The short answer: Vagaro is salon software stretched to cover med spas, and it shows everywhere it matters: clinical notes that aren't attached to visits, packages with no session balances, texting and forms sold as metered add-ons, no phone handling at all, and a booking marketplace that puts your clients one tap away from your competitors — while its AI promo program takes 20% of the service price for new clients. Tepali was built for med spas and nothing else: one system of record for booking, EMR, POS, memberships, and marketing, run by AI agents that answer every call, draft every chart, and follow up with every lead. We know exactly where Vagaro breaks down because our first customer switched from it — and never looked back.
We build Tepali, so read this as the vendor comparison it is — but an unusually well-informed one: our first customer, Luxe Med Spa in Bayonne, New Jersey, ran on Vagaro before switching, and we migrated their full history ourselves. Every structural claim below comes from working with a real med spa's Vagaro data, and every pricing claim is sourced.
Tepali vs Vagaro at a glance
| Tepali | Vagaro | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Med spas only | Salons, gyms, barbershops — med spas bolted on |
| Clinical notes | Charted per visit, like a medical record | Free-text on the client profile — no link to the appointment it describes |
| Package session balances | Tracked automatically, decremented at checkout | No session ledger exists — staff keep count in typed notes |
| AI receptionist | Included — answers calls and texts 24/7, books real appointments | None — an entire third-party industry exists to answer Vagaro businesses' phones |
| AI charting | Included — drafts the chart from the treatment conversation | None |
| AI growth | Included — every lead followed up automatically | "Vera" runs promos and charges 5% per existing-client booking, 20% for new clients |
| Two-way SMS | Included, unlimited | Add-on from $20/mo per 500 texts |
| Forms & consents | Built in | $10/mo add-on |
| Who owns the client relationship | You — booking runs under your brand | Clients create Vagaro accounts, receive Vagaro's marketing, and browse a marketplace listing your competitors |
| Real monthly cost | One price | $24 sticker → $150–$650/mo once the add-ons stack up |
| Switching | Free white-glove migration from Vagaro — history, notes, forms, signatures, balances | — |
Why med spas outgrow Vagaro
Your medical records aren't medical records. In Vagaro, a treatment note — laser settings, units injected, sessions remaining — is a free-text blob on the client's profile with no structural connection to the visit it describes. Ask "what happened at this appointment?" and Vagaro literally cannot answer. When we migrated three years of a real med spa's Vagaro data, we had to rebuild the note-to-visit linkage ourselves because Vagaro never stored it. That's not a missing feature; it's a salon data model holding clinical data.
Your package balances live in somebody's memory. Med spas run on series — six laser sessions, a package of facials. Vagaro records that a package was sold and then loses the plot: there is no running balance of sessions used and remaining anywhere in the system. The practice we migrated tracked "sessions left" in hand-typed notes, which is exactly the kind of manual bookkeeping software is supposed to eliminate.
Your client list works for Vagaro, not for you. Clients must create Vagaro consumer accounts to book. Those accounts receive Vagaro's marketing and sit inside a marketplace where your competitors are listed and searchable. And when Vagaro's AI assistant "Vera" fills your empty slots with promos, it charges you 5% of the booking for your own existing clients and 20% of the service price for new ones. The med spa owner we migrated tried Vagaro's AI tools and summed them up in one line: they didn't work well, and the 20% take made them a non-starter.
Nobody answers the phone, and every message is metered. Vagaro has no phone system and no AI receptionist — its "AI" writes marketing blurbs and answers FAQs on your listing page. Real SMS costs extra, from $20/month per 500 texts. The result in practice: missed calls stay missed, and the marketing features go unused (the practice we migrated had never sent a single campaign from Vagaro). Third-party review sites document the same pattern — features on paper, meters in practice.
