Dentally or Systems for Dentists for a Small UK Dental Practice

Either can work; base the decision on pricing transparency and deployment, since both have larger group owners. Dentally publishes tiered pricing from £125 a month for one surgery, excluding VAT, and sits inside Henry Schein One. Systems for Dentists, incorporated in 1987, has been majority owned since March 2023 by Portman Healthcare Limited, part of a dental practice group, and publishes no comparable figure. Get a written quote from both, matched on surgery count.

Key pointers

• Ask both vendors for a quote matched to your exact surgery count, since Dentally publishes prices that scale down per surgery while Systems for Dentists gives no comparable public figure.
• Ask each vendor how customer data and product decisions are kept separate from its parent group, Henry Schein One for Dentally and the dental practice group behind Systems for Dentists.
• Check whether each quote includes or excludes VAT, using Dentally's published excluding-VAT prices as the comparison basis.
• Decide if cloud-only suits your practice, or whether you want to consider Systems for Dentists' on-premise option and confirm its hardware and connectivity requirements.
• Work out the per-surgery cost, since Dentally Starter costs £125 a month for one surgery, £195 for two (£97.50 each) and £265 for three (about £88.33 each).
• Ask what a quote covers, including the licence, setup, data migration, training days and support tier.
• Confirm NHS claims support for your nation specifically, since integration detail can differ between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland's HSC.

What Practice Management Software Ownership Means for Your Shortlist

Practice management software (often shortened to PMS) runs a dental practice's diary, patient records, treatment planning and NHS claims in one system. For a small independent practice with one to three surgeries, the choice usually comes down to two things: what the system costs at your actual size, and who is behind it.

Henry Schein One, a dental software business, acquired Dentally in 2020 (Dentally, Our story; Dentally, Henry Schein One). The same group owns Software of Excellence, whose EXACT product is one of the other big names UK practices consider, and a trade publication describes Dentally and EXACT together as "the two most widely used practice management platforms in UK dentistry" (Dentistry.co.uk partnership announcement). A practice manager who shortlists "the market leaders" without checking ownership may end up comparing two products from the same parent company, rather than genuinely different suppliers.

Systems for Dentists (SFD) also has a corporate majority shareholder. Companies House records Systems for Dentists Limited as incorporated on 26 November 1987 (Companies House). Since 9 March 2023, its person with significant control has been Portman Healthcare Limited, holding more than 50% but less than 75% of its shares, replacing Ryszard Waclaw Jurowski, the individual who held that role from December 2016 (Companies House, persons with significant control). Portman Healthcare Limited is one of the principal UK operating companies of PortmanDentex, a corporate group that runs dental practices across the UK and Ireland and describes itself as supporting clinicians who care for "well over a million patients each year" (group legal structure). Portman Healthcare Limited and Systems for Dentists share the same registered office in Cheltenham.

That matters for a small independent practice weighing up the two systems. It is a choice between two products each backed by a larger group: Dentally belongs to Henry Schein One, a dental software business backed by Henry Schein, Inc., while SFD's majority shareholder is part of a corporate dental practice operator (Dentally, Henry Schein One). Neither ownership structure automatically makes a product unsuitable. A practice that was drawn to Systems for Dentists specifically to avoid a large corporate parent should ask it directly how customer data and product decisions are kept separate from the group's own practices, and weigh the answer alongside price and deployment.

Deployment, Not Just Price

Dentally is a browser-based, cloud-only platform. There is no on-premise option; every surgery works from a hosted system reached through a web browser (Dentally, Our story).

Systems for Dentists gives practices a choice: cloud-hosted for anywhere access, or on-premise for what it calls "complete control" (Systems for Dentists). Its own site sets out minimum server specifications for a local install, including a Windows 10 or later machine, a dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM as a baseline (Systems for Dentists onboarding). Before choosing on-premise, ask SFD to confirm where data and backups are stored, which functions remain available without broadband, and who supplies and maintains the server, backups and local IT support. For either deployment, get hardware and connectivity requirements and the responsibilities included in the quote confirmed in writing.

