Still trying to manage your memberships with Phorest?
Your booking software doesn't handle contracts, chasing failed payments, member support or ensure compliance for injectables. aglow does.
What's the difference between Phorest's memberships and aglow?
Phorest's membership tool lets you set up recurring plans, credit banks and VIP discounts inside your existing Phorest account. But there is more to managing memberships than that.
With aglow, you get membership management services that actually matter:
Contracts
Automated payment chasing
Real human member support
Compliance for injectables
Variable priced treatments
Just think of us as your member concierge team.
A side-by-side comparison
See how aglow works alongside Phorest
Keep your booking software. Add the membership platform built specifically for beauty and aesthetics.
Why credit-based memberships carry risk.
Phorest’s credit-based plans work like a prepaid tab: the client pays in, the clinic holds the balance, and it gets drawn down as they book in. It’s a familiar model, but it puts more on the clinic than it first appears to.
Balance sheet liability, not asset
Money collected for services not yet delivered is unearned revenue. That’s a liability until it’s redeemed, and it affects how your business is valued.
Revenue you can’t recognise
Until the treatment is delivered you can’t book the income, so reported revenue lags the cash actually sitting in your account.
Refund exposure if they leave
Unredeemed balances can be claimed back. Without contracts you carry that exposure with no agreed terms behind it.
Harder to value and borrow against
Lenders and buyers discount prepaid balances. A large credit liability can reduce what your business is worth on paper.
Where Phorest’s membership tools fall short.
A few gaps worth knowing about if you’re running (or thinking about running) memberships through Phorest:
We chose aglow because it's simple but does everything we need. It works with all our existing systems and takes care of the payments automatically, which saves us so much time and headaches.
Jess Le, BioMed Spa
Advantage aglow. A product-by-product guide.
Subscriptions
Phorest's recurring, service-based plans do a similar job to aglow Subscriptions on paper, but there's more separating them than payment cadence alone. Phorest's fastest cycle is fortnightly, then monthly or quarterly, no weekly option, and weekly is by far the most commonly chosen frequency among aglow members. Reaching those members costs more too, Phorest charges for SMS beyond your included allowance, so every invite and reminder has a cost attached, while aglow's SMS invites and reminders don't. Subscriptions can also be sold everywhere a client already is, a QR code in the clinic, an embedded widget on your website, a link shared on social, or a simple SMS or email invite, all landing in the same contract framework, dashboard and support line as Treatment Plans and Treatment Wallet, rather than mixing a Phorest plan with a separate tool for anything Phorest can't compliantly do.
Treatment Plans
Phorest doesn't offer consultation-led plans. What it has are templates and bundles, single services or fixed combinations, set up by the clinic in advance, and every client on that plan gets the same thing. Treatment Plans are built individually during consultation, around one client's specific goals and budget. That consultation doesn't have to happen in the room either, aglow's AI consultations run the same process from your website, working off your actual treatment menu and pricing, day or night, with no staff member needed to start it. Across the aglow network, Treatment Plans see 87% protocol completion, clients actually finishing what they started.
Treatment Wallet
Phorest's generic credit banks have no compliance structure built in, nothing stops a clinic accidentally breaching TGA and AHPRA rules by tying a discount or a VIP perk to spend that ends up going on injectables. Treatment Wallet is purpose built to work within TGA and AHPRA guidelines, keeps funds off the clinic's balance sheet, protects client balances if a clinic closes, and works with Apple Pay and Google Pay for a tap-and-go experience at the till.
Frequently asked questions
See how aglow works alongside Phorest
Keep your booking software. Add the membership platform built specifically for beauty and aesthetics.
