Eden
Crash & Burn With Vagaro
Our company’s experience with Vagaro was deeply disappointing and ultimately detrimental to our business operations. As a platform marketed toward professionals, we expected a level of reliability, accountability, and transparency that was simply not delivered. Just weeks before a major milestone for our business, Vagaro’s texting and emailing functionalities — essential tools we were actively paying for — stopped working completely. The issue originated from a third-party provider that Vagaro relies on. However, Vagaro did not alert users of this disruption, nor did they communicate any updates. There was no banner, no email, and no message sent to inform us of a platform-wide failure. We were left to discover the breakdown ourselves while dealing with the consequences in real time. This lack of communication significantly impacted our business. Clients stopped receiving reminders and confirmations. Our outreach campaigns stalled. We lost valuable time, revenue, and trust — all while continuing to pay full price for services that were non-functional. It took more than a week for Vagaro to implement a partial workaround. We were initially told the issue had been resolved, only to learn later that we would need to be issued and approved for an entirely new business number — a process that involved yet another delay. This caused extended disruption and further damaged our momentum during one of the most critical periods of our calendar year. When we asked why no communication had been issued to users about the outage, a Vagaro support representative explained that the platform’s user base was “too large” to notify. Instead of alerting all affected businesses proactively, their policy appeared to rely on users identifying the failure themselves before support would engage. This approach, in our opinion, is not only insufficient — it’s negligent for a company serving thousands of businesses. To make matters worse, each support interaction yielded conflicting explanations. Every representative gave us a different version of the issue, the timeline, or the next step. At no point did we receive a cohesive or competent resolution strategy. This revealed what we believe to be a major failure in internal communication and technical support infrastructure. As compensation, we were offered a two-month account credit. While that may seem reasonable on the surface, it did not begin to reflect the financial losses, missed client opportunities, and reputational damage incurred during the outage. Our team was left scrambling to recover, with little support or acknowledgment from the platform. In the weeks that followed, we shared our experience with fellow professionals — many of whom had also experienced issues but were unaware of the cause. Several of them chose to discontinue their subscriptions after hearing what had happened. Beyond this single incident, it’s important to mention that the platform itself has demonstrated an ongoing pattern of instability. It is not uncommon for the system to go offline during peak business hours, leaving users unable to access schedules, process payments, or check out clients. These outages occur multiple times a year. When they do, customer support lines typically greet callers with a prerecorded message acknowledging the issue but offering no timeline for resolution. Callers are essentially told to wait and hope for the best. In addition, the mobile app has frequently crashed, forcing us to delete and reinstall it multiple times in order to access basic features. While we understand that no platform is perfect, the recurring nature of these problems created consistent disruption and frustration. In our professional judgment, Vagaro has not demonstrated the operational reliability, technical consistency, or customer support standards necessary to meet the needs of service-based businesses. We have fully transitioned off the platform and are actively advising others to evaluate alternative options before committing to a system that may not be equipped to support their success.
Response from VagaroOct 9, 2025
We appreciate you taking the time to share detailed feedback. Vagaro continuously evaluates system reliability and communication processes to ensure our users experience minimal disruption. During the recent carrier-related texting issue, our teams worked diligently with our third-party provider to restore functionality and expedite new business numbers where required. We’ve since implemented additional safeguards to improve notification procedures and reduce the likelihood of similar delays in the future. We value hearing from businesses like yours and will continue strengthening the platform to support your daily operations and long-term growth.