Alma — AI chatbot for salons, spas & med-spas

Alma chat widget embedded on a salon-style website, showing a service inquiry conversation in progress with the bot asking about service type, stylist preference, and deposit acknowledgment

/01 — WHY THIS WORKS

How a salon chatbot answers the next client while you're working

Picture a 4-chair salon owner who spends half her morning answering "what time tomorrow?" texts on her own phone — between blowouts, with color processing, while her stylists ask her where the toner is. Alma's widget sits in the bottom-right of her site and runs the same conversation she would: which service, which stylist if you have one, what day works, here's the deposit policy. The lead lands in her front-desk Sheet and pings a CampaignCNX+ confirmation SMS — all while she's still finishing a cut.

Captures service intent (cut, color, balayage, facial, injectable)
Routes by stylist preference when the client has one
Asks the deposit-policy question for long-color and high-no-show services
Hands off to the front desk — by Sheet row, email, or SMS
Runs at 9pm, midnight, Sunday — when the booking DMs actually come in
Never talks over you while you're with a client

— What a salon conversation looks like

Multi-stylist salon · service select

Cut + color + treatment

Hi! What can we book you for today?

Cut and color — maybe a gloss too

Got it. Single-process or balayage?

Single-process

Perfect — that's about 2.5 hrs with a gloss. Do you have a stylist preference?

4-chair salon · stylist match

Tuesday with Andrea, or Saturday with Jake

Any stylist you've worked with before?

Andrea, ideally

Andrea has Tuesday at 2pm or Thursday morning. Jake is open Saturday if a weekend works better.

Tuesday 2 works

Booked the request with Andrea. The front desk will text to confirm — what's the best number?

Day spa · deposit booking

Long-color $50 deposit

Balayage runs 3.5 hours. We hold the chair with a $50 deposit — okay?

Yep, that's fine

Great. Front desk will email a payment link within an hour. Best email + phone?

jess@gmail.com / 312-555-0142

Got it. Once the deposit clears the chair is yours — appointment confirmed.

Med-spa · consultation request

Injectable intake before booking

Are you booking a treatment or starting with a consult?

Consult — first time on filler

Got it. Consults run 30 min, no charge. Which areas are you considering?

Lips, maybe under-eye

Noted. We'll send the intake form before your visit. Best email for the paperwork?

/02 — SALON & SPA TEMPLATES

Salon & spa chatbot templates — 6 starter flows

Pick the template, edit your services + stylists + deposit policy, paste the snippet. Each one is a flow graph already wired to the right questions — service selection, stylist match, deposit ack, consultation intake — written by operators who've actually run a chair, not a startup writing what it thinks the industry needs. The file names below are the real templates in the Alma library.

Salon & spa booking booking/salon_spa.json The default starting point — service select, stylist preference, day/time, contact handoff.
Salon booking flow fitness_wellness/salon_booking.json A second cut tuned for cut/color/treatment-heavy salons with longer service menus.
Spa service selector fitness_wellness/spa_service.json Day-spa version — facials, massages, body treatments, by treatment-room availability.
Consultation scheduler booking/consultation_scheduler.json Med-spa and aesthetic clinics — captures the consult request before any treatment booking.
Appointment scheduler booking/appointment_scheduler.json General-purpose — useful for solo aestheticians or studios with a single service ladder.
Beauty recommendation fitness_wellness/beauty_recommendation.json For retail-attached salons — recommends products tied to the service the client just booked.
Waitlist signup hospitality/waitlist.json Stylist-specific waitlists — captures the request when your top stylist is fully booked.
Gift card inquiry hospitality/gift_card.json Holiday season gift-card sales — captures intent and routes to your retail email.

Alma template picker showing the salon and spa relevant templates including salon-spa booking, consultation scheduler, spa service, beauty recommendation, waitlist, and gift card inquiry as starter graphs ready to load

Alma leads inbox showing salon booking inquiries with service type, stylist preference, deposit acknowledgment, and contact info ready to hand off to a booking system like Vagaro or Boulevard

/03 — YOUR BOOKING SYSTEM

Salon chatbot integrations — Vagaro, Boulevard, Fresha, Square, Mindbody, Acuity

Alma does not have native one-click integrations with the big salon booking systems today. What it does is capture the intent — service, stylist, day/time preference, deposit ack, contact info — and hand the finished lead to your front desk through a Zapier zap or a webhook. Your booking system still holds the slot. Alma is the surface that catches the lead before they bounce off your homepage.

