INTENTIQ vs Pabau, Fresha, Vagaro & ANS
An honest comparison for UK aesthetic clinics. Every platform here is good at something — the right choice depends on whether you’re running a salon, a general clinic, or a CQC-regulated aesthetic practice.
The clinic software landscape in 2026
Nine of the tools UK aesthetic clinics look at — and what each one really is. Prices are quoted from each vendor’s own site (August 2026).
| Product | Price (2026) | What it really is |
|---|---|---|
| Faces Consent | Free (deposit fees ~1.8%+VAT) | Consent forms + basic booking |
| Fresha | ~£10–15/user/mo + 20% new-client fee | Salon & spa booking marketplace |
| AESORI / ANS | £25/mo flat (scales to ~£245) | Aesthetic booking + light EMR |
| Aesthetic Record | $12–19/user/mo + $199–399 setup | US-origin injector EMR / charting |
| Clinicminds | from €160/mo | EU aesthetic EMR |
| Pabau | £49–53/user/mo +VAT | Multi-site clinic management + EMR |
| Square / Vagaro | £0–69/mo | Generic appointment booking |
| Radar / RLDatix / Access | £1,000–£20,000+/yr (demo-only) | Enterprise NHS / care-home GRC |
| INTENTIQ™ | £175 Solo • £280 (2–5 logins) | CQC governance operating system for aesthetic clinics |
All INTENTIQ prices inc VAT; Standard seat bands cover 1 to 20 staff logins with no per-user fees. Competitor prices as publicly listed, Aug 2026.
The governance gap
Booking and EMR tools handle appointments and charts well. But a CQC-registered clinic has to evidence governance — and this is where the cheap tools stop. Here is what each one actually provides.
| CQC-readiness capability | Faces | Fresha | ANS | Aesthetic Record | Pabau | INTENTIQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Booking & client records / EMR | Part | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built-in AI governance agents | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Automated incident/complaint routing to CQC flags (Reg 18/20) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Manual | ✓ |
| Digital consent forms | ✓ | Part | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Complaints register (SLA-tracked, Reg 16) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Basic | ✓ |
| Duty of Candour workflow (Reg 20) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Incident & accident reporting | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Basic | ✓ |
| Scored risk register & assessments | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| SOP / policy management + read & sign | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Clinical audits + CAPA (Reg 17) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Charts | Charts | ✓ |
| CQC regulation mapping (Regs 3–20A) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Training & competency matrix | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| DPIA / SAR / data-breach registers | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Duty of Candour, Speak Up & Statement of Purpose | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ present • Part / Basic / Charts = limited or workaround only • ✗ absent. Pabau is the only booking tool with any governance features — and still lacks Duty of Candour, a risk register, SOP version control, CQC mapping and a competency matrix.
Why nothing else fits
CQC-registered aesthetic clinics fall into a gap. The affordable tools do bookings but no governance. The tools that do governance are built for NHS trusts — demo-only, and priced for organisations 100× your size. INTENTIQ is built in that gap.
Breadth or depth: 36 verticals, or one regulator
The clearest difference between INTENTIQ and the larger platforms is not the length of the feature list. It is how many different kinds of business each one is trying to serve at once.
Pabau, reviewed on its own website in September 2026, lists 36 named verticals grouped into five categories. Medical aesthetics is one of the five. The other four run from ADHD assessment and speech therapy to osteopathy, fertility and IVF.
That is a deliberate and perfectly sensible strategy for a platform selling internationally. It is also the reason a UK clinic facing an inspection ends up doing the governance work itself. A product built to fit an osteopath in Ohio, a fertility clinic in Dublin and an aesthetic clinic in Derbyshire cannot be shaped around one country’s regulator.
The published compliance position reflects that. As set out on their own site in September 2026, Pabau’s compliance pages cover HIPAA, GDPR and a general security commitment. HIPAA is United States health privacy law. GDPR is data protection. Both matter, and neither is what a CQC inspector asks about. Searching their site for CQC returns nothing.
INTENTIQ goes the other way on purpose. One market, one regulator, and the five CQC key questions scored continuously from the work your team is already doing. That is a narrower product by design, and the narrowness is the point.
A fair way to decide: if your clinic’s hardest problem is filling the diary and taking payments, the broad platforms are excellent at that and you should look at them seriously. If your hardest problem is evidencing to a regulator that what you do is safe and well-led, a booking system with a notes field will not get you there, however many verticals it supports.
Worth saying plainly: the broad platforms are not bad software. Pabau in particular has shipped quickly this year, including a unified patient inbox, a mobile app, and AI agents for scribing, letters and prescribing safety checks. Their reported outcome figures, such as a 43 per cent reduction in admin time, come from their own customer impact report based on self-reported data from 300 practices, so treat them as marketing rather than independent evidence, in exactly the same way you should treat ours.
If cost is the deciding factor rather than governance, the aesthetic clinic software cost and pricing guide sets out what the UK options actually charge.
Feature comparison
✓ Included ~ Partial / add-on — Not offered. Based on publicly available information (July 2026); vendors update frequently — verify current specifics with each provider.
Where each platform fits
One of the most feature-rich clinic platforms available, used across many countries and clinic types — a strong, mature product. For a UK aesthetic clinic the trade-offs are per-user pricing that grows with your team, and a broad general-medical focus, so CQC-specific aesthetic governance can need configuration or add-ons rather than working out of the box.
