The best dental practice management software — reviewed honestly

Dentrix is the most widely installed dental practice management system in North America. It handles scheduling, charting, billing, insurance claims, and treatment planning in one desktop application. The feature depth is hard to match — most features a multi-operatory practice needs are already built in. That depth comes with a steep learning curve, an older interface, and a price tag that can run over $1,000 per month when you add modules. The cloud-based successor is Dentrix Ascend (see below). Neither version includes review management or a way to automatically ask patients for Google reviews after appointments. You will need a separate tool for that.

Eaglesoft is Patterson Dental's flagship practice management software. Like Dentrix, it is a Windows desktop application with deep capabilities: scheduling, billing, insurance, perio charting, and imaging integration. Practices that already buy supplies through Patterson often get bundled pricing that makes Eaglesoft attractive. The flip side is the same as Dentrix: aging interface, desktop-only workflow, and zero native tools for managing your online reputation or collecting patient reviews. Asking patients to leave a Google review still requires a manual process or a separate platform.

Open Dental is the rare open-source option in dental software. The base application is free — you pay only for support ($189/month gets you phone and email support). This makes it dramatically cheaper than Dentrix or Eaglesoft for most practices. The trade-off is that setup and customisation require more technical confidence. The feature set is genuinely impressive for a free application: full charting, scheduling, insurance, imaging, and a huge plugin ecosystem built by the community. Like the other legacy systems, Open Dental does not have native review collection or reputation management. But its open-source nature means integrations with external review tools work well.

Curve Hero is one of the better cloud-native dental practice management systems. Because it runs in the browser, any device with internet access — Mac, PC, iPad — can access it without a VPN or remote desktop setup. The scheduling, charting, and billing modules are modern and quick to learn. Curve also offers a patient engagement add-on called Curve Patient that sends appointment reminders and can prompt patients for reviews. In practice, the review prompt feature is basic — a generic message asking patients to leave a review, without the routing or AI reply tools that dedicated review management platforms offer. For multi-location DSOs, Curve's centralized dashboard is a genuine advantage.

Dentrix Ascend is the cloud-based successor to desktop Dentrix. It brings the familiar Henry Schein feature set into the browser, making it accessible from any device. For large groups that run their whole operation through Henry Schein One (supply, HR, analytics, and clinical), Ascend keeps everything connected. For a single-location practice, the pricing is hard to justify — Ascend starts around $800/month and scales up quickly. Like its desktop sibling, Ascend has no built-in reputation management. There is no native way to collect Google reviews after an appointment or to respond to patient reviews from inside the platform.

NexHealth is not a full practice management system — it is a patient engagement platform that sits on top of your existing PMS (Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, or others). It handles online booking, automated appointment reminders, and post-visit review requests. The review collection piece works: a message goes out after each appointment with a Google review link. Where NexHealth falls short is the response side — there are no AI-drafted reply tools, no monitoring of platforms beyond Google, and no way to track your rating trends over time. At $400-800/month, you are paying a premium for the booking and scheduling integration, not for deep reputation management.

Weave is primarily a communications platform — it connects your practice phone system, two-way texting, and appointment reminders in one app. Review collection is included: after an appointment, Weave sends a text asking the patient to leave a Google review. This is helpful and it works, but it is a small part of what Weave does. The review tools stop there. You cannot draft AI replies to reviews from inside Weave, cannot monitor Yelp or Healthgrades alongside Google, and cannot see your rating trends across platforms in one dashboard. If your main goal is reputation management, Weave is not the right fit — it is a phone and texting upgrade with review collection as a bonus.