GlossGenius vs. GoReminders: Which Platform Offers Greater Appointment-Management Flexibility?

GlossGenius bills itself as an all-in-one platform for beauty professionals, allowing users to carry out business functions such as booking appointments, keeping track of inventory, and taking payments. It is therefore an option if you prefer to access all such features in one platform.

However, what if you already have apps to take care of these business functions, and simply need a full-featured, standalone solution for managing your beauty business’ appointments?

This is where our GoReminders appointment-scheduling software shines. Within the platform, you’ll find an extensive range of features for flexible reminder customization and scheduling that aren’t available in GlossGenius. Here’s what we mean:

Full-Powered App on Desktop and Mobile

As a busy business owner, you need convenient access to your appointment-booking platform from any device and location. Our GoReminders appointment-booking app makes this possible with our web-based platform, iOS app, and Android app.

Launch GoReminders from your device of choice, then fill out a short appointment creation form to add new appointments to your calendar. Any reminders associated with these appointments will also be sent instantly. Regardless of whether you’re accessing GoReminders from your computer or your mobile phone, you’ll have access to our full suite of features. Use these to manage appointments, set up appointment reminders, and communicate with customers with ease.

While GlossGenius is available as both a desktop and mobile app, its desktop platform is severely lacking in features. The desktop platform allows you to create and view appointments, but you won’t be able to modify appointment reminders or mass-message customers. At least one GlossGenius user discovered this only after moving his business to the platform, resulting in much dissatisfaction.

Meanwhile, other GlossGenius users have shared that certain features don’t work well on their Android devices because the platform’s app was designed with iOS users in mind.

Flexible, Automated Appointment Reminders

Send appointment reminders like clockwork by setting up automated reminders in the GoReminders platform.

While sending appointment reminders is a tried-and-tested method of reducing no-shows, manually doing so is not a good use of your precious time. The hassle-free solution is to use GoReminders to schedule reminders that will be automatically sent for upcoming appointments.

With GoReminders, you can schedule up to three text reminders and three email reminders—that’s six reminders in all—for each appointment. These reminder messages, which are known as Reminder Templates, have fully customizable contents, giving you complete control over your communication with customers.

Each Reminder Template also has  its own Reminder Schedule, where you can schedule your reminders to be sent anytime from 30 days to just one hour before the appointment. Upon receiving your appointment reminders, customers can easily reply to them via SMS or email if they need to contact you. You can also set up a Message Sequence to send up to six reminders with different messages, and different Reminder Schedules, per appointment.

In contrast, GlossGenius’ reminder feature is significantly more rigid. For one, you can’t choose to send certain reminders to only certain customers. Instead, your customers will receive every reminder that you’ve set up.

Apart from that, GlossGenius will send your reminders according to preset schedules. As an example, GlossGenius will send confirmation emails 72 hours before a scheduled appointment. There is no option for changing this schedule to, for example, one week or 24 hours before.

Customize Your Message Contents

GoReminders doesn’t limit you to standard cookie-cutter reminder messages. As mentioned earlier, you can freely customize the contents of your reminders. This is the perfect opportunity to inject your brand’s personality into your messages and maintain a consistent brand voice across touch points.

You can also go one step further by addressing your customers by name in your messages. You’ll do so by inserting Template Tags, which are our placeholders for dynamically populating messages with your customers’ information.

We offer a default set of Template Tags for data such as customer first names and appointment locations. If you need a Template Tag that we don’t already provide, you can create it yourself! For example, you can set up a custom Template Tag for adding a video call link to your messages.

On the other hand, you may find yourself put off by GlossGenius’ inflexible message customization options. The platform restricts you to using pre-composed message text for your reminders. You can’t modify the contents of your text reminders, while you are limited to adding only one section of customized text for email reminders. Neither can you insert placeholders for enhanced message personalization.

Mass-Text and Email Your Customers With Ease

Reach multiple customers at once with an ad hoc GoReminders Message Blast.

Need to send customers ad hoc messages? Our mass-messaging feature, known as Message Blasts, makes doing so a breeze.

Compose a new Message Blast containing the news you want to inform customers of. This can be an exclusive promotion, your availability for new bookings, a temporary store closure, or something else. You can also use Template Tags to personalize your Message Blast.

Once you’re satisfied with your Message Blast text, select which customers should receive it. You can send the Message Blast to a specific customer, a group of them, or everyone on your customer list. Your customers will receive your Message Blast as a text blast or email blast depending on how they prefer to hear from you.

GlossGenius has a similar mass-messaging feature, but you’ll have to compose and send your text and email blasts separately. This is rather troublesome compared to being able to send mass-messages in both text and email format in one go. The lack of placeholder functionality—as we’ve explained earlier—also means that you won’t be able to personalize your mass-message.

Power Up Your Productivity With App Integrations

Apart from an appointment-booking solution, you likely use a suite of other apps to run your business. As far as possible, you’ll want all these apps to seamlessly send and receive data from each other, instead of requiring manual data entry work.

In that regard, the GoReminders platform offers built-in integrations with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook Calendar, allowing you to view GoReminders appointments from your preferred calendar app.

We’ve also developed a no-code Zapier integration for you to connect GoReminders with thousands of other apps. Alternatively, tap on our API to build custom automated workflows. Integrate GoReminders with the other apps you use in your business, then watch your productivity skyrocket!

However, GlossGenius’ extent of integrations is limited to synchronizing your appointments with various calendar apps. The platform provides neither a Zapier integration nor an API for app integration. You may hence find yourself spending more time on tedious tasks, at the expense of having less energy and focus to devote to higher-value work.

GlossGenius vs. GoReminders: The Verdict

While any run-of-the-mill appointment-booking platform can add appointments to a calendar, it isn’t every platform that gives beauty businesses the flexibility to:

• Remind customers about appointments using highly customizable reminder schedules,
• Personalize their communications with customers down to the very letter, or
• Connect the platform with the business’s existing apps for greater workflow efficiency.

Unlike GlossGenius, GoReminders checks off all the above boxes perfectly. If you’re looking for a powerful appointment-booking solution that’s proven to get customers to turn up for appointments, then GoReminders is for you!

Try GoReminders for free with a full access 14-day free trial. Sign up here (no credit card required).