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The Scoop On Dental Website Costs

By August 13, 2021May 24th, 2022No Comments

Dental-Website-Costs

How Much Should A Dental Website Design Cost?

Following much investigating into dental marketing companies that offer websites, we found a wide spectrum of available options for dentists. From templated pre-designed website offerings to full custom dental website designs, there is a lot to consider.

How does a dental practice make a decision on which dental website is best for them? Between balancing your budget while still getting a quality dental website that will really help your practice, it can be a difficult choice. If you pay too little for your dental website you could end up with a site that doesn’t brand your practice well. A low-cost dental website could also hurt your goal to rank high in search engines. Inexpensive websites are not built with dental SEO in mind.

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The Cost Of Pre-Designed Dental Websites

Designing a website is no small task. Some companies have created software systems that allow you to build a website without understanding coding languages like HTML. A good example of a company that offers a pre-designed website would be Wix or SquarespaceThere are a few pre-designed options in the dental industry. Prosites is an example of a dental company that offers a pre-designed dental website option.

The interface is usually a simple drag and drop system. You upload the photography, logos, and copywriting into a pre-designed layout, and voila, you have a website! It’s kind of like buying a track home. You don’t have total control over the square footage, you’re limited in colors, you usually get entry-level products and you can’t get too far away from the overall look. All the homes on the street look similar. However, it’s a great option for someone looking to cut costs.

Depending on which website design company you go with you’ll invest anywhere from $25 per month up to $300 per month. The difference in the monthly cost is determined by the support services offered. Less support and help with training and troubleshooting is going to be cheaper. There usually isn’t a setup fee with pre-designed websites because you’re the one doing all of the work.

The advantage of a pre-designed website is the cost. The disadvantages are the integration and functionality of the design. You typically are not going to get exactly what you want. Another big disadvantage is that you probably won’t own the website. This means that if you cancel the service you can’t take the design files and simply transfer them to a new hosting company. You’ll have to rebuild the site.

We’ve had many conversations with dentists who say that they own their websites but when you look closely at the contract, it reads that the dental practice owns the site assets but not the site. Sounds confusing? It is! The assets of the site would be photography, videos, and copywriting. If you are in a website contract like this, you don’t own the site because when you cancel the service you’ll have to pay another website design company to take the assets from your current site and rebuild it.

So, if you’re looking for a long-term solution the costs of a pre-designed site may not make sense.

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Dental Website Costs With Agile Development

Agile websites are sites that begin with a template. Think of a website like you would the frame of a house. The exact quality of the home is yet to be determined. Depending on your budget the home could turn out fantastically.

If you decide on an agile website, you’ll want a great dental website designer. The web designer will show you templates that you can choose from. The great thing about templates is that there are thousands. The goal of browsing templates is to find something close to what you’re looking for. Once you’ve decided on a template the website designer will make recommendations, kind of like an interior designer, on how to design and customize the site.

Almost all dental marketing companies provide an agile website design. Even the ones that say they offer custom sites! Agile website development will give almost any dental practice exactly what they want. The variety of templates and the customization options give a web developer the flexibility to pretty much give you what you want.

Agile dental website design significantly cuts down on the website design because the doctor is shooting from the hip as to what they want. When browsing website templates the dentist can see pretty much what they get before starting the project. This helps to set expectations.

We had a client a few years ago that wanted a fully custom site. We agreed to do this and then got started based on some of the dentist’s suggestions. The doctor saw the rough draft and was very irritated because it wasn’t what he wanted. We on the other hand felt that we built exactly what he wanted. We ended up going back and forth for months, spending way too much time on the project. The doctor ended up getting a website that was close to several templates that we’ve used. It was a big waste of time on both sides.

Agile websites have two costs. First, a design fee and a monthly hosting and management fee. Design fees run anywhere from $4,000 – $8,000. This depends on how the dental marketing company charges for their time. Most companies tie the cost of the website design cost to an hourly rate. The difference between $4,000 and $8,000 has to do with the amount of time required to get the site looking the way the client would like it.

The second fee is for hosting and monthly management. Hosting is the cost of renting space on a computer where your website files are stored. When a person clicks on a link to go to your website, it queries the website files at the hosting company and displays them for the person to see. So, you’re paying a company to make sure that your website files are always accessible and are showing up correctly.

Beyond hosting there are monthly management fees. Some dental marketing companies will offer partial or fully managed websites. In a fully managed service, the website company will make unlimited edits and changes to the site, will update the site with recommendations from Google, fix errors, and make recommendations on changes to the design. They take care of everything.

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How Much Does A Custom Website Design Cost?

Custom website designs are built from scratch. The team that you’re working with usually has extremely talented web designers and coders to build exactly what you want. Custom-designed sites will have elements to the site that clearly define your brand and the tone of your office.

We had a pediatric practice ask for butterflies to fly across the home page. This is not a function on any templates that we’ve ever seen and would require custom design and coding. This is a good example of a custom design request.

Most of the integrations with practice patient management systems, like online payments, online forms, and online scheduling can be integrated with agile and custom sites. Custom design is more of an issue of aesthetics than integrations.

Custom website designs have two costs, a design fee, and a monthly hosting and management fee. The design fee can run from around $8,000 – $20,000 depending on the project. Some companies will fly a videographer out to the office to get still photography, testimonial videos, and other assets. This helps to make your website custom but will drive the cost up.

Where To Get A New Dental Website For $0?

Our team of digital marketers offers websites for dentists, orthodontists, and specialty practices. We use agile website development because it drops the website design costs for dental practices. The best dental websites are those that convey the tone and brand of the office and also help to convert website visitors into clients. 

We’ve found that most dentists prefer agile web development for their dental office websites. If you are a current client and have a My Social Practice marketing package you qualify for a $4,000 agile website development credit. If you’re not currently a My Social Practice client please contact us to find out how you can redeem your $4,000 agile website credit. The only requirement in the website package is to not cancel any of your services for one year.

Speedy and agile web development will improve your online presence, integrate with your dental social media marketing, increase your dental search engine optimization and support your dental reputation management.

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About the Author: Adrian Lefler is a dental marketing expert and a key member of the dental marketing team at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adrian is passionate about helping dental practices grow. If you’d like to book one of the members of My Social Practice’s speaking team, you can do that HERE. Interested in learning more about the benefits of dentist SEO or our dental SEO service, please schedule a complimentary consultation. And, don’t forget to read our Google reviews.