# Dental Website Statistics 2026: What 300 US Practice Sites Run

Source: https://bealinawaz.com/blog/dental-website-statistics/
By Ali Nawaz, freelance WordPress and Shopify developer in Lahore, Pakistan (https://bealinawaz.com/about-me/).

Published: 2026-11-14

Dental website statistics from a November 2026 scan of 300 US dental practice home pages: platforms, WordPress versions, page builders, tracking, security and patient tools.

71% of US independent dental practice websites run on WordPress. That's the main finding from my November 2026 scan of 300 practice home pages taken from Chrome's own list of the sites US users visit. The rest is spread thin: custom-coded sites at 10.7%, then Squarespace, Webflow and Drupal at about 3% each. Only 2.7% use a dental-specific website vendor.

The scan also shows where these sites fall short. 37% send none of the six common security headers. 7.3% still load Universal Analytics, which stopped collecting data in 2023. 13 practices run a WordPress version from the previous major release. The numbers, the method and what they mean for a practice owner follow.

## How I collected the data

I didn't buy a list or rely on a survey. Every number here comes from a scan I ran myself with the same code as my free [Website Platform Checker](https://bealinawaz.com/tools/cms-detector/).

1. **The sample.** I started from the [Chrome UX Report (CrUX)](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux) top-sites list for the United States, October 2026, as published in the open [crux-top-lists](https://github.com/zakird/crux-top-lists) repository. CrUX only includes sites that enough real Chrome users visit, so every site in it has actual traffic. CrUX data is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux/methodology) by Google.
2. **The filter.** 1,185 origins in that list contain "dental", "dentist", "orthodont", "endodont" or "periodont". After removing app, portal and login subdomains, 831 sites remained.
3. **The scan.** On 13 and 14 November 2026 I requested each home page once, read the HTML and headers, and recorded the platform, page builder, plugins, tracking IDs, security headers and the third-party services the page loads.
4. **The cleanup.** I sorted every site by hand into practices and everything else (insurers, suppliers, software, schools, directories). That left **441 US practices**: 410 independent practices and 31 multi-location groups (DSOs). 388 home pages could be read; 17 blocked automated visits and 36 didn't respond.
5. **The cohort.** 62 of the readable sites belong to three DSO networks that each run one shared platform, mostly 49 near-identical sites of practices supported by Heartland Dental. Counting each of them would make one company's website look like 49 practices' choices, so the headline numbers below use the **300 independent practices** only.

Limits worth knowing: this is the home page only, so tools that appear on inner pages aren't counted. Sites with enough Chrome traffic to appear in CrUX are likely larger and busier than the average practice. And the detector can only report what a page reveals; 40 WordPress sites hide their version.

## Which platforms dental websites use

![Bar chart: 71.0% of US dental practice websites run WordPress, 10.7% custom code, 3.3% Squarespace, 3.0% Webflow, 2.7% Drupal, 2.7% dental website vendors, 1.7% Wix, 1.7% GoHighLevel, 3.3% other builders](https://bealinawaz.com/assets/blog/dental-website-statistics/platforms.svg)

| Platform | Practices | Share |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 213 | 71.0% |
| Custom code (Next.js, Astro, ASP.NET and others) | 32 | 10.7% |
| Squarespace | 10 | 3.3% |
| Webflow | 9 | 3.0% |
| Drupal | 8 | 2.7% |
| Dental website vendors (PatientPop/Tebra, Doctors Internet, Einstein) | 8 | 2.7% |
| Wix | 5 | 1.7% |
| GoHighLevel | 5 | 1.7% |
| Other builders (HubSpot, Duda, Framer, Hostinger, Unbounce, Joomla, Shopify) | 10 | 3.3% |

Two things surprised me. Wix and Squarespace, the builders most often recommended to small practices, together run only 5% of these sites. And the dental-specific website platforms that advertise heavily to dentists appear on fewer than 3%. Practices with real traffic mostly sit on WordPress, usually built by an agency or a freelance developer.

The DSO networks went the other way: the 49 Heartland-supported practice sites in the sample all run the same custom-built platform, with location pages served through Yext. At that scale, one engineering team maintaining one codebase makes sense. For a single practice, it rarely does.

