Vagaro vs. Square: Which is Best for Your Business?

More often than not, choosing the right software for your business can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. With so many options to choose from nowadays, how do you make sure you select the one that’s best for YOU? Well, no need to worry, we’re here to help narrow the list a bit for you. We’ve compiled this in-depth comparison between two of the industry’s leading software options—Square and Vagaro.

Who is Vagaro Best For?

Vagaro first originated as a booking and business management software for the beauty & wellness industries in 2009 and has since expanded its customer base to include the fitness, tattoo, mental health, pet-grooming industries, and beyond. In the last 14 years since its initial release, Vagaro now also offers its businesses features like digital forms, Daily Deals, custom marketing material, business capital, and much more.

Given both its versatility and its ability to adapt to your business model, Vagaro can be used by just about anyone who needs some form of scheduling capability. Businesses who fall into the wellness, fitness, beauty, or grooming industries may find the most use for Vagaro and its abundance of helpful features, though.

Who is Square Best For?

Having its beginnings originally as a credit card processing company, Square offers a few different software types depending on the industry you’re in: beauty, food & drink, retail, or professional services. With there being such a wide variety of businesses that fall into each of those categories, Square is an optimal software for those with more niche markets.

Best For Scheduling/Booking

Vagaro: From the start, Vagaro offers incredibly granular schedule control as a staple of its $30/mo. base plan (30-day free trial, anyone?) and allows users to take full rein over their booking process. The Vagaro Pro app grants owners the ability to take their business with them on the go in their pocket—anytime, anywhere. Since Vagaro uses automated booking settings that can be customized by the user as well, the booking process can be as precisely or as loosely streamlined to whatever business model that you choose.

Square: Square offers free scheduling management software to businesses, which is included with their base subscription. While Square might not offer granular control over your calendar, they serve a vastly different array of businesses. This is good for anyone who might not be sure what booking flow or process to follow just yet, or who are just beginning to get their toes wet as a new business owner.

Best For Team Management

Vagaro: Vagaro allows you to create as many admin employees (employees that do not require a calendar) as you need for your business, completely free of charge. While Vagaro does charge $10/mo. per each additional calendar added to your Vagaro business, the extra charge caps at seven employees (including yourself). This means that a Vagaro subscription for a business with 25 employees would cost the same as a business with seven employees.

Vagaro also provides employees with a means of logging into the business (if permitted by the account owner) to manage their own calendar and bookings. Vagaro account owners can then use Vagaro’s Access Levels settings to restrict or allow an employee’s access to certain things within the business to ensure no unwanted or accidental changes occur. The ability to run payroll for your employees is also included within Vagaro’s $30/mo. base plan.

Square: Square currently offers two different employee management solutions. The first option, Team Management, is free, and provides businesses with one set of custom permissions to limit employee access and allows you to add unlimited employees to your locations, free of charge.

Square’s paid employee solution, Team Plus, costs $35/mo. per business location, and provides users with unlimited employee permissions, as well as sales and activity logs for each team member. The ability to run payroll with Square is included in their $79/mo. plan option.

Best For Pricing

Vagaro: For $30/mo., Vagaro offers you service and class booking, appointment notifications, waitlist management/capabilities, email marketing, and in-depth client tracking. Add-ons not included in Vagaro’s base plan, like Forms or the Online Shopping Cart, cost only $10/mo. extra to add.

Square: Square offers three different plans to businesses at this time: A free option, a $29/mo. option, and a $79/mo. plan. Square’s free monthly plan provides users with a free website builder, and the basic means of getting a business up and running. If you’re looking to take it a step further and need the ability to track client history or appointment data, that is included with Square’s $29/mo. plan. For all things business and employee management, the $79/mo. is needed.

Best For Customer Support

Vagaro: Vagaro provides 24/7 live and local support (including a separate merchant services support line) to all Vagaro users, businesses and clients alike via chat, email, and phone. Vagaro’s dedicated support agents aim for a three-minute answer time benchmark, which means no sitting for hours on hold, which also means more time spent running your business.

Square: At this present time, Square provides support via telephone, and is available from 6AM–6PM, Monday through Friday.

Best For Credit Card Processing

Vagaro: Vagaro offers competitive credit card processing rates to any business that may want to offer safe & secure payment options to their clients. Since Vagaro’s Merchant Services and processing are done in-house as well, there’s no room for any possible third-party issues. Vagaro offers two different processing plans, and a custom merchant option that allows you to set your own rates with our Vagaro Merchant Services team:

Square: Square offers one processing plan to all their businesses with the following rates:

• 2.6% + 10 cents per in-person transaction
• 2.9% + 30 cents per online transaction

Both Square and Vagaro allow their businesses to offer buy-now, pay-later options to their customers.

Best for Marketing

Vagaro: By default, Vagaro businesses are shared to the online Vagaro Marketplace (over 24 million users) where prospective clients can view & book with professionals. For only $10/mo., Vagaro takes it a step further with its Get Featured ability, which spotlights the business on the front page of the Marketplace so that app users in their area will see them. Moreover, Vagaro provides its businesses with 1,000 free emails to use for email marketing campaigns each month. Vagaro offers larger email plans, as well as text marketing plans, that both start at an additional $20/mo. See the complete arsenal of Vagaro’s marketing tools, below:

• Email Marketing (included in subscription)
• Daily Deals (included in subscription)
• Vagaro Marketplace (included in subscription)
• Get Featured ($10/mo.)
• Vagaro MySite ($20/mo.)
• Text Marketing (starting at $20/mo.)

Square: Square offers both email and text marketing subscriptions to their users wanting to send out automated or custom marketing campaigns. The Square Email Marketing subscription starts at $15/mo. plus an additional cost per each subscribed customer. The Square Text Marketing subscription starts at $10/mo. with an additional fee per text message sent.

Best for Business Growth

Vagaro: Home to things like multi-location capabilities, exclusive enterprise concierge, the Vagaro Marketplace, and Vagaro Capital—Vagaro is able to lay the foundation for businesses while proactively promoting their growth. Vagaro prides themselves on the ability to meet businesses wherever they may be along their professional journey and help set them up for long-term success.

Square: Square offers its users a multi-location management tool that allows businesses to manage their multiple locations from within a main account. The same feature also grants Square businesses the ability to create new locations, which is great for saving time in the long run.

Both Square and Vagaro offer robust software solutions to their users, however, there are some noteworthy differences that should definitely be considered when looking for your next business management software. To start your search off right, try Vagaro for 30 days, entirely free, here.