Planity

Review by eFreeware

If you live in France, Belgium or Germany and your calendar rarely leaves room for a salon visit, Planity is built for exactly that problem. It is a free app for booking beauty appointments at partner salons, and it works around the clock, seven days a week, so you can arrange a manicure, a blow-dry, a facial or a trim whenever it occurs to you. The developer describes it as the app that simplifies daily life and modernizes online beauty booking, and the numbers suggest plenty of people agree: it has been installed more than a million times and holds a 4.8 average from over 400,000 ratings.

What you get is a catalog of salons rather than a single chain. The developer says 60,000 beauty businesses are listed across the three countries, with 15 million active users and more than 400 million appointments booked to date. ELLE magazine is quoted calling it a beauty app worth having, which is the sort of endorsement that matters to readers who want a second opinion before installing. The app costs nothing, shows no ads and offers no in-app purchases, so there is no paid tier to weigh against the free one.

The appeal is straightforward: instead of calling around or walking in on the off chance, you browse options and book from your phone. It is most likely to suit people who already know roughly what they want and value speed over browsing at length. The rest of this review looks at how the booking side works, what supports it, and what the app asks of you.

How the booking side works

The core of the app is a salon directory with a booking function attached. Each partner salon gets a detailed profile covering the services on offer, the prices, when staff are available and photos of the place, so you can compare a few options before committing. That combination is what makes the app useful rather than just a list: you can check whether a salon handles the treatment you want, what it charges and whether it can fit you in, all before you book.

Booking itself is designed to take a few clicks, and the developer emphasizes that it is fast, immediate and available at any hour. That last point matters more than it sounds. Salon phones tend to be busiest when the salon is busiest, which is precisely when you are least likely to get through. Arranging an appointment at midnight for the following weekend is the sort of thing this app is meant to make routine.

The app covers the usual ground: manicures, blow-dries, facials and barber trims, with the option to search for a barber nearby when you need a quick cut. Because the listings span France, Belgium and Germany, the app is aimed at people who live in or travel through those countries rather than at a global audience.

The account and the reminders

Alongside the directory, Planity gives you a personal account where your appointments live. From there you can manage bookings, move them to a different time or cancel them outright, which the developer says takes just a few clicks. Having that in one place saves you from digging through messages or trying to remember which salon you called, and it keeps your history together if you use several different places.

SMS reminders are the other supporting feature, and they are the practical counterweight to booking weeks ahead. A message arrives to remind you of an upcoming appointment, which reduces the chance of a no-show or of turning up at the wrong time. For anyone juggling work, family and the occasional forgotten commitment, that alone can justify keeping the app installed.

Neither feature is unusual on its own, but together they cover the full arc of an appointment: finding the salon, booking it, remembering it and changing it if something comes up. That is a coherent package, and it explains why the app has accumulated the install and rating figures it has.

What the app asks of you

The requirements here are modest. The trade-off is geographic: partner salons are listed in France, Belgium and Germany, so the app is useful mainly if you book beauty services in those countries.

From your account you can change or call off a booking. The SMS reminders depend on the phone number attached to that account, so the number you give needs to be one you actually check.

The app is free, with no paid tier or subscription. What you see is what the app is: a free booking tool with a large salon directory behind it.

Getting the most from it

The most practical habit is to treat the salon profiles as a shortlist rather than a catalog to read end to end. Because each listing shows services, prices, availability and photos, you can narrow down quickly by what a salon actually does and what it charges, then check the calendar for a slot that suits you. That order, services first and timing second, tends to be faster than starting from availability and working backwards.

Booking ahead is where the SMS reminders earn their place. If you schedule a facial or a trim several weeks out, the reminder is what keeps the appointment from slipping your mind, and the account makes it easy to move the booking if your plans change. Canceling through the app rather than by phone is also the polite option when you cannot make it, since it frees the slot for someone else.

It is worth remembering that the directory covers a specific set of countries and partner salons, so results depend on where you are. If you are in France, Belgium or Germany, the app should cover most of what you need. The recent update mentions performance improvements and bug fixes, which suggests the app is being maintained rather than left to sit.

A booking tool worth keeping on your phone

The SMS reminders close the loop, and the personal account keeps everything in one place. With a 4.8 average across more than 400,000 ratings and over a million installs, it is clearly doing something right for a lot of people.

It suits anyone who books beauty appointments in France, Belgium or Germany and would rather not spend time on the phone, particularly if your schedule is unpredictable and you tend to plan at odd hours. For everyone else, it is a free, ad-free tool that replaces a phone call with a few taps, and that is a reasonable thing to keep installed.

What's new in version 6.7.1

Amélioration des performances et correction de bugs