Phorest vs Boulevard

Boulevard is a premium salon and med spa platform known for a clean interface and a strong booking experience. It is a well-built product for businesses that prioritize the front-of-house experience above all else. Phorest covers the same front-of-house fundamentals and goes further on retention, staff performance, and business intelligence. The specific differences: Phorest’s Staff Goals gives every team member live visibility into their own targets and performance; every campaign’s revenue is tracked directly to the register; and every customer gets a dedicated Business Advisor from day one. Boulevard also typically requires a 12-24 month contract. Phorest is a monthly subscription.

Both platforms have automated marketing. Phorest’s machine-learning rebooking tool identifies which clients are overdue based on their individual booking patterns, not a fixed time window. It  sends personalized outreach automatically. Campaign revenue is tracked directly, so after every promotion you can see exactly which clients it brought back and what they spent. Phorest Ads Manager lets you run Facebook and Instagram campaigns from within the software, with results tracked alongside your other marketing. Boulevard’s marketing tools are capable, but Phorest’s connection between client behavior, automated action, and revenue outcome is tighter.

Phorest’s client retention tools operate on two levels. The automated Reconnect tool identifies clients who are deviating from their personal booking pattern — not just anyone who has not booked in 8 weeks — and sends a personalized message at the right moment. The Treatcard loyalty programme drives measurable revenue: salons using Treatcard see a 30% rise in average client spend and a 21% boost in revenue. The combination of AI-driven reconnect and loyalty-driven retention is built specifically around how salons and med spas retain clients long-term.

Phorest’s Staff Goals gives every team member — stylist, therapist, or injector — real-time visibility into their own performance from their phone. Revenue targets, retail numbers, rebooking rate: all live, all personal. Boulevard’s performance data sits in management-level reports. When team members can see their own results in real time, they make adjustments during the week rather than finding out at the end of the month. For a business where individual performance directly drives revenue, that is a meaningful operational difference.

Every Phorest customer gets a dedicated Business Advisor, a named person who manages the account, not a shared support inbox. They handle your onboarding, check in proactively, help you read your reports, and are your direct line when something goes wrong. 1 in 5 Phoresters have worked in the professional hair, beauty, or aesthetics industry. Boulevard’s support is responsive, but it is not structured around a named advisor who knows your business.

Boulevard typically requires a 12-24 month contract, with pricing tied to term length. Phorest is a monthly subscription with no long-term commitment required. For a new or recently launched business, or a salon or clinic evaluating a switch without wanting to lock into a multi-year term, that is a material difference. Monthly subscription also means Phorest has to earn your business every month rather than hold it contractually.

Boulevard has added clinical documentation features for med spas: injection notes, before-and-after photo management, and treatment history tracking. These work well for practices focused on client experience documentation. Phorest’s med spa module goes further: face mapping and treatment area markup, multi-session treatment plans with course tables and multiple consent signatures at each stage, dot phrasing for faster chart notes, AI handwriting-to-text conversion, and compliant automated pre- and post-care instruction delivery. For a med spa managing complex injection protocols or multi-visit treatment courses, that clinical depth matters. For reporting: rebooking rates, revenue by treatment, provider performance, and membership utilization are real-time in Phorest without requiring an export.

Yes — and this is where Phorest’s broader platform depth shows. If you run hair or beauty services alongside aesthetic treatments, Phorest manages both from one account. The same calendar, the same client records, the same reporting. A client’s color notes and their treatment plan are linked to one profile. Staff Goals works for stylists and injectors in the same team. Marketing campaigns can target salon clients, med spa patients, or both from the same tool. Boulevard handles hybrid businesses, but without the same depth on both the salon-specific features and the med spa clinical layer.