Digimax is one of the UK's largest dental marketing agencies. They also lock practices into long contracts, build on templates, charge inflated monthly retainers — and keep the website when you leave. Here's the full picture.
The Problem With Digimax
Digimax is one of the most widely used dental marketing agencies in the UK. They're well-resourced, well-known in the industry, and they'll tell you everything you want to hear on a sales call. But when you sign with Digimax, you're not buying a website — you're renting one. The site is built on their platform, hosted on their servers, and owned by them. When you leave, you leave empty-handed.
Practices that have been with Digimax for three or four years have often paid £30,000–£80,000 in cumulative retainer fees — and still don't own the digital asset they've been funding. They start again from zero.
"We paid Digimax for four years. When we left, we had nothing. No website files, no content, no SEO history we could take with us. Four years of fees, and we started from scratch."
That's not a one-off experience. It's how the model is designed. 78 Dental works differently: one fixed fee, full ownership, no lock-in.
What Digimax Clients Typically Report
Digimax sites share the same underlying structure across hundreds of clients. The branding changes. The layout does not.
Leaving early triggers significant penalty clauses. Practices feel trapped — and often stay longer than they should as a result.
You rarely speak to the person doing the work. Communication goes through account managers who relay messages and dilute decisions.
The website, the content, the SEO work — it stays with Digimax. You walk away with nothing after years of monthly payments.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Digimax | 78 Dental | |
|---|---|---|
| Website ownership | Digimax owns it — you lose it if you leave | You own it outright from day one |
| Website type | Template with brand customisation | Fully bespoke — built from scratch |
| Code quality | CMS/template platform, average Lighthouse scores | Hand-coded HTML/CSS — 100 Lighthouse score |
| Copywriting | Generic boilerplate, often lightly customised | Written from scratch for your practice |
| Monthly cost | £800–£2,000/month ongoing | £2,500–£7,500 one-off (+ optional £495/mo SEO) |
| Contract length | 12–24 months, early exit penalties | No contracts — ever |
| SEO approach | Bundled into retainer, limited transparency | Dedicated SEO retainer, clear monthly reporting |
| Local SEO | Generic dental SEO, not location-specific | Location and suburb-specific from day one |
| Google Ads | Available but bundled, opaque reporting | Available, transparent, client owns the account |
| Who you speak to | Account managers relaying messages | Direct access to the person doing the work |
| Delivery time | 8–16 weeks typical | 4 weeks guaranteed |
| What you keep if you leave | Nothing — files stay with Digimax | Everything — full file handover, no dependency |
| 5-year total cost (estimate) | £48,000–£120,000+ in retainer fees | £2,500–£7,500 + optional £495/mo SEO |
The Three Biggest Digimax Problems
Because Digimax own the website and the hosting, leaving means losing everything. Your URL history, your content, your design — it all stays with them. Practices that have paid for years of SEO work see those rankings disappear overnight when they switch. It's not an accident. It's the model.
Digimax have hundreds of dental clients on the same underlying platform. The fonts change, the colours change, the logo changes — but the structure, the layout, and often the copy is familiar. Private patients choosing between practices will often be comparing sites that came from the same template. You can't differentiate on design when your design is shared.
Digimax's retainer model bundles website hosting, SEO, support and account management into one monthly fee. The problem is there's rarely transparency about what's actually being done each month — or what results are attributable to which activity. Practices pay for years without clear evidence of what they're getting in return.
From a Former Digimax Client
"We were with Digimax for three years. The account manager changed twice. The website barely changed at all. When we finally left, we had nothing — no files, no content, nothing we could use. 78 Dental rebuilt us from scratch in four weeks and it's already a better website than anything Digimax produced in three years."
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