Dental Focus is one of the longest-established dental marketing agencies in the UK. They have a large client base and a polished sales pitch. They also charge significant monthly fees for websites built on a platform you'll never own. Here's the honest comparison.
The Problem With Dental Focus
Dental Focus has been operating in the dental marketing space for over two decades. That longevity is part of their pitch — and there's something reassuring about working with an established name. But the fundamental business model hasn't changed: you pay monthly, they own the website, and leaving means losing everything you've built.
Dental Focus positions their offering as "all-inclusive" — website, hosting, support, SEO all bundled together. The problem with bundles is that you can never tell what you're actually paying for, or whether it's working. Practices with Dental Focus often can't tell us what their monthly retainer is achieving, because they've never been shown clear attribution.
"Dental Focus was professional and approachable on the sales call. Two years in, we were still waiting to see meaningful ranking movement — and when we asked for a breakdown, the answers were vague."
At 78 Dental, every service is scoped and priced separately. You always know exactly what you're paying for, and you own the website outright from week four.
What Dental Focus Clients Typically Report
Dental Focus sites share structural and design patterns across their client base. Your practice ends up looking similar to competitors using the same agency.
When website, SEO, hosting and support are all bundled, it's impossible to know what you're paying for each — or whether any of it is delivering ROI.
Many Dental Focus clients report ranking progress that is slower than expected, with monthly reports that show activity but not clear attribution to new patients.
As with most dental marketing agencies, the website stays with Dental Focus. Years of content, design investment and SEO history cannot be taken when you leave.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Dental Focus | 78 Dental | |
|---|---|---|
| Website ownership | Dental Focus retains ownership — you lose it on exit | Yours outright from day one |
| Website type | Template with branding applied | Fully bespoke — built from scratch every time |
| Code quality | CMS platform, typical mid-range Lighthouse scores | Hand-coded HTML/CSS — 100 Lighthouse score |
| Copywriting | Template copy lightly adapted per client | Written from scratch for your practice and location |
| Monthly cost | £600–£1,800/month ongoing | £2,500–£7,500 one-off (+ optional £495/mo SEO) |
| Contract length | 12–24 month minimum terms | No contracts — ever |
| Pricing transparency | Bundled — difficult to know what each element costs | Every service scoped and priced separately |
| SEO approach | Included in bundle, limited clear attribution | Dedicated retainer, clear monthly reporting with attribution |
| Local SEO | Generic dental SEO, limited location specificity | Suburb and location-specific from day one |
| Who you speak to | Account managers, not the people doing the work | Direct access to the person building and managing your site |
| Delivery time | 10–16 weeks typical | 4 weeks guaranteed |
| What you keep if you leave | Nothing — site and content stays with Dental Focus | Full file handover — everything is yours |
| 5-year total cost (estimate) | £36,000–£108,000+ in retainer fees | £2,500–£7,500 + optional SEO retainer |
The Three Biggest Dental Focus Problems
Dental Focus has a large client base built on a consistent template system. That consistency has made them efficient — and made their clients' websites look similar to each other. When you're a private practice trying to differentiate from the practice down the road, sharing a template with hundreds of other practices is a fundamental problem.
When everything is in one monthly bundle, it's genuinely impossible to tell whether your SEO is working, whether your website is the right design, or whether any specific activity is driving patients. This opacity is convenient for agencies — because it makes it very difficult to cancel on performance grounds. With 78 Dental, every service is separate, measurable and cancellable independently.
Dental Focus typically takes 10–16 weeks to deliver a new website — compared to our four-week guarantee. Practices that switch to us regularly report that their previous Dental Focus timeline was extended multiple times. We fix a four-week delivery window in our contract, not because we rush, but because we scope accurately and then execute without delay.
From a Former Dental Focus Client
"We'd been with Dental Focus for two years. The website looked fine, but we could never get a straight answer about what our monthly fee was achieving. When we switched to 78 Dental, we got a faster site, better rankings within three months, and for the first time we actually understood what we were paying for."
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