking page — a clean, fixed URL (e.g. /bookasalon/) ideal for pasting into your Google Business Profile booking link.
• Statistics & revenue overview — clicks per booking button, completed bookings, estimated conversion rate, and a revenue dashboard with year-over-year comparisons and service trends.
• Custom SMTP support — connect Gmail/Google Workspace, SendGrid, Mailgun and others for reliable email delivery.
• CSV import — bring services, staff and bookings over from other booking plugins.
• CSV export — export bookings and payments.
• Multi-language — Danish and English built in, independently configurable for admin and the customer-facing widget.

External services

BookaSalon does not contact any third party on its own. Fonts, scripts and
styles are all served from your own server, so simply having the plugin
active sends no visitor data anywhere.

Two optional features do talk to outside services, and only after you turn
them on yourself:

1. Gmail / Google Workspace sending (optional)
If you choose “Gmail” under Settings > Email sending and connect your
account, the plugin talks to Google to obtain and refresh an access token,
and to send mail on your behalf:

• https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth — the consent screen you are
  redirected to when connecting.
• https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token — exchanging and refreshing the token.
• https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v3/userinfo — reading the address of the
  connected account so it can be shown in the admin.
• https://www.googleapis.com/ (gmail.send scope) — sending each email.

What is sent: your authorisation code/token and the content of the emails
the plugin sends (booking confirmations, reminders and so on). No visitor or
customer data is sent to Google outside of the emails themselves.
Google’s terms: https://policies.google.com/terms
Google’s privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

If you use a normal SMTP server instead, nothing goes to Google.

2. “Add to calendar” links in emails and on the confirmation screen
The confirmation email and screen contain links to Google Calendar and
Outlook that pre-fill the appointment. These are ordinary links — nothing is
transmitted until the customer clicks one, and it is then the customer’s own
browser that opens the calendar service.

• https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render — Google Calendar.
  https://policies.google.com/privacy
• https://outlook.live.com/calendar/0/deeplink/compose — Outlook.
  https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement

The .ics download is generated by the plugin itself and involves no third
party.