What to check in Fresha fees in Mexico

The word "free" has been attached to Fresha for years and it still turns up in any conversation about the product. What is behind it is not a figure. It is three separate charges that switch on at different moments, and two of them depend on decisions you make.

This page gives you the structure for reviewing them and, above all, is honest about something uncomfortable: we could not verify a single rate applicable to Mexico. The detail of why is below, because understanding that problem is part of knowing how to buy.

Three charges that are not the same thing

The third is easy to overlook when comparing, and it is the only one you can avoid entirely by taking payment in the shop.

Why this guide does not give you a rate

Its pricing page at the Mexico address was checked twice on the same day, 20 September 2026, and returned two versions that do not match. In one, the amounts came in Canadian dollars. In the other, in Polish zloty, with a 23 % tax and the word "Free" on the new-marketplace-client row.

This is not an odd quirk of one supplier: most of these products adapt prices by location, and it is the reason any comparison quoting figures without saying where it looked from deserves suspicion, this blog included.

How to think about an acquisition commission

Even without the figure, the reasoning is always the same, and it works for any supplier that charges you one.

Take an invented percentage so we can do the sum: 15 %, which is nobody's actual rate, and certainly not a verified Fresha one, just a number to show the mechanics. If it is charged once on the first booking by a new client and that person comes back four times a year for two years, the cost spreads across nine visits and turns out cheap. If they come once, trying you out, you have paid 15 % of a one-off sale and there will be no second.

What settles the answer is not on any supplier page: it is in your shop. The question that comes before switching on any marketplace is what proportion of your new clients come back a second time. If you do not know, count it for two months. It costs nothing and it changes the decision.

With that figure and the real rate they quote you, the sum does itself. Without the figure, no percentage is expensive or cheap.

Payment processing deserves its own sum

It is the quietest charge, because it applies to everything you put through, not only to marketplace clients. Before switching it on, check three things in your own Mexican account: the exact rate applied to you, whether it differs between in-person and online payment, and how it compares with what your current card terminal already takes.

It may come out better or worse. What it cannot do is be decided without looking.

What you have to check yourself

• ✓The plan price in Mexican pesos, at the number of bookable members you have
• ✓The new-client commission percentage and its minimum amount, in pesos
• ✓The processing rates applied to you in Mexico, and whether they differ between in-person and online
• ✓Which tax is added and whether it is included in the amounts shown to you
• ✓What exactly counts as a new marketplace client
• ✓What you take with you if you cancel: clients, history and future appointments

Ask for all six in writing, stated for a business in Mexico. The first four are precisely the ones this page cannot give you, and saying so is better than filling them with figures from another market.

When a marketplace pays off

It pays off if you have gaps to fill and no acquisition channel of your own: paying once for a client you did not have is a reasonable deal.

It pays off less if your calendar already fills with clients who know you. In that case you are paying a per-team-member subscription to manage bookings you already had, and the relevant comparison is with a flat-fee tool that charges no commission.

The alternative to the commission model

If the sum above does not work for you, the other model in this market is a flat fee with no acquisition commission: you pay the same whatever your bookings are, and the cost grows with your team rather than with your revenue.

It is not better by definition. It is better when your calendar already fills with people who know you, because in the commission model you would be paying for acquisition you do not need. And it is worse when you have gaps and no channel of your own, because a flat fee brings you nobody.

Decide on that basis and not on the headline price, which is the only thing either option shows you up front.

Carry on with the comparison of options for Mexico, how to measure what empty slots cost you, how to organise the calendar with several barbers, and how to choose and roll out a booking calendar.