Both systems publish NHS integration capabilities, but the supplied descriptions do not establish identical features. Systems for Dentists lists automated transmissions, integrated FP17 forms, NHS number lookup and UDA tracking (Systems for Dentists). Dentally states it covers NHS integration across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, from FP17 forms to payment systems; its help documentation also describes automatic NHS number updates from returned monthly schedules for England and Wales, rather than establishing an equivalent lookup feature (Dentally, Our story; Dentally NHS claim and number updates). Confirm your nation's exact claims process and any required UDA tracking or NHS number lookup before signing.

Pricing and Cost Model

This is where the two products diverge most sharply. Dentally publishes a tiered price list with a surgery-count slider; Systems for Dentists publishes none.

Dentally's three tiers, priced monthly and excluding VAT, run from Starter to Essentials to Pro. The table below sets out the published price at one, two and three surgeries, the range most relevant to a small independent practice (Dentally pricing).

Assumptions. All Dentally figures are the vendor's published monthly subscription prices, excluding VAT (Dentally pricing). Confirm any implementation, training and data migration charges in a written quote. Systems for Dentists does not publish a comparable figure on its site or on the page it names "pricing.html", so no SFD price appears here; that page instead describes the five-stage onboarding process (Handover, Initiation, Discovery, Implementation, Hypercare) a new practice goes through (Systems for Dentists onboarding).

Worked example. Dentally's Starter tier shows real economies of scale as a practice adds surgeries. One surgery costs £125 a month, or £125.00 per surgery. Two surgeries cost £195 a month, or £97.50 per surgery (£195 ÷ 2). Three surgeries cost £265 a month, or roughly £88.33 per surgery (£265 ÷ 3). A practice weighing up whether to expand from one surgery to two or three should factor that falling per-surgery cost into its growth plan, not just the headline monthly figure.

What each Dentally tier buys also differs. Starter includes unlimited users and storage but only chat support and a limited AI clinical notes trial, with AI clinical notes unavailable in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Essentials adds phone support and 45 AI clinical note transcriptions per surgery per month, with the transcription allowance also excluding Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Pro adds custom integrations, a dedicated customer success manager and 90 transcriptions per surgery per month, with the same geographical exclusions for AI clinical notes (Dentally pricing). A one-surgery practice paying £125 a month for Starter is not buying the same support level as one paying £320 a month for Pro, so the cheapest tier is not automatically the right comparison point against an SFD quote.

Because Systems for Dentists quotes individually, a fair comparison means asking it for a written monthly figure for your exact surgery count, on the same excluding-VAT basis Dentally publishes, and asking what that figure includes: licence, support tier, training days and data migration from your existing system.

How Dentally and Systems for Dentists Compare

Neither system is a universal winner, and both have larger group owners. A practice that wants an upfront published price and is comfortable being cloud-only has a clear, checkable figure from Dentally. A practice that wants an on-premise option, or values Systems for Dentists' long operating history and UK support, still has a real reason to choose it, with ownership considered alongside those practical requirements.

Editorial Analysis

The ownership structure is the detail most worth surfacing to a practice manager, because it cuts both ways and is easy to miss. A practice comparing Dentally and Software of Excellence (EXACT) is, as set out above, comparing two products from one company. That is not necessarily a reason to avoid Dentally: a single well-resourced parent group can mean more stable investment in features like the AI clinical note tools Dentally offers outside Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (Dentally pricing).

The assumption that Systems for Dentists is the "genuine independent alternative" needs the same check. Companies House shows Portman Healthcare Limited became the company's person with significant control on 9 March 2023 (Companies House, persons with significant control), as part of the corporate group described above, running practices that care for well over a million patients a year across the UK and Ireland. Neither product is disqualified by its ownership. A small independent practice is choosing between two products each backed by a larger group, and a practice with a specific reason to want distance from a corporate parent should put that question directly to whichever vendor it shortlists.

On price, the difference between a published rate card and a quote-only model remains the practical sticking point regardless of ownership. Dentally's published slider by surgery count, up to eight surgeries, gives a practice manager a starting anchor before any sales call. For Systems for Dentists, request a written quote and compare it against Dentally's public numbers for the same surgery count and VAT treatment.

Sources

• Dentally pricing
• Dentally, Our story
• Systems for Dentists
• Systems for Dentists onboarding process
• Companies House, Systems for Dentists Limited
• Dentistry.co.uk, Dentistry Practice Services partners with Henry Schein One
• Companies House, Systems for Dentists persons with significant control
• PortmanDentex, Legal
• Dentally NHS claim and number updates
• Dentally, Henry Schein One