Phorest salon software is beloved by its 11,000+ global users for its straight-forward solutions to both everyday and big-picture challenges. Uncomplicated and intuitive, Phorest relieves pain points and provides efficiency for owners in every aspect of their business.

With tools to manage your team and clients, marketing features, management and reporting, appointment booking, and more, salon owners have everything they need at their fingertips.

“Phorest’s goal-setting tool is my favorite feature,” says Michaella Williams, owner of seven salon 718 locations in the Brooklyn area. “When stylists set goals and see how close they are to meeting them, it’s a reminder to upsell and rebook. The tool is so valuable because stylists see where they’re at in real time.”

One of the staff goals is “unicorn status,” which is achieved by reaching 120-149 percent of their goal. 

“I’m able to set benchmarks and share numbers with staff in a way they understand, and we’ve seen a jump in our rebooking because of it,” Williams adds. “This tool pushes them.”

Phorest’s forecasting capabilities have also had a huge impact on Williams’ business.

“The report it generates shows me how I am benchmarking nationally and locally,” she says. “As an owner, it’s really nice to get this information to see how you’re doing amongst your peers— especially in the NYC market.

“Before Phorest had these capabilities, I was getting forecasting information from my bank,” Williams adds. “But the Phorest report is more tailored. It’s innovative, and going to be a game changer for all salons because we’re a society driven by data.”

Navigating the Future

As AI continues to revolutionize the way salons operate, Phorest engineers are focused on what they’ve always done best: understanding salon operations and making them more efficient.

“We’re always talking to our salon owners and working on solutions that make sense,” says Nicola Zaghini, principal engineer at Phorest.

Some of those solutions include an ads manager that profiles salons’ best-spending customers and creates ads to target them.

“We know mid-sized salons aren’t hiring marketing agencies to do this,” Zaghini says. “The ads manager tool knows everything about your salon and your guests, and helps create emails and targeted ads to maximize your presence.”

Currently, Zaghini is leading the Phorest team researching AI solutions.

“At the moment, we’re focusing on reliability and researching the needs of salon owners,” he says. “We engage with our customers about the real challenges they experience in the salon to better understand what we need to build to provide more efficiency.” 

At Phorest’s annual summit in early 2025, Chief Technology Officer John Doran shared how the company is thinking about salons and AI in the following areas:

• How AI can boost the average ticket

• Upselling and cross-selling functionality

• Helping staff hit their goals

• Forecasting

• Capturing additional customer information

• Marketing content

Partners Make Perfect

To ensure a user-friendly, smooth roll out of their new technology, Phorest looks to its network of salons.

“We like to partner with about 10 of our tech-savvy customers who love to be the first in line whenever we’re ready to introduce new innovations,” Zaghini says. “They beta test for us so we can refine and perfect based on their feedback before rolling it out.”

Phorest salons play a huge role in early phases of development as well.

“We’re always talking to our customers,” Zaghini says. “Right now, we’re asking them how AI can simplify their everyday work and we’re even helping them integrate AI technology from other companies if they want to try it.”

As Phorest continues to evaluate AI tools and salon owners’ needs, Zaghini says the focus is on how AI can streamline tedious tasks.

“We want to build something with real value that solves problems for salon owners and their teams,” he says.

Want to learn more about Phorest and how it can take your business to the next level? Click HERE for more information.