The $24 price is bait. Forms: $10/month. Texting: $20–$400/month. Website: $10–$20. Advanced analytics: $40. Payroll: $34 plus per-employee fees. Third-party pricing analyses put realistic all-in costs at $150–$650/month — and "they upcharge for everything" is a recurring verbatim complaint in Vagaro's own reviews, alongside recurring reports of crashes and freezes at checkout. Cheap software you have to assemble, meter by meter, isn't cheap.
What Tepali does instead
Tepali starts from the opposite premise: the software should do the work, not just record it.
- The Receptionist agent answers every call and text, 24/7, with full context on your services and clients — and books validated appointments straight onto the calendar, deposits included. No missed calls, no third-party phone bolt-ons, no per-text math.
- The Clinical agent listens during the treatment (with consent) and drafts the chart — attached to the visit, the way a medical record should be. Providers stop charting after hours.
- The Growth agent follows up every lead the moment it arrives — including Facebook and Instagram leads — and re-engages clients before they churn. Your marketing runs itself, to your clients, under your brand, with no percentage skimmed off the top.
- One system of record underneath: online booking, EMR with per-visit charting and consent forms, POS on Stripe Terminal, memberships and packages with real balances that decrement at checkout, inventory, and a unified SMS inbox. One price. No add-on menu.
That's the difference in kind: Vagaro sells you a calendar with meters attached; Tepali runs the med spa with you.
Who should choose which
If you're a solo stylist or a salon on a tight budget, Vagaro's entry price is its honest selling point, and you may never hit the walls above.
If you're a med spa, you will hit every one of them: the notes, the package balances, the phones, the meters, the marketplace. That's who Tepali is for — and switching is the easy part. We've done the Vagaro migration before, it's included, and everything comes across: appointment history, clinical notes, signed forms and signatures, package and gift-card balances. Practices go live in days.
Book a demo and we'll show you Tepali running on real migrated Vagaro data.
Frequently asked questions
Is Vagaro good for med spas?
Vagaro works for salons, but med spas hit its structural limits quickly: clinical notes aren't attached to visits, packages have no session-balance tracking, forms and real SMS are paid add-ons, and there's no phone handling or AI. It records transactions; it doesn't run a clinical practice. Med spas that treat their records as medical records typically need a med-spa-native platform like Tepali.
How much does Vagaro really cost?
The advertised price is $23.99–$83.99/month per bookable calendar, but that's before the add-ons a med spa actually needs: Forms ($10/month), text messaging ($20–$400/month by volume), website builder ($10–$20), advanced analytics ($40), payroll ($34+). Third-party analyses put the realistic all-in cost at $150–$650/month, plus 2.2–2.6% payment processing — and "they upcharge for everything" is a recurring complaint in Vagaro's own reviews.
Does Vagaro have an AI receptionist?
No. Vagaro's AI generates marketing copy and answers FAQs on your listing page, and its Vera assistant creates promotions — charging 5% per booking for existing clients and 20% of the service price for new clients it brings in. It does not answer phone calls; an entire market of third-party AI phone services exists specifically to fill that gap for Vagaro businesses. Tepali includes a 24/7 AI receptionist for calls and texts as a core feature.
Does Vagaro take a commission on bookings?
Standard bookings are commission-free, but Vagaro's growth programs aren't: promotions run by its Vera AI charge 5% per booking for your own existing clients and 20% of the service cost for new clients. Tepali never takes a percentage of your revenue — your growth is yours.
Is Vagaro's charting a real EMR?
No. Vagaro's notes are free-text entries stored at the client level with no structural link to the visit they describe, and its forms live behind a $10/month add-on. Reviewers consistently rate the documentation as basic next to dedicated med spa systems. Tepali charts per visit — notes, photos, and consents attach to the appointment — with AI drafting the chart during the treatment.
How hard is it to switch from Vagaro to Tepali?
Easy — migration is included and handled by our team. We've migrated med spas off Vagaro, and clients, appointment history, clinical notes, signed forms and signatures, packages, memberships, and gift-card balances all come across. Practices go live in days, not weeks.