Excellent for appointments, online booking and marketing, with a freemium entry point. It’s built around beauty and wellness businesses rather than regulated medical practice — so clinical records, traceability and CQC governance aren’t its focus. Great front-of-house; not a clinical or compliance system.
A genuine UK competitor built for aesthetic clinics, covering consultations, prescribing, consent and inventory with expiry/batch tracking. A fair option to evaluate alongside INTENTIQ. Where we differ is our end-to-end CQC governance framework across all 19 CQC regulations, live readiness scoring, and the full governance register suite layered on top.
INTENTIQ vs the booking tools
The big spa & salon platforms — Zenoti, plus records-led tools like MERIDIQ and Consentz — are good at what they were built for: booking, consent, photos and patient records. But there’s a hard line between software that records your compliance and software that governs it. Recording is passive — it waits for you to go and check. Governance is active — it tells you where the risk is before an inspector, or a patient, finds it for you.
More on this in how aesthetic clinics stay CQC inspection-ready year-round.
| Capability | INTENTIQ | Zenoti | MERIDIQ | Consentz |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live CQC readiness score (all 18 regs, RAG per regulation) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Detects governance gaps — not just stores documents | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Duty of Candour register | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Speak Up / Freedom to Speak Up register | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Incidents auto-routed & escalated | ✓ | ✗ | Partial | ✗ |
| DPIA / SAR / Data Breach registers | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Clinical safety huddles & team meeting records | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| SOP version control + read-and-acknowledged tracking | ✓ | ✗ | Partial | Partial |
| Mock CQC inspection you can run any time | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| MHRA alert → local action workflow | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Staff training / CPD / competency matrix | ✓ | Partial | Partial | Partial |
| Digital consent & photo documentation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Online booking & reminders | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Purpose-built for UK CQC aesthetics (not retro-fitted) | ✓ | ✗ | Partial | ✓ |
Comparison based on each vendor’s publicly published product pages (Aug 2026). “Partial” = some capability exists but not as a dedicated governance register or live-scored workflow. Booking tools may add features over time — always verify current scope with each vendor.
A feature table tells you what a platform does. It does not tell you what the gap costs. Employing someone to keep your governance records current costs £30,790 a year once employer National Insurance, pension and liability cover are added. Buying the same work in from compliance consultants comes to £11,768 in the first year. INTENTIQ is £3,000, and every figure is published with its source.
Frequently asked questions
Honest answers to the questions clinics ask us most when comparing platforms.
Is INTENTIQ better than Pabau for a CQC-registered clinic?
Pabau is a capable, broad practice-management platform, and on its own site in September 2026 it lists 36 named verticals across five categories, of which medical aesthetics is one. Its published compliance pages cover HIPAA, GDPR and general security; CQC is not mentioned. So the honest answer is that they solve different problems. Pabau is stronger if your priority is a single system for bookings, payments, marketing and records across many clinic types. INTENTIQ is built for one market and one regulator, and it supports CQC readiness by scoring the five key questions continuously from the work your team already does. Most clinics should judge them on which problem is currently costing them more.
Does Fresha do CQC compliance?
No. Fresha is a free-to-use salon and spa booking platform funded by payment processing and marketing fees. It has no CQC governance framework, no clinical note templates mapped to regulations, and no injectable batch traceability. It’s excellent for filling a diary in a beauty salon, but it isn’t designed for regulated medical aesthetics.
What is the cheapest CQC-ready clinic software in the UK?
INTENTIQ is £280/month flat (or £252/month billed annually), with everything included and no per-user fees. Tools like Pabau and Nymo can look cheaper on the headline price but charge per practitioner, so costs rise as your team grows. Because INTENTIQ bundles governance, LMS, traceability and patient journeys into one flat price, it is usually the most cost-effective option for a compliance-serious clinic with more than one or two users.
Do I have to hold stock to use the injectable traceability?
No. INTENTIQ supports a named-patient, prescription-based model — you can log products, batch numbers and expiry against each patient without holding bulk stock. Full MHRA traceability is captured at the point of treatment, which is a cleaner CQC position than managing a physical inventory.
How hard is it to switch from Pabau, Fresha or Nymo?
Our onboarding team stays alongside you through the move with a structured 11-step checklist and a realistic timeline agreed around your clinic’s size and how much historic data you want to bring over. You can upload your own policies, consent forms and templates so the platform is configured from day one. We’re honest that switching any core system takes care — we plan it to protect your clinic from disruption rather than promising an unrealistic overnight move.
Is Vagaro suitable for a CQC-registered aesthetic clinic?
Vagaro is strong salon and spa booking software — great for scheduling, payments and marketing. But like Fresha, it is built for beauty and wellness businesses, not regulated medical clinics. It has no CQC governance layer: no Duty of Candour register, no clinical safety huddles, no mock-inspection scoring and no live readiness matrix across Regulations 3–20A. If you take bookings and payments only, Vagaro works. If you need to evidence CQC compliance, INTENTIQ is built for that job.
Where INTENTIQ™ is different
We were built from day one around CQC regulation for UK aesthetic medicine — not adapted from a salon or general-practice tool. Governance, MHRA safety-notice monitoring, injection mapping, traceability, a built-in training LMS and patient wellness journeys live in one platform, on simple flat pricing rather than per-seat fees. We’re not the right fit for a beauty salon — and we’ll say so. For a compliance-serious aesthetic clinic, that focus is the whole point.
See it for your clinic
Book a 30-minute walkthrough. We’ll be honest about whether INTENTIQ is the right fit for you.