# Inspire by STX Reviews **Vendor:** STX Software **Category:** [Spa and Salon Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/spa-and-salon-management) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 7 ## About Inspire by STX Inspire by STX is an all-in-one business management and scheduling platform built for salons, spas, barbershops, gyms, and fitness studios. Backed by over 40 years of industry experience, Inspire gives business owners the tools to manage their entire operation from a single cloud-based program. Book services, classes, and packages with 24/7 online booking and automated text and email reminders. Reduce no-shows with deposit requirements and maximize chair time with the built-in Appointment Finder. Sell services, retail, and gift cards in-store or online, and build customer loyalty with integrated rewards programs. Inspire's drag-and-drop marketing builder makes it easy to create automated campaigns that target the right clients at the right time. More than 50 built-in reports cover transactional data, client insights, and compensation, while visual goal tracking keeps your team aligned from the dashboard. Additional capabilities include inventory management with automatic syncing, employee timecard tracking and payroll, customizable intake forms, a client check-in kiosk, and integrated credit card processing through STX Payments. ## Inspire by STX Reviews ### 1. STX could and should be better. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Susan F. | Founder & Hairstylist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 14, 2021 **What do you like best about Inspire by STX?** STX adds capability for adding available time gaps during color processing. This is a commonly overlooked feature that is entirely necessary for almost all salons. Payroll capabilities is why I switched from Ovatu, and it is almost perfect, but still holds fatal flaws. It allows you to compute an array of payment scales and methods. You can compute commissions on tiered scles or just straight forward. You can even combine an hourly rate with commission for those employees that work for both hourly wages and commission. **What do you dislike about Inspire by STX?** • I want to note that I have spoken with customer service regarding each and every one of these points. Perhaps they do not agree these are necessary features. • All aspects continue to be GLITCHY AF • No notifications are sent for rescheduled appointments. • No reminders are sent for classes. • Online scheduling is archaic and confusing for customers. • Online scheduling is also only capable of being embedded into your website using Iframe code, which slows your site and hurts your SEO. Customer service recommended that I contact Salon Cloud for a fix on this. E'hem, that would cost over $5,000.00. Nope. • Inventory is a MAJOR pain in the ass; no downloads, no uploads, no way to duplicate products, and a sku is required. • There are no capabilities to download ANYTHING in a CSV format from STX/Inspire software. Your clients contact information, your appointments, and your inventory are absolutely trapped in the software. If you ever need this information, you must manually type out every single bit of data in order to retrieve it. Yuck! Your payroll and your purchase orders may be downloaded in a PDF format. This suffices for purchase orders, but for payroll, it is mostly useless. The software will not even add the tips to the employees "compensation" total. You are required to transfer all the numbers to a separate spread sheet if you wish these numbers to be computed for you. That leaves room for human error. If you are already transferring data to a spread sheet from your current system's reports and seeking a better way to do payroll, keep looking. • There is no way to integrate with Mailchimp. If I could download my clients contact info, this would be a non-issue, but since STX now owns all my contact info, it's a deal breaker. • The mobile app is a joke! Sometimes it shows a colored area that probably contains an appointment, but there is no name or service visible until you click the box. It is super glitchy just like the desktop software. • Checkout is tedious and slow. When adding items to tickets, we need to be capable of adding multiple items without selecting the worker for each item. This current situation is very time-consuming. Salon receptionists are going to the wayside and we need to get to our next appointment ASAP. This feature is standard on many programs that are vastly less expensive. • Speaking of expensive... STX Inspire costs $120 per month. At that price, it absolutely should be much better. **Recommendations to others considering Inspire by STX:** If you ever plan to switch from STX, do be aware that they have no way to download your client information, inventory lists, or appointments. Make sure you love it enough to keep it before you buy it. **What problems is Inspire by STX solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is a full POS system. I keep my inventory, process purchase orders, and utilize the STX payments system with Clover. This being said, I am finding more problems popping up rather than being solved. ### 2. STX Clous - A review **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Cosmetics | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Inspire by STX?** The easy accessibility for our employees and for our customers. The independency of clients is a great advantage as well. **What do you dislike about Inspire by STX?** This system has a tendency to be very laggy and slow. **What problems is Inspire by STX solving and how is that benefiting you?** The most important problem being solved is the accessibility for clients. ### 3. Love the app but.. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maria Victoria H. | Cosmetologist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 07, 2019 **What do you like best about Inspire by STX?** being able to use it on my phone any where and anytime! **What do you dislike about Inspire by STX?** Sometimes it lacks from the computer which interrupts it from our phones **What problems is Inspire by STX solving and how is that benefiting you?