Clinic App vs Fresha: which is better for a cosmetic clinic?

Fresha is a capable, marketplace-led booking platform for beauty and wellness businesses. For an Australian cosmetic clinic, Clinic App is the better fit for two reasons: everything runs in one system with one record per patient, and it is built around AHPRA and TGA advertising rules. Bookings, desk checkout, memberships, rewards, consent and treatment records sit together, and prescription treatments never earn points or appear in offers. Choose Fresha if marketplace discovery is what you need most.

Both are complete booking systems. Either one can run your diary, take online bookings, check patients out at the desk and sell memberships. So the real question is not which one has more features. It is which one is built around how a cosmetic clinic actually works: patients who come back, prescription treatments that come with strict advertising rules, and clinical records that have to stay right.

Every fact about Fresha below comes from Fresha's own pricing page and help centre, linked as the source. Prices are as listed on Fresha's pricing page on 29 October 2026 and exclude 10% tax, as that page states.

What does Fresha do well?

Fresha does a lot, and it publishes its prices. Its pricing page says it is trusted by over 120,000 businesses. The same page lists calendar and appointment scheduling, waitlists, point of sale, consultation forms, gift cards, packages, memberships, reporting and marketing tools in its plans.

• Free booking links. Direct booking links, Facebook bookings and Instagram bookings are listed as free on the pricing page.
• A large marketplace. New clients can discover your business on the Fresha marketplace, which is the core of Fresha's growth pitch.
• Memberships with automatic payments. Fresha's memberships overview says payments are collected automatically each billing cycle through clients' saved cards, with benefit usage tracked for you.
• A loyalty add-on. Fresha's Client Loyalty overview covers points, up to five tiers and referral rewards, as an optional paid add-on billed by location.
• No minimum commitment. The pricing page says there is no minimum commitment or long-term contract, and that businesses with teams can trial it for 7 days.

For a salon, barber or day spa that wants to be found by new clients, that is a strong offer. It is fair to say so.

Why does one system matter more than a feature list?

Because a clinic's day does not split neatly into bookings, money and clinical notes, and its system should not either. Clinic App was built inside working Australian cosmetic clinics, front desk first. It runs the diary and online booking, deposits and cards on file, front desk checkout and payments, memberships with monthly billing, packages, gift vouchers, rewards and points, a prepaid wallet, referrals, review requests, reminders, the waitlist, consent forms and intake, treatment records and photos, rosters, stock, multi-location and reports. One system, one record per patient, one login and one bill.

That changes the desk. When a member walks in, reception sees their membership, rewards balance, signed consent and last treatment on the same record it uses to check them out. Nothing is copied between tools, and nothing has to be bought separately to see it.

Fresha covers a lot in one platform too: its pricing page lists calendar, point of sale, consultation forms, gift cards, packages, memberships, reporting and marketing tools. The difference is how it is packaged. Fresha prices per bookable team member, and extras such as Client Loyalty are optional add-ons billed per location on top. In Clinic App, rewards, referrals, consent and treatment records are part of the one system and the flat fees.

Which one is built for AHPRA and TGA rules?

Clinic App builds the advertising rules Australian cosmetic clinics work under into the system. On Fresha, the pages cited here leave those choices to the clinic. Two sets of rules matter most for a clinic that offers prescription treatments.

• Prescription medicines. The TGA's guidance on complying with the restrictions on advertising prescription medicines to the public says prescription medicines cannot be advertised to the public except in very limited circumstances, and that indirect references such as abbreviations and nicknames count too.
• Testimonials and inducements. AHPRA's guidelines for advertising a regulated health service say advertising must not use testimonials about the clinical aspects of a service, and that any gift, discount or other inducement must state its terms and conditions. Its guidelines for advertising higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures, which cover procedures such as cosmetic injectables, also say advertising for those procedures must not use testimonials.

Here is what Clinic App builds in around those rules:

• Points, rewards, discounts and offers never apply to Schedule 4 (prescription-only) treatments.
• Prescription medicine names are kept off public, patient-facing promotional surfaces.
• Marketing campaigns and automatic messages are checked for prescription medicine names, including disguised spellings, before they can be sent.
• Review requests never offer points or rewards for a review, skip staff, and are checked for prescription medicine names.
• Consent forms are signed digitally, and the exact wording each patient agreed to is stored with their signature and versioned. Consent for under-18s fails closed: it needs a guardian path.
• Treatment records keep their history. Changes are amended or struck out, never deleted.
• Patient data is hosted in Sydney, Australia. Card numbers are handled by Stripe and never stored by Clinic App. Our guide to client data stored overseas sets out what to ask any vendor.

