ProSites vs a custom website for a dental practice

February is when the new insurance year starts to show in the schedule. Patients with fresh benefits book their cleanings, and the ones who have been putting off a crown or an implant consultation start comparing practices online. For a lot of practices, it is also the month someone at the front desk asks whether the website is still pulling its weight.

Two routes come up most often. One is ProSites, a website company that specializes in dental practices. The other is a custom site designed for the practice by an agency or a developer. Both can produce a good website. They suit different practices, and the difference is worth understanding before anyone signs.

What should drive the decision

• How distinct the practice needs to look. A new general practice and an established implant and sedation practice ask different things of their sites.
• Who keeps it current. New providers, new services, insurance changes and fresh photos all need someone to add them.
• What you own. The domain, the design, the copy and the patient forms each have an owner, and the answer should be in writing.
• How patient information is handled. Anything that collects health details needs care, and so do the tracking scripts on those pages.

ProSites in plain terms

ProSites is best known for building and hosting websites for dental practices. A practice starts from designs made with dentistry in mind, the site is hosted by the provider, and marketing services such as search and paid ads are offered alongside. Because it specializes, the provider already knows the vocabulary of a dental office and the pages patients expect to find.

The attraction is speed and familiarity. A practice can have a professional, dental-specific site without briefing a designer from scratch, and without deciding on its own which pages a dental site needs. For a practice that wants a solid website and would rather not manage a build, that is a genuine advantage.

The questions to ask are about fit and ownership. Any service that works from a design library has to suit many practices at once, so ask whether the procedure pages are written for your practice or adapted from shared material, how much you can change, and what its semi-custom and custom design options would change for you. Ask who owns the domain and the site content, what you can take with you if you ever move, and exactly which marketing services are included in the plan you are offered. Get those answers in writing, because they vary by plan and can change.

A custom website in plain terms

A custom site is designed and written for one practice. It starts from what makes that practice different, whether that is a specialty, a family focus, a particular neighborhood or a team that has been together for years, and builds the pages around the treatments the practice most wants to grow.

The attraction is distinctiveness and control. Real photos of the team and the operatories instead of stock smiles, copy written in the dentist’s own voice, a structure that fits the practice’s actual services, and hosting in an account the practice holds. With AI Overviews now answering many procedure questions right on the results page, specific first-hand content earns more than generic procedure text does.

The costs are effort and dependence on the builder. A custom site takes longer, needs the practice’s time for photos and interviews, and is only as good as the people behind it. A custom site built by someone who then disappears is worse than a template site with reliable support.

Side by side for a practice

	ProSites	Custom website
Built for	Dental practices, most often starting from a design library	One practice’s services and brand
Design	Pre-designed dental layouts, with semi-custom and custom options	Designed around the practice
Content	Ask how much is written for your practice	Written for the practice, often from interviews
Time to launch	Usually quicker	Usually longer
Ownership	Ask in writing about domain, content and design	Should be the practice’s from day one; confirm it
Ongoing support	Comes from the provider; ask what your plan covers	Depends entirely on the builder

Pros and cons for each route

ProSites

Pros:

• Specialized in dentistry, so the structure and vocabulary start out right.
• Faster to launch than a site designed from nothing.
• Hosting, support and optional marketing services from one provider.

Cons:

• A site that starts from a shared design needs real photos and rewritten pages to stand apart.
• Flexibility follows what the platform supports.
• Ownership and portability are worth confirming before signing, as with any hosted service.

A custom website

Pros:

• Looks and reads like the practice rather than the category.
• Built around the treatments the practice wants more of.
• Simpler to own outright and move between providers.

Cons:

• Takes more of the dentist’s and the team’s time.
• Quality depends entirely on who builds it.
• Needs a maintenance plan, or it ages quickly.

Which practice fits which route

• A new practice opening this spring. ProSites or a similar specialist service gets a credible site up quickly, leaving time and budget for the Business Profile and early reviews.
• An established practice selling implants, aligners or sedation. A custom build, with real photos and procedure pages written from the dentist’s own approach, gives comparison shoppers a reason to choose you.
• A practice already on ProSites and happy with the support. Keep it. Rewrite the key procedure pages, add real photography, and check how patient forms and tracking are set up.
• A group with several locations. A custom structure with a genuinely different page per office usually scales better, though either route can work if the location pages are not copies of each other.

Patient forms and tracking scripts

Since the HHS bulletin on tracking technologies in December 2022, practices have had good reason to be careful about advertising pixels on pages where patients share health information. Whichever route you choose, keep ad tracking off appointment requests and medical history forms, ask how form submissions are stored and delivered, and ask whether the provider will sign a business associate agreement.

A different kind of builder

Beyaoshy is a general local marketing agency rather than a dental specialist, and a website is one part of what we do. The business holds the domain, the hosting and every account from the first day. Because one team also runs the Google profile, the reviews, the ads and the CRM, a site we build is judged on calls and booked appointments rather than visits. We have worked with local businesses since 2015, and other marketing agencies white-label this work under their own names.

See what goes into our website builds, or start with the overview for local business owners.