Faces Consent alternatives: what else is available for aesthetic practitioners
Faces Consent is free to use but earns through transaction fees, including a published 1.19 per cent on FacePay plus a share of every deposit collected. The alternatives worth comparing are Beautay, AesthetiDocs and Aesthetic Nurse Software. Compare on total annual cost including card fees, not on the subscription line.
If you are searching for Faces Consent alternatives, it is worth starting with an accurate picture of what you would be leaving, because a lot of what is written about Faces describes a product it stopped being some time ago.
Faces is not a standalone consent tool
Faces Consent is frequently described as a consent app you bolt onto a booking system. It is not. Its own site describes an all-in-one platform: bookings, over 200 insurance-verified consent forms, aftercare forms, client deposits, a client directory, team management, stock ordering, prescriber matching, marketing tools and client finance. There is no subscription fee and no card required to start, though the platform does take a percentage of the payments and deposits you collect, more on that below.
So the reason to look elsewhere is not that Faces only does consent. It does considerably more than that, and the consent library in particular is deeper than most practitioners will ever need.
The real question is narrower, and it is about the business model.
Free describes the software, not the money
There is no subscription fee, and that is real. But "free" is worth reading alongside their terms and conditions, because the platform does take a percentage of what you collect.
Clause 1.1 sets a FacePay transaction fee of "0.99% per transaction, inclusive of VAT at the standard UK rate, totalling 1.19%". Clause 8.2 adds that "for each deposit collected the Company shall be entitled to a set percentage fee of the deposit collected", that percentage is not published. Clause 8.4 deducts the total from your account weekly under a self-billing arrangement.
Run it against your own turnover. At 1.19%, a practitioner taking £60,000 a year in card payments pays roughly £714. A £24.95 monthly subscription is £299.40 over the same year. The break-even lands somewhere near £25,000 of card payments, and lower once deposit fees are counted.
Below that line, free genuinely is cheaper. Above it, the percentage quietly overtakes a flat fee, and it keeps climbing, because a percentage grows exactly as fast as you do.
The platform also earns on the supply side: a marketplace of over a hundred pharmacies and beauty wholesalers, prescriber matching, insurance and client finance. The company behind it is registered as Faces pharmacy Ltd. None of this is hidden; it is in their published terms and on their own site.
It is a good arrangement if you buy product through the marketplace and your card turnover is modest. It suits you less well if you already have a wholesaler and a prescriber you trust, or if your takings have grown to the point where a percentage costs more than a subscription would.
What to actually compare
Whatever you are weighing up, these are the questions that separate platforms in practice:
Where does your booking journey live? Some platforms give you a profile in their own directory, so clients discover you through the platform's brand. Others put the booking site on your own domain under your own name. Both are defensible; they suit different stages. A practitioner still building a client base benefits from discovery. One with a full book usually wants the relationship to be theirs.
How deep does the record go after consent? A signed form captures a moment. Aesthetic work is a timeline. Ask whether you can plot injection points on face and body charts with the product and amount used, record the batch number and expiry against that specific treatment, store before-and-after photographs on the client record, and run multi-session treatment plans at set intervals.
What happens when a batch is recalled? This is the single best test of a client record. If you cannot search a batch number and get back the list of clients treated from it, you will be reconstructing it from invoices and diary entries.
Is stock tracking tied to a shop? If inventory only works properly for products bought through one marketplace, it stops being useful the moment you buy elsewhere.
What does it cost as you grow? Ask for the percentage as well as the monthly fee. A subscription is flat, so a good year costs the same as a quiet one; a percentage of turnover rises exactly as fast as you do. Some platforms also cap client numbers or treatment counts at the entry tier, some price per user, and several publish no figure at all and quote on a demo.
Where Beautay fits
Beautay takes the opposite approach: £24.95 a month including VAT, £9.95 for each additional practitioner, and no percentage of anything. Nothing is taken from a transaction, a deposit or a no-show fee, and there is no product margin, prescriber referral or finance commission either. Your busiest month costs exactly what your quietest one does, and the subscription is the entire business model, which means the software has to be the reason you stay.
In the plan: online booking and deposits with no-show protection, digital consent and screening forms attached to specific services, client records with injection plotting and photo timelines, product and batch tracking with low-stock alerts and recall search, multi-session treatment plans, automated reminders and aftercare, loyalty and gift cards, marketing automations, and a booking website on your own domain. The trial runs 30 days with no card.
What Beautay does not do is prescribing, pharmacy ordering or prescriber matching. If those are central to how you work, Faces covers ground Beautay deliberately does not.
How to decide
Start with the number, because it is the part most people never work out. Take last year's card payments, multiply by 1.19%, and compare that with twelve months of any subscription you are considering. That one calculation settles more of this decision than any feature list will.
Then be honest about which half of the Faces arrangement you actually use. If you order product and find prescribers through the platform and your card turnover is modest, the economics are good and switching would cost you something real.
If you buy elsewhere, already have a prescriber, or your takings have grown past the break-even, and you want the booking and record side to go deeper on batch traceability, photographs and treatment plans, then a flat subscription is worth pricing up.
Either way, check both vendors' own sites for current features and pricing before deciding. Platforms in this market change faster than the articles written about them, this one included.
Related reading
More on comparisons, starting with the overview:
Run your clinic on one platform
Beautay brings booking, consent forms, client records, and client communications together for solo aesthetic practitioners in the UK.
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