Few things in your dental practice are as frustrating and someone who does not show up for an appointment. Unfortunately, no-shows are pretty common. In fact, the average no-show rate for dental practices is 15%.

To reduce no-shows, many practices implement dental appointment reminder software. This software sends a series appointment reminders to patients through email, text and voice calls. Patients who receive these messages can confirm appointments, cancel or reschedule.

There are numerous appointment reminder solutions in the market. This can make it difficult to find the best solution for your practice. To streamline your vendor selection process, we've created a short-list of the best dental appointment reminder software.

Table of Contents

• How Does Dental Appointment Reminder Software Work?
• Dental Appointment Reminder Software Features
• How Much Does Dental Appointment Reminder Software Cost?
• Best Dental Appointment Reminder Software
  • Doctible
  • NexHealth
  • Weave
  • Lighthouse 360
  • Adit
  • Solutionreach
  • Demandforce
  • RevenueWell

How Does Dental Appointment Reminder Software Work?

Appointment reminder software integrates directly with your practice management system to send patients a series of messages. Here's a step-by-step look at how dental appointment reminder software works.

First, you create tailored drip campaigns that will be sent to patients before and after their appointments.

Once each appointment is scheduled, the software looks at the appointment date and type to begin sending messages. Most systems send messages a few weeks in advance of the appointment, one week before the appointment, and a few hours before the appointment.

Each software platform has a dashboard that your team can use to keep track of the status for each appointment.

Finally, patients who miss their appointments are sent messages to reschedule their appointments.

Dental Appointment Reminder Software Features

There are numerous appointment reminder software vendors. Most solutions come with the same core features. As with most software, there are features that are unique to each platform – such as the ability to reschedule patients directly inside emails, or the ability to send voice reminders.

These are the most common features you should look for in your dental appointment reminder software:

How Much Does Dental Appointment Reminder Software Cost?

Dental appointment reminder software typically costs $200-500 per location per month. Some systems, like Doctible, allow you to only purchase a tool for appointment reminders. Most tools, however, sell appointment reminders as part of a complete patient engagement platform.

Best Dental Appointment Reminder Software

We've researched the market to find the most popular, highest-quality appointment reminder solutions in the market. The solutions below are used by single location practices, multi-location practices, and DSOs. Read the solution overviews to find the product that is best for your practice.

Doctible

Doctible is a popular patient engagement platform that offers a wide range of software tools to help practices acquire and retain patients. The platform offers a very wide range of features including automated reminders, two-way texting, intake forms, a chatbot, online scheduling, reputation management, and payment processing.

Doctible's email and text campaigns can be customized to send to patients as much as 30 days prior to their appointments. When a patient confirms the appointment, its status is automatically updated in your practice management software, which greatly reduces staff time spent confirming appointments.

To learn more about Doctible, read our full Doctible review.

Visit Doctible

NexHealth

NexHealth is a powerful, end-to-end patient experience management platform used by thousands of dental and medical professionals to grow their practices. NexHealth's platform includes tools to manage the patient experience end-to-end: email & text messaging, online reviews, appointment scheduling, online forms, appointment reminders, recalls and reporting.

NexHealth also allows you to create a workflow that will send a series of patient appointment reminders over time. The tool comes with a set of templates you can send through email and text message. You can edit these appointment reminder templates using a WYSIWYG or HTML editor, and can personalize the message with fields like "PATIENTNAME".

To learn more about NexHealth, read our full NexHealth review.

Visit NexHealth

Weave

Weave is a patient communication system that includes VoIP phones for use in your dental practice. Weave's platform includes appointment reminder software that increases scheduled appointments and reduces no-shows. Patients can confirm appointments via text, or start a text conversation to change their appointments.

To learn more about Weave, read our full Weave review.

Visit Weave

Lighthouse 360

Lighthouse 360 (LH360) is a popular patient communication system that was designed specifically for dental practices. It is one of the oldest and most popular platforms in the market.

If patients have scheduled appointments, Lighthouse 360 can send them automatic appointment reminders through text, email, postcards or automated phone calls, which the company claims reduce no-shows by an average of 40%. The system comes with email and text messages that you can use immediately. Alternatively, you can create your own messages, and customize them with your own images, copy, and design.

To learn more about Lighthouse 360, read our full Lighthouse 360 review.

Visit Lighthouse 360

Adit

Adit's Engage application is also used for appointment confirmations, reminders, and recalls. Engage pulls data from the online scheduling tool and your practice management system to send these messages automatically.

Appointment reminders can be set up to send to confirmed or unconfirmed patients for specific appointment types, providers, and operatories. You can also set the date and time that you would like the message to be sent. As you can see below, the system also dynamically pulls in patient information such as patient and location name.

To learn more about Adit, read our full Adit review.

Visit Adit

Solutionreach

Solutionreach (formerly Smile Reminder) is one of the major players in the automated patient communication space. Its roots are in dentistry, though it's also popular in other medical professions such as optometry and chiropractic. Solutionreach claims that their automatic appointment reminders can reduce your no-shows by 30-40%.

To learn more about Solutionreach, read our full Solutionreach review.

Demandforce

Demandforce is a powerful marketing and patient communication system designed to increase patient recall and reactivation. It is one of the oldest and most popular patient communication systems. In addition to appointment reminders, the platform includes patient recalls, reputation management, and its own local business directory.

To learn more about Demandforce, read our full Demandforce review.

Visit Demandforce

RevenueWell

Thousands of dental practices use RevenueWell to help reduce no-shows, reactivate inactive patients, and solicit patient reviews. Priced at $339/month, without any contracts, RevenueWell is a powerful, yet affordable option that can help your practice connect with patients and save your team time by automating many routine tasks.

RevenueWell allows you to send postcard and letter reminders in addition to email and text. Its emails can include videos and calendar invitations for patients to add their appointments to their personal calendars.

To learn more about RevenueWell, read our full RevenueWell review.

Visit RevenueWell