The bottom line is that you can create very detailed custom reports that help you understand your business on every level.īefore deciding to invest in Open Dental, you can download a trial version of the program and perform a test data conversion on your data, free of charge. This means that in Open Dental, you can export whatever combination of data you need, instead of being limited to specific queries. Open Dental provides users with access to the database schema instead of hiding it behind closed doors, as is the case with many proprietary software companies. Many software providers make it difficult to transition your practice to a new system down the line - data must be extracted and converted, often with mixed results. With a tech team of 12+ software engineers, the company has made a commitment toward delivering high quality software for dentists, and this is evident in its decision to make their software open source. Jordan Sparks, a dentist who was dissatisfied with the status quo of dental software. Open Dental was founded on the idea that users, not software companies, should have complete power over their data. After this contract, you can continue to use the software for free, but you will not receive software updates or customer support. Is Open Dental Free? No, to use Open Dental, you must sign up for a 6 month-contract at $169 per month.
After that, the price drops to $119 per location per month
Open Dental is also not designed to work in a web browser, like many web-based software solutions. Cloud-based software companies typically take care of storing and backing up your data on their remote servers, but with Open Dental, you will be responsible for encrypting, backing up, and managing data on your own servers. This is particularly beneficial if you ever want to create highly customized reports or transfer data to another software provider.Īlthough Open Dental gives you more control over your data, it also leaves you responsible for developing a data storage and backup strategy. Whereas many major dental software companies store your data within proprietary databases that make it difficult for you to retrieve after your contract ends, Open Dental ensures that you have complete control over your data at all times, by giving you access to the MySQL database used to store your data.
#Open dental software tutorial full#
However, one feature that distinguishes Open Dental from other players in the dental software industry is that it gives users full access to their practice's database, which enables users to create powerful custom reports and queries. For roughly $100 per month, Open Dental offers many of the time-saving and paperless features that users typically look for in dental practice management software: insurance claim validation, business-critical reports, powerful scheduling and charting capabilities, and much more.