The key points
- Judge their live dental sites on a phone, not their portfolio slides.
- Ownership and exit terms matter more than the design proposal.
- Ask who writes treatment content and who reviews it clinically.
- Walk away from anyone selling reviews or promising a ranking position.
Do you need a dental specialist or a general web company?
Either can work. What matters is whether the company understands how patients choose a practice and can show it in sites they've built. A dental specialist brings familiarity with treatments, booking systems and regulations; a general agency may bring stronger engineering and more original design. Test both the same way.
Dental marketing companies have one structural habit to know about. Many run hundreds of practices on a shared platform, with treatment pages written once and reused. That keeps prices down, but it means your implant page may read word for word like a practice two towns away. Search engines have little reason to favour either copy, and patients can tell.
What questions should you ask a dental web design company?
Ask questions that reveal how they work after the contract is signed, not just what the homepage will look like. Their answers should be specific and written down.
- Who registers the domain, and in whose name?
- Do we own the design, code, written content and photos if we leave?
- Who writes treatment pages, and does a dentist at our practice approve them before publishing?
- How will online booking connect to our practice management system, or what happens to form submissions?
- How do you measure success: rankings, traffic or booked appointments?
- What is the minimum term, notice period and cost to cancel?
- Who will we talk to each month, and how fast are content changes made?
- How do you handle privacy for forms collecting health details in our country?
How do you check a dental website company's past work?
Open three practice sites they built, on your own phone, over mobile data. Try to book an appointment. Find the emergency number. Read the implant or aligner page and paste a sentence into a search engine in quotes; if the same paragraph appears on dozens of other practices' sites, you've learned how they write.
Then call one or two of those practices, ideally ones the company didn't hand-pick. Ask how quickly changes are made, whether enquiries rose or fell, and how the company behaves when something breaks. A practice manager will usually tell you within two minutes.
Run the sites through Google's PageSpeed Insights as well. You don't need to understand every metric. If most of their sites score poorly on mobile, yours probably will too.
Which red flags should rule a company out?
Some practices are too common, and too damaging, to negotiate around. If a company does any of these, keep looking.
- Offering to write, buy or filter reviews. Google's policies prohibit fake and incentivized reviews, and in the US the FTC's 2024 rule on consumer reviews made fake reviews unlawful
- Guaranteeing first-page or first-place rankings, which nobody controls
- Registering your domain in their own name
- Long minimum terms with no exit, or a contract where the site and content stay with them
- Building dozens of near-identical city pages that swap only the town name
- Refusing to give you admin access to your own Google Business Profile or analytics
What should the contract say?
The contract should name what you'll own, what's included each month, how changes are priced, the minimum term and what you receive on exit. If it's silent on any of these, it'll be decided in their favour later.
Look for a handover clause: on cancellation you receive the domain transfer code, a full export or code repository, the content and images, and admin rights to analytics, tag manager and your business profile. Ask for a support period after launch in which defects are fixed without charge, and a named contact.
In the US, if the company will handle forms or systems containing protected health information, ask whether they'll sign a business associate agreement. This isn't legal advice; your compliance adviser should confirm what your practice needs.
How should you compare proposals fairly?
Send each shortlisted company the same written brief and score their replies against it. A brief needs only a page: your treatments to grow, dentists, locations, booking method, the old site, and what success means for you (usually booked new-patient appointments).
Score how well each proposal answers your brief, not how polished it looks. The company that asks you sharp questions about your patients and front desk is usually the one that'll build something that works.
Dental marketing company vs general web agency
| Aspect | Dental marketing company | General web or software agency |
|---|---|---|
| Dental knowledge | Usually strong out of the box | Varies; check their healthcare work |
| Content | Often shared library copy | Usually written for you, if scoped |
| Ownership | Often a licence while you pay | Usually you own it; confirm in writing |
| Integrations | Common booking tools supported | Custom integrations possible |
| Contract | Monthly bundle with minimum term | Project fee plus optional support |
Dental web design company shortlist check
- Have you tested three of their live dental sites on your phone?
- Is the treatment copy unique to each practice?
- Will the domain be registered in the practice's name?
- Does the contract include a handover clause on exit?
- Do they report booked appointments, not only rankings?
- Did they avoid any promise of reviews or guaranteed positions?
Sources
Rules and guidance this answer relies on. Policies change, so check the current version before acting on it.