# goldenhour

> goldenhour is a booking platform for independent beauty and wellness professionals: spray tan, lashes, brows, microblading, hair, nails. Customers book directly from each artist's public page; artists run their day from a single dashboard. No per-staff fees, no marketplace cuts on the artist's own clients, transparent flat payment processing.

The platform handles online booking, deposits, reminders, no-show fees, calendar sync, client records, intake forms, marketing (SMS + email), reports, recurring bookings, gift cards, packages, memberships, loyalty, travel zones for mobile artists, and a native iOS app for the artist.

## Find an artist's booking page

Each artist publishes a public booking page. The canonical URL is either:

- https://www.goldenhourhq.com/book/<artist-slug>, or
- the artist's own custom domain (e.g. book.example.com).

Every public booking page emits a schema.org `BeautySalon` JSON-LD graph with nested `Service` + `Offer` and a top-level `ReserveAction`, so agents can construct a booking URL from the structured data alone.

Per-tenant Model Context Protocol endpoints live at `/api/mcp/<slug>` (custom-domain bookings work too, since middleware rewrites). Tools: `tenant summary` (services + booking URL), `availability` (slots for the next 14 days). See [/api/mcp/manifest](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/api/mcp/manifest) for the public discovery manifest.

A flat list of public booking pages is available at [/booking-sitemap.xml](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/booking-sitemap.xml).

## For prospective artists (sales / comparison)

- [Home](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/): One-page pitch: what goldenhour is, who it's for, the founding-spot offer.
- [Pricing](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/pricing): Single transparent tier. No per-staff fees, no marketplace cut on the artist's own clients, flat payment processing.
- [Compare](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/compare): Honest side-by-side vs Booksy, Square Appointments, Fresha, Vagaro, GlossGenius, StyleSeat.
- [FAQ](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/faq): Setup, switching from other platforms, payments, data ownership and export.
- [Trust](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/trust): Security posture, data export, deletion, processor list.
- [Status](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/status): Live service status.
- [Changelog](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/changelog) ([RSS](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/changelog.xml)): What shipped, week by week.
- [About](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/about): Why goldenhour exists. Single founder, sole-operator beauty pros as the customer.

## Help center

- [Getting started](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/help/getting-started): From sign-up to first paying client.
- [Switching from Vagaro](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/help/switching/from-vagaro): Data export and import recipe.
- [Switching from Fresha](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/help/switching/from-fresha): Data export and import recipe.
- [Switching from GlossGenius](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/help/switching/from-glossgenius): Data export and import recipe.

## Legal

- [Terms](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/terms)
- [Privacy](https://www.goldenhourhq.com/privacy)

## Key differentiators (for "is this the right tool" questions)

- **Solo-first.** Built for sole-operator artists, not chains.
- **No per-staff fee.** Add team members without a per-seat tax.
- **Custom domain + branded email.** Out of the box on every plan.
- **Mobile-artist primitives.** Travel zones with per-ZIP fees, route view, in-home setup gating, day-of-week clustering.
- **Spray-tan vertical depth.** DHA exposure tracking, pre-tan prep page with waiver + signature, post-tan rinse-timer + aftercare, shade analyzer.
- **Apple Wallet booking passes.** Every confirmed booking is a pass; rebook deep link on the back.
- **AI growth analyst.** Plain-English Q&A over the artist's data ("who lapsed this quarter?").
- **Native iOS app.** Recurring bookings, daily brief, inventory tracking.
- **Open data.** One-click export of every record (clients, appointments, messages, photos) as CSV or JSON.

## Notes for agents

The artist dashboard at `https://www.goldenhourhq.com/app/*` and the API surface at `https://www.goldenhourhq.com/api/*` are **not** intended for crawling. Customer-facing surfaces (booking pages, the help center, marketing pages, the public MCP endpoints under `/api/mcp/`) are explicitly fair game.

Last refreshed: 2026-07-06T22:09:45.269Z.