Best Dental Software 2021

Dental software is built to support the operations of dental practices. While dental practices typically use several software tools, the most important by far is dental practice management software. Dental practice management software includes features used by front office staff, hygienists, and dentists such as appointment scheduling, patient intake, charting, notes, billing, claims management, and reporting. Historically, most practice management systems were implemented on-premise. In the past five years, the transition to cloud-based systems has accelerated.

In addition to practice management software, dental practices often purchase patient engagement software and membership plan software. These systems are used to improve the patient experience, and increase practice revenue. Finally, innovative practices are increasingly adopting practice analytics software to understand dental KPIs and teledentistry software.

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Highest Rated Dental Practice Management Software

Dental practice management software is the primary software tool used to manage the day-to-day operations of dental practices. Dental practice management systems have been around for decades, and several good options exist in the market. Since it is the foundational technology for your practice, we recommend conducting a thorough vendor evaluation process to select the best practice management system for your dental practice. Read our comparison of the best dental practice management software.

Highest Rated Patient Engagement Software

Patient communication software improves patient engagement before & after appointments and helps build your practice's online presence. One of the top features, appointment reminders, have been shown to reduce no-shows by as much as 40%. The benefits of patient communication software include increased practice revenue, as well as saved time for your administrative & marketing personnel. Read our comparison of the best dental patient communication software.

Highest Rated Reputation Management Software

Reputation management software was built to help businesses generate and distribute positive customer feedback. These positive customer reviews are shared to review platforms such as Google and Facebook, which makes it easier for new patients to discover your practice. Reputation management software also includes tools to help you manage your business listings, have two-way text message conversations with patients, web chat and send customer surveys.

Highest Rated Dental Membership Plan Management Software

Dental membership plans are subscriptions for discounted treatments that are offered directly to patients. There are significant benefits of offering membership plans at your practice. A membership plan adds recurring revenue to your practice, attracts uninsured patients, improves patient loyalty, and reduces dependency on insurance. Dental membership plan software is built to help you efficiently managing your membership program. Read our comparison of the best dental membership plan software.

Highest Rated Appointment Scheduling Software

Appointment scheduling software was built to help dental practices manage their appointment calendars and increase appointment volume. The core features found in this type of software are online appointment schedulers that you can embed directly on your practice’s website, the ability to schedule different types of appointments with each dentist, and patient appointment reminders. Many practice management systems have appointment scheduling modules, but practices commonly purchase these tools to improve their ability to streamline appointment management.

Other Top Dental Software

Dental practices commonly use several other software tools to support operations. We have listed the most popular solutions in the list below. This includes online appointment scheduling software, dental practice analytics, and dental marketing software.

Dental Software Prices

Dental software prices range from a few hundred to thousands of dollars per month. Most dental practices pay around $200 to $500 per location per month for their practice management software. Here's details that will help you compare prices for the most popular dental practice management software platforms.

Software VendorStarting Monthly PriceFree TrialSubscription Add-Ons
CareStack$650 per monthNo
  • None
Open Dental$159 per monthYes
  • $20 per dentist per month for 3+ dentists
  • eServices bundle is $135 per location per month
Denticon$280 per monthNo
  • Requires separate subscriptions with DoseSpot and Updox
Curve Dental$350 per monthNo
  • Patient engagement module is an additional $150 per month.
Dentrix Ascend$500 per monthNo
  • $995 initial setup fee
  • $200 per month for Dentrix Ascend’s built-in imaging, which is used by 90% of Dentrix Ascend customers
Dentrix$6,995 license + $139 per monthNo
  • Additional fees for bundles with extra functionality

Dental Software FAQs

Dental software is used by dental practices to improve the efficiency of their day-to-day operations. Dental software supports back office processes such as billing & invoicing, front office processes like patient engagement, and clinical processes such as treatment planning. The software can be hosted on-premise, or in the cloud.

Dental practices use several types of software on a daily basis. Here's the most popular types of dental software:

  • Practice management software
  • Patient engagement software
  • Reputation management software
  • Dental membership plan management software
  • Dental imaging software

Dental software costs $100s to $1000s of dollars per month depending on the size of your practice. For a single location, practice management systems start at about $200 per month. Patient engagement systems cost $300-400 per month per location. Reputation management systems start at $299 per month.

The best dental software depends on your practice and preferences. Many dental practices prefer well-known, tested solutions like Dentrix and Eaglesoft. Newer, innovative practices might have a preference for cloud-based systems like Denticon or open systems like Open Dental. The patient engagement market is similar – Solutionreach and Lighthouse 360 are well-established, popular solutions, while Doctible and NexHealth are newer, more modern systems.

The most popular dental software applications are BirdEye, Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Podium, and Solutionreach. Each of these software applications has over 10,000 customers.

On-premise dental software is software that is hosted locally at a dental practice. Practices typically host on-premise software using a server or server room. In many cases, they choose to hire an IT consultant to manage on-premise software. Some experts believe on-premise software is safer and more reliable than cloud-based software, although this is debatable. On-premise software is also more challenging to update than cloud-based software.

Web-based dental software is software that is hosted in a centrally managed database and accessed using the Internet. It is also known as cloud-based software. Web-based software is easier to manage and update than on-premise software. Starting with Salesforce, there has been a macro shift in the software industry towards web-based, subscription software.

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