Starting today, the Zivly Solo plan is free. Not a free trial, not a limited-time promo, not "free for your first 30 days and then we'll email you about your card on file." Free — up to 300 bookings a month, for as long as you're running your business on your own.
If you're an independent hairstylist, esthetician, nail tech, or barber working solo, you can now run your entire booking, client management, and payment setup on Zivly without paying us a cent.
Why We're Doing This
Independent beauty and wellness professionals are already carrying a lot. Rent, product costs, insurance, marketing, inflation on everything from gloves to gel polish — running a one-person business in Canada right now is not cheap, and it's not easy. The last thing you need is another monthly software bill eating into a margin that's already thin.
We built Zivly to help small operators run their business like a bigger one — without the bigger-business price tag. Making the Solo plan free is the next step in that same idea: if you're just getting started, or you're intentionally staying solo, your booking software shouldn't be a line item you have to justify every month.
This Isn't the "Free" You're Used To
A lot of software gets marketed as free and then isn't, really. You've probably seen the pattern: sign up free, get a taste of the full product, and then somewhere around week two or the end of your first billing cycle, a card is required, features quietly get locked behind a paywall, or the pricing page you signed up under gets replaced with a new one.
That's not what this is. There's no card required to start, no countdown to when billing kicks in, and no plan to change that later and pull it out from under people already using it. Up to 300 bookings a month, on the Solo plan, is free on an ongoing basis. Not an introductory rate — the rate.
We'd rather tell you exactly what's free and keep it that way than surprise you with a bill you didn't plan for.
What's Included, Free
"Free" doesn't mean stripped down. The Solo plan includes everything a solo operator needs to actually run their business:
- Up to 300 bookings/month
- Client management & scheduling
- 50 free transactional SMS/month (appointment reminders & confirmations)
- 100 marketing emails/month
- Payment processing & invoicing
- Analytics & reports
Standard payment processing rates still apply when you take a card payment (that's a Stripe cost, not a Zivly markup) — but there's no monthly software fee sitting on top of it. The only other cost is a small CA$0.99 booking fee, and it only applies when a client books an appointment themselves through your online booking page and pays online at the time of booking. If a client pays at their visit instead, or if you or your staff create the booking from the Zivly Business app, there's no fee at all.
Why We're Introducing a Small Booking Fee
A free plan with no limits at all is an easy thing to take advantage of, and unfortunately some accounts already have. We've seen automated bots hitting our booking system to generate junk appointments, and a small number of solo accounts misusing the free tier in ways it was never meant to be used - well outside how a real solo operator actually books real clients.
A CA$0.99 fee on client-initiated, client-paid online bookings is a small, deliberate speed bump against that kind of abuse. It costs a genuine solo business almost nothing, since it only applies to online bookings clients pay for themselves - it costs nothing at all for pay-at-visit bookings or anything booked from the Zivly Business app - but it makes bulk, automated, or bad-faith use of the free plan expensive enough that it stops being worth doing. It's about keeping the Solo plan free and sustainable for the vast majority of honest independent operators it was built for.
Why 300 Bookings a Month?
300 bookings a month works out to about 10 appointments a day, every day, for one person. In practice, almost no solo stylist or independent operator gets close to that ceiling — it's there to keep the plan sustainable for us, not to quietly nudge you toward upgrading. If your business does grow past that point, it's a good problem to have, and it usually means you're ready to bring on a team member anyway — which is exactly what the Team plan is built for.
Making Software Affordable, So You Can Actually Make a Profit
The goal here is simple: give solo salon, spa, and barbershop owners in Canada a real shot at running a profitable business without software costs working against them from day one. Every dollar you're not paying us is a dollar that stays in your business while you build it.
When you do grow — when it's you plus a chair, or a second stylist, or a small team — Zivly's Team plan is there at a flat CA$10.99 per service provider per month, with front desk staff always free. But that's a decision you get to make when your business is ready for it, not one we make for you with a pricing page that changes on you.
Proudly Made in Canada
Zivly is built in Canada, priced in Canadian dollars, and designed for how Canadian salons, spas, and barbershops actually run — not adapted from a US product with the currency symbol swapped out. Supporting independent Canadian business owners is the whole reason this company exists, and a free Solo plan is one of the more direct ways we can do that.
Ready to Get Started?
If you've been putting off getting proper booking software because of the monthly cost, that reason is gone. Sign up for the Solo plan free — no credit card required — and see everything it can do for your business.
Head to our pricing page to see the full breakdown, or go straight to signing up below.