On Fresha's side, the Client Loyalty overview says the business selects eligible items when it sets up the program, so a clinic can choose what earns points. That page, the pricing page and the memberships overview do not mention prescription medicines or advertising rules, and Fresha's Partner Terms of Business make the business responsible for using the platform in line with applicable laws. A clinic can follow the rules on Fresha. The difference is that on Fresha your team sets and checks it, while Clinic App excludes Schedule 4 treatments and checks messages automatically.

No software makes a clinic compliant on its own: responsibility stays with the clinic and its practitioners. What a system can do is make the wrong thing hard to do by accident. Our guide to TGA and AHPRA rules for clinic loyalty, rewards and membership offers covers the detail.

Fresha is built to help any beauty business get found. Clinic App is built to run a cosmetic clinic in one system, around the AHPRA and TGA rules it works under.

How do the costs compare?

Fresha publishes its prices; Clinic App quotes flat fees after a free audit. Here is how each one is structured.

Fresha's pricing page lists the Independent plan at A$44.95 a month for one bookable team member, and the Team plan at A$29.95 per bookable team member a month. Optional add-ons are billed on top, per location: Client Loyalty is A$89.95 a month, for example. Card processing is listed at 1.59% + A$0.28 per online transaction and 1.29% + A$0.26 per in-person transaction. New clients who find you through the Fresha marketplace attract a one-time 20% commission, with a minimum of A$8 per client.

As an example only: a clinic with six bookable team members on the Team plan would pay 6 x A$29.95 = A$179.70 a month before tax, add-ons, messaging over the free allowance, card processing and any marketplace new client fees. Your own number depends on your team size and how you use it.

Clinic App charges flat fees, custom to the clinic, covering the whole system. There is no setup fee, no per-seat fee and no lock-in. Card payments run through Stripe. We do not publish a dollar figure, because the fee is quoted after the free 45-minute Patient Revenue Audit, once we know how your clinic runs. If you are comparing several systems, our guide to the best aesthetic clinic software in Australia covers the wider field.

The new client fee deserves its own look, because the rules are more detailed than most clinics realise. Fresha's help article says it can apply even when the client books through your own website, if they viewed your Fresha marketplace profile first. We explain how it works, and how to avoid paying it for existing clients, in how the Fresha new client fee works.

How do Clinic App and Fresha compare side by side?

Fresha facts in this table come from its pricing page, memberships overview, Client Loyalty overview and Partner Terms, as read on 29 October 2026. "Not described" means those pages do not cover it, not that Fresha cannot do it.

Which should your clinic choose?

Stay with Fresha if new-client discovery through a marketplace is your main growth lever. It is a capable, low-entry system, and many businesses run well on it.

Choose Clinic App if you offer prescription treatments and most of your revenue comes from patients who return: memberships, treatment plans, packages and regulars who rebook every few months. In that model it pays to have the desk, the nurse's notes, consent, membership billing and rewards on one patient record, and to have the AHPRA and TGA rules built into the rewards, offers and messages rather than left to memory on a busy day.

A simple test: list the five things your front desk does most in a day, then count the screens each one takes in your current system. The system that makes those five things fastest is the right one, whatever its feature list says. For the wider field, see our guide to booking systems for cosmetic clinics.

What does switching from Fresha to Clinic App involve?

Switching starts with your Fresha exports and ends with a planned switch day, not a weekend of retyping. We do the move with the clinic, and Zoe onboards in person.

• Your data comes across. We import your client list, visit history, gift vouchers, package balances and active memberships from Fresha's exports and reports (CSV or Excel). You see a preview before anything is saved, and a report of any rows that were skipped and why.
• Saved cards are the one thing that cannot move. Fresha's export help article says client card details cannot be exported or transferred. That is Fresha's rule, and it protects patients. So each patient gets a "re-save your card" link.
• Members need that link first. Fresha collects membership payments through saved cards, so the members on recurring billing are the patients to contact first, before their next billing date.
• We set it up to match how you run. Before switch day we map who books, how the desk checks out, which memberships, packages, treatments, rooms and staff you have, and set the system up to match.

Our step-by-step guide to exporting your clients from Fresha covers which files to download and what to check in them, whichever system you move to.

Zoe Wogan

Founder, Clinic App

Zoe founded Clinic App and works hands-on with Australian cosmetic and skin clinics on switching systems, memberships and earning more from the patients they already have.