Turbo Link vs Vagaro for Tattoo Shops
Turbo Link and Vagaro compared for tattoo shops: pricing, consent forms, texting costs, and what is bundled versus billed separately.
Vagaro’s advertised price is lower than Turbo Link’s on paper, at $23.99 a month for the first six months before rising to $30. But that number does not include everything a tattoo shop needs. Once you add tattoo consent forms and text reminders, which sit outside the base plan on Vagaro, the gap narrows or disappears depending on how your shop uses texting. Turbo Link’s Trade plan is $39 a month billed annually and includes consent forms, deposits, and reminders in that one number.
What we read and when
We fetched vagaro.com/pro/pricing and vagaro.com/pro/text-marketing on September 2, 2026. The pricing page lists a single location plan at $23.99 a month as an introductory rate, with the regular price at $30 a month, and states the plan can be canceled anytime with no fees. Included features on that page: AI-powered business tools and marketing, payments, a free credit card reader, calendar and resource management, a customer waitlist, memberships and packages and gift certificates, 1,000 free emails a month, advanced reporting, customer loyalty programs, customer tracking and client data, SOAP notes, a booking widget, daily deals, inventory tracking, invoices, a free listing on the Vagaro Marketplace, unlimited notifications and appointment reminders, and online booking through Vagaro, Instagram, Facebook, and Apple Maps.
The same page notes that during the 30 day free trial, email marketing, text marketing, and the branded app are excluded, which is the clearest signal we could find that those pieces are not simply part of the base plan. The text marketing page confirms Vagaro sells text marketing as its own product but does not publish a standalone price for it. We could not find a Vagaro page describing a tattoo-specific consent or intake form as a built-in feature; SOAP notes, which are a general clinical note format, are the closest match listed.
Side by side
| Turbo Link (Trade, $39/mo billed annually) | Vagaro (Single location) | |
|---|---|---|
| Base price | $39/mo, $45 month to month | $23.99/mo for 6 months, then $30/mo |
| Tattoo consent and release form | Included | Not listed as included, SOAP notes are the closest built-in feature |
| Deposit invoice at booking | Included | Available through payments, deposit workflow not itemized on the pricing page |
| Text reminders | Included in the subscription | Sold separately as text marketing, excluded from the free trial |
| Flash and hourly pricing per piece | Included | Not tattoo-specific, general service pricing only |
| Website on your own domain | Included | Online booking widget, not a full designed website |
| Marketplace listing for new client discovery | Not offered | Free listing on the Vagaro Marketplace |
| Memberships, packages, gift certificates | Not offered | Included |
Where Vagaro is genuinely ahead
Vagaro has been around long enough to have a real marketplace of clients who search it directly to book, and that free listing has value for shops trying to pick up walk-in style discovery. It also bundles broader retail and loyalty tools, memberships, packages, and gift certificates, that Turbo Link does not offer at all. If your shop wants those specific tools, or if marketplace traffic matters more than a tattoo-specific workflow, that is a fair reason to look at Vagaro seriously.
Where the two diverge for tattoo work specifically
Turbo Link’s consent form, deposit invoice, and flash and hourly pricing are built around how tattoo appointments actually run: a deposit that holds the slot, a release the client signs on their phone before the chair, and a price that might be a flat flash rate or an hourly custom rate on the same day. Read how that flow works on /help/tattoo-consent-and-deposits and how to record a deposit once it lands on /help/record-a-deposit.
For work that spans multiple sessions, like a sleeve or a back piece, Turbo Link tracks the whole thing as a project rather than a string of unrelated bookings. See /multi-session-tattoo-scheduling for how that shows up for the client.
The bottom line
If your shop wants one subscription that already has the tattoo consent form, deposits, and texting baked in, price that against Vagaro’s base rate plus text marketing plus whatever a consent form workflow costs to build in Vagaro’s forms tools. If marketplace discovery and general retail features matter more to you than tattoo-specific workflow, Vagaro is a reasonable pick. Compare the full Turbo Link feature list on /for-tattoo and full pricing on /pricing, or get a walkthrough at /get-a-demo.
Related reading: Turbo Link vs Tattoo Studio Pro, deposit policy guide, and flash vs hourly vs project pricing.
Questions people ask
Is Vagaro cheaper than Turbo Link for a tattoo shop?
Vagaro's single location plan reads as $23.99 a month as an introductory rate for the first six months, rising to $30 a month after, read from vagaro.com/pricing on September 2, 2026. Turbo Link's Trade plan is $39 a month billed annually. Vagaro's base number is lower, but forms and text marketing are handled as separate pieces on Vagaro, so add those in before comparing totals.
Does Vagaro include a tattoo consent form?
The Vagaro pricing page we read lists SOAP notes among included features but does not list a tattoo-specific consent or release form as part of the base plan. Turbo Link includes a built-in tattoo consent and release form on the Trade plan at no extra cost.
Is text marketing included in Vagaro's price?
Vagaro promotes text marketing as its own product on a separate page, and its 30 day trial explicitly excludes text marketing and email marketing from the free period. That points to it being billed apart from the base plan rather than bundled in. Turbo Link's automatic reminders and texts are part of the one subscription.
Does Vagaro work for a shop with one artist?
Yes, Vagaro's single location plan is built for that. So is Turbo Link's Trade plan, and it adds a page per resident artist if the shop later brings on guest artists.
What does Vagaro do better than Turbo Link?
Vagaro has a much larger built-in marketplace of clients who already search Vagaro to book, free listing on that marketplace, and a broader set of general business tools like memberships, packages, and gift certificates out of the box. Those are real advantages if marketplace discovery matters to your shop.