## WordPress: versions, page builders and SEO plugins

Of the 213 WordPress practices, 173 show their version. 151 of those (87%) run the current 7.1 release line, which is better than I expected. But 13 sites (7.5% of those showing a version) are still on WordPress 6.x, a full major version behind the current [WordPress release](https://wordpress.org/download/releases/), and the oldest was 6.6. Old versions miss security fixes and the block editor improvements that later themes depend on.

![Bar chart: page builders on 213 WordPress dental sites. Elementor 36.2%, no page builder found 30.0%, block editor only 19.2%, Divi 8.5%, WPBakery 8.0%, Beaver Builder 2.3%, Oxygen 2.3%](https://bealinawaz.com/assets/blog/dental-website-statistics/page-builders.svg)

| On the 213 WordPress sites | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Elementor (Free or Pro) | 77 | 36.2% |
| Elementor Pro | 64 | 30.0% |
| No page builder found | 64 | 30.0% |
| Block editor only | 41 | 19.2% |
| Divi | 18 | 8.5% |
| WPBakery | 17 | 8.0% |
| Yoast SEO | 100 | 46.9% |
| Rank Math | 38 | 17.8% |
| No SEO plugin visible | 75 | 35.2% |

Elementor is the clear favourite with dental agencies. WPBakery still appears on 17 sites; it's an older builder that wraps content in shortcodes, which makes a later redesign harder because the text has to be pulled out of them first. A visible SEO plugin isn't required for good SEO, but on a practice site it usually means someone set titles, descriptions and the sitemap on purpose.

## Tracking: what practices measure

| Tracking found in the page | Practices | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Google Tag Manager | 224 | 74.7% |
| Google Analytics 4 ID in the page | 112 | 37.3% |
| Google Ads tag | 57 | 19.0% |
| Meta Pixel | 46 | 15.3% |
| Universal Analytics (retired) | 22 | 7.3% |
| No analytics or tag manager at all | 15 | 5.0% |

Three in four practices load Google Tag Manager, so many more run GA4 inside it than the 37% whose GA4 ID is visible in the page source. The useful number is the 22 practices still loading Universal Analytics. Google [stopped processing Universal Analytics data on 1 July 2023](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528) and removed access to it in July 2024, so those tags collect nothing. If a practice's only analytics is that old tag, it has had no website data for over two years.

## Patient tools on the home page

![Bar chart: patient tools on dental practice home pages. Call tracking 21.3%, third-party online booking 21.0%, review widget 17.3%, cookie consent banner 12.3%, patient financing 8.3%, accessibility overlay 7.7%, live chat or texting 5.7%](https://bealinawaz.com/assets/blog/dental-website-statistics/patient-tools.svg)

| Tool | Practices | Share | Examples seen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Call tracking | 64 | 21.3% | CallRail, Liine, PatientPrism |
| Third-party online booking | 63 | 21.0% | NexHealth, Modento, CareStack, Flexbook, LocalMed |
| Review widget | 52 | 17.3% | Trustindex, Birdeye, Elfsight |
| Cookie consent banner | 37 | 12.3% | Cookiebot, CookieYes, OneTrust |
| Patient financing | 25 | 8.3% | CareCredit, Sunbit |
| Accessibility overlay | 23 | 7.7% | UserWay, AudioEye |
| Live chat or texting | 17 | 5.7% | Podium, Birdeye, Tidio |

Only about one practice in five links or embeds a third-party booking system on its home page. Others use their own "request an appointment" form, which works, but it isn't real-time booking and the patient still waits for a call back.

The accessibility overlay number deserves a note. Overlays are scripts that claim to make a site accessible automatically. In April 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission [finalised an order requiring the overlay maker accessiBe to pay $1 million](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/04/ftc-approves-final-order-requiring-accessibe-pay-1-million) over claims that its tool made websites compliant. An overlay doesn't replace accessible markup: labelled forms, real buttons, alt text and enough colour contrast.

