Sergey Vareyko / Online Booking Apps

Online booking app development for salons and service businesses

This page is for owners of salons, studios and other service businesses who want a booking app of their own instead of a page in someone else's marketplace: clients use an app on their phone, staff manage schedules and payments in one admin panel, and the system is connected to the accounting and payment tools the business already runs. I'm Sergey Vareyko, a software architect with 15+ years in Java backends, web frontends and mobile apps. Below: what online booking app development covers when I do it, how I work, and the projects behind it.

What I build

A salon appointment app is three products that have to agree: a server that owns the schedule and the rules, an admin panel for the people who run the business, and client apps that work on an ordinary phone on an ordinary network. Everything below comes from the two booking projects described further down: the beauty studio app and the Smart Reception platform.

  • Schedules and settings in the admin panel. Schedules, integrations and payments are managed there, and almost everything in the system is configurable, so routine changes do not wait for a developer.
  • Client apps for Android and iOS. Clients book appointments in the apps, which are published on Google Play and the App Store.
  • Client notifications. Push notifications to the apps through Firebase messaging, APNS and Pushy, email through SendGrid, and SMS through an SMS provider's API.
  • Booking rules and client chat. Hours and shifts per master and weekday, night shifts, a daily cap and cancellation deadlines are set per salon, and an AI receptionist answers clients and books appointments in a web chat and in Instagram Direct, handing over to a person when a question is not standard.
  • Payments and accounting. Card payments, a bank API, the studio's POS and 1C accounting software, all integrated with one backend.
  • Speed on slow networks. The app was optimized for slow connections and runs on its own high-performance cache implementation.
  • Monitoring built in. The system detects internal errors, UI errors and performance issues, and the state of the application is visible in real time.

Underneath it is Java and Spring Boot with MySQL, database changes tracked as versioned Liquibase migrations, and the server on CentOS behind nginx. The same shape — a server that owns the rules, an admin panel, integrations with what the business already uses — carries over to e-commerce back offices and custom business systems.

How I work

I start from the business requirements, not from screens. Before any code we go through how appointments work today: the services, who works when, how clients pay, which accounting or POS system is in place, and how clients should be notified. From that I define the structure of the system, the stack, the integrations and how it will scale. That is what I do as a solution architect on new client engagements, and I stay on to guide the implementation.

Then you get a working version as early as it can be useful, and the app grows through iterations on real use. I take the result end to end — backend, admin, mobile clients, integrations, deployment — so there is no gap between "the API is ready" and "the app works". Whether the product is new or an app you already have needs extending, the deliverable is a running system, not a set of mockups: the server with its admin panel, the client apps published in the stores, the integrations connected, and a database whose every change is tracked.

Projects in this domain

Smart Reception — Architect and Engineer, 2026 to date. A multi-tenant online booking platform for salons and independent masters: an owner registers a salon, adds locations, masters and services, and gets a public booking page where clients pick a service, a master and a time. Bookings follow the salon's own rules: hours and shifts per master and weekday, night shifts, a daily cap, cancellation deadlines. Clients get reminders and a "my bookings" view; the salon gets reviews, a chat inbox, and an AI receptionist that answers questions and books appointments in the web chat and in Instagram Direct, handing over to a person when a question is not standard. One Spring Boot application with two React front-ends, MongoDB, a self-hosted AI model with a cloud fallback; live since October 2026.

Beauty Studio "Krasa" App — Software Engineer, 2018. A system for a beauty studio: clients book appointments in the Android and iOS apps, published on Google Play and the App Store, and the studio manages the schedule, services and payments in the admin panel of the server application. It integrates with 1C, a bank API, card payments, a POS and Firebase, was optimized for slow networks with its own cache, and reports internal and UI errors and performance issues on its own; the studio can configure almost everything and watch the application's state in real time.

Iotatech Claims (CLM) — Software Engineer, 2016–2018. Not a booking product, but the client messaging carries over: I built two-way SMS with claimants over Twilio, with threads inside each claim, an inbound reply webhook, read marks and archiving, the backend in Kotlin and the UI in Angular.

Frequently asked questions about online booking app development

How long does it take to build a salon appointment app?

It depends on scope, and an honest estimate comes after a first conversation, not before. The things that move it most: whether you need apps in Google Play and the App Store or a web version is enough, how many systems the app has to talk to (payments, POS, accounting, SMS), how complex the scheduling rules are, and whether existing client data has to be moved over.

What technology do you use?

Java and Spring Boot on the server with a relational database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL, an admin panel rendered on the server or built in Vue or React, and client apps for Android and iOS. For the beauty studio app that meant Spring Boot, MySQL, Thymeleaf with Bootstrap on the web side, and Swift for iOS.

Can the app work with my payment provider and accounting software?

If the system has an API or an exchange format, yes. The beauty studio app is connected to card payments, a bank API, a POS and 1C accounting software. Each integration is a separate piece of work, so the list of systems you already use is the most useful thing to bring to the first conversation.

Who looks after the app after launch, and where does the code live?

The app is built so that the business runs it day to day: settings live in the admin panel, and the system reports its own errors and performance problems. Ongoing support, and where the repository and the servers live, are agreed at the start of the project.

Need an engineer with experience in online booking app development? Write to me — a few lines about the task are enough — or look through my CV.