Vagaro Zapier bridge

Boulevard Webhook → API

Fresha Zapier bridge

Square Appointments Zapier bridge

Booker Zapier bridge

Mindbody Webhook → API

Acuity Zapier bridge

Front desk only Sheet + SMS

Lead → Google Sheets row for the front desk to confirm
Booking confirmed → CampaignCNX+ SMS push (great for "your appointment is held")
Deposit-required services → email to client with Stripe Checkout link via Zapier
CoreCNX contact + timeline event for the unified customer record
Generic webhook for shops with their own booking stack

— From sign-up to first inquiry

Set up your salon chatbot in 30 minutes

The salons that get the most out of Alma start with one of the six templates above and edit only what's different about their shop — service menu, stylist names, deposit rule. Everything else is already wired.

/01

Pick a template

Service Select for a multi-stylist salon, Stylist Match if you want by-stylist routing, Consultation Scheduler for a med-spa, Spa Service for a day spa with treatment rooms.

/02

Edit your services + stylists

Type your service menu into the question node — cut, color, balayage, facial, lash, injectable, whatever you sell. List your stylists. Set the deposit rule for the long-color services.

/03

Paste the widget

One line of JavaScript on your Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress site. The widget is live the moment the page reloads. Instagram DMs are in development.

/04

Watch inquiries land

Booking inquiries drop into your front-desk Sheet and ping a CampaignCNX+ confirmation SMS. Email notification to you with the hot-lead flag for same-day requests.

Start the trial → See the demo

— Common questions

Salon & spa chatbot FAQ

If yours isn't here, send us a note and a real human replies the same day.

Will it work with Vagaro / Boulevard / Fresha?

No native one-click integration today — we'd be lying if we said otherwise. Alma bridges into those systems through Zapier or a generic webhook. The bot captures the booking intent — service, stylist, deposit ack, contact — and your booking system still holds the actual slot. Most owners route the lead to the front desk first, who then enters it into Vagaro / Boulevard / Fresha by hand, or to a Zap that creates the appointment for them.

Can it take deposits?

Alma does not process payments natively. What it does is capture the deposit acknowledgment in the conversation ("I understand a $50 deposit holds the chair") and route to a payment link — typically a Stripe Checkout URL fired by a Zap, or an email from the front desk with the link. The bot handles the conversation; Stripe handles the card. That separation is on purpose — payment processing is a regulatory mess, and we're not pretending to solve it.

How does it handle stylist-specific waitlists?

The bot can ask which stylist the client wants, surface the availability windows you've configured (e.g. "Andrea has Tuesday 2pm or Thursday morning"), and capture the request when nothing fits. The waitlist template (hospitality/waitlist.json) is built around that exact flow — name, stylist, service, preferred days, flexibility. The lead drops into your front-desk Sheet for outreach when a slot opens.

Will Instagram DMs work?

Honest answer: in development. The Instagram DM channel is scaffolded in the codebase and pending Meta approval. We are not promising a date and you should not buy Alma today expecting to ship on Instagram tomorrow. The website widget is live and works on every salon site we've ever tested. When IG ships, the same flow runs there too.

What about no-shows?

Two levers. First, configure the deposit-required rule for high-no-show services — long color, balayage, injectables. The bot captures the deposit ack and routes to your payment link. Second, wire CampaignCNX+ SMS into the flow so a reminder text fires the morning of the appointment. The combo of "you put money down" plus "we just texted you" cuts the no-show rate without you having to chase anyone.

Can each stylist have their own bot?

Yes — within the bot limits of your tier. Starter is 1 active bot, Growth is 5 bots ($79/mo, the popular tier), Agency is 20 bots ($199/mo). A 4-chair salon usually runs one bot for the whole shop and routes by stylist inside the conversation. A multi-location group runs one bot per location. The Agency tier adds sub-account workspaces for multi-location operators who want isolated data and their own logins per shop.

Can I white-label it for my salon's brand?

Yes — on the Agency tier ($199/mo). White-label gives you a custom domain on the widget and your salon's brand on the chat experience — no Alma logo. Most single-location salons don't bother (the widget is small and the Alma branding is unobtrusive); it matters most for multi-location groups, agencies running salons as clients, and shops that want a fully branded customer experience.

What's the typical setup time?

Under 30 minutes from sign-up to the first inquiry, by the templates built into the library. The bulk of that time is typing your service menu into the question node and listing your stylists — neither of which Alma can do for you. Pasting the widget on a Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress site is one line. If you spend more than an hour, email us — something's wrong with the template, not with you.

The AI chatbot for salons & spas — book the chair while you're cutting hair.