United Kingdom · review · updated 2026-08-01
Ascend
Software of Excellence’s cloud offering, NHS-certified under its own name.
In United Kingdom: NHS-certified. The NHS BSA list records “Ascend” against Software of Excellence, at the same Gillingham address as EXACT. Henry Schein One owns both SOE and the US product Dentrix Ascend, and the two are plausibly the same platform — but the NHS list does not say so and neither does SOE publicly, so we do not assert it. Ask the vendor directly if that distinction matters to you.
Who it’s for
EXACT practices considering cloud who want to stay with the same vendor.
What Ascend costs
Ascend does not publish a price. You have to request a quote, which means you cannot budget or compare before speaking to a salesperson. No figure published.
We do not repeat third-party price estimates for quote-only vendors. Several widely republished figures in this category turned out to belong to a different product — see how we compare.
What’s built in
7 of the 19 modules we track are included in the core product.
| Module | Availability |
|---|---|
| Scheduling | Built in |
| Clinical charting | Built in |
| Perio charting | Built in |
| Native imaging | Not stated |
| Billing | Built in |
| Claims | Built in |
| Insurance eligibility | Not stated |
| Payments | Not stated |
| Patient messaging | Not stated |
| Online booking | Not stated |
| Digital forms | Not stated |
| Recall / reactivation | Built in |
| Analytics & KPIs | Not stated |
| ePrescribing | Not stated |
| Teledentistry | Not stated |
| AI features | Not stated |
| Open API | Not stated |
| Multi-location | Built in |
| Orthodontics | Not stated |
“Not stated” means the vendor does not say either way on its public site. We do not infer capability that isn’t documented.
What it does well
- Cloud, from the vendor with the largest installed base in UK dentistry.
- NHS-certified in its own right, so FP17 submission is covered.
- Sold by the same company as EXACT, which makes a migration path from the incumbent plausible.
Where it falls short
- No published pricing.
- Very little is documented publicly under the Ascend name in the UK — we could not verify most of the feature set, or confirm its relationship to the US Dentrix Ascend product.
- Ask specifically what differs from EXACT, because the two are sold by the same team.
Next step
Prices and features move. Before you commit, confirm the current figure with Ascend directly, and ask specifically what is not in the base price — that is where budgets slip in this category.
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