## Basic on-page SEO

| Home page check | Share of practices |
|---|---|
| No meta description | 7.3% |
| No H1 heading | 10.0% |
| More than one H1 | 17.0% |
| Title longer than 60 characters | 37.3% |
| At least one image without alt text | 30.3% |
| No structured data at all | 11.7% |
| Business structured data (Dentist, LocalBusiness, MedicalBusiness or Organization) | 65.0% |
| Uses the specific "Dentist" type | 24.3% |
| Missing a mobile viewport tag | 0.3% |

Practices get the basics mostly right; every site was mobile-ready except one. The gaps are in the details: titles long enough to be cut off in search results, images without alt text, and only a quarter using the `Dentist` schema type that tells search engines exactly what the business is.

## Security headers and HTTPS

![Bar chart: share of dental practice sites sending each security header. X-Content-Type-Options 52.0%, HSTS 39.7%, X-Frame-Options 36.0%, Referrer-Policy 28.0%, Content-Security-Policy 26.3%, Permissions-Policy 21.0%, none of the six 37.0%](https://bealinawaz.com/assets/blog/dental-website-statistics/security-headers.svg)

Every practice site in the sample loads over HTTPS. Most certificates come from free authorities: 175 from Let's Encrypt and 78 from Google Trust Services, the one Cloudflare uses. HTTPS alone isn't the whole picture, though. Security headers tell browsers how to handle a site's pages, and **37% of practices send none of the six common ones**. Only 11.3% send all six. These are server settings, usually a few lines in a host's configuration, and they matter more on a site with patient forms.

Hosting follows the platform: WP Engine hosts 53 practices directly (17.7%), 44.7% sit behind Cloudflare, and the rest are spread across Amazon Web Services, Kinsta, Rackspace, GoDaddy, Liquid Web and others.

## What this means if you run a practice website

You don't need a rare platform to compete. Most practices with real traffic run WordPress, and the ones that stand out do the ordinary things well. A short checklist from the gaps in this data:

1. **Check your analytics.** If your site still has a `UA-` tag and nothing else, you haven't measured anything since July 2023. Move to GA4, ideally through Tag Manager.
2. **Update WordPress.** If you're on 6.x, plan the update to the current version with a backup and a staging copy first.
3. **Add security headers.** HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options and a basic Content-Security-Policy are the first three to ask your host or developer for.
4. **Use the Dentist schema type** with your address, hours and phone number, and keep titles under about 60 characters.
5. **Make booking easy.** If you use a booking system, put it on the home page. If you don't, say clearly how fast you call back.
6. **Fix accessibility in the page, not with an overlay**: alt text, labelled form fields and readable contrast.

You can see what your own site runs, including its platform, hosting, security headers and tracking, with my free [Website Platform Checker](https://bealinawaz.com/tools/cms-detector/). It's the same code that produced this study.

## Common mistakes I saw in the scan

- **Retired tracking left in place.** 22 home pages still load a Universal Analytics tag that has collected nothing since July 2023.
- **Page builders stacked on page builders.** 6 WordPress sites load two different page builders at once, which usually means an old one was never removed after a redesign.
- **Heavy home pages.** The median practice home page loads 17 scripts and 27 images before a patient sees the phone number.
- **No H1 or several H1s.** 27% of home pages have either no main heading or more than one.

## When to get help

If your practice site is on an old WordPress version, still runs Universal Analytics, or sends no security headers, those are quick fixes for a developer. If it needs a rebuild, I build and maintain [WordPress websites](https://bealinawaz.com/services/wordpress-website-development/) for practices and small businesses, with a free audit of your current site first. Projects start at $500.

## FAQ

##### What platform do most dental websites use?

In this scan of 300 US independent dental practice home pages, 71% run WordPress. Custom-coded sites are second at 10.7%, and no website builder reaches 4%.

##### Is WordPress good for a dental practice website?

It's the most common choice among practices that get real traffic, mainly because it's flexible, works with every booking and review tool, and any developer can maintain it. It needs updates and a decent host, which is where many practice sites fall short.

##### Are Wix and Squarespace good for dentists?

They work for a simple site, but they're rare among the practices in this sample: 5% combined. They limit how much you can change the site's code, structured data and speed later.

##### How was this data collected?

From a scan of each home page on 13 and 14 November 2026, using the same code as my free Website Platform Checker. The sites came from Google's Chrome UX Report top-sites list for the US (October 2026), filtered to dental sites and checked by hand.

##### Can I use these numbers?

Yes. Please cite "bealinawaz.com dental website study, November 2026" and link to this page.