Building a salon website can often be a one-time job, especially for an agency. Once you finish up the build, you can hand the site over and move on to the next client. However, while you’ve developed the booking flow, you won’t see a penny from it after launch. My TimeTailor review looks at a plugin to help change that pattern.
Its free WordPress plugin links a salon site to the TimeTailor cloud platform for online bookings, scheduling, payments, reminders, Point of Sale (POS), and team management. Underneath all of it sits a partner model that pays you a recurring share of every online booking your enrolled salons process.
TimeTailor Review: Fast Facts
- TimeTailor is a free WordPress salon booking plugin that connects your site to the platform for bookings, payments, reminders, staff management, and more.
- Online bookings carry a 3.9 percent fee that the client pays at checkout, so core booking stays free for the salon. Manual appointments are always free.
- Through the partner program, agencies can run booking systems for multiple salons from one account and earn a recurring share of that fee on every online booking.
TimeTailor Review: How the Free Model Works
TimeTailor’s savvy business model makes core booking free, with online transactions being chargeable at 3.9 percent based on the appointment value. This way, the salon can decide whether to pass it to the client or absorb the cost. The fee won’t apply again for reschedules.
TimeTailor does offer some optional add-ons though:
- Offline no-show protection at $12 per month and user, which flags those customers, sends automatic reminders, and provides some extra payment options.
- Extra reporting at $9 per month and ‘bookable expert’. You get some deeper reports on who is generating most of the revenue, and more.
- A professional website at $15 per month. If you want to even skip creating a website, TimeTailor will handle this for you through its own hosting.
For agencies, this pricing is what makes the pitch to salons easy. There’s no fixed monthly bill and you set your own resale terms on top through the partner program.
How Agencies Earn Recurring Revenue
TimeTailor sets itself apart by turning the booking engine into income that keeps paying after the project closes. It’s a simple setup: the plugin is free, the salon runs bookings without a monthly bill, and TimeTailor adds a transaction fee at checkout that’s paid by the salon client and split between TimeTailor and the partner (i.e. you).
How much you keep depends on the program. Under the white labelling model, you earn 50 percent of the 3.9 percent fee for as long as the salon stays a client, plus 85 percent of any markup you set on top.
The affiliate route pays a tapering share instead: 40 percent of the fee in year one, 30 percent in year two, and 20 percent in year three.
That 85 percent markup lever lets you set your own price ceiling on top of the base split. Because the model rewards volume, it suits agencies that already serve several salons.
TimeTailor Review: What the Plugin Does
In a nutshell, TimeTailor is a salon booking and management platform. It covers the whole salon workflow rather than just bookings:
- The digital service menu is where you assign services to your experts, and add categories, services, prices, durations, images, and add-ons.
- Calendar and appointment management handles online bookings and manual walk-ins. Team management sits alongside it with roles, individual working hours, and per-staff permissions.
- On the money side, payments and deposits run through Stripe, including card-on-file, Apple Pay, and Google Pay where available. Deposits and prepayments act as no-show protection.
- Automatic reminders cover confirmations, rebooking prompts, and retention messages.
- The POS tools turn a phone or tablet into your register, so there’s no separate hardware to buy.
The WordPress plugin is the bridge between a salon’s site and the TimeTailor cloud.
This means the data lives in TimeTailor rather than the WordPress database. The plugin also handles authentication, account creation, dashboard access, and salon owner invitations through an API.
This cloud connection cuts both ways. On the upside, salons manage services, staff, payments, and schedules from one synced account. A live two-way sync means a price or service change in TimeTailor will update a site automatically. However, you do need to weigh up whether relying on an external service is suitable for your clients (my experience so far has been solid!)
TimeTailor Review: Who This Plugin Is For
TimeTailor serves most salon types you are likely to build for. However, it can also be great for freelancers and small business owners in the beauty and wellness spaces.
So, a solo stylist or mobile makeup artist can work from their phone to take bookings, payments, and deposits. A multi-chair salon could give each stylist their own schedule, while barbershops or nail studios can mix walk-ins with online bookings in one calendar. Meanwhile, spas can lean on deposits and ‘card-on-file’ to protect against no-shows on higher-value treatments.
The agency angle is where TimeTailor stands apart, though. If you build or maintain salon sites, you can enrol clients into one platform and manage them from a single account.
For example, you could be an interior designer who provides a turnkey service beyond the direct design of the salon. In fact, anyone whose work already brings them into contact with salons is a potential partner.
TimeTailor Review: How to Set Up and Use TimeTailor
After you install and activate the plugin, a TimeTailor item appears in the WordPress admin menu and opens a guided flow.
From there, you can log in or create a TimeTailor account. You’ll need to choose whether you are starting either as an agency or partner, or as a salon owner. Some of the onboarding steps will differ depending on which option you choose.
I found that there were some options around testing and inviting clients within WordPress but I needed to click on the Salon Dashboard button to view most of the setup options and full todo list:
While you can add services one at a time, the menu import option is quicker. Here, upload an existing menu as a PDF, images, or a CSV and the platform builds the services for you. The same import also handles client lists and past appointments.
With services and staff in place, you can use the dedicated Block to add the booking widget to any page:
After confirmation, the appointment drops into the salon’s calendar with an automatic confirmation.
Day to day, the salon owner can run everything from the same account. This keeps you out of routine service and price changes while giving the salon the power to run its business affairs.
How TimeTailor Supports You After Setup
For support channels, the main route is live chat available around-the-clock from the TimeTailor dashboard:
You can also send an email, but the live chat is the primary way to get a hold of the team. Partners also get free training and a dedicated consultant, which matters when you onboard several salons at once. I didn’t need to test the live chat response times during this review, so you may want to do so before you attempt a working build.
As for documentation, the Help Center is thorough with its section and functionality coverage. It also includes a library of video tutorials.
However, I have some hesitation over the structure of the docs. The help content reads as long lists of FAQs punctuated with screenshots rather than task-based documentation. While the answers are useful, the FAQ format makes it harder to follow a single workflow end-to-end.
I also expected to be able to click on some ‘cards’ for typical documentation, but this wasn’t the case.
A new partner setting up their first salon may have to hop between several FAQ entries to assemble one process, where a step-by-step guide would carry them straight through. The video tutorials help close that gap, and I would lean on them instead.
TimeTailor Review: The Bottom Line for Agencies
If you’re an agency or service provider working with several salons, I think you’re going to like TimeTailor. The partner program turns each enrolled salon into recurring income rather than a one-off invoice. In return, the salon gets consolidation through bookings, payments, reminders, menus, scheduling, and POS in one synced place without a fixed monthly bill.
There are trade-offs, such as the booking system running on an external cloud platform, although this isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker. I’d also want to see the documentation read like a true manual rather than a set of FAQs. On the whole, the mix of a free product and a recurring revenue split is an unique and practical proposition for any agency or salon.
Related Articles
- The Top Appointment and Booking Plugins for WordPress
- Best WordPress Booking Plugins
- Best WooCommerce Extensions for Bookings and Appointments
Will your agency want to look deeper after reading this TimeTailor review? I’d love to chat about it more in the comments section below!
