Moving off Phorest: what to take with you and what to look for

Take your clients with you first

Export before you give notice. Phorest’s terms let it delete your data 60 days after the contract ends, and a customised export after that point needs an engineer and carries an administration charge.

• In Phorest, open Manager, then Business, then CSV Export, click New Export, pick a date range and a format, and download the file when its status shows Done. Their help article says this covers client data and purchase transaction history, and that large exports can take up to an hour.
• For a single client, Client actions then Export gives a zip with appointment history, transactions and contact details. Their article says consultation forms are not part of it.
• Their help articles do not describe a file of future appointments. Ask support for one in writing, or screenshot or print your diary for the weeks ahead, so nobody with a booking is lost in the changeover.
• Keep a copy of every file somewhere that is not your Phorest login.

Check your agreement before you cancel

Phorest’s Australian terms (clause 13.1, read on 2 November 2026) say the agreement runs one year from the date your first monthly payment is received, then renews for one-month periods unless you give written notice at least one month before a period ends. If you end it early you owe the subscription fees for the rest of the contracted period. Your own order form is what binds you, so read it, and ask Phorest to confirm your end date in writing. This is a plain reading of their published terms, not legal advice.

• Find the date your first monthly payment landed. That is when your year started.
• Put the notice date in your calendar a month before the year, or any later month, ends.
• Cancel the way their help centre says: for Australia it points to a request form. Save the confirmation email or a screenshot with the date on it.
• Ask for the end date back in writing.

Questions to ask any salon software before you sign

• What does the price cover per person, and what is charged on top: texts, a card terminal, online deposits, marketing?
• How long is the agreement, how does it end, and how much notice does it need?
• Can I download my full client list myself, free, at any time?
• If I cancel, when does my booking page stop taking bookings, and who deletes my data and when?
• Who answers when something breaks, and is that included?

Phorest’s own pages answer some of these and leave others to a quote. Ours are on the pricing page and the legal pages, so you can read them before you talk to anyone.

Bringing the file into Gaplessly

Import reads CSV, TSV, XLSX and JSON files up to 10MB, and it is open on every plan. Gaplessly’s column mapping recognises the headers that Fresha, Mindbody, Acuity, Boulevard and OpenTable exports use. Phorest is not on that list, so you check the mapping yourself, and you can correct any column before anything is saved. The dry run then checks the file against the real database and reports how many rows are ready, how many are already on file and how many cannot be imported, with a reason for each, before a single row is written.

Two limits to plan for. A client row with no phone number is refused, so fill those gaps first. And a booking import needs its client to exist already, matched by email, so import clients before upcoming bookings. If an import runs into trouble the app offers free migration help.

On price, Solo is free up to 50 bookings a month and A$19 in a busier one, Growth is A$59 a month for 3 bookable people, and Pro is A$149 for 10, all excluding GST. We do not quote a migration timeline because it depends on the size and state of your file; the dry run shows you what you are dealing with.

What Phorest does well

Phorest is built around salons and comes with people attached: a demo, a personalised set-up, phone support Monday to Saturday and free access to marketing consultants are all on its own pages. A product you set up yourself will not match that. If hands-on onboarding is what you pay for, it is a real part of the price.