** It benefits us hairstylists that we can use it on our phone, not just straight from the computer . We are able to check our appointments on our phones anywhere, anytime! If we were to see a client outside of the salon we could easily make appointments straight from our phone! ### 4. Review of STX **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Natalie N. | Victim Services Intern, Mental Health Care, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 18, 2018 **What do you like best about Inspire by STX?** I like the design and layout of STX. It is very simple and user friendly, and is very similar to the Apple/Mac database which makes it familiar and more comfortable to use. It is easy to become accustomed to, which makes it easier to use for people of older and younger generations. I like that everything is in one place and we can even count the register with it. **What do you dislike about Inspire by STX?** I dislike how complicated it can be to reverse an action done in the system. It feels like once you do some actions, you cannot undo them, or it is very complicated to reverse the action. This creates conflict when someone accidentally deletes an appointment, checks someone in, etc. It would be helpful to have some type of "history" that indicates the actions completed. **Recommendations to others considering Inspire by STX:** I would recommend that someone considering STX that they should use it. It is very helpful and easy to learn. It is good to have all of your resources on one system, which allows you to track everything through one software. Whether it be client information, employees time in/out, transactions, and appointments, the system allows for everything. **What problems is Inspire by STX solving and how is that benefiting you?** The business problems I am solving with STX are the complicatedness of putting all our resources and technology in one place. Before STX, my salon used an appointment book, did transactions by a machine, and had to use many different technologies. STX allocated all of our resources so that we can track our spending, client information, appointments, and more. ### 5. Multitasking **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Cosmetics | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2019 **What do you like best about Inspire by STX?** The way STX has visual and text cues to keep everything coherent is great. 15 minute time slots, multiple users, multiple settings. It lets us run a 5 station salon with a single person handling all booking and checkouts without any issues. **What do you dislike about Inspire by STX?** There’s nothing specific tht I can think would need changing. **Recommendations to others considering Inspire by STX:** It is worth it! **What problems is Inspire by STX solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ease of booking was a big one that I personally found solved once I became familiar with STX software. ### 6. Very easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about Inspire by STX?** This product is so easy to use. The point and click nature of it makes booking reservations a breeze. **What do you dislike about Inspire by STX?** The report functionality is not the best. There are also menu areas that require too many functions to get a result. **What problems is Inspire by STX solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were able to keep better track of reservations and send out reminders with the program. ### 7. Convenient and easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Cosmetics | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 15, 2018 **What do you like best about Inspire by STX?** I lime how easy it is to use and the differesnt tools in the system. **What do you dislike about Inspire by STX?** Sometimes it takes a while for it to load especially the reports dont show up quickly **What problems is Inspire by STX solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use this at our salon to check client information and booking ## Inspire by STX Discussions - [What is STX Cloud used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-stx-cloud-used-for) - [View Inspire by STX pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/inspire-by-stx/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-11+06%3A29%3A43+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=8dae131d-88e5-4448-b171-977fbdea67a9&secure%5Btoken%5D=92c7eefd0c6155b1f46be510510da70d4c9124da524d518484b1c40486db3fc8&format=llm_user) ## Inspire by STX Features **Business Administration - Spa Management** - Inventory Management - Billing & Sales - Employee Management **Billing & Revenue - Gym Management** - Automated Collections - Merchandise Sales - Invoicing **Business Management** - Staff Management - Payroll - Analytics and Reporting - Billing and Invoicing **Client Experience** - Appointment Scheduling - Aftercare communication - Automated client communication - Digital Consent Form Collection **Marketing - Spa Management** - Membership - Social Review - Automated Campaigns **Class Management** - Self-Service Portals - Scheduling - Communications - Recitals and Events **Agentic AI - Gym Management** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Proactive Assistance **Artist Management** - Commission Tracking - Portfolio Organization - Booth Rental **Guest Experience - Spa Management** - Scheduling - Surveys - Customer Trends **Facility Management - Gym Management** - Scheduling & Reservations - Payroll **Client Manangement** - Personalization - Mobile App - Student Profiles **Marketing** - Social Media Marketing - Review Collection **Data & Reporting - Gym Management** - Data Collection - Reports & Dashboards **Integrations** - Marketing Platforms - Point of Sale (POS) Systems **Business Operations** - Inventory Management - Compliance Tracking - Payment Processing - Reporting and Analytics **Membership - Gym Management** - Contract Creation - Lead Management - Online Member Portal - Performance Tracking - Marketing Tools ## Top Inspire by STX Alternatives - [Mindbody](https://www.g2.com/products/mindbody/reviews) - 3.7/5.0 (496 reviews) - [Vagaro](https://www.g2.com/products/vagaro/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (389 reviews) - [Acuity Scheduling](https://www.g2.com/products/acuity-scheduling/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (400 reviews)