Nowadays, people put an enormous amount of time and energy into their appearance, which has led to a drastic shift in the amount of spas and salons surrounding us. Salons are embracing traditional technology to open new avenues in the customer experience. It has proven revolutionary by developing apps for salons that make it much easier for companies to run their operations, as they can be conducted, customer appointments arranged and engagement boosted.
The beauty industry is expanding exponentially due to the increase in awareness of personal care, urbanisation and shifting lifestyles. As per Grand View Research, the global market for beauty salons is predicted to grow by 8% CAGR between 2023 and 2030. This is the perfect sector to invest in to expand revenue.
If you're exploring the business of beauty salons and wondering how much it will cost to develop an app for your salon, this is the definitive guide that will provide you with details about custom salon app development, services and cost estimates.
What is a Beauty Salon App?
The app for beauty salons is a platform that runs on the internet to aid salons in bringing customers online and streamline their business processes. The apps can be used to schedule appointments, sell products, run business operations and interact with customers. Recently, there's seen a significant increase in the demand for these apps due to their ability to keep customers engaged all hours of the day, as well as flash sales and discounts. It makes finding how to book, manage and even manage beauty services easier.
A user-friendly app for salons will increase business growth and help attract customers in a data-driven society. In addition to making appointments easier, salon staff benefit from an online boost. Salon App monetisation is yet another crucial aspect to be invested in development. It allows you to make the most of applications and increase revenue through advertisements. In contrast to traditional methods using traditional methods, this application for beauty salons assists in solving major problems for businesses, which cause them to lose potential clients.
Steps to Build a Beauty Salon App
The process of developing a salon app has several stages. This is the step-by-step guide:
Research
A successful project begins with a thorough investigation. Learning about the business, understanding the market and identifying obstacles the industry faces are crucial steps in the research stage of application development. Developers must always look at the app's strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (SWOT) to determine every aspect of its pros, negatives and potential obstacles. Apart from analysing customer demographics and identifying the necessary features, it is essential to conduct an analysis of your competitors.
Design
A good developer will design applications keeping the intended audience in mind, with the goal of attracting the right audience. An application can only be useful if it is easy to use and intuitive to the people who use it. An app for beauty salons is not considered to be great if it doesn't allow you to schedule appointments for pedicures; it's only useful when the application allows you to do this job in just a few steps.
People ages 15 to 70 regularly go to beauty salons. These age groups differ in their understanding of technology. Therefore, a user-friendly interface will ensure that every app user gets the most pleasant experience.
Develop and Test
The next stage of creation is the design of the mobile app. This is using the reports compiled by the business analysis team and the UX/UI designers. As mentioned previously, it is possible that development will follow different yet similar road maps based on the platform on which the application is planned to be run.
Backend developers create the server portion of the application and connect it to the UI/UX envisioned by the design team. When the application is completed with all the required features and functions, It is then delivered to a team of high-quality researchers and testers who will determine whether the functions are operating well and if there are issues that might lead to issues with the application's operation. When the team of testers is satisfied, the app can be launched.
Deliver and Maintain
Making and launching the app is just the beginning of an app's development plan. Launching and maintaining the app after launch are completely different problems. After the initial three steps of app development, the app is made available to the general public to use. This begins the process of collecting feedback from users and letting the developers know about their needs.
Applications are software and software has to stand the test of time to remain on the market. This is why gathering feedback from the public to make better updates is an absolute requirement. When launching an application on the Google Play Store or the Apple Store, developers should look for reviews, public opinion and reviews. Getting hold of these figures and utilising them to benefit the beauty salon is crucial.
Beauty Salon App Development Costs
The price associated with on-demand salon app development services depends on various factors, such as the platforms, their functionality features and the complexity of the app. However, the cost of developing an on-demand beauty app can vary from £20,000 to £200,000 based on factors like the number of features available and technological stacks, the location of the app development company, the user interface/UX design, etc.
App Functionality & Features
It is a matter of what you need in terms of simple or more complex features like appointments, user profiles or service listings, AI integration or loyalty programs that impact the total cost estimation. If you select the basic application, it will require less investment, but increasing the complexity will cost more.
Platform Choice
If you decide to stick with one platform, such as iOS or Android, creating an app for a beauty salon will incur lower costs. Using cross-platform platforms, such as Flutter and React Native, will be more affordable, but it has certain limitations in terms of performance.
Wireframe
Wireframes are a blueprint for the app's coding. Tools such as Figma, Photoshop and others are frequently required to create a great wireframe, which could increase the price. The cost for salon app development wireframe designing can range from £2,000 to £6,000.
Technology Stack
As development technology improves, integrating new frameworks such as Swift, Node.js, Flutter or React Native can affect the overall cost based on the developer's skills and knowledge of framework licensing. In addition, databases, API gateway, cloud service and push notifications may increase development costs.
UI/UX Complexities
Selecting a minimal, template-based design can reduce salon app development costs due to the easy integration. However, customising features of UI/UX, such as unique animations and a responsive layout, can raise overall design costs because of the high demand and the architecture.
Third-Party Integration
Some third-party integrations, such as the payment gateways Stripe and PayPal or the addition of Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, could add more complexity and costs. Furthermore, using social media logins may also result in higher initial costs, but they will ultimately improve usability.
Development Teams
It's also contingent on whether you're hiring an experienced team of in-house developers, which will incur greater costs of hiring, training and resource allocation. In the alternative, you can contract with a mobile application development firm in India to pay for specific features, project integration or bug fixing and then pay them accordingly.
Development Timelines
If there's a very short timeframe for developing the app for beauty salons, it can result in costly costs due to the limited range of negotiation. With the aid of flexible timelines, it is possible to allow for cost-effective decisions to invest strategically in the services of your choice. However, it will also develop apps with longer delivery durations.
Maintenance and Updates
Following the launch of your salon's app, regular salon app maintenance, feature upgrades or bug fixes are required, which add to the cost of running the app and developing a salon reservation application. The total annual maintenance cost will range from 15% to 20% of the initial development costs.
Conclusion
Investing in salon app development is among the most profitable investment options for salons in 2025. Developing a well-designed salon app requires careful planning, appropriate technology and keeping customers engaged. If you design an easy booking system, provide exclusive loyalty programs, gift vouchers and exclusive cashback deals and speak to clients about their experiences, it will help you increase your revenue and keep customers interested in your offerings.
A well-designed salon that employs the appropriate strategy for marketing and listening to customers is crucial to staying top of the line in beauty apps.
You know not only how much you'll need to shell out to achieve your idea of an app for beauty on demand but also the best way to get the money you invested back in the shortest possible time.
If you put in the time and hard work, you can improve your salon's business. Making it available online will expose you to a greater public, giving your sales the needed boost. To make sure you're getting an advantage, it is essential to engage in a thorough discussion with a beauty app development service company.
