United Kingdom · updated 2026-08-01
Dental practice management software, compared honestly.
Dentally publishes £125 a month for a single-surgery practice. Every other NHS-certified system will only tell you over the phone. Here is what that one published price actually buys, what the other eleven are likely to cost, and the questions that get a real number out of them.
Why this site exists
Most of this market won’t tell you the price.
Of the 12 products we track, 1 publish a real figure and 11 make you talk to sales first. That would be a minor annoyance if the review sites filled the gap accurately. They don’t.
Only Dentally publishes a price — and it is the same vendor whose Canadian page, under the same heading “Affordable pricing for every dental practice”, shows no figure at all. Everything else NHS-certified is quote-only.
So we made a rule: we only publish a price we can see on the vendor’s own page, and every one carries a source link and the date we read it. Where a vendor publishes nothing, we say so instead of guessing.
How we compareThe full stack
Every system we track, cheapest published price first. Products that publish nothing sit at the bottom — not because they are worse, but because you cannot compare what you cannot see.
| Software | Deployment | Published entry price | Built for | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dentally Henry Schein One | Cloud | £125/month per site, unlimited users | Solo · 2–4 locations · Group | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| Aerona Aerona Software | Cloud | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations · Group | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| Ascend Software of Excellence (Henry Schein One) | Cloud | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations · Group · DSO / enterprise | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| CareStack CareStack | Cloud | Quote only | 2–4 locations · Group · DSO / enterprise | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| Cloud 4 Dentists Cloud 4 Dentists | Cloud | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| DentalPlus Admor DentalPlus Software | Cloud or on-premise | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| Denticon Planet DDS | Cloud | Quote only | Group · DSO / enterprise | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| EXACT Software of Excellence (Henry Schein One) | Cloud or on-premise | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations · Group · DSO / enterprise | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| i-Smile Drawing Board Solutions | Cloud or on-premise | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| Pearl Not stated on the NHS BSA list | Cloud or on-premise | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| R4 PracticeWorks Ltd (Carestream Dental) | Cloud or on-premise | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations · Group | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
| Systems for Dentists Systems for Dentists (SfD) | Cloud or on-premise | Quote only | Solo · 2–4 locations · Group | Review Visit(opens in a new tab) |
Prices are the vendor’s own published figures, each read on its source page and dated on that product’s review. “Quote only” means the vendor publishes no price at all — we do not substitute third-party estimates. How we compare.
Where most practices land
There is no single best dental software — there is the right one for your size, your appetite for running a server, and your budget. These four cover most situations.
Head to head
Side-by-side on price, deployment and every module — the two questions people actually search for before switching.
- Dentally vs EXACT The cloud challenger against the UK incumbent
- EXACT vs R4 The two entrenched UK systems, head to head
- Dentally vs R4 Published pricing against Carestream’s incumbent
- Dentally vs Aerona Two UK clouds — one publishes a price, one does not
- EXACT vs Systems for Dentists Multinational against independent British vendor
- Dentally vs CareStack UK market leader against the US entrant