Running memberships on Phorest, and it's mostly landing on you?

Phorest wasn't built with TGA and AHPRA compliance in mind. A generic credit bank has no guardrails to stop a clinic accidentally breaching the rules that say injectables can't be discounted, incentivised or pre-sold, tie a VIP perk or a bundled discount to that spend, even unintentionally, and the clinic is exposed. That compliance risk, and every other risk that comes with a credit based approach, sits entirely with the clinic.

If you ever move away from Phorest, for pricing, features, support, whatever the reason, your membership structure, member history and contracts don't come with you. You're rebuilding from scratch on whatever you move to next. With aglow, your memberships were never tied to your booking software in the first place, so that risk doesn't exist. And if you're moving from Phorest to aglow right now, we'll migrate your members across for you, free of charge, so there's nothing to rebuild on your end either.

Phorest processes the payment. What happens when a payment fails is on you and your front desk to manage. aglow follows up automatically, so you're not the one having the awkward money conversation.

Phorest's membership feature doesn't include a legal agreement layer. If a member wants to cancel early or disputes a charge, you're working it out yourself.

Phorest's fastest cadence is fortnightly, then monthly or quarterly, set by the clinic. Weekly is by far the most commonly chosen frequency among aglow members, and it isn't on Phorest's list at all. With aglow, the client chooses their own frequency, including weekly, and their own start date within the window you set.

Phorest's memberships can run to a fixed term, like a year, with payments collected automatically. But there's no legal contract or cancellation policy sitting behind it that we could find, which means the commitment is really just a payment schedule, not an enforceable agreement.

Phorest's closest equivalent is a simple interest form on your website, a visitor leaves their details and it lands in your dashboard for someone on your team to follow up. aglow's AI consultations do the actual selling: built on your specific treatment menu and pricing, they run a real consultation with the visitor, put together a personalised treatment plan, and send it for them to accept, any hour of the day, no staff member involved. If they don't convert on the spot, the conversation and their answers are captured so you're following up with something specific rather than a cold enquiry. If they do convert, it's contracted revenue in your dashboard before anyone on your team has said a word.

Phorest works on custom quotes, based on business size, locations and features, so there's no way to know what you'll pay without going through a sales conversation first. aglow's pricing is published on our website, plain and simple, no call required to see it.

Phorest includes an SMS allowance, and messages beyond it, or longer messages that split into multiple SMS, are charged at standard rates. That's real money every time you invite a client to join or send a payment reminder. With aglow, SMS invites and payment reminders don't cost extra, and if you launch Treatment Wallet, we'll run a free SMS campaign to your entire client base to help you launch it.

Every payment collected through a Phorest membership carries a processing fee that comes out of what lands in your account. In Australia, Phorest offers a way to pass that cost on to clients at checkout, but it works by adding a fee to how the client pays, the exact kind of fee due to be phased out under card payment reforms landing 1 October 2026. It's not something worth building a pricing strategy around. With aglow, the member service fee is paid by the member as part of their membership, it isn't taken out of your revenue.

Phorest supports hundreds of features across booking, POS, marketing and staff management. Memberships are one line item among many. It's not their core product, and it shows in how far the feature goes. Ours is the whole job, and it gets deeper every month. Client retention, predictable revenue and loyalty, built into the experience through a wrap-around service, not bolted onto software that has other priorities.