Nine Years Building Phoenix: The Tools and Resources That Actually Helped

When I opened Phoenix Eco Spa in Brighton in 2017, I was clear on the vision - a vegan, eco-conscious spa built on genuine quality and care. What I was not clear on was how to actually run a business. I started with a spreadsheet for clients, a basic website nobody could find, and bookings taken over the phone.

Nine years on, Phoenix has been named Best Day Spa in Brighton two years running, we have over 15,000 clients in our database, and in April 2026 we open our second location in Hove. That growth did not happen by accident - and it did not happen because of the treatments alone. The infrastructure behind the business matters just as much as what happens in the treatment room.

This is the honest version of that story. Not a generic tool list - but the specific platforms I use, what I tried before them, why I switched, and who each one is actually right for.

Email marketing: the asset I wish I had built sooner

I started on Mailchimp like most small businesses do. It is fine when your list is small and your needs are simple. But as Phoenix grew and our client database passed a few thousand, the limitations became obvious. The automation was basic. Segmentation was clunky. Sending a re-engagement sequence to clients who had not visited in three months, while excluding people with upcoming bookings, required workarounds that never quite worked properly.

I moved to ActiveCampaign and the difference was significant. The conditional logic in the automation builder is genuinely powerful - you can create sequences that respond to what a client actually does, not just when they were added to a list. Our post-treatment follow-up sequence, our lapsed client re-engagement flow, and our Hove launch campaign were all built in ActiveCampaign. It handles a 15,000-person database without any of the deliverability issues we occasionally had with Mailchimp.

The honest caveat: ActiveCampaign has a learning curve. If you are just starting out and your list is under 2,000 people, it is more than you need right now. In that case, MailerLite is where I would begin. The free tier is genuinely generous, the interface is cleaner than anything else at that price point, and the deliverability is excellent. Start there and move up when the automation starts feeling limiting.

If your spa or wellness business also sells retail products - skincare, supplements, branded merchandise - then Klaviyo deserves serious consideration instead. Where ActiveCampaign is built for service businesses, Klaviyo is built for businesses where product revenue matters. The revenue attribution, abandoned browse sequences, and product recommendation logic are significantly better than either of the above for that use case.

Card payments: where I wasted money before finding what works

The payment setup at Phoenix went through three iterations before we landed on something that worked cleanly. Square was our first card reader. The hardware is well-designed and the app is straightforward, but the fees crept up more than I expected as transaction volume grew, and the customer support when things went wrong was poor.

We then tried iZettle, which was fine but not meaningfully better. What I actually wanted was something with transparent, predictable fees - no monthly minimums, no surprises.

SumUp is what we use now for portable and event payments, and it is the one I recommend to other wellness businesses starting out. The card reader is inexpensive, the transaction fee is flat and clear, and there is no monthly subscription standing charge to worry about. For a spa or salon that processes a consistent volume of in-person transactions, the total cost of ownership is lower than either Square or iZettle in most scenarios. The app is simpler than Square's, which some people will find limiting - but for straightforward in-person payments, that simplicity is a feature, not a drawback.

Website: the platform decision that cost me two years of SEO

I built Phoenix's original website on Wix because it was quick and I could do it myself. That was the wrong decision. Wix's SEO foundations are weak, the templates for wellness businesses look generic, and the customisation hits a ceiling quickly. I spent two years on a platform that was actively limiting our visibility in local search.

We moved to Squarespace and the difference in both quality and search performance was immediate. For a spa, salon, yoga studio, or wellness practice, Squarespace is where I would start. The templates are genuinely well-designed for service businesses, the built-in SEO tools are solid, and you do not need a developer. The blogging and content tools are also better than Wix's, which matters as you start building organic traffic.

The exception: if your business has a meaningful retail component - you sell products online as well as services - then Shopify becomes the right answer. Squarespace's e-commerce is adequate for simple product sales, but Shopify's inventory management, product variants, shipping integrations, and checkout experience are built at a different level. Phoenix does not sell retail online, so Squarespace serves us well. If you do, go straight to Shopify.

CRM: the system I should have set up in year one

For the first few years, Phoenix's client relationship management was a combination of our booking software and a spreadsheet I kept promising myself I would properly organise. It was not enough. As the business grew, the inability to track client conversations, corporate enquiries, gift voucher sales, and partnership discussions in one place was a genuine operational problem.

HubSpot solved it, and what surprised me was that the free tier is more capable than most paid CRMs I had looked at. Contact management, deal pipeline, email logging, and task tracking are all available without spending anything. I use it to manage the commercial side of the business - partnerships, event enquiries, corporate wellness clients - completely separately from our day-to-day booking system. If I were starting Phoenix today, I would set up HubSpot on day one and build the habit of logging everything from the start.

The education that shaped how Phoenix thinks

The tools above handle the mechanics of the business. But the thing that actually changed how Phoenix operates was investing in my own understanding of human behaviour, motivation, and wellbeing.

I hold diplomas in NLP and positive psychology. That education changed how I think about client experience, team culture, and what it actually means to create a space where people feel genuinely cared for. It is not incidental to Phoenix's success - it is central to it.

For ongoing professional development in this space, Mindvalley is unlike anything else I have found. The depth of the content - covering mindset, performance, conscious business, and personal growth - is serious. It is not the kind of surface-level content that fills most online learning platforms. I have found courses there that genuinely shifted how I approach decisions in the business, not just how I feel personally.

For more formally accredited development - qualifications that carry weight in the wellness industry - Coursera is strong, particularly in health sciences, wellbeing, and business management. The quality of the university-backed programmes is significantly higher than most alternatives.

And if you have expertise in wellness and are at the point of thinking about packaging that knowledge into a course, membership, or digital product, Teachable is the platform I would use. I have looked at Kajabi and Thinkific alongside it. Kajabi is more all-in-one but expensive and more complex than most people need at the start. Thinkific is comparable to Teachable but the student experience is marginally weaker. Teachable hits the right balance of capability and simplicity for a wellness professional building their first course.

What I would do differently

Start your email list before you think you need one. Get off Wix immediately if you are on it. Set up a CRM from day one even if it feels premature. Invest in your own education before you invest heavily in paid marketing.

The businesses I see struggle are rarely struggling because of the quality of their treatments or their products. They struggle because the infrastructure is not there to support growth when it comes. Phoenix took nine years to reach where it is. The tools above could have been in place from year one.