Why We Built Groom Book

March 2026

My groomer's name is Maria. She's been grooming for 22 years. She has a small salon with two chairs, a bathtub for the big dogs, and a wall of laminated breed standard cards that her mentor gave her in 2002.

Maria's software? A binder with client contact info, a paper calendar on the wall, and a calculator.

When I asked her why she didn't use salon software, she said: "I looked into it. It's $180 a month, it's complicated, and the one I tried locked me out of my own data when they changed pricing."

She represents thousands of independent groomers. This is for her.

The State of Pet Grooming Software

If you run a salon, you basically have three options:

1. The legacy desktop software

$150-250/month. Runs on Windows. Looks like it was designed in 2003 (because it was). Requires a dedicated computer that can't do anything else. No mobile access. No online booking. But it "works" so you stick with it.

2. The SaaS platform

These are the Vagaro/Jill-of-All types. Monthly fees, sometimes percentage-based on bookings. They're web-based which is better. But they own your data. If you stop paying, you lose everything. Some take 15-30% of your booking revenue. They often cater to salons AND stylists AND wellness businesses — grooming is just one checkbox.

3. Generic scheduling tools

Think Calendly, Acuity, Square Appointments. They're fine for appointments but know nothing about grooming: no breed-specific timing (a poodle trim takes different time than a Doodle shave-down), no coat type notes, no deposit handling for no-shows, no pet profile history. You're constantly working around the tool.

Here's the thing: grooming has unique operational needs that generic software will never address well.

What Groomers Actually Need

After talking to dozens of groomers, a few themes come up constantly:

Time by breed and coat type. A 15-pound Doodle with a shave-down takes 3x longer than a 15-pound Bichon Frise with a bath-and-brush. Generic scheduling tools don't understand this. Groomers end up double-booking or rushing.
Client and pet history in one place. "Oh, this dog got matted last time, I need to use a different brush" — that context needs to live in the profile. Paper files work. A whiteboard works. But when you have 200 clients and 3 groomers, you need something better.
Deposit handling. No-shows hurt. Charging a deposit at booking and automatically retaining it for cancellations is table stakes for any modern booking system — but most grooming software doesn't do it well.
Working offline. Mobile groomers — the ones who show up at your house with a van and all their tools — often work in areas with no cell signal. A PWA that works offline isn't a nice-to-have, it's essential.
Your data, your server. This is the big one. Groomers have watched platforms get acquired, change pricing, or shut down. Nobody wants to build their business on rented software.

What We Built

Groom Book is open source, self-hostable pet grooming business management software. It runs on your server (or your laptop, or a $20/month VPS). It does everything a small salon needs:

Appointment scheduling with groomer calendars
Client and pet profiles with history, coat type, behavior notes
Service catalog with breed-specific timing and pricing
Online booking portal (24/7 client self-service)
POS, invoicing, tips, receipts
Automated SMS and email reminders
Revenue and utilization analytics
PWA — install on your phone, works offline
Staff impersonation with full audit logs (for managers)

And because it's open source, you can hire any developer to customize it, or run it on your own infrastructure. Your data stays yours.

The Price

Groom Book is free. AGPL-3.0 license. We built it because the problem is solvable and the existing solutions are exploitative.

If you want to run it yourself, you can have it running in 5 minutes:

    $ git clone https://github.com/groombook/groombook

    $ cd groombook

    $ docker compose up --build

If you want someone else to host it for you — managed hosting, backups, updates — that model can work too. We might build that someday. But you'll always have the option to self-host.

Who This Is For

Groom Book is for:

Independent groomers running a one-person shop who are tired of paper and whiteboards
Small salons with 2-5 groomers who can't justify $200/month for legacy desktop software
Mobile groomers who need offline-capable, PWA-based scheduling
Developers who want to contribute to software that helps small businesses

It's not for:

Enterprise salon chains (yet — maybe never)
Businesses that want a fully managed SaaS with 24/7 support contracts (look at Vagaro or Phorest)

The Future

We're just getting started. Groom Book v1 covers the essentials. Here's what's on the roadmap:

Multi-language support for international groomers
SMS via Twilio (not just email reminders)
Waitlist and cancellation queue
Groomer commission tracking
Integration with QuickBooks and other accounting tools

If you want to follow along: GitHub.

Maria — if you're reading this: I hope this helps. You deserve software that respects your time and your business.

To everyone else: if you know a groomer who's been making do with a whiteboard and a binder, show them this. They have options now.