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Comparison · CRM
Easy!Appointments vs Phorest
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Easy!Appointments and Phorest — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Easy!Appointments vs Phorest: at a glance
What is Easy!Appointments?
Self-hosted scheduler adds video-meeting links, then parks 1.6.0 in beta for four months.
Easy!Appointments publishes only pre-release tags — every entry in the feed is an alpha or a beta. The 1.6.0 line, opened in February 2026, is the first to treat online meetings as first-class: Jitsi link generation for public bookings, a Google Meet setting, and a dedicated meeting-link field on appointments. Google Calendar handling was pulled into its own integration section, and providers can now toggle their own syncing.
What is Phorest?
Phorest lets salons price the stylist, not just the service
Two back-of-house releases landed the same day. Staff pricing can now be set per individual staff member per service, replacing a model where variation came only from branch price or staff category, and it carries through to booking, checkout and online. Alongside it, everything a staff member is qualified for — service, service time, development time, finish time — collapses into one table instead of several screens. Brand creation also stops requiring a support ticket.
Easy!Appointments vs Phorest: editorial side-by-side
Self-hosted scheduler adds video-meeting links, then parks 1.6.0 in beta for four months.
◆ Current state
Easy!Appointments publishes only pre-release tags — every entry in the feed is an alpha or a beta. The 1.6.0 line, opened in February 2026, is the first to treat online meetings as first-class: Jitsi link generation for public bookings, a Google Meet setting, and a dedicated meeting-link field on appointments. Google Calendar handling was pulled into its own integration section, and providers can now toggle their own syncing.
◆ Where it's heading
The product is moving from a booking form toward a scheduler that owns the whole appointment, including where it takes place. The 1.6.0 changelog is cumulative and barely changes between alpha.1, beta.1 and beta.2 — the feature set landed in February and the two betas since have been stabilization passes. The preceding 1.5.x work was almost entirely fixes and permission tightening, which makes 1.6.0 the first feature-bearing cycle in over a year.
◆ Prediction
The obvious next step is a 1.6.0 stable, but nothing has been tagged since 2026-04-01, so the release is either close or stalled — these entries do not distinguish between the two.
Phorest
5.0CRM
Phorest lets salons price the stylist, not just the service
◆ Current state
Two back-of-house releases landed the same day. Staff pricing can now be set per individual staff member per service, replacing a model where variation came only from branch price or staff category, and it carries through to booking, checkout and online. Alongside it, everything a staff member is qualified for — service, service time, development time, finish time — collapses into one table instead of several screens. Brand creation also stops requiring a support ticket.
◆ Where it's heading
The recent run is consistently about removing steps from daily front-desk and manager work: clock-in by geofence, client lookup on the diary, transactions on the client card, voice notes, and now self-serve brands and consolidated staff setup. The direction is deepening the operational core rather than expanding into new surfaces like marketing or payments.
◆ Prediction
With pricing now granular to the individual staff member, the pressure moves to reporting — expect the analytics side to gain per-staff revenue views that make the new pricing dimension readable.
Alternatives to Easy!Appointments and Phorest
Other CRM products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Easy!Appointments or Phorest.
Twenty
Twenty's ORM v2 migration is down to permission and repository edge cases
Woodpecker
Woodpecker's public feed is an SEO content engine, not a changelog.
Vendasta
A daily SEO blog pitching AI service lines to agencies, with no product releases in it.
Thryv
Two weeks after the platform relaunch, Thryv's feed is all demand generation for it.
NetHunt CRM
NetHunt's feed is evaluation-stage SEO content, with no product releases visible in it.
See all Easy!Appointments alternatives → · See all Phorest alternatives →
Recent activity from Easy!Appointments and Phorest
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoPhorestAdd New Brands
- 1d agoPhorestPricing just got personal
- 14d agoPhorestGeofencing Clock In/Out on Phorest Go
- 19d agoPhorestSales Transactions in the client card on Phorest Go
- 20d agoPhorestFind a client on the diary
- 26d agoPhorestVoice Note to Client/Appointment Note
- 4mo agoEasy!Appointments1.6.0-beta.2: second stabilization pass on the video-link release
- 5mo agoEasy!Appointments1.6.0-beta.1: the alpha changelog, promoted to beta
- 6mo agoEasy!Appointments1.6.0-alpha.1 adds Jitsi and Google Meet links to appointments ⚡
- 1y agoEasy!Appointments1.5.2-beta.1: permission checks on search, webhooks fire from the API
- 1y agoEasy!Appointments1.5.1-beta.1 (no release notes published)
- 2y agoEasy!Appointments1.5.0-beta.1 (no release notes published)
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Easy!Appointments and Phorest?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Phorest is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Easy!Appointments better than Phorest?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Phorest is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other CRM products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Easy!Appointments?
Top Easy!Appointments alternatives in CRM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Easy!Appointments alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/easyappointments for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Phorest?
Top Phorest alternatives in CRM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Phorest alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/phorest for the full list with editorial commentary on each.