A Square alternative for barbershops
Square is everywhere in small businesses, and for good reason — it handles payments exceptionally well and most barbers already have the reader. But when barbershops try to use Square's queue and waitlist features, they run into the same friction: a tool built for retail that has been stretched to handle walk-in service flow. If you are paying for Square Appointments or trying to hack together a waitlist inside Square's ecosystem, there is a purpose-built option that handles the walk-in side without replacing your payment setup.
What Square does well — and where it falls short for barbershops
Square's payment stack is hard to argue with. Fast checkout, solid hardware, a clean merchant app. Barbershops that already use Square for transactions are right to keep it. The friction shows up when you try to manage the walk-in line. Square Appointments is designed around booked slots: a client picks a time, you confirm it, and they arrive when expected. That is not how most barbershop walk-in traffic actually works — customers show up, count the people in chairs, and decide whether to stay. A system built around scheduled appointments does not handle that situation naturally.
Square's waitlist feature, where available, is a tack-on to the appointments product — not a dedicated walk-in queue. It lacks a TV display mode for the waiting area, a door-facing kiosk for customers who do not want to use their phone, and real-time wait estimates that update as barbers finish cuts. You also end up paying for appointment-booking infrastructure that a walk-in-only shop does not use.
The NextUp staff screen: barbers call the next customer with one tap, see the wait estimate, and manage the full queue without leaving the chair.
What barbershops actually need from a queue app
The core walk-in loop for a barbershop is simple: customer arrives, joins the line from their phone or a tablet at the door, sees how long the wait is, and gets a text when a barber is ready. Staff have a screen that shows who is waiting and who is next, so they can call the next person without interrupting a cut to check a paper list. A TV on the wall shows who is in the chair and who is coming up — visible proof to anyone walking in that the system is working and the wait is real.
NextUp is built around that loop. Every plan includes the staff screen, the TV display mode, the door kiosk mode, QR codes for the door and Instagram bio, service and barber selection at check-in, and 1,000 texts per month per location. There is no appointment-booking overhead because barbershops that run walk-in-only do not need it. For shops that do take some appointments, the booking feature is available without changing the pricing.
Loyalty stamps for returning customers
One of the more practical features for barbershops is the built-in loyalty stamp card. When a customer checks in, they accumulate stamps. After a set number of visits — you choose the number — they earn a reward: a free cut, a discount, a product upgrade. It runs automatically as part of the check-in flow with no paper card for the customer to track or the barber to stamp.
This kind of repeat-visit incentive is a natural fit for a barbershop, where most of the customer base comes every two to four weeks and a loyalty program is one of the few levers that directly increases visit frequency. Square does offer a loyalty program, but it is a separate paid add-on: $45 per month for the first location on top of whatever plan you are on. In NextUp, it is included.
Pricing: what you are actually paying for
NextUp is $29 per month for a first location and $19 for each additional one. That includes the queue, staff screen, TV display, door kiosk, loyalty program, SMS notifications, and insights. There is no tier that unlocks the features you actually need — everything is in every plan.
If you are already on Square for payments, you do not need to change that setup. NextUp handles the queue and customer flow; Square keeps handling the transaction at the end. They run side by side. You can start a 14-day free trial at nextupwalkin.com — every feature is available from day one, no card required until the trial ends.